Fire Kissed Read Online Free PDF Page B

this Bastian wasn’t going to do anything interesting. What power did angels have anyway? Or did they just stand there and pretty you to death?
    Terrifying.
    Run!
    Yes. It was time to run. The urge was old and familiar, a knee-jerk reaction based on ten years’ worth of reinforcement. Didn’t matter that she hurt or was tired. Didn’t matter that one angel was saying one thing in her head, and another, standing in her room, was telling her the opposite.
    Kaye smothered the flames in her hands and gingerly crawled off the bed so her throbbing brain wouldn’t burst. Suitcase. “And even if I weren’t afraid of wraiths, you’re missing the obvious.”
    “And what’s that?”
    She skirted the bed to get to the closet, staying away from Bastian. Slid open the folding doors. “It was a Grey who sicced a wraith on me. The mage families would kill me on sight.”
    “The mage families could kill you regardless,” he said. “The point is, they haven’t. It’s been years since they’ve had anything to do with you.”
    She surveyed her wardrobe, considering. Her brain felt like lead from last night’s drinks, making the vibrant colors of her clothes seem gaudy. But none of them were cheap. A Brand would never look cheap.
    He continued, “Brand House is burned to the ground. You carry the scars of the wraith attack. Maybe they think you’ve been punished enough for refusing to marry Ferrol Grey.”
    Kaye whipped back. “How could you know I refused him?”
    And what else did he know?
    “I’m an angel,” he said. “It is my business to know these things. Why did you back out of the marriage contract?”
    That should be obvious; maybe he didn’t know anything after all. She turned to the closet. “I was fifteen and he was an old man.”
    “Refusing Grey cost you dearly,” Bastian said behind her. “But now you’re all grown up. You’ve come into your power. They don’t come after you, Ms. Brand, because ultimately you are one of them.”
    Maybe. But also because she’d kept quiet about the other angel, the one her father had captured, for a long time. She would not kid herself; that silence was everything. Out of sight, out of mind. And very, very quiet. “I’ve changed my answer to no way in Hell, but thanks for the offer.”
    “I can pay you,” Bastian said. She felt him advance, a rush of white light racing across her Shadow-bred skin to buzz her nerve endings everywhere. Damn him.
    Kaye could make her own money. Lots of it. Five grand a second.
    The hotel cleaners weren’t likely to return the laundry she’d sent down yesterday. She threw clothes, still on their hangers, from the closet to her bed. She’d have to make do with what she had here. She’d catch a cab out front, then the first flight from LAS. Go on an adventure, a comfortable one.
    “I’m also offering you the kind of protection no mortal businessman like Hampstead or Hobbs can.”
    She turned and found him too close. A man, in her room, with an offer. “Ironically, I’d only need your kind of protection if I took your job.”
    “Ms. Brand, you peddle your wares at the mages’ sufferance.” His voice had turned authoritative, not the right tactic with her at all, seeing as how it made her blood churn that much faster, the beat in her temples even more acute. She needed some painkiller. Narcotic, preferably.
    “Their power is growing, consolidating,” he said. “The world is turning dark. Even you must feel it. The Age of Man is coming to an end. Eventually magekind will come for you. Soon they will come for you.”
    No. She would not go willingly back to that life. She’d been running from that life for years. That other angel had even said it: The mage life wasn’t for her.
    His stern mouth moved into a twist of a sardonic smile. “What about payback?”
    Kaye felt a sudden tug, as if her guts were hooked on a short line. Payback, she understood. The concept had been taught to her from the cradle—how the angels had