Unchained (3) by Ashwood Sharon

Author:Ashwood, Sharon [Ashwood, Sharon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 0451230736
Publisher: Signet
Published: 2010-07-06T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Demon slime was toxic, no two ways about it. Ashe thought about bringing a bucketful and dumping it over the lawyer’s head.

They’d had to crawl onto the slime-coated metal stairs and slither down as best they could without breaking their necks. The second- floor exit was too high to jump, and it wasn’t like they had time to pry open one of the other windows. They were all painted shut.

Which meant plenty of exposure to the toxic goo. They’d run straight to the corner gas station to get hosed off. That probably saved their lives, but not their clothes. Even sprayed clean, they smelled like rotten hamburger.

To add insult to injury, clouds had rolled in and it had started to pour by the time they’d gotten back to the SUV. The seats got soaked.

There was no time to change before making her appointment with Bannerman and her in-laws’ lawyer. Stinking like a pig carcass and high on adrenaline, Ashe wasn’t in the mood for high heels and pearls anyway. She was channeling Bruce Willis from Die Hard, and wanted someone to pound.

She made two phone calls en route. One was to Holly, telling her the bookstore was possessed. Without magical backup, Ashe was useless against a demon. Holly said she’d take care of getting an extermination team together right away. In the meantime, she’d send the hounds down to keep the public away from the store.

The other call was long-distance to a hacker Ashe employed from time to time, a guy somewhere in the South operating out of a mobile home. Getting into the land titles database and figuring out who had sold what to whom was a matter of minutes. He confirmed what she’d already guessed: Bannerman had handled the sale of the bookstore when old Mr. Cowan’s estate had been settled. If good old Tony and the demon were one and the same, Bannerman must have known. Sure, demons could pass for human for a while, but sooner or later their real nature came out. Why had he sent Ashe on a mission to search out the demon sliming his walls when he already knew who it was? Why not just ask her to kill it? None of this made sense.

When they parked in front of the lawyer’s office, they were, amazingly enough, only five minutes late. She slammed the Saturn’s door and stalked toward the front door of the skyscraper.

Reynard caught up to her in a few long strides. His face was grim, mouth a thin line of tension. “I know your times are different from mine, but I cannot see that they have changed so much.”

“Which means what?”

“Threats of violence won’t work.” His gray eyes held worry. “Lawyers have courts and judges they can use to fight back.”

Ashe tightened her jaw. “Who says I’m threatening? Threats are just warm-up exercises.” She burst through the door to the foyer, leaving a trail of water behind her. “I can’t believe I hired that goof.”

He grabbed her arm. “You made this appointment because you are fighting to keep your daughter.

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