She held tight, ignoring the sting, and absorbed the pain before it sheathed her apprentice Mickey. Ava had long since developed a high tolerance to the physical suffering that came with brokering time, and that made her bounty hunting services invaluable. Mickey cleared his throat—his way of pretending that traveling through time didn’t hurt. He was getting stronger, but not yet capable of handling the raw side-effects alone. Someday he’d have to absorb the full impact, but not today. Today he remained under Ava’s protection. The stinging subsided as Ava dispensed the pea-sized gems into a pouch no bigger than a teabag. She tightened the drawstring and secured it on her belt loop before tucking the little purse into the waistband of her blue jeans. An uneasy silence spilled across the cool night air and swirled around Ava and Mickey. She scanned the darkened, desolate alley and eased the MPD from her back pocket. Not that the Micro Placement Device, a Blackberry-type gadget, could offer much support in the way of protection, but in these electronically-underdeveloped times it’d do three things well.
