I sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“I guess I can’t blame you, all things considered.”
“What are you doing here?”
Rose sighed, turning to lean against Gary’s store window. The gnome would love that. Her dark eyes were tired as she looked past me, surveying Main Street as if waiting for someone to fire on her.
“I, uh… I wanted to apologize.”
Whatever I’d been expecting, it hadn’t been that.
“Apologize? For what?”
She took her gaze off the street for long enough to roll her eyes at me. “For, uh, talking shit about you to everyone I came into contact with? For arresting you with Naud Chains? For–”
I held up my hand. “I get the point. Look, you probably saved my life that night at the Council.”
She opened her mouth to argue and I shook my head. “If Cara had stayed alive, I wouldn’t have had a chance. She was smarter than all three of those dumbasses put together, and she never would’ve left me alone with just Wes in that office. If not for that choice, I wouldn’t have gotten to Mella, wouldn’t have managed to return her pelt.”
Her eyes widened. “Is that what happened?”
“You hadn’t heard?”
Her mouth twisted. “The Council is keeping any information about that night very quiet. There’s a ban on speaking about it at all. Not to mention, I’m not exactly working for them anymore.”
“They fired you?”
She gave me a look like I was a particularly dense kind of idiot.
“There’s a price on my head.”
It clicked. “They know you killed Cara.”
“They can’t prove it, but they caught me on the cameras in the parking lot that night. They know I had something to do with it, and they’ve given orders to bring me in.”
If they caught her, they’d torture her. Fury burned in my gut.
“How’ve you managed to stay off their radar so far?”
“I’ve been lucky. Besides, I’m not high priority right now—they’re mostly trying to figure out how they can take advantage of the demons being weakened.”
“I’m sorry.”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t be working for them anyway. They made all these noises about how Wes, Bruce, Cara and Ben… how they were acting alone and they had no idea. But they were lying. I can tell.”
“Who was lying?” My heart twisted in my chest and she shook her head.
“Not Keigan. He’s walking around like a ghost. But, I’m pretty sure Albert knew. And a few of the Discipulus mages under him. It goes deeper than you think. You should be careful.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
She nodded and stepped past me. Then she stopped.
“I heard about your business. If you need an extra set of hands, let me know. I’m freelance now.”
I grinned at that. “I will.”
She nodded and began walking away.
