Read Online Utterly Charming by Kristine Grayson - Free Book Online Page B

room. Any time clients said they were wasting Max’s time, they were clients who really needed to go to jail. But Blackstone was attempting to dismiss Max as if Max were a bellboy waiting for a tip.
    “You aren’t wasting my time,” Max said, and then he turned to the sarge. “May I have a moment with my client?”
    The sarge shrugged, and that was when Max noticed that no one seemed to care that Blackstone’s arms were crossed. Blackstone’s hands should have been handcuffed, but no one seemed to have thought of that.
    Max frowned. He had never encountered anything like this before. What kind of situation had Nora gotten him into?
    “Are they letting you go?” he asked Blackstone.
    Blackstone smiled, and Max had to take a step backward. It was as if someone had lit up the room. For the first time ever, Max felt jealous of another man. Blackstone probably had to beat women off with a stick.
    “You’ll see,” Blackstone said.
    And then, as if on cue, the not-dead woman shoved her way into the interview room, trailed by five cops and the two ambulance attendants. She pushed Max aside, and he fell against the table, his feet tangling in the connections to the tape recorder. But she didn’t seem to notice. She headed toward Blackstone. She was as tall as he was, and she seemed to sizzle with energy.
    They looked matched somehow, not like they were related, but like they had been painted with the same brush, a brush filled with glitter that only Max could see.
    He untangled himself as she raised her arms in a classic sorcerer pose. It looked as if she were grabbing air and holding it. Then she said in that elegant voice, “Where is she?”
    The voice made Max shudder. If she had been asking him, he probably would have told her everything, including his underwear size. But Blackstone didn’t seem upset at all. He got a self-satisfied cat-that-just-ate-the-canary grin and shrugged.
    Max’s heart stopped. Somehow he knew that little smile would piss the not-dead woman off. Max headed for the nearest wall and saw that the sarge, the cops, and the attendants were doing the same thing.
    “I know you know,” the woman said as she got closer to Blackstone.
    “Actually, I don’t.” Blackstone let his arms fall to his sides. Max glanced at the cops, thinking they should have been doing something—anything—about this, but they were mesmerized. It seemed like they had forgotten where they were and that they were supposed to be in charge.
    “Tell me where she is,” she said.
    Blackstone rolled his eyes and said, “You know, Ealhswith, you’d think this would grow old after a thousand years.”
    She took a step closer to him. Max pressed himself against the wall and pretended to be invisible. He’d represented arsonists and murderers and generally scary people, and never in his life had he felt like this.
    He felt like a child in the presence of giants.
    “I will not let you have her,” the woman said as if Blackstone hadn’t spoken a word.
    “That’s been clear from the beginning,” he said.
    She took another step toward him. Max was starting to think she was moving slowly for dramatic effect. He wanted her to launch herself at Blackstone, do what she was going to do, and then leave. Immediately.
    “This has gone on too long,” she said, “and we’re getting sloppy.”
    Max glanced at the cops. This was criminal talk. The cops should have noticed. And they did. But they looked as scared as Max felt.
    Which didn’t reassure him.
    “ You’re getting sloppy,” Blackstone said. “Who would have thought to have a battle in the middle of a suburb?”
    “Fields are getting harder to find.”
    “Not really,” he said and tilted his head against the wall. He seemed to be watching her and, despite his relaxed posture, he seemed ready to fight. “I knocked you out.”
    “You should have killed me,” the woman said.
    “And then what would have happened to all that we hold near and dear?” He said this