Page 106 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“Let me hear everything that’s going on.” I manifested and I heard Connor answer the door.

“Can I help you?” Connor asked.

“Is the homeowner home?” the person outside the house answered in a grumbly voice I’d heard before. Detective Shift.Shit.

“No. She ran to the store for garbage bags. Clearly, someone ransacked the place. Can I ask what this is regarding…” Connor paused and the detective must’ve pulled his badge because he finished, “DetectiveShift.”

“The neighbors reported something going on at this residence.”

“But not when someone broke in and leveled the entire place? That makes sense. And since when does the police department send a detective to look into a possible B and E?”

“I was the closest,” he countered.

“Right. Well, she’ll be back when she’s back.”

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I live here. She’s the homeowner, but I moved in a couple of weeks ago. We’re getting married.”

“And you don’t want to file a report?”

“I asked her. She—wait, why’d you ask for the homeowner?”

“Excuse me?”

“Why did you ask for the homeowner? Why wouldn’t you have assumedIwas the homeowner?”

Ooh… good question. Come on, Detective Shift. Let’s see you get out of this one.

“You tell the bitch that we want the grimoire.”

Connor growled. Literally growled.

“She gives it up willingly,” Shift continued, “Beetle will spare her life. He said he’ll make her his number-one concubine. She fights us, the rest of the demon population gets to play with her.”

Playwith me? I burst from the bedroom in full charge, ready to take that asshole out, but the moment I reached the front door, a literal hole opened up beneath Detective Shift, sucking him down. A portal. The man showed up at my house threatening me and then used a goddamned portal to escape when it had gotten too real for him. And that ticked me off more. He’d chosen his side. He needed to stand up and fight for it. Clearly, Beetle hadn’t vetted his minion too well. Next time Beetle might want to check with resume sites like LinkedIn or Monster.

And because of my ADD ‘ooo—shiny’ brain, I giggled, thinking about searching up minion positions on Monster. Connor shot me the death glare of all death glares.

“You were supposed to stay hidden,” he raged.

“Whoa… down boy.”

He dragged his hand through his hair so roughly that I thought I spied a bald spot after he’d finished. Maybe it was just my imagination, but it still looked painful. “Simone… Swear togod… How am I supposed to keep you safe if you keep charging head-first into danger?”

“Right. Let’s pretend for a second that I’mnotthe granddaughter of Lilith andhaven’tcome into magic that no one on the planet has seen before—oh, right, wecan’t. BecauseI amthe freaking granddaughter of Lilith, which is exactly why they’re after me. I can’t hide from them. I’m in this. Iamthis… this… whatever this turns out to be. I’m connected and you know it.”

“But you’re my mate?—”

“Yeah. And I love that thing you do”—I twirled my finger in the air to remind him of the thing in question—“but I told you before, we’re partners in this or it’s not happening. I’m not about to play damsel in distress to bolster your ego.”

“It’s not my ego.” He sighed. His rage deflated for the time.

“Good. Now that we’ve got that settled, you’ve seen that detective before,” I said. Connor narrowed his eyes at me. “That first day we met. You tried to kidnap me.”

“You know damn well I wasn’t kidnapping you.”

I shot him my ‘really?’ eyes and waited.

---