Touched by Fire (Demons of New Chicago #1) - Kel Carpenter Page 0,35

to get groceries, no one followed me—”

“Are you sure?” I asked her. If I were someone else, I might have thought I was just a little paranoid.

Given who my boss was—or ex-boss, I should say—I wasn’t taking my chances.

“Yes,” Nathalie sighed. “I did a tracking spell both on the way there and back since you have a demon on your trail.”

“By your own admission, your magic isn’t consistent. Are you one hundred percent positive that no one followed—”

“Yes, Piper. I’m sure,” she groaned, turning on her heel to enter the kitchen.

I stepped away from the door, and slowly trailed back into the living room, narrowing my eyes on her. She drifted toward one of the cabinets and pulled out a glass, then moved to get herself water before going for the package of cold medicine that was on the counter.

“My boss will have heard that the Antares Coven has been taken out. He probably knows it wasn’t me that did it, and we have less than twelve hours before my three days is up. Of those three, I’ve been unconscious for most of them, and you’ve been in and out of my apartment—so forgive me for being a little fucking paranoid when the people I used to work for tend to send assassin’s before they put a price on a head.” I raised my voice toward the end of my speech because truth be told, I was feeling more than a little unraveled after the week I’d had.

Nathalie didn’t react, though. Not the way she should have. If anything, she seemed unbothered by my anger.

“Are you done yet?” she asked in a bored tone while making a sandwich.

Annoyance and anger sizzled through me.

“Are you always so lax with safety?” I asked her, tilting my head. My heartbeat picked up a fraction, but it wasn’t anywhere near dangerous levels. Yet. “Because if I didn’t know any better . . . I’d say you simply don’t care. And for someone that begged to work with me so that you could keep your ass alive, I’m starting to wonder why you keep putting yourself in positions that do the opposite. In fact, working with me at all doesn’t lend to staying safe. Which makes me wonder, why are you here?”

She paused, lifting her head. I could tell that she only just realized where I was going with this.

“I’m not working for your boss,” she said quietly. “And I know you don’t really think that, or you’d have killed me already.”

“You’re a good liar,” I said. “A great one. You use subtle manipulations to play people. I watched you do it with that McArthur bastard. How do I know you haven’t been playing me? That you’re not waiting for the call to be put out just to kill me where I stand?”

Nathalie sighed and then lowered her eyes, before raising them to meet mine.

“Because I want to work with you—” she started.

“Why?” I bit out. “You’ve yet to really give me an answer. Your coven excommunicated you, yes, but you could have found a new one. I bet Barry would have taken you in, or worst case—you could have left. But you’re dead set on staying with me. On helping me. I need to know why, right now, or we’re going to have a problem.”

Maybe I was a tiny bit paranoid. It was possible.

But things simply weren’t adding up. For a girl that wanted to live so much, she latched onto the person who literally kidnapped her—then wouldn’t leave me when I told her to—it just didn’t make sense. Survival of the fittest.

No one was that loyal. And from the time I’d spent with her, I knew she wasn’t stupid.

If anything, she was smarter than she let on.

“Okay,” she said. Her shoulders slumped as she set down the knife she’d used to smear peanut butter and jelly on bread. “I’ll tell you why. I haven’t been completely honest with you.” When my jaw tightened, she gave me a hard look. “You don’t get to judge given you kidnapped me, haven’t told me shit about what you are or why the demon wants you, not to mention the fact that I got us back here on my own—”

“Spit it out.”

“I’m not a gray witch.”

I blinked. “Then what are you?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I have magic, but not like my family’s magic. Everything I told you about my magic was true, but I don’t have a color alignment. I do have an ability, though. When