me, potion stirrer,” he said, leaning close enough that I could see that he had his teeth clenched.
“No!” Serah screamed and then clamped both her hands over her mouth as if she had meant to catch the words before they flew free of her lips.
Gideon ignored her as he proceeded to drag me down the alley with him so that we were now standing in front of the poor dead woman. Twisting my coat in his fist, he shoved me against the wall.
“Thanks for the wake-up call,” Gideon grumbled, keeping his back to where the cops were still scrambling to leave the immediate area.
“I couldn’t try to do a tracking spell with an audience. It would kind of blow my cover,” I replied, remaining pressed against the wall even though my expression wasn’t what you’d call fearful. Most people would have called it irritated, but then I’d spent the better part of a lifetime getting roughed up by this asshole. It was getting really old.
“Your cover?”
“You know, mild-mannered tattoo artist.”
Gideon said nothing, just rolled his eyes at me before returning his attention back to the problem at hand. “It looks like she was killed last night. Probably grabbed off the street and dragged back here, judging by the marks in the asphalt.”
“Shifter, right?”
Gideon nodded at my question.
“The attacker had to have been strong to take on a shifter and win, particularly a scared and desperate one,” I continued.
“And you said the attacker was a woman?”
“Human female from what I’ve been able to tell. It’s from an Alpha Conversion tattoo.” The warlock turned to me, looking a little confused, and I frowned. “It’s based on the fuoco selvaggio spell.”
“What!” Gideon shouted. Now he was angry and in my face with all his Tower-inducing terror. “Are you responsible for this mess?”
“Hell no!” I shouted back, no longer worried about keeping up any pretenses. I gave him a hard shove, pushing him away from me so that I had a little breathing room. “Tattoo artists have been doing a potion and symbol version of fuoco selvaggio for centuries. It’s not quite as strong as the spell and it’s a hell of a lot harder to control the results.”
The warlock just shook his head in horror as he looked back at the dead woman. “What the hell,” he whispered.
“The Towers are in for an ugly wake-up call if they keep thinking they’re the only ones who know how to do some scary magic shit,” I snarled.
Gideon stepped close, his hands balled into fists. “Is that a threat?”
“No, it’s a statement of fact.” I was more than ready to go a few rounds with the bastard.
Gideon froze. “We still have an audience,” he said in a low voice.
“How many?”
“One. It’s the woman.”
“Serah?”
Gideon paused as he quickly searched her mind. “Yes.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay. She knows.” Pushing away from the wall, I walked to the center of the alley and looked back toward the street. “You can come down, Serah.”
“She knows?” Gideon demanded, though I noted that the earlier heat had left his words. “What happened to your earlier complaint? Your precious cover?”
“It’s a long story,” I muttered, watching as Serah poked her head around the edge of the building before slowly making her way toward us. Now that we weren’t snapping at each other I was starting to feel like an ass. But then, short tempers were to be expected from two men standing over the body of a dead pregnant woman. No matter how hard we tried, we were each thinking of someone else who could too easily become a target. “I’m sorry . . . about earlier.”
“Yeah,” Gideon grunted softly.
Which I took more to mean: You’re right, Gage. I’m sorry I acted like such a total dick. Please forgive me.
“Gage?” Serah said as she reached me, pulling my thoughts back to the issue at hand.
“It’s okay. He’s not going to kill us right now,” I said, flashing her a weak smile. “He came to scare your old buddies away so we could get some work done.”
“Wish I could do that trick,” she said, trying to sound friendly, but there was still a lot of fear in eyes.
“I wouldn’t advise it. Warlocks don’t like mornings.”
“Shut up, Gage,” Gideon muttered and I closed my mouth. While Gideon was a good warlock, I didn’t want Serah to get the idea that she could just give him shit anytime she wanted. If anyone else saw, he’d have to peel off a few layers