Page 44 of A Shade of Myself
I twirled my hand for my magic to twine around my arm and solidify into my scythe to prove my point about her nonhuman status, but nothing happened.
For me, that is.
To me, however, was an entirely different story. She hauled me up above her head, the cuffs straining and yanking painfully on my arm. I begged her to stop, but it was like she hadn’t heard me.
“I mean, you’d think that a Banim Shovavim would know better than to make horrible assumptions but apparently not.” She dropped me hard onto the chair, the impact shuddering through my tailbone like a sharp spike.
How did this demon know what I was? And why threaten me at the playground and put humans in cages? Ohhhh. Damn. The critical piece of this puzzle snapped into place in my groggy brain.
I rubbed a cuffed wrist. “This is the supersecret demon-hunting organization that Naveen Kumar is part of, isn’t it?”
The organization that he’d said he could tell me about but then he’d have to kill me.
Goth Girl slow-clapped me.
For someone as precariously on the fringes of the magical community as I was, confusing a person for a demon was a tough screwup to amend. With this particular Ohrist, because I realized that with my luck there was only one person she could be, my mistake meant I was fucked.
Just like Mara, the executive assistant to one of the partners at my old law firm, had held true power in our company, I was far more worried about crossing this woman than anyone else in this organization.
I mustered up a weak smile. “You’re Clea, aren’t you? Nav’s—”
Her eyes narrowed and I swallowed the word “assistant.”
“Indispensable colleague. The preeminent organizer and person who keeps him on track. Keeps them all on track,” I added, wondering how much of my foot was still in my mouth.
She crossed her arms, leaning back in her chair so the front two legs lifted off the ground. “I’m the second-in-command.”
“That’s great! Girl power for the win, am I right?” I held up a fist to bump but at her flat stare, dropped it. There had to be a way to dig myself out of this hole. “I’m very sorry for my extremely wrong assumptions,” I said. “I take all the responsibility for us getting off on the wrong foot. But we share a common goal.”
Her chair thudded back down, and she leaned in with a scary look. “We have nothing in common. I’ve devoted my life to ridding the world of evil. You’re Tatiana’s minion who’ll jump, fetch, carry, and run through hoops for the person with the deepest pockets. Or am I wrong that you let BatKian keep the Torquemada Gloves?”
I repositioned the cuff so it didn’t bite into my skin. “They weren’t a demon artifact. They had no magic.”
“You didn’t know that when you refused to hand them over on Torres’s island, did you?”
“That wasn’t about money,” I said tightly, narrowing my eyes. “I was keeping my family safe.”
“Wow, you aren’t only motivated by a paycheck but by your entitlement to special treatment.” She gave me a snarky smile and flashed a thumbs-up. “Way to go.”
Sometimes Delilah brushed against me like a purring cat, but right now my magic felt like claws digging into my back. I longed to turn the pain outward and slap that look off Clea’s face.
I clasped my hand around Giselle’s necklace, letting it dig into my flesh until I’d gotten a handle on my temper. “I need to speak with the demon who can check for magic on this necklace. Please. For a poor Ohrist.” I pulled it out of my pocket and held it up. “The woman who owns it is going slowly mad. If I can rule this necklace out as a cause for foul play, it would mean a lot. And if it is demonic, you’d be instrumental in thwarting an evil artifact.”
Clea pursed her lips, so I kept talking, detailing Giselle’s distress. I might have embellished it, but it was for a good cause.
The door opened and Nav entered, a lock of platinum-blond hair falling over one brown eye. “Give me the necklace and I’ll deal with it. You wait here.”
There went my hopes that he was off on some job and we wouldn’t cross paths. “You can’t sideline me,” I protested.
“Can’t I?” He looked at Clea. “I’m fairly certain I can.”
“Oh, you totally can,” she said. “Miriam broke about a hundred rules with her trespassing.”
I tugged on the cuffs. “I thought I was saving some kid from a—”
“Watch it,” Clea growled.
I changed tactics. “I didn’t trespass.” I showed them the token. “Look. I had this.”
