Read Online mission magic 01 - the incubus job by Diana Pharaoh Francis - Free Book Online

four years, and I don’t know how long she’d been dead before that. All the same, I thought of me and Law in the office and was mortified.
    “She’s keeping a low profile,” I said in a strangled voice.
    He eyed me and the corners of his mouth curved as if he knew exactly what I was thinking and was enjoying it immensely.
    He turned his attention back to the ghosts. “Thanks for looking out after her,” he said to them.
    “She’s important,” someone said. Ramona, I think. She almost never talked. She’d come to me only about a year ago. A college student who’d been gunned down in a gang shooting in Chicago. A mutter of agreement ran through the collected dead.
    “She’s special,” Tag said. One of just three male ghosts I had. He’d joined my little band a couple of years ago. I’d been on a job in Arizona, helping out on a police investigation that Ivan had an interest in. Tag had run away from home and was on his way to L.A. to break into the movies. On the way he’d been kidnapped and forced into prostitution. I’d been the one to take down the operation, but he’d been sick and half starved and had died in my arms.
    The memory made my eyes burn. He’d weighed hardly anything and was covered with bruises. He’d cried and begged me never to tell his mom what had happened to him. I never did. I made up a story about how he’d died saving another boy from drowning in the river.
    “That she is,” Law agreed solemnly, his hand tightening on mine.
    “You know I’m standing right here,” I said.
    “We won’t leave her,” Edna said determinedly, and everyone else nodded and murmured agreement.
    “I agree,” Law said. “She needs you.”
    I pulled my hand from his. “Don’t do that. Don’t patronize.” Anger made me launch down the steps again at full speed, my bare feet slapping on the cool concrete.
    Law overtook me in just a few steps but didn’t try to stop me. The ghosts coasted behind.
    “I’m not patronizing,” he said.
    “Then you’re lying,” I snapped.
    He grabbed my arm, twisting me around to face him. “I’m not lying. I thank God you’ve had at least someone in your corner when you go out on your jobs. That Costa Rica job with the lich and his cat? I knew you’d left the States. A month went by, and I started to get worried, but no one had heard from you. Not a peep. Another month and I was climbing walls. There was no trace of you anywhere. Three months after that, you show up again, and I had no idea what happened, except this.”
    He ran his fingers over my back. His mouth twisted down bitterly. “I knew you’d gone through a shit storm, and I couldn’t do a damned thing. You sure as hell didn’t want me there. Why didn’t you call me when it got bad?”
    I’d thought about it, in those few moments when I wasn’t delirious with fever. Even with the help of the ghosts, the lich magic had penetrated deep, and I almost didn’t make it. I still fall into random fevers with some interesting and scary side effects. Law had been in my head for most of my illness, especially when I didn’t think I was going to recover. I’d wanted to call him more times than I can count, if only to say good-bye, but I hadn’t been sure he’d pick up, and if he did, I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t tell me to go to hell or, worse, yawn and tell me to deal with it on my own. In the end I was too chicken to find out.
    “It had been a long time,” I said. “I thought you were probably done with me, the way I left.”
    “You should have called me.”
    “I can’t call you whenever I stub my toe,” I said, starting down the stairs again. “I have to rely on myself.”
    “And a crowd of ghosts,” he said with a snarl.
    “The ghosts have been an unexpected blessing,” I said, glancing back at them. “Besides, even though you seem to think I’m an incompetent idiot, I’m pretty damned good at what I do.”
    He grabbed my arm. “I don’t think you’re an incompetent