counter, produced two shot glasses, and smacked them down. Next thing I knew, she held a silver bottle and was splashing clear liquor into the glasses.
I stepped back. “Oh, no. I don’t—”
“This is the good vodka and it’s on the house,” she said with a grin that didn’t quite reach her worried eyes. “I think we could both use a dose of ‘calm the hell down.’” She picked up a glass. “You with me?”
With a mental shrug, I picked it up. We clinked our glasses together in a wordless toast, then tossed the shots back. The liquor burned down my throat.
“That was … good,” I wheezed.
“Damn right.” She gave me a friendly wave of dismissal. “Now go find Zora. I need to get back to work.”
Worrying my lower lip between my teeth, I crossed to the stairs and started up them. Zora hadn’t reported me. I chanted the reassuring words with each step. She hadn’t reported me and she wanted to talk. This was a good thing. This was what I’d wanted all along—a chance to explain myself. A chance to make her understand that I was an illegal contractor by necessity, not choice.
Despite my inner pep talk and Tori’s dose of liquid courage, nerves fluttered in my stomach as I reached the third floor. I turned down the side hall and paused at the atrium door, its sign turned to its blank back. Zora was giving me a chance. I would find a way to convince her.
As I gingerly knocked on the door, I dredged up the memory of the unlocking rune, but the door swung silently open. The atrium’s interior was black and almost no light leaked in from the hall. I took a step inside, hesitating. Was I early? Or late? Where was—
Light bloomed. Firelight.
The orange glow swept across Zora, who stood in the middle of the white circle on the floor. She was dressed in full combat gear, and her hands rested on the pommel of her huge sword, its point resting between her feet.
She wasn’t alone.
On her left was a man with dark hair, dark eyes, and two katana sheathed at his hip, his fingers hooked on the hilt of the longer one. On her right stood a man with coppery red hair, bright blue eyes, and a broadsword even larger than hers, already unsheathed. His palm was raised, flames dancing above it.
Aaron and Kai. Pyromage and electramage. They had been at the park on Halloween when Zylas had killed Tahēsh, and they’d fled with Tori and Ezra afterward.
They also represented two-thirds of the Elementaria trio that Zora had called the guild’s strongest combat team outside of leadership.
“Close the door,” Zora said quietly.
I didn’t know what else to do. Fear sizzling in my blood, I pushed the door closed.
“This room is reinforced with the best magical protections possible.” Her voice, like her face, was grim. “No amount of force or magic can break the walls. Nothing that happens in this room can harm anyone outside it.”
A deeper cold chilled my limbs.
“Aaron and Kai,” she continued, “have volunteered to support me. I figure that makes the odds about even, so if you plan to kill us, you can go ahead and call your demon out.”
My head spun. I slid one foot sideways, widening my stance so I wouldn’t sway where I stood. The two mages, towering head and shoulders above the petite sorceress, watched me without expression. Well, now I knew why Zora had delayed confronting me; she’d been waiting for Kai and Aaron to return from their trip.
Slowly, her words sunk in. If I planned to …
“Kill you?” I whispered. My disbelief cracked, a flicker of anger lighting in my chest. “I’m not going to kill you! Don’t you think that’s pretty obvious?”
Zora raised her eyebrows. “True. You had a much better opportunity back in that apartment. You could’ve blamed my death on the vampires.”
I clenched my jaw, waiting to see what she would say next.
“I haven’t told anyone what happened that afternoon. Not even these two.” She indicated the mages. “They’re here purely on faith.”
They didn’t react, their silence bordering on threatening. No sign of Kai’s charming smile or Aaron’s boisterous laughter, which I’d seen and heard often during the last guild meeting, touched their impassable faces.
“Here’s the deal, Robin,” Zora said flatly. “From now on, you don’t do anything or go anywhere without telling me. I will be your shadow. If you sneak around behind my back or break one more MPD law