“Two hours of babysitting.”
Interest lit his eyes, and he glanced from me to the kids who’d gone back to fighting with each other. There may have only been two of them, but it usually felt like there were about sixteen of them in here.
“Five hours.”
I scowled at him. Five hours and I’d go quietly insane. “Three.”
“Four.”
Double what I felt I could handle without losing my mind, but if someone was selling a forget-me spell, I wanted to know who.
“Fine.”
He nodded and turned away, going through his records. A moment later he took the paper with Selina’s name on it and wrote down another name below it.
Beatrice Philips.
“Thanks. How’d you get her name?”
“It was on her ID when she opened her wallet. You didn’t get that information from me.”
I nodded and my body chose that moment to warn me that if I didn’t lie down soon, I’d hit the ground. I was so tired, the store was spinning around me.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” If I collapsed in Gary’s store, my badass reputation would be dented even worse than it already had been— if I wasn’t killed first. Mage Council bounty hunters weren’t exactly popular in this neck of the woods.
“I’m going to need some myrtle balm.” If I was going to be hunting a witch who had access to witchweed, I needed to be prepared. My memories were mine, thank you very much. Even my worst memories. No one would be taking them from me.
Gary turned and picked up a small jar, placing it on the counter. “On the house.”
I gaped at him. He must really be feeling bad about selling that witchweed. But with my finances the way they were, I wasn’t going to look a gift gnome in the mouth.
“Thanks Gary.”
I turned to go, freezing as the gold mark on my hand began to heat up. I pushed up my sleeve and glared down at it as it shimmered like it was alive.
Looked like the demon had just found out I’d given him the slip. I petted the Mistilteinn Dagger as I strode out the door, tempted to go check into a hotel.
No, I wouldn’t give Samael the satisfaction of seeing me run. He may be displeased, but I doubted he’d waste his resources bringing me back to his tower.
I kept one eye on my rear-view mirror the whole way home, just in case.
10
Danica
The sound of my alarm was like a knife through my brain, and I groaned. My head throbbed— likely the after-effects of whatever healing spell Samael’s people had performed to heal my wounds.
It was almost ten and I could feel my time counting down. Today was Saturday, which meant I only had a week until my time ran out. My skin itched with the need to take my life back. Lia jumped up on the bed, walked up onto my chest and nuzzled my cheek, her throat vibrating with her wild purrs. I scratched behind her ears and she chose that moment to bite me.
“Hey!”
She shifted her head back under my fingers as if urging me to get back to work and I narrowed my eyes at her.
“So that was just a love bite, huh?”
I spent the next five minutes running my leg under the covers while Lia pounced, attacking my foot like a rabid dog. Eventually, I hauled myself out of bed and stumbled to the coffee pot, cradling the mug to me like it was a lifeline. I took it into the shower with me, placed it on the small shelf out of the water, and let the heat pound away some of the tension in my neck.
