Tales of the Otherworld Read Online Free PDF Page B

money.”
    “Huh?”
    “That last job. The spells I sold for you. You thought I took more than my cut. I was sure I hadn’t, but I was just doing some banking, and I realized I screwed up. I owe you three hundred. I’m so sorry.”
    “Okay …”
    “Can I send the money the usual way? Western Union? You’ll have it by noon. And, again, I’m really sorry. It was an honest mistake. I hope we can work together again soon.”
    “Okay …”
    We talked for another minute. After I hung up, I stood there, wondering what that had been about.
    I’d been sure Weiss had screwed me over with the payout. I’d called him on it, but it hadn’t been a big enough deal to cause trouble over. Just another lesson learned, and I’d moved him off my list of contacts.
    Did he have something he needed help with now? Realized he shouldn’t have burned this bridge so fast? Yep. I was pretty sure I’d get another call in a day or two, with a new job offer. Whether I took it remained to be seen.
    I called Ruth next. She had a council meeting in Illinois next week. Was I still in Chicago? Could she drop by and see me? Paige was coming and she kept asking about me and they’d love to see me if I was free.
    I said I wasn’t in Chicago anymore. That lie came harder than any I’d told in months. I wanted to see them—God, I wanted to see them. I missed babysitting Paige. I missed talking to Ruth. But I couldn’t let Ruth see how I lived now. I wasn’t ashamed of it—I just didn’t want to upset her. She didn’t deserve that.
    Growing up in the Coven as a half-demon was an experience I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. The Coven prides itself on using only white magic—when it uses magic at all—and I was the embodiment of everything opposite. Or that’s what my mother told me. Looking back now, I’m not sure how much of it was unwarranted prejudice, and how much of it I earned.
    My mother tried to “warn” me in hopes of curbing my powers and turning me into a docile little witch who would make
her
look good. Her witch sisters already treated her with suspicion for having had a demon’s child, willingly or not. So she wanted me to prove that there was nothing wrong with me. I was just like every other Coven girl. And in expecting me to react that way, she’d proven how little she’d known her only child.
    The Coven witches did treat me differently. I didn’t imagine that. My earliest memories were of sitting alone at Coven meetings, watching the other girls play, knowing that if I went over, their mothers would whisk them away. They didn’t mistreat me, but I knew they were watching, waiting to see what effect the taint of my demon blood might have. If I’d been the good little girl my mother wanted, maybe they’d have come to realize there was nothing wrong with me. But I couldn’t be that girl. They expected me to be bad, so I complied.
    On the scale of bad children, I’d have rated about a four. I misbehaved. I disobeyed. I caused trouble. But I was hardly the embodiment of demonic evil. When the adults shunned me, though, the other girls saw an easy target for every bad impulse
they
had. They tormented me and bullied me and blamed me for everything that went wrong, even stealing things just to plant them in my room.
    The worse they got, the worse I got. I had only one ally in the Coven. Ruth Winterbourne. But it wasn’t enough. Her influence was too little, too late, and I grew up knowing that the only person I could trust—really trust—was myself.
    By the time I was a teenager, I was trolling the black markets of Boston, buying—and often stealing—dark-magic grimoires, immersing myself in that side of our world. The Coven kicked me out and I’d found myself adrift in a world with only one tool for survival: magic. I was a powerful witch and half-demon, and that was how I would survive.
    After breakfast, I headed over to the Lincoln Park campus of DePaul University. No, I wasn’t a student. I’d gotten my