mission magic 01 - the incubus job Read Online Free PDF

me. “That’s why you left? Because we exterminated the ghosts?”
    He sounded incredulous, like that was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. I looked up at him.
    “We killed people, Law.”
    “Ghosts. Just ghosts.”
    “They still think and feel. We just killed them like they were vermin.”
    “They’re unnatural. They don’t belong in this world.”
    I didn’t tell him we were unnatural. We were killers. Instead I shook my head and stood up. I tried to push by him, but he grabbed my hips, refusing to let me get past.
    “You can’t be serious, Mallory. Tell me you didn’t leave me for six fucking years because of some ghosts.”
    “If they aren’t natural, then how come they exist?”
    “Because somehow the universe’s wires get crossed. Bad shit happens and they hang around even though they shouldn’t.”
    “Or maybe they’re supposed to be here, just like we are,” I said. “Maybe killing them is unnatural.”
    I held up my hands between us when he started to talk, even though I wanted to melt against his chest. His grip on me was hot and sent prickles of desire into my belly.
    “I know it doesn’t make sense to you, but after that, I couldn’t be an exterminator anymore. You know Camden wouldn’t have let me just retire, any more than you would have. So I left because otherwise I was going to kill myself. That’s the truth.”
    He stared down at me, his green eyes laser hot. “You are a coward,” he said, thrusting me away from him. “Did it never occur to you that I’d be worried about you? That I’d think you got taken? You should have trusted me.”
    Calling me a coward hurt. Maybe more than anything else anybody had ever said to me. Maybe more than leaving him. I’d have to stop the bleeding later. First I had to get rid of Law. “I didn’t hide. If you’d wanted to find me, you could have. As for trusting you?” I snorted. “Yeah, I just told you I was next to suicidal, and you respond to that by calling me a coward. If you’d have done that then, I’d have thrown myself under the first bus I found.”
    “I wouldn’t have let you,” he said, as if that changed something. “Anyway, I did find you,” he growled.
    I stared.
    “I’ve kept track of you all these years. Once I figured out you left of your own free will, I decided to keep my distance. I hoped maybe one day you’d show up and want to talk. But then when you do turn up, it wasn’t for me at all. You didn’t even know I was here, did you?”
    His nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed to slits. His eyes went flat as a snake’s.
    I shook my head. “I’m on a job. I thought you were still with Acadia.”
    His mouth twisted. “I left three months after you did.”
    “Why?”
    “None of your damned business,” he said. “Right? That’s the way you want it now. You’re doing your thing and I’m doing mine. Except you brought a poltergeist into Effrayant, and you’re protecting her. Makes me look bad, Mal. I don’t like to look bad. As for your other business, take it out of the auberge. Effrayant and guests are off limits to you.”
    “I’m a guest,” I reminded him. “You can’t prove I had anything to do with a poltergeist, and there’s no other reason to kick me out. Besides, my employer would be very disappointed, and I think Effrayant would regret disappointing him.”
    “Ivan DeMarco,” Law said. “You work for him now?”
    I wasn’t surprised he knew. Once LeeAnne had spilled the beans that I knew him, he’d have looked up my registration next. Ivan was footing the bill. “I work for a lot of different people. I freelance. Ivan’s one of my clients.”
    He looked me over again, his gaze lingering on the scar on my face before moving to the streak in my hair. The white was glaring against the brown. It would have taken a blind man not to see it. “You never got hurt when I had your back. How bad was it?”
    Which time? My memory went to the scar on my back, my most recent joust