Page 37 of Ignited

“What are you talking about?” he demanded. “What is this job?”

She said, “Your boss Thanatos is a sorcerer. Isn’t he?”

He was? “Honestly, no one knows what he is,” Boomer admitted. “Dealer says troll. My money’s on basilisk. Or maybe mutant dragon.”

“Boomer.” Fur rippled along Karisma’s face. She was getting upset.

“Okay, he might be a sorcerer. He obviously has powers. But he’s all right, in his own weird way. He’s saved all of our lives—everyone in this pack. He brought us here and gave us decent work to do.”

“As what? A black ops team?”

Well, yeah. “We help people, Kari. Retrieve kidnap victims. Take down bad guys.”

“And who tells you they’re bad guys? Him? You just kill whoever he says?”

Boomer shook his head. “Trust me. They’re as bad as they come. The things I’ve seen…”

Like a psycho who wanted to blow up two little kids just because their parents reminded him of people he hated.

Karisma was watching his face. “You really think he’s not a bad guy.”

Boomer sighed. “We’re none of us really what you’d call good guys. But we do what we can to make the world less heinous. And Big T pays for it all.” He reached out, cupping his hand around her neck, and she didn’t shake him off. He asked, “What do you want from Thanatos?”

She bit her lip, and then said, “He has a piece of an ancient artifact that I’ve been searching for. When I get it, I can go after that asshole Maximilian and reverse what he did to me.”

Whoa. That was big. But going up against Thanatos… “So, you were going to try to… what. Buy this thing from Thanatos?”

She shrugged. “Beg, borrow, buy, steal. Probably steal.” She looked in his eyes. “I need that artifact, Boomer. I’ve spent years tracking it down. It’s my only hope.”

Things suddenly started to make sense to him. “That’s what those fake FBI guys are after, isn’t it. The other pieces of it?”

She flicked her gaze to Thanatos. “No one can be allowed to get their hands on that,” she said.

Which meant she wasn’t planning on telling Thanatos about the Barbie box. Which put Boomer between a rock and a hard place. Awesome.

Sugar called out, “Wrap it up, Boomer. Some of us have better things to do than stand here in the snow all morning.”

“Fuck off, Sugar. I’m the one with no coffee.” Boomer turned to Karisma. “He’s right though. We can’t stand here forever.” He held out his hand. “You coming?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No,” came Thanatos’ voice from within the hood. “You do not.”

Chapter 17

Karisma discovered that the Big House was in fact a mansion—a beautiful stone and timber structure that looked like it had been built by giants, with polished tree-trunk columns along the front and wide steps up to a covered porch.

They all trooped inside, across a huge vaulted foyer and up a curving staircase with an intricate carved wooden banister. They walked in silence, Boomer still holding her hand, up two flights and through a long gallery lined with books, artwork, and even a few suits of armor standing guard.

“Did he kill the knights who used to own those?” Karisma whispered.

“Probably,” Boomer murmured back. “I’m just telling myself they were evil knights, and they deserved it.”

She could tell he wasn’t as confident as he’d pretended. Thanatos wasn’t like any of the other sorcerers she’d gone up against. He was something else—some kind of shifter, maybe? He had an odd smell—or, to be more precise, a lack of smell.

All she could scent from him was earth and stone. Maybe he really was a troll.

But if he hid even his face from the wolves who worked for him, what else was he hiding?