Chapter Nine
Fingers tighten, squeezing my arm. My knees scrape along concrete as I’m pulled across the floor. The stench of puke and blood mingled with cleaning products assaults my nose. I can’t move. I can’t fight. A scream gurgles in the back of my throat, trapped by frozen muscles. I want to run. I want to escape. I want to kill the bastard who holds me captive.
I try to flail my arm, move my legs, but only accomplish a pathetic moan.
“Gin!”
The man holding my arm laughs. “Not close enough. No help for you.”
“Gin!”
My arm shakes, my body trembling. Wicked laughter fades into background noise as another’s fingers grasp my arm.
“Gin! Wake up!”
The command ricochets through my veins, a zinger of power laced in the words. My eyes open to a brow-furrowed Smythe. I sit, throw my arms around his waist, rest my head on his shoulder, and squeeze for all I’m worth. After a heartbeat’s pause, he returns the hug, his hands making small circles on my back, letting me know without words everything will be okay.
His touch comforts, soothes, and chases away the dream.
“What was it?”
“A replay of last night.” A shudder ripples across my skin. “Thank you for saving me.”
One hand strokes my hair. “Always.”
I raise my head, meet his eyes, our lips inches apart. His gaze bounces between my eyes and my lips as if asking permission.
Despite it breaking my personal rule, I want the comfort only he can provide.
He lowers his head while I raise mine, our lips meeting as one. Power surges along my nerves, my veins, straight into my core, a blossoming heat. He deepens the kiss as my fingers curl into his nape. So much for one little kiss. One kiss with this man will never be enough.
Wanting more of him, I lean back, and he takes the offer, pressing me into the bed, crawling up my body like he belongs, until he lies fully on top of me, the sheet a barrier between us.
Never releasing his lips, I reach under his t-shirt, trying to pull it over his head. I’m almost successful when his phone rings. He pulls back.
“You aren’t answering that, right?”
Rolling off me, he pulls the phone out of his pocket. “It’s work.”
Well, shit. I throw off the sheet as he answers the phone. My body tingles in all the right places, eager for him to finish what we started. Too damn bad. I should’ve stuck with my personal commandment. Instead, I’m tingling, unfulfilled, and unlikely to get relief.
Double dog damn it.
Smythe white-knuckles his phone. Never a good sign.
“Come again?” His brows drop low. “Why now…who else are you calling? Okay, we’ll be there.”
He yanks the phone from his ear and slams his finger on the screen, ending the call. Anger morphs into lust as his gaze runs the length of my body.
“I told you not to answer it.”
He cracks a grin. “Yeah, well.” His expression grows serious. “Maybe it’s for the best. As much as I want”—he waves a hand in my direction—“we work together.”
Not that it’s stopped him in the past. A twinge of jealousy winds through my veins. He’ll stop with me but didn’t with his first mentee? Clearly, I read more into our abbreviated horizontal action time than I should have. Two choices, Gin, woman up and act like it’s no big deal, or turn into bitch-zilla.
After a two second pause, playing nice wins. “It could get awkward.”
He nods once, closes his eyes. When he opens them, only determination remains in their depths, his lust banked.
“The Agency has called an emergency meeting. That’s what the call was about. Multiple demons have made an appearance over the last week, more than normal. No rise in crime, though. Those of us who can are going to meet to brainstorm.”
Just what I wanted to do. Visit the Agency at its high-rise in Boston. My esteemed employer thinks I’m white trash. One of the other guardian mages, Samantha—whose perfectly toned body Smythe didn’t mind sleeping with—tried to have me killed, not that anyone besides Smythe believes me. Smythe’s father, David—who oversees the guardians—belittles me at every opportunity. He belittles Smythe too, so maybe acting like an ass is just his personality. The whole building confuses my justitia, which is convinced a demon lives on the property, even though they say no demon has ever set foot inside the warded place.
Good times.
“Do I have to go?” Geez, can my voice get any whinier? It’s like I’ve channeled a petulant two-year-old.
Smythe straightens his shirt. “Yes. Other Justitians will be there. You haven’t met them all and should.”
Oh joy. More condescending looks. Look at the poor Justitian who didn’t grow up knowing anything about this life and who actually has a job. How plebian.
“I can hardly wait.”
“Try not to be sarcastic.”
“What do you expect? They all hate me.”
“Not all of them.”
“At least Samantha hasn’t tried killing me lately.”
“True that.” His eyes flare as if he suddenly remembers something. “I know how she paid the minions she sent to kill you.” He’s at the bedroom door faster than the time it takes me to blink. “I’ll be on my laptop. Get dressed.” He shuts the door behind him before I can ask how.
I close my eyes, draw in a deep breath in hopes it clears my mind and release the breath on a sigh. Swinging my legs out of bed, I glance to the clock and blink in surprise.
2:00 p.m.? It’s been years since I’ve slept this long. Years. Waste of a day.
Okay, not a total waste. Smythe plans on telling me how Samantha managed to pay off minions to kill me. The thought of those minions reminds me of my friendly, neighborhood demon and the visit he paid me last night. Something I need to tell Smythe. Maybe he knows the identity of the person the mystery demon targets.
I pull clothes, a bra, and panties out of drawers before heading to the shower. Smythe didn’t mention how long before we need to leave, but I plan on making the bathroom trip quick. More time to chat that way.
When I emerge from the bedroom, dressed and ready for meeting with the enemy, ahem, I mean my employer, the heady aroma of coffee greets my senses. Fresh, not the kind that’s been sitting in the pot all day. Yummy. I love having a mentor who gets me.
I pour an extra-large mug, standing in front of the sink to sip the hot, liquid caffeine. Perfection. Rather like Smythe.
Gah. I really need to get him and our near miss out of my head. It didn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. It won’t happen.
Fake it until you make it.
“I found it!” Smythe shouts from the living room, mobilizing my feet into action.
Carrying my mug, I quickstep it next to where he sits on the couch, laptop resting on his thighs.
“What did you find?”
He points at the laptop, and I lean over his shoulder. “Proof Samantha did it. Well, almost proof. Still need to find the recipient of her transfer.”
“You mean proof she hired minions to kill me?” Shortly after I started wearing the justitia, Samantha convinced me a hoard of minions were attacking in San Antonio and I needed to help her ward fight. Which was a lie. Sure, there were minions in that park, but they had been hired by the blonde bitch to annihilate my ass.
Unfortunately for her, Smythe came to my rescue, burning the minions in an inferno of magic flame.
You’d think with evidence like that her toned ass would’ve been fired. But David took her side over mine. Only Smythe believed me.
And now he has proof.
“Yep.” He thumps the screen.
“Is that Samantha’s banking account?” At one time, watching Smythe break into websites worried me the feds would appear to arrest us for hacking. Now, I know better. Smythe’s hacks were as commonplace as going out to eat and about as safe.
“Yep. With a large transfer two days before she kidnapped you.” He po
ints to the transaction. “I need to dig a little deeper and trace who the transfer went to.”
“That’s kinda stupid to transfer money when withdrawing it and handing it to the minion would’ve been less traceable.” Goes to show being a guardian mage doesn’t translate into having brains.
“Lucky for us she went with the transfer. I’ll work on it when we get back from the meeting.” He snaps the laptop closed. “We need to leave if we want to get there in time.”
He places the computer on the coffee table and stands.
Time for the Zagan reveal. Yet another thing I have to, rather than want to, do. “There’s something I need to say.”
“Can it wait? We need to leave.”
“Sure, but you won’t be happy about it.”
Smythe sighs, all long-suffering and half patience. He rolls his hand in a get-on-with-it gesture.
“Zagan visited me last night.”
His jaw tenses. “And you’re just now telling me?”
Heat slaps my cheeks as I remember his kiss. I clear my throat. “We were a little busy. And I really wanted to know how Samantha paid those minions.”
He stares at me for a breath. “What did he want?”
“To let me know how upset he was about Bad Dye Job Guy drugging my drink. And to let me know about a rampaging demon out to ensnare a human. He said if we found the human we’ll find the demon.”
“Seriously? As if that is some new thing. Aren’t all demons out to ensnare humans?”
“Yeah, well. I said pretty much the same thing. He kept insisting we needed to stop the demon by finding some mysterious human the demon targets.”
“He’s nuts. Oh wait. He’s a demon. Same thing. That’s all he said?”
“Pretty much.” The part where he claimed my blood called to him, I keep to myself. No sense letting Smythe on to my past.
“Then we need to leave if we want to make it on time.” One brow rises as he looks at my mug.
“What? They have a problem with this?” I hold up my mug.
He shrugs, the gesture implying they might. Too damn bad. Waking up without caffeine is not really waking up.
“Ready?”
He offers me a hand. Taking a deep breath, I grasp his warm palm. Time to face the esteemed Agency.
Chapter Ten
With his free hand, Smythe opens a portal. Several seconds later, we arrive in the white landing room of the Agency.
Smythe taps my mug, and steam begins to rise from the no longer frozen coffee. I offer him a smile before taking a sip. He gets me. I think I’m falling in love.
To the left of where we stand, teenaged geeks sit in front of a row of computers. As one they glance our way, their gazes returning to their screens after a two-count. I’ve been told the geeks are really mages in training who can stop a demon from transporting into the Agency. I’ve also been told this room is the only way into the Agency.
I’m not convinced on either point.
This group of teenagers, mages or not, fail to inspire any fear other than that they can hack into your email account. And I’ve seen Eloise portal right into the infirmary without a soul checking up on her illegal arrival. Not to mention someone stole my justitia from the vault where it had been kept after the Agency determined my ancestral line died out in the 1940s.
Clearly the Agency has security lapses it wishes to deny. Not to mention flat-out incorrect information.
If my ancestral line had died out, I wouldn’t be wearing the bracelet, now would I?
After a quick nod to the teenagers, I follow Smythe across the room and out the door into a hallway decked out like a certain New York billionaire’s apartment. Gold and crystal chandeliers line the hallway, plush white carpeting swaths the floor, dampening noise. The scent of lavender hangs in the air, tickling my nose into a sneeze.
“Bless you.” Smythe glances over his shoulder. “You need a tissue?”
“No.” I sniff. “I need this place to stop using lavender as air freshener.”
“Sorry.”
He leads the way to the end of the hall where the conference room is, but instead of opening the door and walking in, he hooks a right down another hall.
“What’s wrong with the conference room?” I gesture over my shoulder toward the room where we’ve met before for a planning session, but he never breaks stride.
“We need more space. There’s another room that’s bigger.”
Bigger? The conference room I refer to holds a table large enough to fill my living room and has enough chairs for half the city. How much bigger could this other room be? And if the Agency was this freaking rich, why couldn’t they pay my salary so I could work full-time hunting the baddies?
A question they refuse to answer.
At the end of the hall, Smythe turns right, stopping in front of an elevator. When the door slides open, we step inside. He pushes the button for the eighteenth floor.
Like the hallway, gold gilds the elevator buttons, lines the marble floor. Marble. In an elevator. Definitely an out-of-this-world experience. The door pings our arrival, opening into yet another decked-out hallway. We step out, following voices around a corner to the obvious meeting place. Smythe nods at the huddle of bodies so I mimic him, wishing I knew who I was greeting. Not that it matters. A couple of waves and nods are all we get.
Smythe shoves open a door, and I’m snapped out of my thoughts into a full-fledged gawk session. Mirroring the other conference room, a wall of tinted windows overlooks the Boston harbor. Plush chairs sit in rows facing a podium with a projector screen hanging behind it. Almost all of the chairs are occupied with chatting people. Voices fill the space with noise thick enough to slice with a scalpel. A few people at the back turn when we walk in, but most don’t notice us, continuing to talk as if they haven’t seen each other for years.
Maybe they haven’t.
I offer a smile to whoever glances my way as I follow Smythe to the nearest two chairs. Despite having worked with the Agency for the last three months, I only recognize a couple of the faces. The last time I met for a brainstorming session was when a group of mages led by Samantha raided Zagan’s lair.
I take a sip as I glance around the room looking for Samantha. But I don’t see her. Don’t see David either.
“Where’s your dad?” I gesture at the crowd.
Smythe’s jaw tightens. “He’ll be here. He’s the one that called me.”
“What’s the deal with you two?”
He turns his head, his blue gaze piercing, urging me to look at my lap. I refuse to take him up on the offer. I am not afraid of the big, bad mage.
Most of the time.
“Now is not the time to discuss that.” The icy tone of his voice dares me to disagree.
Heat slaps my cheeks. Way to go Gin. Piss off your only ally in the room.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just curious.”
His gaze stabs my soul like a knife, welling guilt instead of blood.
“Really. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” I start to touch his hand, but he narrows his eyes.
“What happened to your father?”
Blood rushes from my face so fast dizziness swamps me. After I killed the wife-beating, child-abusing bastard, T talked to a ghost who helped us hide the body in a fresh grave in the local cemetery. The true reason T refuses to talk to ghosts. The reason neither of us will discuss.
We convinced the police dear old Dad walked out, deserting his family to begin another life elsewhere. Continued telling the story until his friends stopped coming around. Mom never asked. As long as the beatings stopped and the booze flowed, she accepted our lies right up to the day she died. Smythe, though, sees through our story as if he read the truth from my mind.
Which as a telepath, he very well might.
I slam barriers around the errant memories, rounding them up, stuffing them into a dark corner where they seethe in silence looking for an escape.
My fingers
tighten around the handle of my mug. “I told you. He left.”
“Uh-huh.” He faces the podium.
I try not to sag in relief. A reprieve. For now.
Topic change time.
“What’s on the agenda?”
“I told you.” His voice ekes through tight lips. “An excess of demon appearances has us worried.”
I swallow. “Right, right. I mean, what do they plan to do about it?”
“That’s why we’re here.”
So much for a topic change. More like a make-Gin-look-stupid change. Wait. In this place, that’s not much of a change.
Since Smythe no longer seems interested in talking, I glance around the room, looking for fellow Justitians. Which is harder than it seems. Not a one of them hops up and announces who they are. And the lack of demons in the place means no bracelets making a sudden appearance.
A door opens at the far side of the room, to the right of the podium, letting in some familiar faces—aka Samantha and David—and a not-so-familiar face. Instead of her normal black leathers, Samantha wears khaki pants and a white button-down blouse, both sculpted to show off her flawless figure. David looks the same as always, gray hair in a military cut, white button-down shirt, and navy trousers. The brown-haired man who walks in behind him towers over both Samantha and David with a physique like a cross between a body-builder and a rhino. His tailored dark suit shows off his bulging arm and chest muscles.
My justitia shivers, the silver links vibrating a warning. Nothing new there. The Agency gives the thing the creeps. Makes it think a demon exists where no demon could possibly be. I blame it on the white noise in the background. The sound drives me up a wall, why wouldn’t it also bother my bracelet?
And then the thing completely misfires, jutting into a sword as if a demon or minion entered the room. Which, judging from the lack of reaction from the crowd, one did not.
Since when does my justitia misfire? Maybe it’s not. Maybe a demon really does hide in plain sight at the Agency. What are the chances?
My mug falls onto the floor as the sword forms against the back of my hand, the bracelet links shifting around my palm to give the sword support. Hot coffee splashes against my pants, and I gasp.
Demon Cursed Page 8
