Despite my training and my fury over having my home invaded, my first impulse was to lower my weapon and apologize for the unkempt state of my apartment. I couldn’t help it. Troy Devich was standing in my living room, offering me a job, and I’d tried to blast his guts all over my couch. My mother would have been mortified. If she hadn’t been dead for more than two hundred years.
Fortunately, the idiotic impulse passed, and my anger roared back to the surface, singeing every nerve ending in my body. It didn’t matter who he was,whathe was, or how much money he had. It didn’t even matter what he wanted. He was in my living room. Without my permission.
“What is this job?”
“Come in, and I’ll tell you.”
“Tell me, or I’ll shoot you. Again,” I countered, my ears pricked for any sound from the neighboring apartments.
Devich nodded, almost respectfully. “I understand your suspicion, but I don’t want our private business overheard by an insomniac neighbor. Neither do you. Trust me.”
Again with the trust line, which only made me trust him less, though that hardly seemed possible. Still, he was right. The last thing I needed was for the late-night bachelor two doors down to come home and find his reclusive neighbor shooting at one of the richest men on the planet. Who refused to die.
And just like that, Devich won our first argument.
With my gun still aimed at his head, I ran my hand along the interior wall to the right of the door, feeling for the light switch. “You evenlooklike you’re going to move, and I’ll shoot you where you stand. In the head this time.”
“That sounds fair.”
It was more than fair. If I were confronting any ordinary intruder—someone who couldn’t mend bullet wounds as fast as Aaron Lacey could flip a circuit breaker—I’d have shot him in the gut, then questioned him while we waited for the ambulance.
I flipped the switch, and weak yellow light flooded the room from the dusty fixture overhead, dimly illuminating my living room and kitchen. And Devich’s smug expression.
With my left foot, I pushed my duffle bag over the threshold, where it slid across a patch of tile until it hit carpet. I stepped into the living room, leaving less than eight feet of worn brown carpet between Devich’s shiny dress shoes and my boots, in which my bare feet were starting to sweat, despite the October chill.
Staring straight into his fog-gray eyes, I reached back and pulled the door shut, closing myself in with a man I’d only ever seen on TV, giving speeches. A man the world couldn’t seem to decide whether to love or hate. He was a saint, directing the various corporate entities owned by his board of directors to contribute to every charity imaginable. He was a monster, buying and selling companies at will, putting entire town populations out of work. He was an oddball, appearing as the public face of his company, yet never revealing even the slightest glimpse of himself as a person, even to close friends. Which I seriously doubted he had.
Up close, Troy Devich appeared human—unnaturally handsome in a clean-cut, businesslike manner, but entirely lacking horns, scales, claws, or a tail. Yet having just shot him, twice, I had little doubt that the phrase “appearances can be deceiving” was coined specifically to explain his existence. He had power similar to that of a mage, healing ability like an imp, and no moral constraints against breaking and entering. He was the richest, most publicly visible Netherworlder on earth. A monster hiding in plain sight.
And he wanted my help.
Most people in my line of work would have been thrilled. I was not.
Troy Devich had endless resources at his disposal. He had access to cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art facilities, and the most comprehensive database of information on earth. There was only one reason he would need my “off the record” services.
Whatever he wanted was probably immoral, definitely illegal, and highly likely to get me killed. Er…re-killed.
“What is this job? And talk fast.”
“I’ve lost something,” he said. “And I need you to find it.”
I shrugged. “Sounds like you were careless.”
“I did notmisplacethis item; it was stolen from me.” His gray-eyed gaze skimmed my cheap furniture, largely bare walls, and an ancient, twenty-inch television, and I could practically feel his pity. Or…disgust. “I pay very well, Ms. Walker.”
I happened tolikemy stuff, and the decision to spend my money on equipment, rather than décor was intentional. What good would marble countertops and leather couches be when I was rarely home to enjoy them?
“Not interested,” I said. And not just because he’d opened the negotiation by insulting my home. The more pressing concern was that Troy Devich seemed like the kind of wealthy, entitled man who was virtually impossible to please, and his dissatisfaction with my performance could endanger my reputation, and thus my business. And possibly my life, judging from the tendrils of power still wafting over me. I stepped to the left, clearing the way to the door. “Now get the hell out of my apartment and take your checkbook with you.”
He stayed put. “I’m not offering you money, Ms. Walker, though there’s plenty of that, should you change your mind.” His power surged over me like a wave of heat swelling from the oven, and I had to lock my knees to keep from falling against the door at my back. It was a silent threat, a less-than-subtle suggestion that I take whatever he was about to offer, do whatever he wanted, and count myself lucky to be alive.
I was tempted to tell him to go to hell—and to lend him the price of admission. But Devich’s next words stopped me cold, my eyes wide, my fingers stiff around the grip of my gun.
“What I’m offering you is knowledge.” He spoke slowly, confidently, as if he knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. Yet. “Information I happen to know you’ve been after for decades.”
There was only one piece of information I’d been after for decades, though that was a conservative estimate at best. I’d actually been trying to solve this particular puzzle for the better part of two centuries.
“We could help each other, Ms. Walker.” His causal shrug felt anything but casual. “Or, if you’re not interested in what I know, I can think of several of your past clients—un-satisfied customers, let’s say?—who might be interested in a little background on the infamous Lex Walker.”
