Witches for Hire (Odd Jobs #1)(32)
Simone leaned over his shoulder. “Payments and phone numbers,” she said with false cheerfulness. “You three have been busy bees.”
He bowed his head low because groveling was the only honorable thing to do. “You have good reason to be angry. In my concern for not opening old wounds or placing you in defiance of your pack’s orders, I dismissed your skills. Please forgive me.”
“You don’t have to be so formal. I forgive you.” She held up her finger. “But I’m not forgiving Jeremy.”
After that very unfun ride with his consultant, Clive was more than happy to, as Simone had put it, throw him under the bus. “I accept your stipulation.”
Simone tapped her finger on the middle margin of the page. “This is the number of a rogue coven I came across at my second job. The one who skipped town after they fucked up my car. There might be hexes set just for dialing the damn thing if you’re not an intended recipient of it.”
If he had known his job would become as complicated as his missions in the other world, he might have reconsidered breaking Goldie. “Do you know any of them?”
“A couple by name, but investigating them will be a pain in the ass.”
“I trust you to pursue it.”
Simone smirked. “That’s one thing I have over the Brit. Jeremy is allergic to anything coven, so he hardly knows the big players.”
“I’m not trying to make this a competition.”
“I don’t need your permission to make it one.” Simone gathered the notes together and tapped them on her leg. “My work will be for nothing if the Council senses we’re making progress again and sends more goons.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t refuse their request.”
“What we need is a coven head backing us, so the Council has to go through official channels instead of stealing our work.”
“I’m too new to get that kind of support.”
“Well, if you don’t think it’s too dangerous for little ol’ me to visit one of the bruja heads, I’ll see what I can do.”
Asking such a thing was monumental for a witch who had voluntarily left her coven. It was the same as Clive crawling back to his king and begging for help. Shame knotted his stomach. “I truly hope you’ll believe that I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“I just don’t understand why both you and Levi did that to me. I’m sure it’s not because I’m a woman, since you kept Edarra in the loop. Is it being a parent?” Simone pointed at her chest softly, as if it would break like glass. “Am I too fragile because I have kids?”
“I didn’t tell Jeremy either,” Clive reminded her.
“Oh yeah, that makes it better. Next time, don’t assume that you know what’s best for me. I’m taking my lunch.” Simone stalked away and swung the door shut hard behind her.
On Clive’s desk, the #1 Boss coffee mug sat in silent judgment of his misdeeds. “I haven’t done much to deserve you, have I?”
THOUGH NEON green and red lights had replaced bright yellow bulbs to bring in younger blood at the bowling alley, Simone saw few faces under forty. The racket of pins being knocked down transported her to days when she would clap happily as her abuelo rolled. If he scored, it meant tamarind gummies for her as his cheering squad. At the end of the mostly empty bowling lanes, her abuelo stood in the middle of a group of men whose various Hawaiian shirts were more garish than the lighting. They jeered as a bald man stepped up to the line. When he threw his ball, his sleeve lifted, revealing tattoos of eyes split down the middle for grinning teeth and a tongue sticking out in anticipation of a meal. The head of the Sorcerer’s Guild had sported a gray ring of hair the last time she saw him, but time was marking him too. The bowling ball zoomed straight for the gutter, rolled in the dip, and then bounced onto its original path, striking down all the pins. The computer screen read a strike, but the men surrounding the bowler shook their heads.
“You put it down as a gutter, Rick,” Simone’s abuelo said with a hand on his hip. His black hair put up a good fight through the Mexican War of Independence and California’s Gold Rush, but it was finally losing the battle to gray.
The sorcerer’s eyes widened. “I didn’t use magic.”
“Too bad you can’t cheat as well as you lie,” said a white-haired man with an Irish lilt whose muscular arm cradling his ball was covered from shoulder to fingertips with a snake bearing runes. A druid high priest to complete her abuelo’s flush of powerful friends. “This is what real bowling looks like.” He rolled, and his ball sailed down the lane out of fingers no longer forming a snake’s head but creating smaller runes like an optical illusion. All but one pin fell.
“Not as good as me,” Rick muttered. He tried to reach for the scorecard, but he was shooed away.
The druid noticed Simone and pointed at her. “Who’s the lovely lady here to see?”
Her abuelo’s grin lessened wrinkles around his mouth that were too few for his age. “My pretty granddaughter, who looks like she wants to have a serious talk.”
“Hola,” Simone said, suddenly feeling shy.
The other Latino in the group with no signs of tattoos on his skin slapped his thigh. “Simone? With the barrettes?” He pointed at his knee. “The last time I saw you, you were this high!”