table under the window.
Sorsha had dozed on. There was a sort of delicateness to her features when they were relaxed with sleep, a vulnerability in the softness of her skin. When we shadowkind took physical bodies in this realm, we could be gouged and shattered too, but unlike her, we could escape into the shadows to avoid a blow.
I’d already had to dig one bullet out of her. That had been painful—for me as well as her. Perhaps that was what Omen meant about her supposed fragility causing trouble.
The answer was simple, though. It rang through me clear as anything as I gazed at her lovely form.
I wouldn’t let the few who were vicious enough to wound this woman get close enough to do so. No mortal or shadowkind would uncover any frailty in her. She’d saved me from a cage that would have burned me and the searing of the lights in a collector’s home—and I would save her when she needed me to. Over and over, if it came to that. When a battle turned bloody, it wasn’t as if Omen needed my abilities in that moment to serve his purposes anyway.
Whatever other shadowkind he’d known who’d mingled with mortals, they must not have cared the same way I did. She was mine, and she’d called me hers, and nothing had felt more right in my entire existence. He didn’t need to worry about how much she mattered to me precisely because of how much she mattered to me.
Satisfied with that conviction, I eased down on the bed next to her to soak up a little more of her warmth. If I was particularly lucky, she’d share a morsel of that chocolate delicacy with me when she woke up.
9
Sorsha
When I returned after placing the police cap I’d stolen a couple of days ago on the head of a ten-foot-tall horse-and-rider statue in the park, Omen barely gave it a glance, even though he’d given me the challenge. “All right,” he said. “Now let’s see you collect, oh, we’ll say ten wallets. You never know when some mortal cash might come in handy.”
I stopped myself just shy of glowering at him. It was a hazy afternoon, the sunlight filtering through a thin layer of grayish clouds overhead, but warm enough that plenty of people were roaming through the park around us. Nabbing ten wallets wouldn’t be tough. But we really didn’t need cash when Ruse could charm anything we needed out of just about anyone—and at this point I was pretty sure that Omen’s tests weren’t meant so much to confirm my abilities as to arrange my arrest or some disabling injury. Maybe he’d have liked both.
I’d thought he was done with the Sorsha Trials after yesterday’s ambush, but apparently not. Ellen’s phone call this morning appeared to have set him off. I’d only spoken to her for a few minutes to get the plans for a Fund meeting in an undercover location this evening, but Bossypants had been fuming behind his controlled exterior ever since.
My own patience was wearing so thin you could have severed it with the blunt end of a spork. I also didn’t love the idea of screwing over ten random innocent bystanders who’d just wanted to enjoy the last few days of summer.
I set my hands on my hips and smiled thinly at Omen. “How about I do you one better? I’ll steal the wallets, lift the cash, and return them without the marks ever knowing what they lost.”
“A thief with a heart of gold,” Omen said with a hint of snark. “I’ll be watching to make sure you collect the full ten.”
“I’m counting on it.”
I slipped through the park, focusing on purses left by picnic blankets and on larger gatherings where I could blend in with the crowd long enough to score. I only took a bill or two out of each wallet rather than all the cash, because Omen wouldn’t know how much I’d left behind. When I’d replaced the tenth and walked back to the edge of the park where he’d parked Betsy, I had a hundred and fifty bucks and no intention of playing this game any longer.
“Here you go,” I said when he emerged from the shadows between the trees, and handed him the money. “Buy yourself a better attitude. Somehow I’m guessing you didn’t put the shadowkind guys through half this much work to prove they belonged on the team.”
“I picked them, knowing they already belonged.” Omen grimaced