Magic Gifts (Kate Daniels #5.4)(20)
Author: Ilona Andrews

Green flashed in Jim’s eyes. He yanked a piece of paper from the clipboard and thrust it at me. It looked like a long list.

"What is this?"

"This is the list of all the phone calls I’ve gotten about this shit in the last week and a half. The mercs have gotten every damn member to call me here." He shook the list in Curran’s direction. "You want to know why your background checks aren’t done? This is why! I could get it done if your mate would stop dicking around and just dealt with it."

Oh it’s like this then. "Then I have a great idea. Since they’re all calling you, why don’t you stop dicking around and deal with the Guild. You have the same time in as I do."

"I have a job!"

"So do I! Why is your time more important than mine?"

The clipboard snapped in Jim’s fingers. He dropped it on the ground and raised his hands. "You know what, I’m done. I quit."

"Oh my God, seriously?"

Jim wiped his hands one against each other and showed them to me.

"Is that you washing your hands off?"

"Yes."

"Really? So what, you’re going to retire and open that flower shop you always wanted?"

Jim’s eyes went completely green.

"Enough," Curran said. An unmistakable command saturated his voice. Jim clicked his mouth shut.

I crossed my arms. "I’m sorry, is this the part where I fall to my knees and shiver in fear, Your Furriness? Silly me, I didn’t get the memo."

Curran ignored the barb. "What’s your problem with the Guild?"

"The only way to resolve it involves me being entangled in running it and I don’t want to do it." I waved my arms. "I have the Consort crap and I have the Cutting Edge crap and whatever other bullshit the two of you throw my way. I don’t want to go to the Guild every month and deal with their crap on top of everything else."

Curran leaned toward me. "I have dress up and meet with those corpsefuckers once every three months and be civil while we’re eating at the same table. You can deal with the Guild."

"You, dress up? Wow, I had no idea that putting on your formal sweatpants was such a huge burden."

"Kate," Curran snarled. "They’re not sweatpants, they are slacks and they have a belt. I have to wear shoes with f**king laces in them."

"I don’t want to do it! I hate the policy crap." I so didn’t need the Guild politics in my life. It was complicated enough, damn it. "I don’t have time for it."

"Everybody hates the policy stuff," Curran growled. "You will do it."

"Give me one reason why."

"Because you know those people and some of them are your friends. The Guild is sinking and they’re losing their jobs."

I opened my mouth and clamped it shut.

"Also, because I’m asking you to do it," Curran said. "Will you please resolve this, baby?"

I would punch him. I would punch him straight in the face, hard. "Fine. I’ll need a lot of back-up for the Guild."

Curran looked at Jim. "Make sure she has everything she needs."

"Okay," Jim said. He picked up the pieces of his clipboard, pulled a piece of paper out and handed it to me with the pen. "Write it down."

I did and gave it back to him.

Jim read it. "I’ll take care of it, Consort."

"Thank you, alpha."

If it had been raining, our voices would’ve frozen it into hail.

"Is there anything else?" Jim asked Curran.

"No."

Jim nodded and left.

"I hate you," I told Curran.

He chuckled. "You’d hate me more if Jim quit. We’d have to find a replacement. I don’t trust that many people. Just think how much more shit you’d have to put up with."

"Don’t," I warned him.

"Mmmm, Kate, the Chief of Security. Sexy. Who better to guard my body then the woman who owns it?"

"Curran, I will punch you."

"Rough play." Curran pretended to shiver in excitement.

I raised my fist and tapped his biceps lightly.

"You knew it was inevitable," he said.

I knew. The moment Jim sent me the file I had known exactly how it would end. But I put up a valiant fight. "Yes, but I don’t have to like it. Can we eat now? I’m starving."

"Oh so I am forgiven?" he asked.

"Sure. The next time you decide to flex your claws and come up with a plan to invade a home of a high-ranking civil servant, I’ll bark, ‘Enough!’ and expect to be obeyed, how about that?"

"You told me no," he said.

"And?"

"And I didn’t like it."

"You can’t assault the DA’s house, you crazy bastard!"

"And you can’t check out of the Guild’s mess. We both have to do things we don’t want to do. I consider us even."

I rolled my eyes and we went upstairs to our cold food.

"I know what that ass is getting from me next Christmas," I said.

"What?"

"Clipboards. Lots and lots of clipboards."

Chapter Eight

Before the Shift and the start of magic waves, a person’s power could be readily judged by the kind of car they drove, by the clothes they wore, and the company they kept. In post-Shift Atlanta visual clues were still proved true in some cases, but not nearly often enough. A bum in tattered jeans and ragged cloak could walk out into the crowded street, raise his arms, and the sky would tear open and weep a rain of lightning and hail the size of coconuts, leveling everything in a three mile radius.

That’s why post-Shift Atlanta evolved a new concept: a show of power. It was a decisive, showy demonstration of abilities and power, designed to intimidate.

When I woke up in the morning, a pair of grey jeans, grey T-shirt, and grey leather jacket waited for me, folded on top of a grey cloak edged with fur. Grey was the Pack color. I was going to put on a show for the Guild and this was my costume for it. I put the clothes on, added my boots, my saber in the back leather sheath, my throwing knives, and my wristguards filled with silver needles. I braided my hair away from my face and examined myself in the mirror. I was broadcasting badass loud and clear. Normally I stayed away from clothes like that. The less attention I drew when I worked, the better. Today was different.

I marched into the bathroom, where Curran was brushing his teeth. His blond eyebrows crept up. "That’s your Council meeting outfit from now on."

I laughed. "Cloak or no cloak?"

"Definitely cloak," he said.

I tried the cloak on in front of the mirror.

Curran came up behind me and nuzzled my neck.