Badge by Ellen Mint

Author:Ellen Mint [Mint, Ellen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Romance Fiction
Publisher: Totally Entwined Group
Published: 2022-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

* * * *

Layla

“Is that all you people know?” I asked, quickly past caring and rounding back to a shrieking exasperation.

Stone looked up from his stupid pad to stare at me in confusion.

“First abduction, then death?”

“You do not have to…” He groaned and pinched his temples. As he did, the shellacked medium brown hair fell from its glue hell. Stone took a moment to fix it before he pulled over a chair and sat across from me.

Here came the good cop part.

“Our job here, my job, is the same as yours. We are on the same team.”

“Last I checked, I didn’t abduct women and stick them in mason jars,” I said.

His face only fluctuated for a moment, as if he either didn’t believe me or didn’t agree with it. “Instead you openly attack and destroy on the streets where any human could see.”

“What? You guys all about ‘keeping the humans out of the paranormal world’?”

“Humans are as much a part of the ‘paranormal’ world as demons and angels. How do you not know this?”

Damn, that one cut deep. My cheeks burned at the simple question that revealed the depths of my ignorance. I’d been piecing together all of this mess I had been born into thanks to what my incubus and werewolf occasionally let slip. Cal seemed to be as unaware of the side of magic as I was, and Ink… Ink only revealed what benefited him.

A bubble caught at the base of my throat. I scrunched my nose, trying to fight back the truth wanting to escape. It wasn’t just that my mother wasn’t around to teach me. I couldn’t let these assholes know she’d abandoned me. Who knew what they’d do if they found her? Probably the same shit they were doing to me. I coughed, the back of my tongue starting to tickle, then itch and finally burn.

Leaning forward, I spattered out a wet cough. I half expected to find blood like I was a pretty ingenue quaintly dying from consumption. Instead, a large globule of silver mercury sat on the table. I sat back and felt the same cold potion they’d forced down my throat cling to the side of my mouth.

“Here.” Stone plucked the kerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to me. What kind of weirdo carried a handkerchief around? It looked like silk, with the initials RS embroidered on the corner. I stared at it but wasn’t about to take anything from them.

“No thanks,” I said, pulling my bag to me and digging inside. Under the mess of aspirin bottles I’d stopped needing, I spotted a dusty pack of tissues. As I pulled them out, my keys came with. They jangled loudly, drawing Stone’s stare.

I met his eye while dabbing off the last of their truth potion. “You gonna take those too, while somehow acting like you’re the good guys and not creepy-as-hell kidnappers?”

“We’re not…” He groaned, his bottom lip thinning until it matched the top. “We’re not the bad guys, nor are we the good.

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