Page 63 of Conquered Obstacles

“I thought we might get bored over spring break,” Mary purred. “Okay, so we’re going to need stuff.”

I nodded at the list, making their laptops and other items appear. A fancy printer to handle business proposals. They called Jamie to come back and then filled him in.

And then I went with Colton to Gil Mendoza’s big fancy office.

“Okay, I’ve done a lot of sneaky as shit magic and even cloaked myself, but this is fucking trippy,” he whispered as we moved along the hallway, no one noticing us. “I have to wait until night and all kinds of hoops. It’s daylight and people everywhere and cameras—”

“I gave three live cows this morning for a three-headed dog to chomp on,” I drawled. “Before I brought my sister-in-law who tried to kill me and put a curse on me that lasted thousands of years back to my brother up at the top of Olympus while dozens of gods I don’t even know watched the show. This isn’t remotely the weirdest part of my day.”

“Fair. Totally fair, but it is mine, and I’ve been around magic all my life too,” he grumbled.

Fine, I could understand that. I glanced over at the reception desk and saw what floor his office was on and brought us up there. Then after a few wrong turns, we found the right spot.

“We can’t open the door without them noticing,” Colton worried when he saw the three assistants in the outer room.

I gave him the look he deserved and used my power to bring him to the other side of the door. “Did you lose some IQ points today?”

“No, tired, freaked out—a whole list. This guy is powerful, connected, and not going away.”

“You’re worried more about this guy than you were your elders,” I muttered, not sure what to do with that.

“That was one cult and I didn’t know they had a demigod with them,” he grumbled. “I rolled my eyes at them all of the time. They were nothing for you, but as a business owner, I know how the pressure of having so many jobs relying on every move or misstep you make can weigh on you. This health department thing is out of my wheelhouse.”

“I’ve missed feeling like you’re on my side,” I admitted, looking away when he glanced at me. “And it’s nice we can actually be honest with each other. I didn’t realize how much I was hiding from you too. Though I hid it so your mind didn’t explode and you didn’t lock me up for being crazy, but whatever.”

I cleared my throat and moved towards the computer.

“In the movies, they always just plug something in and copy everything over. Then some computer genius decrypts it later. It always seemed too tedious.”

“Your lack of patience always makes me chuckle,” he said as he moved up behind me, snickering when I used my power to put in the correct password and get us past the lock screen. “Yes, that is much easier.” He pulled out some drive or something and plugged it in, leaning over and using the mouse to navigate. “Shit.”

“They won’t find your prints or anything, love. You’re not currently corporeal.”

“So fucking weird,” he mumbled, shaking his head but kept working. “Okay, let’s start snooping while it all transfers over. Hopefully, he’s the type of monster to keep receipts.”

I glanced around, feeling something off in the office. I smirked when I found it. “He’s an old-school monster.” I reached over to a glass award-looking thing and lifted it slightly. The bookcase to my right opened, and behind it were three different filing cabinets. “Always a classic trick.”

I duplicated it all and made it appear in my garage. The other side, the bookcase just pulled back to reveal a liquor cabinet and bar setup. Probably something to impress anyone he wanted to. The boy’s club kind of bullshit.

But to hide filing cabinets like that… This should be fun.

And from the look Colton gave me, he was up for it as well.

17

Colton let me use his private plane to help me dodge the hoops of getting from Boston to WA for the meeting in time publicly. Having Jamie and the twins with me helped. I honestly wanted to leave the twins out of it, but when they started digging into what we found on Gil Mendoza, they were just as riled up to take this bastard down as I was.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I whispered after we landed and were taxiing to meet the car arranged for us.

“What? The flight?” Jamie asked innocently.

I shook my head. “The world. It wasn’t supposed to ever get this out of balance. Money and wealth weren’t supposed to matter this much and overrule everything else. There wasn’t supposed to be this much pain to live before the horrors of the underworld we didn’t fix. The world was supposed to give most people more good days than bad. It doesn’t anymore.”

“You have the chance to change it as you have been, Mom,” Mary said gently. “You have for a lot of people, and the ripples are spreading. In under a year. Give it time.”

“Time is the one luxury too many people don’t have, love,” I mumbled. “But today we handle this monster so he doesn’t stop the mission.”

“I still say we bury him on a mountain,” Kary said under her breath.

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