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The instant that I locked onto the artifact, the door opened. “Can I help you?”
Moira wasn’t the one standing behind the door, but the stranger felt powerful. She knocked that power into me, a metaphysical slap to knock me into submission. But being raised in a pack, I know how to show who’s Alpha.
Tonight, I’m tired, frustrated, and over the idea of the power struggles in my town. Fed up with yielding, I pushed back harder than I intended, and the woman gasped and fell back from the door. “Sorry, I don’t like games,” I snarled.
She gaped at me as I strode past into the candlelit interior of the shop’s back rooms. I followed my nose, like every other find, through the narrow halls lined with many differently carved and decorated doors.
I turned a corner, and the hall widened, with one more door at the end, brighter than the rest. There’s only one reason this door would have so much protective magic woven through the wood that it’s visible to the naked eye.
It’s Moira’s office or the room where all the valuables are kept. Either way, what I want is on the other side of it. The woman from behind the door crossed her arms and glared at me.
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
I stepped toward the witch, and she jumped back. The power I felt in the alley had partially leaked away. No wonder she was worried. This witch had taken a swipe, and she couldn’t hold on to the tendrils of power she employed.
The fucking audacity of some witches.
The witch receptionist hugged the wall while scooting past and scurried to the door, giving it a sharp rap with her knuckles. The door swung silently open, and she waved me through.
Moira sat on an overstuffed easy chair in a large room decorated like a storybook grandmother’s house. It reminded me eerily of the safe house in which Thorn had stashed me. The decor is not what I expected from the self-proclaimed ‘baddest witch’ in Louisiana. I halted the moment as I spotted her.
With white hair drawn back into a bun and the Laura Ashley floral dress a half-century out-of-date, the baddest witch in Baton Rouge reminded me of a kindly grandmother.
As if.
“I wondered when I’d finally see you.”
I chuckled as I sat in the recliner Moira waved me toward.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting. No disrespect intended.”
She gave me a curt nod in acknowledgment of my faux apology.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting.”
“I’m curious about the nature of today’s visit. I understood you were trying to find a way back into the pack, but after Kye’s attack on Thorn’s warehouse, I assume that’s no longer an option?”
Moira made it a question, but she didn’t need the answer. This isn’t about getting to know me or finding out what I want. Just telling me that there’s nothing I do that she doesn’t already know.
“What can you tell me about this?” Improvising, I opened my button-down shirt to the navel, leaned forward, and pulled the neckline of my tank top down to show her the demon mark.
Moira pursed her lips. “Oh, you have been busy.”
I leaned back again. “Had a job go sideways. Now I need something from this shop to get back on track.”
“You don’t say. What do you need?” She spoke with grandmotherly concern —a total acting job that made me think Moira had missed her true calling.
“The sister to this artifact, to call it out of me.”
She looked shocked, and for the first time since I walked in, I believed she was sincere. “Most people would be glad for more power, not seek its removal.”
“I’m not most people. I was hired to do a job, and the job’s not done until the item I got hired to find is in my client’s hand.”
Moira stood and circled me, and I observed she was not walking like the granny she pretended to be. She leaned in to examine the mark closer. “You have so much untapped potential. It’s wasted on the Syndicates.”
“Well, I don’t observe faction biases when choosing my clients. It’s only one of the benefits of not belonging to one.” I smiled with an innocent butter-wouldn’t-melt expression.
Moira sighed, and I figured she was not buying my performance.
