“No, I’m not—” The words died on her tongue.
There, hanging on either side of their faces, was her curtain of blonde hair.
Petra released him with a hard shove, but he didn’t do more than a slight rocking back on his haunches. His laughter grated against her pride like broken glass.
She hadn’t even felt the glamour’s release. Too late she recalled the way he’d rubbed her skin — no doubt wiping away the carefully concealed, skin-tone sigilwork she’d painted there to anchor the spell.
Petra stood quickly enough to send her chair back into the wall with a dullthunk.
A burning desire to say something, anything, to wipe that smug look off of his pretty face ate away at her gut, but she’d already wasted too much time and effort on him.
Casting the demon a scathing look, she made to step around him, toward the small door that led to the staff area.
Except she couldn’t move.
Shadows coiled around her legs, holding fast, as Shade took a leisurely stroll around her. He leaned against the pool table, drink in hand, and gave her another knife-like grin.
“Tell me your name.”
Already caught and too angry to care, Petra blazed bright in the artificial darkness he’d summoned.“Fuck you.”
He clicked his tongue. “Stubborn. I like that. Can cause some trouble, though. I like that, too.”
She wanted to hit him. She wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him until she couldn’t lift her arm anymore. “If you were never going to take the job, then why are you even here? Why are you doing this?”
“I never said I wasn’t gonna take the job,” he replied, “only that you can’t afford my fee. Even if you think you can, I don’t want your money.”
All at once, the wildfire inside her went up in smoke. “What do you want?”
“Tell me why you’re so scared and maybe I’ll share.”
The urge to hit him came back with a vengeance. Speaking through her teeth, she explained the situation a bit like she was speaking to an unruly five year old. “The man I need information on is powerful within the Gloriae.”
He almost looked disappointed. “So you’re worried about losing your cushy job.”
That almost startled a laugh out of her.Worried about my job?Gods, she never even wanted it in the first place. The only reason she joined the Temple was because of Max and the only reason she became San Francisco’s High Priestess was to discover what happened to him.
Despite what everyone around her thought, Petra Zaskodna wasn’t ambitious. She was a survivor so exhausted by treading water she’d resigned herself to drowning. A rat who’d chosen to get on a sinking ship.
All at once, the fight bled out of her. Petra closed her eyes, her glow dimming until it vanished completely, like a candle snuffed by the darkness that held her. “Can you do it or not?”
He frowned, eyes narrowing. “’Course I can.” The bastard didn’t even give her time to feel relief before he added, “But I want something more valuable than money in return.”
Dread trickled, drop by drop, into her veins. “What?”
The demon swirled his drink, mostly melted ice now. All the while, she could feel his shadows creeping up her legs, the ghost of a touch, until they’d wrapped around her waist. She forced herself to keep still, not to panic at the feeling of delicate constriction. “I’ve heard rumors that you have connections to a certain Sovereign’s Consort.”
She didn’t need to think about it. “Absolutely not.”
“You don’t even know what I want from her,” he protested without heat, as if heknewshe’d react vehemently and thought it was awfully funny.
“I don’t care what it is, you aren’t getting to Margot or the sovereign through me.”
She might’ve been a liar. She might have conned her way into being San Francisco’s High Priestess. She might have forged a relationship with Margot Goode on a pretense, to dig for information on the Elvish Protectorate’s involvement in Max’s death.
But she was damn loyal to the people who earned it.
Margot considered her a friend. They were both new to the city, and though they were witches with vastly different backgrounds, there was a connection between them that had blossomed into a friendship. Constrained by her quest and the lies it forced her to tell, Petra hadn’t been able to give that relationship the amount of herself it deserved, but that didn’t mean she would throw Margot under the bus.
