Page 62 of Coerced

Her face went bone-white and horror filled her gray eyes.

“Yeah. Like I said.” I sighed. “I’ll take you back. You can talk with Jax or Gemma.”

I turned, but she stopped me by darting in front of me and holding up one hand.

“In my day—” she started.

“Yesterday,” I nodded.

“It was the way of things for a woman to hold a man’s arm as they walked in public. I see now that this formality has been done away with. I apologize for seeming old-fashioned.”

I cut my eyes to her face and saw she looked honest enough. Shrugging, I swung around and started walking again.

“I must spend some time devising appropriate gifts for those who freed me,” she said. “You, especially, must be rewarded. While it was the effort of several, you were the one who faced the greatest risk.”

“You owe me nothing. The others would say the same.”

“Ah, but I am not one to allow a debt to go unpaid.”

“You sound like my mission skills teacher.” I smiled as I thought of Ms. Chapman. “But yeah, I understand about paying debts.”

We reached the park and found a bench near a water fountain that had been drained and wrapped for winter.

“So what did you wanna talk about?” I shoved my hands in my pockets.

“The reason I was petrified.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“You sure you wanna tellme?”

“I do. After all, you are more fit to be its guardian than I, who merely created it at an archangel’s request.”

“Uh, I don’t know about that. And I’m not so sure I wanna be any sort of guardian.” I scratched my head, feeling outta my league here. “Besides, the archangel who asked you to make it. Won’t he want it?”

“No pure hand may touch it lest its power be undone. What is more, only one who walks in all three worlds can use it.”

“All three worlds? So a tainted neph would be the perfect combination, huh?”

“Precisely. How convenient that one should be among my rescuers.”

Convenient, my butt. This has fate stamped all over it.

“All right. How big is this thing? And where do we have to go to get it? And what does it do?”

Instead of answering any of my questions, she reached into her pocket, then held out her palm to show me a tiny key. It was about the size of a handcuff key, but thicker and with eight teeth instead of the usual one or two.

“Sure doesn’t look like it’s worth the trouble it’s caused,” I said without thinking and earned a stern look.

“Swift judgment often overlooks hidden qualities. Additionally, size is no indicator of power. Take a candle’s flame. An inch or two in length and weightless, yet in the dark, its value is immeasurable, is it not?”

Her way of speaking was frustrating, but I figured, like Gemma, she’d get to the point sooner or later if I let her ramble long enough.

“What does it unlock?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

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