Page 38 of Wicked Deeds

“You could go back downstairs now,” I suggested.

“Nope.” He slipped off his tux jacket and held it out to me. “Put this on, you’re shivering.”

Excellent idea. I pocketed my gun and slid the jacket on. It was warm and smelled like him. Way better than fresh fried afrit.

Warmer, I stared at the remains. Two afrit in a month. Not to mention the other potential sightings and finding Ajax’s secret lair. What the hell was going on?

Maia refilled her bucket and poured a second load of water over the remains. The concrete around the pile of melted plastic was scorched, but less steam indicated it was cooling down. Promising. No doubt Riley Arts were going to have to get the fire department or something to check the damage—after the Cestis had removed any sign of what had actually been burning. Maybethe fire department would believe that the cleaning chemicals had started all this?

Not my problem. The Cestis were the ones who dealt with covering up demon activity with the non-magical first responders and legal system.

“All right,” I said, starting to believe the afrit was dead. “Now we call Cassandra.”

Maia tapped her earpiece. “No need. She’s already here.”

Chapter Ten

I kickedmy shoes off as soon as we walked through the front door. Cassandra, after seeing what I was wearing, had sent us home after a few questions. Maia had stayed with her to help with the cleanup.

I was getting sick of being sent home while the big kids finished the job, but my feet were damned happy to be out of the shoes. Low heeled or not, they weren’t designed for afrit hunting. I headed on autopilot toward our bathroom, where I could ditch the dress, shower to get the smoke scent out of my hair, and finally get to bed. I was struggling with the clasp of my necklace when Damon appeared behind me, the mirror showing him frowning down at his datapad.

More than a ‘we just chased an afrit’ frown.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, freezing with my hands behind my neck, wondering if this night was about to get worse.

He held up the screen to me and tapped it.

I squinted, then sighed when I recognized the security feed from the garden. Dim blobs of plants moving in the night air. “What am I looking at?”

“Wait.”

And I saw it. A flicker of two tails going behind a bush. Another nixling. Not Lianith. She’d had her collar on while the glam squad worked on me and I’d left it on when we headed out.

I groaned, dropping my hands. “Another one.”

“Yep,” Damon said.

“Is it still here?”

“No, watch.”

I kept watching. After another thirty seconds or so, Lianith came tearing into view, her faux-Maine coon tail fluffed in outrage. The nixling bolted and Lianith chased it out of frame.

“I should talk to Lianith,” I said. I put my hands on the edge of the sink, resisting the urge to bang my head against the marble counter. My kingdom for one uninterrupted night. Or Damon’s maybe. My kingdom was tiny.

I straightened with a sigh. “I take it Mitch already knows?”

“Yes. Do you want to call Callum?”

“If it’s already gone, I’m not sure there’s much point.” I hesitated, considering. Callum and Gráinne were hunters. It was possible they could track the nixling and find out where it had run to. I took the datapad and replayed the footage. It was high quality, but even the best night footage was still mostly shades of gray in low light. The nixling was dark like the others but I couldn’t see enough detail as it fled to know if it was one that had visited us before.

“I’ll send Callum a message. He can decide what he wants to do. I need to get out of this dress and shower. Then I’ll talk to Lianith”

“Alternatively, wait to send the message, and I’ll help you out of the dress. And in the shower.” He pulled me close for a second, pressing his lips to my temple.

Which I was pretty sure smelled like fried afrit, but it didn’t seem to bother him.

“I don’t like when you go running off to kill random demon creatures,” he muttered.

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