Page 8

I held it up. “I left it here.” I didn’t wait for a response before heading for the lift. They probably assumed I was going to see Cade to demand to know why my employment came with so little work. I wasn’t. I didn’t know where I was going until I stepped off automatically at the necromancer floor.

Something loosened in my chest immediately. Up here felt like home. Familiar. Safe. Less pressured. And it came with the bonus of knowing Calisto wasn’t working today; he’d done the night shift so would be home in bed.

John lifted his head and did a double-take as I strolled in and took a seat at Calisto’s desk. “Wrong department, Baxter.”

“Just checking in.” I scooted the chair back far enough to put my feet on the desk. A neat stack of notebooks lost its battle with gravity and hit the floor. Ha! My desk was tidier than Calisto’s now.

“Calisto isn’t working today.”

“I can see that. Or I’d be sitting on him.”

John’s lips twitched before he forced them straight. He shook his head. “You know the rules. We stay in our department, the mind-fuckers stay in their’s, and never the twain shall meet.”

A shadow fell across the desk before I could tell John where he could stick the derogatory term for my fellow psychics. I looked up to find number two on my list of people I didn’t want to see.

Asher Baines. Personal assistant extraordinaire to my boss, partly for his precognitive abilities, and partly for his ability to create military organization out of chaos with a laser-sharp focus on the finer details. Devilishly handsome. Impeccably dressed. Never ruffled. Never unreasonable. And he also happened to be Calisto’s boyfriend and fated mate. I’d stayed in his house for months until I wore out my welcome.

“Asher,” John said, the strain of calling him by his name rather than an ice-related nickname telling in his voice.

“John.”

I slid out from behind the desk. “I’ll leave the two of you to it.” I was halfway to the door, freedom within touching distance, when Asher called my name. “It was you I was looking for.”

Of course it was.

He and John might have come a long way with civility, but they were hardly at the Asher dropping by for a chat stage.

“Cade wants to see you,” Asher added. “I rang the psychic department and Kendrick said I’d just missed you.”

“So you sent out a search party.”

“Something like that.”

“Well,” I said breezily, “lead the way. Wouldn’t want to keep the big boss waiting.”

The lift ride was mercifully short, with little opportunity for conversation. Less merciful was Cade’s habit of demanding someone’s presence and then not being ready for them, which left me cooling my heels in Asher’s office.

I could feel his eyes on me as I feigned a fascination in a potted plant taller than I was. This room held some interesting memories. A few months back, while I’d still been invisible to everyone except Calisto, it had been his last point of refuge while a woman named O’Reilly hunted him down. Things had looked dire before Asher stepped through a wall and came to his rescue. Asher, of course, had known it was going to happen years before.

“How are you, Baxter?”

“Absolutely fine and dandy.” I didn’t look at him. “You?”

“I’m good.”

I ran my finger over the leaf. No dust. Dust didn’t get a look in while Asher was around. “Great! I’m good. You’re good. Seems like everyone’s good.”

“You need to call Calisto.”

“Do I?”

“He‘s worried about you. We both are.”

“That’s really sweet of you both, but unnecessary.”

“The more you ignore him, the more concerned he gets.”

There were several things I could have said to that. The sharpest—that if they were truly worried, maybe they shouldn’t have gone to such lengths to push me out of their home. But I recognized the truth. I’d made the situation impossible for them. Engineered it so that they had no choice. I may even have brought ‘home’ men I wouldn’t normally have looked twice at, just because I knew it would get under their skin. One guy in particular came to mind, with a large facial tattoo and a bifurcated tongue. Though, to be fair, I’d definitely found the tongue thing interesting in certain places.

“I’ll call him,” I lied.

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Soon, as in today? Soon, as in tomorrow? Or soon, as in next week?”

I turned with a smile. “Jeez, Asher. You’re like a dog with a bone. I’m beginning to see why John had such a problem with you.” I gestured to his desk drawer. “Eat a chocolate bar or something. Make yourself feel better.”

Color crept slowly into Asher’s cheeks. “I forget sometimes,” he said stiltedly, “that you know things you shouldn’t.”

I was saved from having to respond when Cade’s office door opened, the man himself standing there.