Read Online Gunmetal Magic by Ilona Andrews - Free Book Online Page B

now his mother was dead. I would get those bastards. I would find them and make them pay.
    I got up. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’re done. I’ll inform you when I have a lead.”
This interview is over. Get the hell out of my office and out of my life.
    “Do that.”
    Raphael rose and left.
    Work was the only thing I had left. Everything else was gone now. I would find the murderers. I would find them if it was the last thing I did. I had to do it to prevent them from killing anyone else, to offer their victims vengeance andsolace, and most of all I had to do it to prove to myself that I was still worth something.
    I pulled out a phone book and tracked down the three addresses of the bidders.
    His scent was still here. I snarled at it, but it refused to vanish.
    Hurt and frustration bubbled in me. I was keyed up too high, my skin was on too tight, and I wanted to shoot something just to vent all the pain boiling up inside.
    So Raphael had replaced me with a seven-foot-tall dimwit, so what? Good riddance. I was better off on my own.
    The back door opened with a faint creak. Ascanio walked into the office and froze.
    “What?” I asked.
    He opened his mouth, his eyes wide.
    “Speak!”
    “Breasts,” he said.
    Female shapeshifters didn’t have breasts in warrior form. There was no need for them. They were either flat-chested or sported rows of teats. I had breasts. They were covered with fur, but they were recognizable adult female boobs.
    “It’s not your first time seeing a pair, is it?”
    “Um. No.”
    “Then do act like you’ve been around the block before.”
    Ascanio closed his mouth with a click.
    “Don’t test Raphael,” I told him. “If you do, he’ll cut you into itsy-bitsy pieces and leave them in a pretty pile on the floor.” I decided I liked my beastkin voice. It was deeper, more powerful, and sounded better. In an attractive female monster kind of way.
    “Oh, I don’t know.” He gave me a look suffused with teenage arrogance. “I think he might find it difficult.”
    “No, he won’t. We once fought a dog the size of a two-story house. Raphael ripped one of its heads off.”
    Ascanio blinked. “One?”
    “It had three.” I got up and pulled a change of clothes from my bag. My other me was about twenty-five percent larger, but my long-sleeved T-shirt had a lot of stretch in it. I pulled it onand put on my pants. They were more like capris now and they were tight on my calves. “I’m going out.”
    “Like that?”
    I pulled out my knife and sliced the hems of my pants. Much better. “Who’s going to stop me?”
    “But you’re…not in human shape.”
    Yes, and I was sick of being ashamed of who I was. I looked at him for a long moment. “If I change back into a human, I’ll need a nap. I don’t have time for naps. If someone has a problem with the way I look, fuck them.”
    “Uhh…”
    “And stop looking so scandalized. I covered my boobs, didn’t I?”
    “But I still know they’re there. I saw them.”
    “Treasure the memory.” I grabbed my bag off the table.
    Ascanio jumped in front of the door. “Can I come with you?”
    “No.”
    He fluttered his eyelashes at me. “I’ll be very quiet.”
    “No.”
    “Andrea, I’m sick of being stuck here by myself. Please, please, please, can I come with you? I’ll be good.”
    He’d been cooped up in the office for the last few weeks, at first because he was injured, then because he wasn’t and we wanted to keep him that way.
    “I’m going to look for a murderer. If you come with me, you’ll get hurt when we run into trouble on the way. And then I will have to have a very unpleasant conversation with Aunt B, which will go like this: ‘You won’t join Clan Bouda, you broke up with my son, and you let that sweet precious boy get hurt.’”
    Ascanio picked up my desk with one hand and held it four feet off the ground.
    “It’s not your muscle I’m concerned about. It’s your brains. Or lack thereof.”
    He