Witches' Bane (The Soul Eater Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

she didn’t answer. Not one to be so easily dissuaded, I checked the Find Friend app and rode my Ducati through a rain shower to where the app had pinned her location. People streamed back and forth from a diner on West Thirty-Fourth Street, a block from Madison Square Garden and right in the heart of tourist central. After a quick recce, it was clear Shu wasn’t inside, but I hadn’t really expected her to be. I wasn’t entirely sure what she did outside of work, but I had my suspicions. Hence keeping tabs on her spell-purchasing activities at Mafdet’s Curiosities store.
    The app blinked her location as inside the building.
    I parked the bike against the brownstone walls and eyed a set of rickety steel-frame stairs snaking up the back of the building. Shu moved apartments regularly. I had no idea if this was her home or someone else’s that she happened to be visiting in the middle of a workday. Maybe she was on a job? Or was it personal?
    I tried calling her cell again and started up the stairs.
    A gaze skittered down my back, pulling me to a stop. A glance over my shoulder revealed plenty of people power walking back and forth along the sidewalk, but none were looking up. Few New Yorkers bothered looking up. They focused on their destinations and marched to it. Still, something had hooked into my senses.
    At the top of the steps Shu answered the door before I could knock, and shot me a scowl jagged enough to cut. Her jacket was gone, but otherwise, she looked the same as she had earlier that morning.
    “What are you doing?” she asked, raking her gaze from my head to my boots and back again.
    “Working. You?”
    “Lunch.” She scanned my face, looking for what, I wasn’t sure.
    “Were you expecting company?” I asked.
    “No. Why?”
    I shrugged off the gaze on my back and lifted the arm in its bag. “I brought you a gift.”
    In the soft light, I could just make out the bloody fingers clinging to the plastic. Shu couldn’t miss the ripe smell of decay wafting from inside the plastic.
    “I need you to take a look at it.”
    “Of course you do.” She moved aside, letting me pass.
    I stepped over the threshold, expecting to feel the magical tickle of a shielding spell or something to protect whatever she got up to here, but I felt nothing. No wards, no protection spells. If there were any, they were so deep I couldn’t detect them.
    Her apartment was a mess and appeared either half finished or half gutted. Some walls were plastered, while others weren’t walls so much as frames you could step through. Split-levels and trailing cables made walking treacherous, and above, the ceiling was long gone, exposing the original steel beams that led up to the trusses. I was fairly certain her place wasn’t up to code.
    Ahead of me, Shu stepped through the chaos with practiced precision, weaving through doorways with no doors into a room without walls, and stopped at a long steel table that appeared to be a stand-in for a kitchen countertop. She swept her a whole array of bowls, jugs, colored jars and plastic containers aside and turned to me, waiting.
    I stepped around extension cables, empty paint cans, and used paint trays. “Renovations?”
    “The owner bailed halfway through fixing it up. I bought it cheap.”
    “You own this place?” She must have needed it for spellwork. Why else would an ex-demon sorceress need to buy an apartment? Maybe something about its geographical location made it a power hotspot? I’d look up the address back at the office. A sorceress would have a reason for purchasing a dilapidated old building.
    “Did it come with the diner round the front?”
    “Yeah, but that’s managed separately.”
    “Osiris’s balls, how much did this place cost?”
    Her glower sizzled. “You have your things. I have mine. Now give me the damn arm.” She held out her hand.
    I dug into the bag and handed over the arm. “You actually own this place? Your name’s on the deed?” My gaze snagged on