“You were right, Morgan!” her mother crowed. Her crow squawked in the background.
“That it’s either too early or too late to be calling unless someone died?” she asked. She could hear Luke frantically trying to soothe Rix before the neighbors could start pounding on the walls.
“Not yet,” her mother said cheerfully. “Your rival is almost certainly using Infernal influence.”
“Oh good.” She hadn’t actually given much thought to what it would mean that other demons were involved, beyond how to use that against Brad and her mother. Hopefully this would be enough to keep Fiona busy long enough to get Luke safely home. “So you can go all Shadow Council on them and I can go back to bed?”
“Unfortunately not.” Her mother sighed. “All the evidence is circumstantial, and everyone involved appears to be mundane. Which means we have to catch them in the act before I’m allowed to even reveal the existence of the Shadow Council.”
“Oh.” Was that enough to keep her busy? Or would she keep looking? To Morgan’s dismay, Rix nosed the door open and bounded up on the bed, looking anxious. “I don’t want to be unhelpful here, but you do realize it’s two in the morning? I have to get up for work in four hours.”
“I’m sorry, darling, I forgot.” Murder squawked something. “But there was something—do you think you might be able to infiltrate them?”
“Infiltrate. My company’s rival. So what, I can hunt down demons for you?”
Luke, who had followed Rix, caught her eye in alarm. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. His glamour included abs that belonged on an underwear model, and she briefly wondered if they mirrored his actual abs. Then the panic in his face threw cold water on her libido. He was freaking out and she was perving over his abs and she was a terrible person.
“Yes, exactly—maybe you can get a job there?”
“Mother, you can’t get a job at some random tech company with no notice.” She ripped her gaze off Luke and tried to focus on her mother’s ridiculous demands. It had taken her a four-month search to get the job at her current company, and that was only because she’d been willing to work literally anywhere that would hire her.
“Just walk your resume over and hand it to the girl at the front desk. They like gumption, I know I’ve heard that.”
She reached out and squeezed Luke’s hand, while trying to keep her tone sufficiently light. Demons avoided lying by misdirection. “Do you even realize how much of a cliché you’re being right now? That’s not how you get jobs these days. I don’t know if that’s how anyone ever even got jobs.”
“Look, I don’t know how young people do things these days.”
“Exactly! You’ve never even had an office job—you were a private detective before you started working for the Shadow Council!”
“Well, you don’t have to get huffy.”
Every time it felt like they’d made any progress, it vanished soon after. Rix licked her cheek and whuffed in sympathy.
“Is that a dog?” her mother asked.
“You’re hearing the neighbors,” Morgan said quickly.
“You need a better apartment; your walls must be paper thin.”
“I’m hanging up now, Mother, before you try to tell me to stop eating avocado toast,” she said, clicking the red button.
“Your mother’s getting closer?” Luke asked, his knuckles pale where he grabbed the back of the chair.
“Yes, but it’s going to be OK. I sicced her on GreenField UnLtd. That should keep her busy. And you safe.”
“You lied to her. For me.”
She bit her lip. “I told her for you. But… I didn’t lie.”
“What do you mean?” Without his shirt on, it was easy to tell when his shoulders tensed.
“Because GreenField really is working with another demon, remember? That’s what I told Brad. You were there!”
“I thought you were lying!”
“You couldn’t tell?” Shit. She hadn’t meant to keep it from him, and when he didn’t bring it up, she figured it was a sore subject.
“No!” He paced away from her and then turned back. “I can’t read your mind. I can tell what you want, but not what you know.”
