Page 28 of Silver Claw

I laughed. “She’s waiting for me to close up the office so I can visit her house. Joe is making her comfortable while she waits.”

He raised his eyebrows and cocked his head. “We’re doing that now?”

“Sometimes people need a little extra care, Max.”

The patiently waiting client Max had just brought in raised his hand. “I can get on board with that.”

For the next couple of hours, I saw clients, Max made housecleaning appointments, and Barb Miller rested in the waiting room, content. When I glanced out at her, she was sitting with her feet up, her head lolling, fast asleep.

A couple of ghosts drifted into the office and then straight through the wall to the outside again. It was a nice, quiet night and I was glad of it, especially after the worry about Gavin Voss and that whole mess.

I didn’t need anything else to add to the stress of not only the Iron Fang alpha, but the loss of my magic and my shapeshifter.

But then my phone lit up, and even though the screen showed a number I didn’t recognize, I knew I was going to need to take the call.

I just had a feeling.

“Kait,” Anika Draper said when I answered. “We need to talk.”

Chapter Twelve

I put my phone on speaker before placing it on my desk. “Absolutely,” I told her, anger rising up to choke me at the sound of her voice. “Tell me where you are, and I’ll be happy to meet up and…talk.”

Joe walked closer and stared at the phone with narrow eyes, as though she might suddenly climb out of it and he needed to be ready.

“I’m not eager to meet just yet, kitten, but I have some information you need to hear.”

“I need to hear how I can get back the magic you stole from me,” I said.

“Here’s the thing about your magic,” she said, but then said nothing more.

I raised my eyebrows when thirty seconds went by and she was still silent. “Hello? Have you fallen asleep?”

Her sigh floated through the air. “I made a mistake, Kait.”

Joe and I looked at each other, surprised. “A mistake,” I echoed. “You made a mistake.”

Again, she sighed. “I’m sure you’ve figured out by now what I am. What I do. When I need to neutralize a power, the pressure grows inside me until I find that power, and I handle it. If I neglect to relieve that pressure…” I could almost see her shrug. “The pain of it is unrelenting. I don’t expect you to understand, because it’s not something a person can imagine, even if they’ve had the shit kicked out of them. Even if they’ve had their magic extracted. I’m explaining this to you because I want you to understand that this…this thing I was born with is impossible for me to fight. And most times, I don’t want to. I go with it, becauseno one should be in control of too much power. It fucks up the universe, you know?”

I thought of the years I spent as a hobbled wolf. “I know pain,” I told her.

“Maybe,” she said. “If you do, you’ll understand why I had to cut your power.”

“No,” I snapped, then softer, “No. You can’t chop someone’s arms off and leave them bleeding and helpless just because it makes you feel better. You can’t do that.”

“You’re hardly helpless. What I felt inside you was something that not even I understood. There’s something wicked in there, kitten. Something unkillable.” She paused. “I don’t scare easy, but I can admit it gave me bad dreams for a while.”

My rage grew at her words. She’d forced her way inside me, analyzed me, invaded me. And there was no way to stop such a thing from happening.“Youare too much power,” I told her, my voice hoarse. “If you really wanted to restore the balance, if you really cared at all about neutralizing shit, you’d kill yourself.” Then I smiled, though she couldn’t see me. “But don’t worry. I plan on doing that for you.”

She actually chuckled. “So mad, so bloodthirsty. It’s part of what makes you irresistible.”

I clenched my fists. “What the fuck do you want, Draper? Why did you call me?”

“Yeah,” she said, her voice going soft and smooth, but no less dark. “I told you I made a mistake, and I can admit when I’ve done something wrong. I took too much from you. I could have let some of the air out, then plugged you back up and went on my way. But I’ve never met someone who could handle the badness inside them. Usually those with too much power end up wrecking the world. But along with the darkness inside you,the crazy, and the…the weird shit that I don’t have a name for, there’s something pure.”

She went silent again, as though she were thinking about that pureness.

I didn’t mind, because I needed a minute.