Page 262 of Flirting with Darkness

STOLEN MAGIC

AN URBAN FANTASY ROMANCE

EMMA DEAN

1

DEX

“Did you take care of it?”

Dex set his gun down on the sink and turned on the water as hot as it would go. He let it run over his hands, washing away the blood like it had never been there.

“Sir?”

He cleaned his fingernails next, and then grabbed the soap. Dex was careful to make sure every inch of his skin was clean. “It’s done.”

“Good, because if the humans get wind of this…the last thing we need is the Council on our ass. The boss would kill us.”

Drying his hands on a towel, he tossed it in the trash and grabbed the rubbing alcohol. “I said it’s done.”

The alcohol stung the cuts, but it would get rid of any remnant of the blood that wasn’t his and speed up his healing. He tossed the bottle back into his box of first aid shit.

“I owe you one for this, Dex.”

Yeah, he owed him big time for this fuck-up. But Dex saved up favors and debts as if they were more precious than diamonds.

In his world, they were.

“Is there anything else you need from me, anything I can help with, sir?”

“Leave.”

There was a strained silence and Dex gripped the sides of the sink, avoiding his reflection.

He heard footsteps and then the door closed.

Finally.

Porcelain cracked and he released the sink, standing up straight to face his own reflection.

Fuck.

A snap of his fingers and the towel in the trash caught on fire, eliminating any evidence that might get caught in the fibers.

Dex inspected the blood on his face, studying the way the red droplets caught the light. Then he wiped them off, turning the water on again until steam rose, filling the bathroom until the mirror fogged—covering the glowing orange red of hellfire in one eye.

And the silvery white of divine power in the other.

2

NOVA

“Congratulations, Novalie,” Madam Jadis, the head witch, told her as she handed over her new hunter’s license. “You’ve already received your first assignment, I hear.”

“I have, Madam. Thank you,” Novalie took the small black booklet with the Council’s logo on the front. Inside was her picture ID with empty pages for her future missions.

“A three-month trial, isn’t that right?” the witch asked. She was over two hundred years old, some said, but she barely looked sixty.

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