jinn 03 - vestige Read Online Free PDF Page A

propping herself up with a knotty broomstick. Her nose was huge and hooked to the left. Wrinkles covered her face and her eyes were deep set and narrow, nearly hidden in the mass of lines.
    I pushed the selkie up the porch’s steps. The old woman offered me an envelope with my payment in it. I accepted the money and reclaimed my cuffs, then gave the selkie over.
    “And the hand?” the crone asked.
    I shrugged. “Wasn’t on her. I don’t know what she did with it. Probably sold it.”
    The old woman frowned, looking between the two of us. The selkie kept her eyes glued to the ground.
    I headed back to my car and drove through the night and a horrendous storm to get back to Chicago. The case wasn’t too bad, but now I had the hand of glory in my glove compartment (not nearly as dirty as it sounds) and no idea what to do with it.
    Sy called me as I entered the city limits like he knew I’d been away. “Hey, stop by the office when you get home.”
    “Sy, I’m tired. I just want to crash. I’ve been up all night.”
    “It won’t take long. I have coffee.”
    “Fine.” Within minutes I parked in front of the office. It was nearly ten a.m. I collected the mounds of wrappers and fast food bags out of the front seat and shoved them in the trashcan as I walked inside. “What do you want?” I asked him as a greeting.
    Sy stood behind the bar like he always did, a beacon of chiseled features and elven perfection. There was a steaming cup of coffee and breakfast waiting for me. We were the only two in the room.
    “How’d the bounty go?”
    I shrugged. “Fine,” I said with a full mouth.
    “That’s not what Baba said.” He raised a questioning brow.
    I stuffed another bit into my mouth and glared at him while I chewed. “Since when do you question how I do my job?”
    “Did you find the hand, Femi?”
    I considered lying to him, but Sy was more my friend than my boss. “Yes.”
    “Why didn’t you give it to her? That was part of the deal.”
    “Do you know what she uses it for?”
    He frowned. “That’s none of our business. If you don’t like her or her methods, then you don’t take the bounty. You know that—and you chose to take it.”
    “And I delivered her the selkie. There’s no fucking way I’m giving her back the hand so she can kill little kids. If you don’t like it, fire me.”
    He shook his head and sipped his coffee. “As far as anyone else is concerned you don’t have it.”
    “Fine.” We sat in silence for a few minutes.
    “I know I said I didn’t want to know, but I changed my mind. What the hell happened in Arizona? You’ve been strange since you got back.”
    I pushed my plate away, half finished, suddenly not hungry. “Nothing. Are we done? I have to go.” He opened his mouth to say something, but I was already to the door. I wasn’t going to talk about what happened there. No good ever came from looking back.
    I needed to stop by the warehouse to see if Olivia and Holden needed anything, but I was tired and it’d hold until later. Nothing was going to distract me from my bed in my apartment.
    I ignored everyone as I walked in, with tunnel vision focused on my door. I dropped all my shit on the floor just inside and pulled the key from the lock. The apartment was dark, the benefit of living in the basement unit and the relentless storm. I made a beeline for my bed and collapsed face first across it.
    “You didn’t follow through on our deal.”
    I rolled over and sat up in one smooth motion, pulling my gun and aiming for the vampire leaning against the darkest wall of my bedroom. “We didn’t have a deal,” I told Corbin.
    His white hair glistened in the darkness. “That’s not the way I remember it.”
    “I figured out the entrance on my own. You can show yourself out.” I motioned toward the door with my pistol.
    “That’s not really my problem, is it? You know where a fugitive is, and you’re going tell me, one way or the other.”
    I fired the gun,