Page 80 of Pulling Strings

Delighted as I was by the challenge, his path was too easy to track. There was only one way forward and one table left between him and me. Sending out mental anchors, I hooked under the tabletop and waited. When Jax’s front paws landed, I lifted the table and flipped it backward, forming a wall he slammed into at full speed.

The knock of the panther’s body colliding made me grin. He hit the floor with a heavy thump. Down for the count.

“Who’s next?” I asked the crowd. “The pussycat gave it a shot. Surely one of you can do better.”

The horde began a slow divide, either moving toward the exit or pushing closer.

A few onlookers took advantage of the icebreaker and decided to make a go for it. One woman grabbed a chair and swung it toward my legs. A clap crushed it in midair, causing it to burst into a spray of harmless wooden shards.

Two men clambered onto the table. The first dove belly-down and looked up in time to take my shoe to his face. The second made faster progress until I caught him by the waistband of his pants and airlifted him backward. I dropped him in the middle of a cluster of people, toppling them like bowling pins.

Shouts of collaboration rose from the group, proof that nothing brought people together quite like a common enemy.

Amidst the ruckus, my ears pricked to a bellowed protest from Nash. “I’m charging you for damages, Fitch!”

“Put it on my tab!” I hollered back.

People climbed or leaped onto the table with war cries, swinging beer bottles and fists. One by one, they were rebuffed. Clocked with their own makeshift weapons, donkey-kicked out of range or telekinetically dragged away like rejected acts on an old vaudeville show.

After the last would-be initiate scurried away, I sprawled out flat on the tabletop. My chest heaved with panted breaths and sweat slicked my face.

“Your boy’s bloody nuclear, Grimm,” someone said. Ripley, judging by the accent. “Is he always like this?”

“Not nearly often enough,” Avery replied, chuckling. He tossed my suit coat to drape over my prone form. “You got a little… On your nose there.”

I daubed at my nostril to find a bead of fresh blood. “Guess I overdid it,” I mumbled, but the knowledge did nothing to put a damper on my good mood.

Residual power zipped through me like bees swarming from my brain into every finger and toe. I wondered if others could feel it, shocking like static, or making my skin as hot to the touch as I felt inside.

Grimm towered over me with his features drawn tight and skin pale. He had passed anger into something else entirely. Coldly simmering, calculating.

“I hope you’re satisfied,” he said. Even his voice vibrated with tension.

I huffed a laugh, stretching toward the whiskey sour gone room temp and sweaty. With my drink in hand, I pushed myself to sitting as Donovan skulked back into sight.

“Donnie!” Grimm shouted across the empty room. “Take your brother and go home.”

Donovan’s stony expression was joined by a visible wince. “What’d he do this time?”

“I livened up the party,” I said, taking a sip of my cocktail.

“And you felt that was necessary?” Grimm smoothed his hair behind his ears but looked more like he wanted to pull it out.

“Ifeltlike having fun,” I replied.

It didn’t bear lamenting that I didn’t want to be here in the first place, or that I was still processing Jacoby Thatcher’s oh-so-compelling testimony. In a matter of minutes, he had publicly dismantled my identity and made me out to be nothing more than a pawn in the Bloody Hex’s game.

Grimm remained on his feet, shaking his head.

I turned to face him and caught the other men in my peripheral. Avery had kicked back to watch, a popcorn bucket shy of full cinematic rapture. Vinton mimicked Grimm’s mounting rage, gone purplish red from his cheeks to the top of his bald head. Ripley watched, perpetually suspicious, while his zombie lap ornament stroked the origami turtle.

Donovan lingered behind me, out of the way, which was where I wanted him.

“Why are you even mad?” I asked Grimm. “Abunch of lowlife, cut-rate witches showed up here doing parlor tricks… Fucking papermancy, for Christ’s sake.”

Avery snickered.

“It was an embarrassment,” I said.

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