room was finally silent, I relaxed in my chair, waving my hand toward the fireplace so that flames jumped to life again. Zyrus circled back to me, practically purring in its contentment, as if it expected me to give it a little pat on the head as a reward.
“Clean up the mess, please,” I said, trying to suppress my own conflicted feelings.
As you wish.
Zyrus rushed off toward the mutilated remains of the corpse while I picked up the book on demons I had been reading. I had only a couple more hours to get some research done and then I had to return to Asylum. There were people in Low Town who needed tattoos and potions.
I also needed to get away from Zyrus for a few hours so I could think clearly. The demon offered a tempting solution to my problem. Could I use it to pick off the warlocks and witches of the Towers one by one until the world was finally safe? Was it wrong to use a demon to save the world? I wasn’t sure anymore.
For now, I had access to Simon’s books and I knew I was safe while I did my research on magic. There had to be a way to take down the Towers. There had to be a way for me to keep Trixie and our baby safe.
CHAPTER 4
I returned to the back room of Asylum just after one thirty. There was too much on my mind after Zyrus had killed the warlock for me to continue reading. Too much in my life was changing and slipping away from me no matter how hard I worked to hold it all together. Zyrus had presented me with an option that I still wasn’t sure I should jump on, yet it was almost guaranteed to be the one thing that fixed everything. Wasn’t that what I wanted? Wasn’t I willing to sacrifice myself in order to keep Trixie and the baby safe?
As soon as I arrived, I realized that I wasn’t alone in the parlor. The energy zipped to my fingers without a thought, an aggressive spell at the ready on the tip of my tongue when the person called out.
“Gage? Is that you?” Trixie asked from the main tattooing room. Her heels clicked across the linoleum floor as she approached the back room.
With a heavy sigh of relief, I released the magic and walked down the hall to meet her, a smile growing on my face.
“What are you doing here so early?” I asked, pressing a quick kiss to her pursed lips. She wasn’t happy. Had she not seen the flowers that I sent?
“You mentioned yesterday that you wanted to do inventory, so I came in early to help. Where were you?”
“Shit!” I slapped the heel of my hand against my forehead. “I am an idiot. I’m sorry. Yesterday was so insane. I completely forgot.”
“I noticed,” she murmured as she returned to the main tattooing room and sat on her little stool. “Where were you?” she repeated, giving me a very pointed stare. “I checked the basement.”
My heart leapt into my throat and I couldn’t breathe. “I said never to go into the basement without me!”
“I didn’t go down. I opened the door and saw that the light was out. I called down there. I figured unless you were lying dead down there, you weren’t in the basement. Where were you?” Her voice was growing sharper with each word.
I forced a casual shrug. “Nowhere important. I was doing a little research on the many problems that are in my lap at the moment.”
“Am I one of those problems?”
My eyes narrowed on Trixie and I felt my teeth clenching. My dear girlfriend wasn’t usually so combative, but there was no question that the woman was looking for a fight. Something had upset her and now I wondered if it was something I had specifically done or if I was just getting the brunt of her anger because I was convenient. Or maybe it was hormones? Pregnant women were emotional. Did that apply to elves as well?
“Trixie, I don’t see our situation as a problem,” I said calmly, hoping to diffuse her anger before we were embroiled in a fight.
The lovely elf just shook her head and sighed. “You went back to the Towers, didn’t you?”
Confusion furrowed my brow and I forced myself to sit down in the chair across from her. “You know I did. I told you about that already.”
“No, I mean that’s where