Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,30
cops have.”
I started to shrug but stopped myself rather than strain the seeping wound. “I can do it myself, but my magic use might catch the attention of the Towers and we need the Towers involved.”
“Yeah,” she breathed. She turned away from me, her eyes skimming over the basement with a new understanding. This wasn’t the realm of a tattoo artist. It also wasn’t the realm of the Ivory Towers, but of one rogue warlock. She was somewhere no human had ever tread and lived. When she turned back, I could see all the questions colliding in her brain, fighting to jump off the tip of her tongue first.
Lifting my hand to stop whatever she was going to say next, I smiled weakly at her. “Can we hold off the questions for another time? It’s really fucking late and my back is killing me.”
“Can I have just two questions?”
“Yeah, I guess.” I didn’t want to answer any more questions, but I figured she had earned them considering how poorly the night had gone.
“Why are you doing this? I mean, I know you said that you’re doing it because of Trixie, but is that really the only reason?”
I scrubbed my hand over my face, sure that I was now rubbing in dirt but I just didn’t give a damn. For Trixie, I would do anything, but Serah was right. The elf wasn’t the only reason I was standing in the basement just a couple hours before dawn bleeding. “Something she said, that I was the only one who could do this, stuck with me. You’ve got a killer who has been created based on a powerful potion. You’re going to need someone versed in a little magic to track this person down and I don’t see anyone else from the Towers volunteering.”
She made a little noise of acceptance in the back of her throat and nodded. “When this is over and the killer is caught, are you going to kill me?”
“No, Serah, I’m not going to kill you,” I groaned, more than a little agitated that this topic kept coming up.
“I’m serious!” she snapped, looking as if she really wanted to stomp her foot in frustration. “You’re trusting me with a big secret. You don’t know me.”
Anger bubbled from the petite woman, but the protection spell didn’t stir, so I took it as a sign that she wasn’t violently upset with me. “No, I don’t know you, but I trust you not to tell anyone while we’re working together because you don’t want to see me lynched.”
“And when it’s over?”
“I’ll wipe your memory.”
Her face bunched up a bit at that pronouncement as if she were weighing the alternative, which was definitely death in her mind. “Will it hurt?”
I chuckled as I walked back over to the table in the far corner and picked up her gun. I’d clean up this mess tomorrow. I was too damn tired now. “No, it won’t hurt.”
At my urging, she preceded me up the stairs. I turned off the light and returned the protection spell to its normal active status before ascending the stairs to the tattoo parlor.
A quick glance at the clock revealed that we’d been down there less than a half hour but it felt like it had been far longer than that. Dawn was only a couple hours away and I was eager to get to bed for a few hours. There really was no chance of salvaging the evening.
“Get some sleep,” I said, handing her gun back.
Serah clicked the safety back on before shoving it into her shoulder holster. Reaching in her back pocket, she pulled out her wallet and withdrew a little card. “Here. Call me if you hear from the goblins. I’m going with you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said with a smirk as I shoved the card in my pocket. She was adjusting to the knowledge that I was a warlock pretty fast. But then, most people in Low Town adjusted fast. There was too much weird shit here and if you didn’t adapt, you were likely eaten . . . or you just went insane.
CHAPTER 7
Gravel crunched and pinged against the undercarriage of Bronx’s Jeep as he slipped off the old narrow road onto a weed-choked pull-off that might have once been someone’s driveway. After spending the majority of the day leaning on my few contacts with fingers in illegal activities, I finally had the address to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. It was supposedly the goblins’ base