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I shrugged and picked up the paper. “Are you applying to be a cartoonist? I’ll say you need more work.”
“I didn’t draw it,” she snapped. “Obviously. But that’s definitely supposed to be me in the picture.” She pointed at the cat ears.
I pretended to be shocked. “The resemblance is astounding.”
She let out a huff. “Wylder, I’m serious. I found it in my bedroom—someone left it for me to see. This feels like a threat.”
I cocked my head at her. “What do you mean?”
“I mean someone wants me gone—most likely in a body bag.”
“I hardly think we should take cartoons so seriously.”
She ignored my jibe. “Think about the rest of the company you keep. Are any of them likely to toss sketches into people’s rooms as a joke?”
She might have had a point there, not that I was going to admit as much to her. “All right, let’s hear what you have to say then. Who do you think left it?”
“My best guess would be Anthea,” she said without hesitation. “She’s already all but threatened me to my face. I could see her wanting to intimidate me into leaving. Not that it’ll work.”
A frown crossed my face for the first time. My aunt had donewhatwithout checking with me first? I held my annoyance under wraps. “Whatever else she’s done, this doesn’t look like Anthea’s work to me. She doesn’t play kiddie games.”
“Maybe it was Gia, then.”
I snorted. “Then you really have nothing to worry about. You’d take her down in five seconds flat, Princess.”
I probably shouldn’t have admitted that thought out loud, but thankfully Mercy seemed to be too distracted to notice the compliment. She glowered at the drawing. “I don’t like it, that’s all.”
An idea unfurled in my head, my smile returning with it. I let my voice drop lower. “I can think of something that would help you feel safer.”
Her gaze jerked up, suspicious… but not without a certain heat. Oh, the Claws’ princess might have had shields up all around her, but she wasn’t unaffected by me, not by a longshot.
“What did you have in mind?” she asked tightly.
I motioned to the table. “Can you use a gun?”
Her gaze followed my gesture, taking in the array. Her posture stiffened slightly, but she nodded. “I haven’t in a while, but I know the basics.”
Of course she did. Her father would have been an absolute failure if he hadn’t even given his daughter a basic grounding, whether he’d considered her a proper heir or not.
“No time like the present to refresh those skills.” I picked up a smaller model of gun, checked to see if the clip was loaded, and handed it to her. “Go on, try it out.”
Mercy blinked at me in surprise. “You’re putting a gun in my hands while you’re standing there unarmed?”
“If you even think of pulling it on me, you’ll be dead in less than two seconds.”
She ignored my words and instead peered down at the guns again. Her hands hovered over each before she set down the one I’d given her and grasped one that was bigger. “I think I’m going to go with this.”
Interesting. Ambitious. I liked that more than I wanted to. “Are you sure?”
She shot me a baleful look. “I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t. Now what?”
I grabbed a pair of earplugs from the case on the table and handed them to her. “Assuming you value your hearing.” Then I nodded at the targets on the opposite side of the range, each showing the outline of a head and torso filled with concentric lines narrowing in to a bull’s eye on the chest and forehead. There were three other than the one I’d already blasted away. “Pick one and try to hit a bull’s eye.”
Mercy hesitated, but only for a second. She marched over to stand in front of one of the targets, giving me an excellent view of her ample behind. That body was all soft curves, a major contrast to her personality.
She fired the first bullet before I could stop her. The force of the recoil made her stumble. I caught her shoulders before she fell. She looked up at me and then at my hands where I held her.
“Your stance could definitely use some work,” I said before she could shake me off. Of course, Ihadto lean especially close so she could hear me with the earplugs in. “Allow me.” I fixed her arms and angled her body toward the target. “You must hold it firmly but not too tightly. All your muscles can’t be engaged, or it’ll kick you back harder than it has to. You need to be able to hold your ground.”
