Dusk Avenger (Flirting with Monsters #3) - Eva Chase Page 0,30

figure this pathetic, but security was my job. Stepping up beside my lady, I cleared my throat. “Who are you, and what are you doing on our vehicle?”

“Oh, I—” The figure fumbled with the shoes and then shoved them all into one of the cupboards with an exaggerated sigh of resignation. She sprang up to her full height, which only brought her about level with Sorsha’s waist. Still grinning, she gave us both a brisk salute. “Antic, at your service. Here to help in whatever ways I can.”

“An imp,” Omen said from behind me with a note of distaste.

Ugh. Imps were mischief-makers, always seeking human attention in the most obnoxious ways. Since they liked to scamper around mortal-side and I’d rarely crossed the divide in centuries, I’d thankfully had few dealings with them.

“You didn’t entirely answer the second question,” I said. “Why are you here? Our human doesn’t need your version of ‘entertaining’.”

The imp raised her pointed chin. “I did answer. I’m here to help. You’re looking for help, aren’t you? I heard you talking about it. And you obviously know what you’re doing, the way you marched into that awful room where they had me shut up behind bars. If you’re going to stick it to more of those kinds of humans, count me totally on board.”

“I don’t think your sort of helping is exactly—” Omen started.

Sorsha held up her hand. “Wait a second. Weren’t you just complaining about how few shadowkind want to get their hands dirty? She just proved she can move things around invisibly, even if her shoe towers need a little work in the steadiness department. There’s got to be some way she could contribute.”

Ruse had ambled closer. He peered down at the little being with a smirk. “I don’t get any sense that she has motives beyond what she’s offering.”

“The question is whether she’ll contribute more than she’ll make us long for a quick sword to the chest,” Omen said, echoing my own reservations.

“Hush, you,” the imp said, as if she wasn’t speaking to a hellhound shifter more than twice her size and approximately a thousand times more powerful than she was. She bounded up onto the sofa and sat there with her scrawny legs dangling. “The human wants me to stay, and that’s good enough for me.”

“No one asked your opinion,” Omen muttered. “Really, Disaster?”

Sorsha gave him a firm look. “Really. You can’t moan about not getting enough help and then moan that the help we get isn’t in the perfect package.” She turned back to the imp. “Thank you. I really appreciate it.”

The imp beamed at her. “How are we sticking it to ‘em first?”

Sorsha sank down on the sofa across from her. “Well, we need to figure out where we’re going next—for a sort of side mission. Maybe you can even help with that. I’ll mention all the things I can remember about the place, and if it sounds like anywhere any of you have been mortal-side, speak up.”

As I propped myself against the counter by the sink, keeping one eye on the imp in case she turned out to have more malicious intentions—you could never be too sure—Sorsha rubbed her mouth.

“All right. There was someplace we got ice cream at least a couple of times—there was always a line-up and I’d get impatient, and it had a bright red sign. I remember things about the inside of our house, but that won’t help anything. Um… there was a park near the house, with a slide my mom said was too tall for me to go on yet. Some kind of festival we went to with lots of music, in the summer I think—my hair got all sweaty. And there was a big bridge I loved… something about it at night, like smoke rising across the sky?” She knit her brow. “I know that’s all incredibly vague. I do have the box with the note my parents left me, too.”

She reached for her purse, but Omen brushed past me to touch her shoulder. “Hold on. Say what you did about the bridge again. As much as you can remember.”

Sorsha frowned in concentration. “It was definitely big—although hard to say how much of that impression is relative to when I was a preschooler. I only remember it when it was dark. Maybe not full night but evening. And that smokiness moving toward the sky—”

“That.” His fingers tightened where he was gripping her. “There’s a glamour on your memory. I can feel it