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“I like your sexy caramel skin,” Ray purred.
I snorted. “Can you not compare my skin to food, please, demon?”
Ray purred again, making some throwaway comment abouteating me upwhich I chose to ignore. Ray continued, “So, your dad was a high rank then.” She tapped her chin, and I wondered what she was thinking.
“You don’t get much higher.”
“Why doesn’t your mom leave him if he treats her like he does you?”
I eyed her. “No one says no to the General.”
“You did.”
I didn’t need to sayand look where it got me.
Living on the wrong end of the city, spending my nights tracking down demons.
We stared at each other for a beat. Ray shuffled around a bit, seemingly unsure as to what to say. There was nothing she could say anyway. I shrugged and straightened, reaching for the cupboard to fetch the sugar. She had asked, and I had answered. I didn’t need her sympathy.
“Ray, we need to figure out who you’ve pissed off,” I said.
“Who I pissed off…this year?”
My lip twitched. “Yeah, let’s start with that.”
“So, what’s the plan?” Ray asked, sliding up next to me as I stirred sugar into the bitter mess she called coffee, her shoulder bumping mine. She was so relaxed as though nothing had transpired between us. Perhaps to her, it was nothing more than pleasure, so I supposed it made sense I looked at it the same way.
Normally, not a problem for me. But Ray was a puzzle I was apparently determined to solve.
“We search for links between the places you’ve targeted, find out who runs them.”
She made a face. “I don’t think I can remember them all.”
“It’s fine. I have notes.”
“Oh yes, you’ve been stalking me. I forgot.”
I raised my eyebrows at her. “I prefer investigating, but yes, I guess so.” She smirked again, and while I fought to keep a neutral expression, I knew a twitch of my lip betrayed me. “You deserved it, though.”
“Never said I didn’t.” She grinned.
Christ, she was intoxicatingbut also cheeky and a troublemaker. I’d have my hands full as long as she was staying with me.
Speaking of hands being full…
My eyes shifted to her chest again, and I shook the thought from my mind. Not soon enough, though, judging by the look on her face. Once again, she knew exactly what I had been thinking.
Tipping the coffee into the sink, the sugar unable to save it, I dropped the mug in after it before heading to the coffee table, tossing papers to the side until I found the map I had made tracking Ray’s whereabouts.
“Wow, youhavebeen busy,” Ray said as I sat at the breakfast bar before unrolling the map. Ray shook her empty mug after staring at my handiwork. “Mind if I have some more coffee?”
“Go for it,” I muttered, not looking up again.
Searching for patterns on the map, I put it together with what I had learned doing online research and asking around the streets while I tried to track Ray down in those first weeks. It was difficult to track who owned the businesses Ray had targeted, and to her credit, it did seem that it was almost completely random—no wonder the authorities thought it was a gang-war issue. The ownership of the buildings was tangled in layers upon layers of business names to protect the not-so-innocent, and I had learned more by asking people who were willing to talk on the street than I had from the internet.
Attempting to color code with only three different pens, I got to work. Looking up when there was an odd noise from the kitchen, I found Ray with a spoon in her mouth. She paused, sucking on the spoon, eyes widened slightly from the look I gave her like she had been busted doing something she shouldn’t.
“Are you…” my gaze flitted from the jar in her hand to the spoon in her mouth, “… eating dry instant coffee?”
