The Sorceress Screams Read Online Free PDF Page A

swami
swan?”
    Desmond
sighed. “Set up a meeting with him. And then use Water to manipulate him into
telling you if he had anything to do with Dea’s enthrallment. A visiting vampire is flouting our agreements, and I need to know
if he’s working autonomously.”
    “It doesn’t
work on Maximo. I don’t know enough about vampires to know if that’s normal or
not, but it didn’t work for me.”
    “When have you
tried to manipulate de Sole?”
    “Last night.”
    “You were with
him last night?”
    I didn’t like
the implied accusation in that frosty voice of his. Desmond hadn’t said when he
would call yesterday, and he’d blown me off for the emergency anyway. He didn’t
have any right to be miffed.
    “No, he came
to the shop to check up on me. Just like you did.”
    “Then why did
you manipulate him?” The question had been voiced in his original neutral
tone—frost and accusation missing.
    “He had
something of mine I wanted back.”
    “And it didn’t
work?”
    “No. It bombed big time. But it didn’t seem like
he’d noted the empathic link.”
    “I’ve been
able to manipulate vampires. But I wasn’t sure if they noticed it or not, so
I’ve never tried it on de Sole.”
    “Oh, I see,” I
said in my best sardonic tone. “Send in the sorceress to do what you’re too
chicken shit to do.”
    “He wouldn’t
hesitate to attack me. You, on the other hand…”
    I waited for
him to finish his statement. He never did. “Me on the other hand what?”
    “He bid on
your date at the charity auction. He claimed you as part of his faction despite
your attack on Ascencion . And he threatened me with
vivisection if I ever accused you of a crime again. Obviously de Sole is
willing to tolerate more from you than he would anyone else.”
    Uneasy with my inability to refute that, I reacted with snark . “He probably just
wants me to be his mole, too.”
    “You’re on the
fringe, and he knows that. You’re of no use to him until you infiltrate our
ranks, but that will never happen because you aren’t one of us. I think what he
wants from you is personal.”
    His declaring
I’d never infiltrate their ranks rankled me.
Infiltration was precisely why I’d been sent to Wipuk .
But the final declaration worried me more. What if he was right about Maximo?
    “I tried to
manipulate him, Marino. It failed. I can’t make him tell me anything, so
there’s no point in trying.”
    “You failed
with Water. Women have any number of manipulative tools that don’t require
magic.”
    I shot into a
seated position, upending the laptop onto the futon with a noisy thud that
probably wasn’t healthy for the device. “I can’t believe you. No, that’s not
right. I can . You’re Desmond the dick,
and this is just another dick move of yours.”
    The Water
witch retorted in a stiff, condescending tone. “We all have to do distasteful
things occasionally to further our ends.”
    “What
distasteful thing have you done lately, Marino?” I made an angry noise. “Let me
guess, it involved cooking dinner for a certain frustrating sorceress.”
    “It involved
cooking dinner for a certain frustrating society matron with grabby hands.” The
words were stilted and hollow as though he’d spoken them from between clenched
teeth.
    Did he mean
the woman who had won his date at the
solstice ball auction?
    Still, he
hadn’t said cooking dinner for me had been pleasant. He’d only said the latest unpleasant thing he’d done was
with the society matron. For all I knew, he could have cooked for her on
Tuesday after our Monday date.
    I heaved
another martyred breath. “I’m going to dinner with him tomorrow night. I’ll
find out what I can, but I’m not sleeping with the guy to do it.”
    “You already
had a date set up?”
    The icy
question had me quickly replying. “It’s not a date. He has something of mine,
and he won’t give it back unless I have dinner with him.”
    “What does he
have?”
    “ Nuh uh uh uhhh .”