Read Online Wild Hunt by Margaret Ronald - Free Book Online Page A

Didn’t your wards keep them at bay?”
    Abigail started, then straightened up, the twinkle gone. “No,” she said. “I don’t bother with wards against dreams. They’re impractical, and a waste of time and energy.”
    I grinned. This was the real woman now, not the milquetoast of a moment ago. She still had the same bloodless scent, the same delicate care in how she moved, but now there was a center of stone to her mien. “I could say the same thing about wards in general. But then again, I’m no magician.”
    “And I am, I suppose, by your lights.” Abigail sighed, a very grade-school-teacher sigh. In fact, she would not have looked out of place in a teachers’ lounge, right down to the cardigan and the little floral pin over her left breast. But while there were bags under her eyes, they didn’t have the ground-in look that most teachers’ had. These were more recent. “Fine. I should have come clean about that to begin with.”
    I shrugged. “I can understand why you didn’t. People can react strangely, especially if they’re not aware of the undercurrent to begin with.”
    Abigail mouthed the word undercurrent , as if testing it. Now that I was seeing her as a magician, a whole new set of implications slid into place. The excessive care she took with her clothes was a marked contrast to most adepts, who usually ended up so steeped in their magic that they couldn’t remember which end the pants went on. The exceptions tended to be both very fastidious and very powerful—but I didn’t get that sense from Abigail. She wasn’t small-time, but she didn’t have the arrogant power that I associated with that kind of adept. (And let’s face it, most of them were male.)
    “Even magicians have grandmothers,” Abigail said, folding her gloves one over the other. “My story still stands. And yes, the nightmares are even more of a problem for someone in my position. If you don’t do this sort of work, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
    “I never said I wouldn’t do it.” I opened my desk drawer and rummaged around for a contract. “Here. Take a look. There’s a list of work I won’t do on the second page.”
    She took the contract and flipped the first page over. “Photography?”
    “People wanting to catch their spouses cheating on them. There are enough PIs in the city who’ll do that for less.” Granted, I’d had to do a little of that sordid work when I was starting out, but then the undercurrent stuff had come in, and I’d swapped one flavor of sordid for another. “But yes, photography, intimidation, papers served, or bodyguard work. And I reserve the right to step away from the case if something starts going—”
    I stopped. Just for a second, that sudden shift in Abigail’s scent had come and gone: the rank scent of adrenaline and terror, like a spatter of blood over her pale scent.
    “Do you usually back out of cases?” she asked. Her voice—again calm and controlled as a teacher’s—broke into my thoughts. She was good, I thought; she might be scared, but she was used to hiding it.
    “I haven’t much, lately.” It was part of why I was careful about what I took on; obligations wore on me, and I found it very hard to walk away from them.
    “Good.” She took a fountain pen from her purse and uncapped it. Her nails were bitten to the quick, I saw, and beyond; at the tips of her fingers were little half-moons that barely deserved the term fingernails. It was the only thing out of place on her. “I’ll take careof finding out which of the items is the problematic one, and I’ll have it to you in a couple of days.”
    I reached out and slid the contract out from under her hand. “Whoa. I haven’t yet said yes, or set terms—”
    “Two thousand per day,” she said without looking up. “Five thousand more on completion, and a down payment towards that before you begin work in earnest.”
    Well. That was nice—that was several times my usual rate, and the work itself