Page 4 of Blood on the Ice

I know that, but I like to make my way.

“My family paid for undergraduate school and I decided to do the rest on my own. It keeps me from owing Axel more than I want to repay.”

Iggy frowns petulantly, but he doesn’t understand why I want to keep as much of my life here as separate from my crime syndicate relatives at home. The more of their ‘help’ I accept, the more likely I am to get a phone call demanding a favor someday. I don’t want to use my gifts for their bullshit, so I try to limit how much exposure to my life here I grant them. My mother isn’t as bad as my father and uncles, but she’s no pushover, either.

“What did you get out of the mysterious murderess?”

Grateful for the change of topic, I loll my head over to look at him. “She seems nice, Ig. A little distant, but I think she’s earned that in the past year since…”

“Since she killed our former boss after hunting him down like a dog?”

“I guess. I mean, I’m sure she has sharp edges, but the woman in my shop today was sad and alone. She definitely would have preferred prison to being sent here.” I pull my glasses off, sitting them on the coffee table and pick up the glass of wine he had waiting for me.

“Do you think she’s going to clean house or what?” His expression is more unsure than I’ve ever seen before, and I realize he truly is scared.

“Not entirely, I don’t think. If I were to guess, I’d say she’ll ferret out Magnus’ loyal minions first. She can’t do any of the shit the auditors want if she has crooked assholes working behind her back.”

My enigmatic friend nods, considering my words as he grabs the containers of food and a pair of chopsticks. Opening the first one, he grins as he picks up a small dumpling and holds it up for me. “Sounds like you got a good read on her, even if you didn’t get solid answers.”

I lean in and catch the proffered food with my teeth. If I don’t, Iggy will get pouty and fuck knows I don’t have the spoons left to deal with that after today. “I did what I could without being obvious I was grilling her, man.”

“Is she pretty? The pictures always make her look big and angry,” he says as he scratches his chin with his free hand.

“Gorgeous,” I mumble around the pot sticker. “Tall as hell, but the gothic CEO look is very hot.”

He blinks and gives me a slow, knowing smirk. “You like her! Oh, Slade, that’s precious. The stony Domme look has your motor running.”

“Shut up, Iggy.”

“We could try the sharing thing again; we’re a lock when we work together. The chicks dig our brainy nerd sandwich.” He bobs his brows and I roll my eyes.

“I am not committing to seducing our new boss, who murdered her former fiancée for being an unfaithful crook, with my roommate. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Ah, but that’s not a ‘no’. It’s more of a ‘it’s a bad idea’ andthatI can work with.”

Poseidon save me from ambiguous best friends who have no boundaries.

in my head

The Dean’s house still reeks of Magnus, and Ihateit.

My stuff is coming, but it won’t arrive for at least three more weeks. After the human virus bullshit for the past few years, shipping is a goddamned nightmare, even with supernatural moving companies. I’d planned to pare down my belongings before I moved to the US when my ex and I gotmarried, but that was over a year away. When the Council handed down their edict, I was left scrambling to pack every damned thing I owned in short order and get my ass on a plane to start here.

I could have flown trans-Atlantic, but it would have taken longer, and they refused to set my stupid monitor to allow for it.

Growling in frustration, I look down at the amulet my mother gave me when I graduated from Swallowtail in my teens. It’s why I can shift without destroying my clothes, so I never take it off, but now that it’s part of my sentence, I resent its presence. The hex added to ensure I didn’t run out on my prison time keeps track of me and makes it impossible to remove the pendant until they deem my sentence served.

Here I am, stuck in a house filled with the ghost of my ex, imprisoned in a job I didn’t want, and locked down like a rabid werewolf. My life has become one huge cosmic joke, and it makes me want to go on a vengeful rampage through this idyllic countryside. I could entomb half the males in the dorm before anyone even realized I’d gone rogue, then break the chain around my neck and fly free. But that would mean living on the run for the rest of my lengthy lifespan and I’m not cut out for hiding in caves and abandoned churches.

Rubbing my hand over my face, I head to the kitchen in search of a nice bottle of Cabernet. If I’m going to live with the rustic, Ernest Hemingway-esque decor my dipshit ex picked, I’ll need to get very drunk. It’s Friday, anyway, so it’s not like I have anything else to do besides plow through books so complex I’m going to need a forensic accountant to make heads or tails of them.

“I wonder if Jackson Thorne has one of those on staff,” I murmur as I rummage for the corkscrew. He lives nearby and stood out as one of the rare agents at the trial who didn’t seem eager to condemn me.

That thought brings a wave of fury and shame. Memories of being shackled by magic and glared at by an enormous gathering of high-powered supes flood my mind, making my shoulders sag. I’ll never outlive the humiliation of that scene, andthatis the ultimate indignity Magnus left me with. Without proof of the things he told me before I struck the final blow, no one would believe the evil that lurked under a skin that pretended to be merely shady. So I didn’t use any of his vile admissions as evidence in my trial; I merely had my lawyer use the laws of both my people to justify my actions based on publicly known crimes.

“They’d be shocked down to their expensive jockey shorts if they knew what kind of filth he’d been up to.” Muttering to myself has become a bit of a habit, but I don’t have any friends left to vent to about the unfairness of my life.

Fuck, I’m a sad sack of a supernatural.

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