whiskey witches 02 - blood moon magick by s m blooding Page B

the same thing?”
    “No.” That was something else, something that possibly had to do with the werewolf? Werecat? How many different types of were-animals were there?
    Tony glared at her.
    “I don’t think this has anything to with me.”
    “Are you sure?”
    She couldn’t be. She should have ended Sven in Louisiana when she’d had the chance. She should have sent him back to Hell. She should have kept the key to a gate that no longer needed a key. Just her soul. “Yeah.”
    She should have buried Dexx.
    She looked at the body of Elizabeth Harwood and hoped this wasn’t another person she could add to her personal body count. “I’m pretty sure.”

T ony didn’t have a lot to say as they went back to the precinct. He went into the building, leaving Paige outside.
    She zipped up her jacket tighter, closer to her neck. Colorado spring was chilly, especially since it was threatening to snow. She hated snow.
    Had she overstepped her boundaries? Had she given away too much information? The thing about secrets, though, was that you couldn’t keep them secret forever. She’d learned something in Texas. Peoplein this line of work weren’t stupid.
    When Tony came out of the precinct, the metal door clanking hard behind him, he motioned her toward his car. A charcoal grey 2015 Dodge Charger. Everyone in the department crowed about it, jealous. She couldn’t say it was horrible. It was a Charger, which was part of the same family of her favorite car, the Challenger. The Charger had four doors, which made going out on investigations easier. Though, if she had the money after Leah was grown—
    She stopped herself. Leah would never sit in the backseat of her car.
    The drive to her apartment started off quiet. Paige waited until they got onto Santa Fe before trying to talk to him. “I have my reasons for not hiding the information from him.”
    He grunted.
    “In Texas, we had a lab tech. I couldn’t always catch or contaminate the evidence before it made it to her lab.”
    He narrowed his eyes, gripping the wheel tightly as he slowed to a stop due to traffic.
    “She’s smart. She caught onto the fact I was tracking something different. I lied to her, but she saw right through me.”
    He settled back into his seat, the leather creaking.
    “She went on investigations on her own, looking for reasons behind the evidence she’d been able to gather. And she found it.” Paige shifted, recalling that night. She’d just happened to be in the area, by pure accident, tracking down another demon. If she hadn’t arrived when she did, Ethel wouldn’t still be Ethel. She’d be either be dead or possessed.
    “She found trouble. I can smell it on you.”
    “That nose. I’m not going to like it, am I?” She needed to divert his emotions, needed to get him to open up again.
    “Probably not.”
    She turned her attention to the slow-moving cars.
    He remained quiet.
    “You need to understand something,” Paige said. “You may have years and years more experience than I do hiding this thing, but it doesn’t show. If you want to be truly invisible, you need to follow the rules.”
    His lips pulled up. “No.”
    “Then you need to get better at not leaving a trail of red flags all over the place. You were commanding Barn to break protocol. Not once. Not twice, but a lot.”
    “I did what I had to.”
    “You could have cost him his job.”
    “Better his job than his life.”
    “Hmm. His life.” She turned her attention back to the window. “No job. Thinking you’re a nutcase. Trying to prove to the world that you’re not so you can get your old life back.” She turned back to him. “Think about, Tony. You were going to send him into the paranormal world alone anyway.”
    “I can’t trust people who aren’t in our world.”
    “They’re a lot more fragile than we are and unable to protect themselves against what we face.”
    “Like demons.”
    “And vampires.”
    His lips pinched shut for a minute before he