Al was rummaging again, and ignoring his muttered prediction of doom, I said, "I want you to help me steal something."
Nick, true to form, sucked on his teeth and eyed me. "What?"
He didn't mean "what" as in "excuse me." He meant what did I want him to steal, and a quiver rose and fell. I almost had him.
Nick waited for me to answer, and when I didn't, he pointed to his boots, out of his reach. "Fair enough," he said. "What's in it for me?"
Smiling, I felt his laces, sensing the charmed silver in them. Nice. "Nothing," I said as I yanked the laces free and tossed him the first boot. "You get nothing. Not a damn thing."
His second boot landed next to the first, untouched. Sitting on the low cot, Nick put his elbows on his knees and looked up at me from around his shaggy hair. An almost-hidden disappointment was in him for my having found his means of possible escape, and I could nearly see him reassessing the situation. "Remove my mark, and I'll think about it," he grumbled.
Al came forward, and as I handed him the laces, he intoned, "It's my mark, not hers."
"So she owes you a mark instead of me," Nick said. His tight face turned to me. "I bet you could get rid of it overnight, Rachel. Or don't you charge for your services?"
I hardly felt Al's hand on my arm as I shoved it off. Feeling like Ivy, I sauntered to him, confident, in control, and pissed to the ends of the earth. Did he just call me a slut? Again? "I'm not taking your lousy little mark," I said, close enough to do some damage if I tried. "I'm still trying to get rid of the one you foisted on me."
Knowing he'd gotten to me, Nick smiled. "We have nothing to talk about. Get out."
This wasn't going well. Maybe Al was right and I didn't have it in me to be the bad cop.
Al was gleefully rubbing his hands together, and my promise to abandon reality if I couldn't do this came crashing down on me. "I told you!" he crowed. "What color do you want your walls painted, Rachel? Snag him now and be done with it."
Nick's face got ugly, and I held up a hand. "You owe me, Nick."
Grabbing an unlaced boot, he shoved his foot into it, hard. "I don't owe you anything."
"How do you figure that?" I shot back, hand on my hip.
He wedged his foot in the other boot. "The focus?" he mocked.
"You sent it to me!" I said loudly.
"I thought you were dead!" he shouted back.
"And you never bothered to check!" I said. "Not my problem!"
Al chuckled as he tried on tribal masks, and I frowned, not liking him watch us argue.
"I had to get it back," Nick said sullenly. "I'd already promised it to the coven."
"And you gave them me instead," I said bitterly. "I was in Alcatraz, Nick. They want to give me a lobotomy. They lace the food with compounds that block your ability to do magic. I don't owe you shit."
He stood, and seeing a hint of remorse, I crossed my arms over my chest. If he was going for the door, he'd find himself on the floor again. "Maybe lying to me is acceptable to you," I said. "And maybe selling information to demons about me is not a problem. And maybe I was a naive sucker of a girl who deserved everything she got." My voice was rising, but I couldn't help it. "But if that's what I was to you, then that's what I was. My mistake for thinking I was something else."
I sounded like a hurt girlfriend, and I hated it. I thought I'd let this go, but apparently not.
"I've learned one thing through this crapfest, Nick," I said, forcing myself to be calm. "People treat you like they see you, not who you really are. Let's say you're right. Let's say I'm the bad guy here, and you're the poor abused human. Is that who you want to be? The helpless human? 'Cause that's not how I saw you. And if I'm the big bad witch who is unreasonable and mean, then that's how I'm going to act."
A year of bottled-up frustration surfaced, and his eyes widened as I came at him.
He raised a hand to block my punch, and I shifted my grip, levering his own arm under his