Page 18 of Conflicted

It didn’t take longer than a minute for me to find him. Leaning against a building across from the clothing store was the demon who seemed hell-bent on making my life a misery.

“This is the third time this week,” Ez said. “First he was getting humans to graffiti police cars, then to rob a bank, and now they’re literally rioting. He’s escalating, Micah. We need to do something. We can’t keep ignoring it.”

“We haven’t been ignoring it. I go in afterwards and clean up the mess.” All the cars had been scrubbed clean by me. The stolen money had turned up on the bank’s doorstep the next morning, while all footage of the perpetrators had been erased, along with the memories of everyone involved.

It wasn’t their fault they’d robbed the bank, after all.

No, the blame lay with another fucker who was haunting me in ways I seemed unable to escape.

“This is ridiculous,” Ez huffed, his infamous temper rearing its head. “He’s just a demon. You haven’t even reported him to upstairs yet. What’s all that about?”

I cleared my throat, gesturing to the pile of paperwork. “It’s been a busy week. Benji and I are behind.”

Benji side-eyed me then, but thankfully didn’t say anything. We weren’t behind. Not even close. Even if we had been, reporting demonic activity took priority over everything else.

“Then let’s just execute him,” Ez said impatiently. “I don’t know why we’ve let it go on this long.”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s minor activity, Ezekiel. It hardly warrants stripping him of his immortality. No one’s been hurt as a result of his actions.”

“Yet. And those humans he compelled would’ve been hurt if they’d been sentenced for a crime they didn’t mean to commit.”

I met his furious gaze levelly. “Yes, but that didn’t happen.”

“Because you cleaned up after him,” Ezekiel exploded. “How long are we going to keep letting him run circles around us?”

My brows shot up. “You want to take your tone down several notches, Ez?”

Next to me, Benji had pushed back from the desk, his hands tense on the wood. He watched Ezekiel closely, waiting to see if he’d be required. We all knew how spectacular Ez’s temper was when he lost it.

Fortunately, he’d never crossed the final line, the one angels struggled to come back from. Every arch had a breaking point, and if pushed past it, they could lose control of their powers. Whenever it had happened, it’d had catastrophic consequences for everyone in the vicinity.

As annoyed as Ez got, he’d never yet reached that point. Still, I was relieved when he exhaled a noisy breath and sheepishly carded his hand through his hair. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be a dick.”

“It’s fine,” I said mildly as Benji returned to his laptop as though nothing had happened. “Save your ire for our enemies, Ez. It’ll serve you better there.”

“Sorry,” he repeated. He paused before gesturing at the tablet again. “Let me go deal with him. I’ll come back in a much better mood.”

I glanced at the monitor, where Nox was nonchalantlyleaning against the building. Like he could sense me watching him, he looked into the camera and blew a kiss.

Fucker.

“No,” I said, getting to my feet and clicking off the feed. “I’m going to deal with him myself.”

4

Nox

Was I trying to get Micah’s attention?

No.

Maybe.

But not for the reason one would assume. It wasn’t that I wanted to see him again, but I did want to prove a point.

That point being that my days of letting someone tell me what to do were behind me.

Either Micah was more stubborn than I’d thought, or he genuinely didn’t give a fuck about the chaos I was unleashing on the streets of Knightsbridge.

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