Page 7 of Fresh Old Bounties

“Witch.”

Greeting and goodbye and a severe lack of respect all bundled into one neat word that still sounded like he meant to say it with a very different starting letter. Considering I had saved his furry hide a week ago, he seriously needed to adjust his attitude. I reminded him of this fact with a haughty lift of my chin.

“Good,” he added like the words were being ripped off his throat. “Thanks.”

Much better.

Dru was staring daggers at me from outside the shop, so I said my goodbyes and joined her.

“Can you believe it?” Dru fumed as we walked back to the Tea Cauldron.

It was hard to. After all the stress and hoops I’d gone through to make Hutton’s alpha power potions, he should be treating me much better. He hadn’t even paid me yet!

I brought out my phone and sent him a quick text reminding him of the bill. The fact I still had his number listed as Ass 2 brought me some satisfaction.

Grandma would not have approved of treating my clients this way. But then, for all I knew, Grandma might’ve had a private diary full of curses and code names for her most trying acquaintances.

“Hutton has some gall,” I said.

“Not him. Sonia!”

Truthfully, Sonia’s response hadn’t come as a huge surprise, but Dru would probably sock me if I said that. “She should take this more seriously,” I agreed.

“Did you do something to piss her off lately?” Suspicion filled Dru’s voice.

Other than existing, apparently? “I haven’t talked to her since the last meeting. I told you she hates me.”

“Hmph.”

My phone vibrated with an incoming text. Hutton.

Already paid.

Had he? Because my bank account disagreed. Where?

Same account as usual.

Must be the mythical account Brimstone and Destruction, my other dark magic client, also used to pay me. An account Bagley had obviously kept hidden from the Council. I asked Hutton for the account details, then gave my attention back to Dru.

“Look at it on the good side,” I said. “At least she told us to bring it up.”

“There is no good side. Sonia probably added it to her list of things to ignore next meeting just to mess with you.”

While that was a distinct possibility, something told me Sonia wasn’t that mean spirited. My natural optimism at work, no doubt. If you didn’t believe the best in people, was there even a point in living among them?

“This way, we have a few days to work on our proposal,” I told Dru. “We can gather information about Tabbies, maybe canvass the shops in the street, and come up with a list of reasons it’d be bad for the community if they took over the Corner Rose. Sonia will be impressed by all the paperwork.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” Dru admitted.

“I’m not half bad at this business thing, you know. Runs in the family.” The side of the family I had no blood connection to, but osmosis worked just as well. “I’ll ask my sister for ideas.”

“Your stepsister? The one who works for that big business management firm?”

“Yep.”

“Fine.”

“It hurts me you trust her more than me. You haven’t even met her.”

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