Demon's Vengeance The Complete - Jocelynn Drake Page 0,20
most of the agents. The cops weren’t supposed to know anything about me.
“There have been rumors recently. Started this past summer.”
“Rumors about what?”
“Magic.”
My heart stopped for a second and then started painfully again, racing in my chest. This was not a good thing. “You think . . . what? I’m a warlock?”
Serah’s head fell back on a laugh. The sound was like little bells ringing in the crisp air. “A warlock?” She laughed again and this time she snorted. She slapped her hands over her mouth, her cheeks turning red in the dim light. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. You’re a warlock and I’m queen of the pixies.”
Pulling her keys out of her pocket, she unlocked her car and got in while I walked around to the passenger side. Relief made me light-headed, but a small nagging part of me was insulted. I’d spent most of my life trying to prove to the Towers and myself that I wasn’t like the other witches and warlocks. They were only cold-hearted killers focused on gaining more power while crushing the world. But it was the perverse part of me that didn’t like being told that I didn’t have it in me to be something. Why couldn’t I be a warlock? I shrugged before pulling open the door. My aura must have been wrong. Gideon and the others exuded scary.
Boy, was I about to prove Serah wrong.
CHAPTER 5
Pink Floyd was trickling out of the speakers at Asylum when we arrived, causing my stomach to clench with guilt and worry. “Wish You Were Here” was usually saved for when the troll was troubled. The album A Collection of Great Dance Songs had been played a lot in that first month after I’d been drawn back into the Towers. I’d never gotten around to telling Bronx what had happened, but then I hadn’t been my usual cheerful self during that time either, so he knew things hadn’t gone well.
The troll looked up as we came in the front door and gave a soft grunt of acknowledgment before reaching under the counter to turn down the music. “TAPSS got ahold of you,” he said, though I think it was meant to be a question.
“Yeah.” I shrugged out of my heavy coat and tossed it onto the wooden bench that ran along the back wall. “I’m sorry about Kyle.”
He grunted again, though this one sounded a little more thoughtful. “I hadn’t talked to Kyle in a couple years, but . . . to go like this. I was just starting to think that the Towers were the only thing that we needed to worry about.” He turned his piercing gold eyes on the woman standing in the middle of the lobby, looking undecided as to whether she wanted to be there.
“Bronx, this is Serah Moynahan, an investigator with TAPSS.”
As he rose to his feet, the troll’s relaxed demeanor disappeared like a wisp of smoke in the wind. I could see the muscles in his hard jaw tighten as if he were grinding his teeth. He didn’t offer her his hand, which was unlike Bronx since the troll’s manners usually put Emily Post to fucking shame, but Serah was TAPSS and no tattoo artist liked the regulatory agency.
“I’m sorry about Kyle,” Serah said as she shrugged out of her coat. She didn’t seem particularly put off by his cold demeanor, though she was keeping a good distance between them. At over six feet, Bronx was an intimidating figure of muscle and menace. It also didn’t help that Trixie had drawn dancing skeletons along Bronx’s bare arms using greasepaint. Since a troll’s skin was too thick for tattooing, Bronx had Trixie draw different images on his arms every night so that it appeared that he had some tattoos.
“Are you almost done for the night?” I asked, breaking the awkward silence that had settled in the room.
Bronx reluctantly tore his eyes off Serah to look at me, his expression softening. “No more appointments and I’ve only got another hour of my shift. Sunrise is in three hours.”
“No shit?” I twisted, looking out the front window as if I could use the moon to judge how late it was. But then, the moon was hidden from where I stood and I couldn’t use it to tell time even if I could see it. No matter. Between the trip out to Kyle’s shop, the investigation, and the drive back, the night had wasted away, when I had hoped to spend it in