Burned by Magic (The Baine Chronicles #1)(65)

“Very well,” the receptionist finally said in a clipped voice. She settled back into her chair and pointed to a hallway on my right. “His office is upstairs, five doors down from the elevator. Gerod will escort you.” She nodded to one of the guards, who stepped forward, pinning me with an intimidating glare.

I shrugged, refusing to let a mere human guard bother me. “Fine. Lead the way.”

The elevators, like everything else in this building, were white, with white flooring and walls, and the black call buttons stood out. I rode up to the second floor, then strode down a white-carpeted hallway to the sixth office door, my new pet guard in tow.

I didn’t knock or ask for entry. I just kicked the door open and strode in, ignoring the protesting voice of the guard behind me.

Hanley Fintz was hunched over the typewriter on his desk, no doubt clacking out another slanderous article. He jumped as the door banged against a metal filing cabinet. “What is the meaning of this!” he shouted, his eyes rounding behind his spectacles. Without his large slicker draped over his spindly frame, he looked distinctly unimpressive in his shirtsleeves and slacks.

“I’m here to interrogate you, you slime.” I bared my fangs, fury taking hold as I grabbed him by his flimsy collar.

“Guards!” Fintz squeaked, and the guard who’d accompanied me grabbed my arm.

“Ma’am,” he said sternly, hauling me back. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave –”

I whirled around, using the momentum from his own grip, and slammed my knee into his midsection, hard. The guard crumpled against me with a painful gasp and I let him fall to the floor, then shoved him aside so that anybody passing by wouldn’t be able to see him.

Sure, that might’ve been a little harsher than warranted, but I wasn’t feeling too chummy toward Privacy Guard employees these days.

“There.” I turned back to the reporter, who was quivering in the corner, his back pressed up between two metal bookshelves. “Now, Fintz, you’re going to be a good boy and tell me the truth. Who’s been bribing you?”

“W-what?” His cheeks colored, his eyes narrowing despite his quivering fear. “Nobody! I’m employed by the Herald, just doing my job. Did you really barge into my office and injure a guard just to ask me that?”

“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.” I snagged him by the collar again and drew him close until we were nose to nose, and bit back a grimace at the acrid stench of fear. “I want to know who’s paying you to write these nasty propaganda articles about shifters.”

“It isn’t propaganda!” Fintz protested, sweat rolling down the sides of his narrow face. His clammy hands pawed ineffectually at my grasp. “What I reported in that article is completely true! You shifters are an emotional and unstable lot! Just look at you! Manhandling me like some kind of wild animal –”

I slammed him into the bookshelf, knocking down several volumes. One of them bounced off the top of his head, and he yelped. “Cut the crap, Fintz.” I kept my voice even. “I’ve been looking at the papers, and the Herald has been using its influence to pit humans and shifters against each other. Tell me, right now, who’s been paying you off for that, and you might not have to spend the rest of the night lounging in the same jail cell that I did.”

“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Fintz’s lower lip wobbled. “Mr. Yantz tells me what to write! He’s my boss!”

“I’m afraid he’s correct, Miss Baine.” The door opened, and Petros Yantz, the Editor-in-Chief of the Herald, strolled in. A tall man with glossy chestnut hair dressed in a sleek, three-piece suit, he was slicker than a puddle of grease, and flashed me a charming smile, ignoring the guard on the floor. “I am the one who ordered those articles. We have to make a living here, and this kind of stuff is pretty sensational.”

“Sensational!” I let go of Fintz and spun toward Yantz. My nose told me that both men were telling the truth… but my gut told me there was still something terribly wrong about all of this. “Your articles are doing more than creating a sensation, Mr. Yantz.”

He arched his brows. “Perhaps instead of terrorizing my poor reporter, you can come with me to my office,” he suggested. “You’re more than welcome to interrogate me all you like.”

I crossed my arms. “Just like that?”

Yantz shrugged. “I’m not aware that printing news is considered a crime.”

Oh, I’ll bet I can dig up something connected to you that is a crime, I thought, but I just gave him a gimlet stare.

“Well? Are you coming?”

I hesitated, feeling this was all way too easy. But I had questions, and he was my best shot at answers. “Fine,” I said, stepping forward. “But no bullshit. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

“Of course not,” he said smoothly. “I assure you I know better than to lie to you.”

“Wait, Miss Baine.”

I turned at the sound of Fintz’s voice. “What is it?” I asked, and that’s when Yantz grabbed my wrist.

I gasped as a needle plunged into my wrist and pain spiked through my arm. I whirled back to face Yantz, yanking my arm away as fast as I could, but not before he’d hit the plunger and sent whatever murky liquid was in there shooting into my veins. A strange, giddy sensation washed over me, and I sank to my knees as the room began to rock. I barely felt the pair of strong, meaty hands that hooked beneath my upper arms, and simply stared at the colors of the room swirling together, until all I could see was blackness.