I sighed and followed Eammon to a smaller room off the main larger one. Eammon sat at a desk that had clearly been made for him, owing to the size, and he pointed to the chair across from him. “I have an idea for how to get you out of Crash’s debt, in a reasonable manner. It will cover the true cost of the daggers and sheath, so as to not offend him, without overpaying him.”

My eyebrows went up. “Really?”

He nodded. “We were approached last week by a client who thinks he’s being stalked. We did a cursory look into it, and there’s no evidence anything is stalking him. He’s a bit paranoid.”

I leaned back in the chair. “He needs a babysitter from nothing?”

Eammon nodded. “We were going to turn him away, but if you take it, it’ll technically be your first bounty. It won’t be a big payout, so you’d only need to give Crash far less than a bigger bounty.” He smiled and again that twinkle was there.

“You’re a bit of a sneaky leprechaun.” I smiled and shook a finger at him. But I could use the money. Maybe I could even go to the auction for Gran’s house. Maybe . . .

Shoot, it was a dream, but sometimes dreams were what kept you going through the mud and the rain. “Okay, I’ll take the job. When does it start?”

“You’d go now, work for him for four days, $500 a day, that’s two grand.” Eammon slid a paper across to me with a name and address on it.

I skimmed it quickly. “Eric Pine. He’s way out in the boonies. Wait, is that the Eric I met last week?”

Eammon grimaced. “Yes. He prefers the quiet. He’s a half-man and completely out to lunch. He’s had us watching him off and on for the last . . . well, I guess nearly a year. But there is no one there. Nothing.”

Like Sarge, then, a werewolf. I could handle that. “You’re sure that he’s just being paranoid?”

“Absolutely,” Eammon said. “We’ve bodyguarded for him before, but there are other jobs coming through that are frankly worth more.”

My cut with the Hollows was a 70/30 split. That would leave me with fourteen hundred for the four days, and only another hundred and forty for Crash. That didn’t seem right, but for the moment I held back mentioning that Eammon was being rather stingy. The turquoise knife was priced at five thousand. If I’d negotiated, I bet I could have gotten it for four thousand at the highest. Really, I should have paid seven to eight thousand for the pair. I swallowed hard, knowing already that I wouldn’t let Eammon dictate how much I would pay Crash for the knives.

Then again, Crash was no doubt going to be at that auction for my gran’s house so maybe I didn’t need to be so generous with him. I folded the paper. “Okay. So, I go out there and then what?”

“Do some perimeter checks, take this handbook with you—the Basic Bodyguarding section will walk you through it. Your main function will be to talk him down, basically.” Eammon tapped the desk. “Don’t stay more than four days.”

I frowned and took a handbook that would have been mighty nice to have from the beginning of the week. “The contract is four days, why would I—”

“He’ll try to talk you into it.” Eammon sighed. “He’s like a hypochondriac always going to the doctor. But we’re the doctor. I’m about sick of seeing his face around here, and if not for the fact that he’s got some cash squirreled away and he always pays, I wouldn’t bother.”

“But a good first job for the newbies.” I nodded. “Smart. You should keep him on the client list for sure. Use him with all the trainees.”

Eammon gave me an appreciative look. “Good business sense in you, lass.”

I shrugged. “I’ve been around the block a few times. I’ll see if Sarge can give me a ride out.”

He waved both hands at me. “Ah, no, don’t do that. It’s going to be bad enough that I’m sending you. No cell service, and Eric doesn’t like Sarge. Them shifters can be weird around each other.”

“What about Corb?” I wasn’t sure Corb would take me, but he was an option.

“No good there either,” Eammon said.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “Does Eric hate all of you?”

Eammon snort-laughed. “Not hate, no. But he’s scared of those two.”

I pushed to my feet. “Fine, I’ll find my way out there. I should go now?”

“Yeah, off you get. You’re ahead of the others in all the written work, so I’m not worried. The physical stuff will come to you, lass.” He winked. “Here, take this phone. Anything comes up, you call me. I don’t expect anything, but still good to be prepared.” Then he shooed me out of his office.

“Out there” turned out to be an hour drive easily, if I’d had a car. Walking would take all night. I grimaced, my legs hurting already.

Eammon saw me out, and I felt the others’ eyes on me. They probably thought I’d been kicked out.

“I’ll be back! Don’t get killed without me!” I gave them a cheery wave that struggled not to turn into a one-fingered salute. Up the stairs, I went into the still-drizzling night. Robert sat across from the tombstone stairwell, swaying next to a tree. I lifted a hand to him. “Hey, Rob, how’s it hanging?”

“Friend,” Robert whispered, and I nodded.

“I’ve got to go on a job. Want to come?” The words slid from me, bypassing my filter.

“Coming,” Robert whispered, sidling along a few steps behind like he wasn’t quite sure it was a good idea. Hell, he was probably right. I still wasn’t a hundred percent sure I wasn’t already losing my mind. Maybe . . . nope, I wasn’t going there.

I walked through the graveyard to the main road, and then kept on walking. All the way back to Corb’s place, I walked. That alone took a couple of hours that was no small feat after running in the muddy, rain-soaked cemetery training ground.

I needed to take the whole bottle of ibuprofen with me.

“You stay in the cemetery,” I said to Robert when I reached the house. “I’m going to get some sleep.”

I climbed the stairs to the loft, pulling myself up with each step. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked myself repeatedly.

This was all crazy, insane, stupid. I could hear every word as clearly as if Himself were standing right there shouting it. I mean, if he had been standing there, I would have kicked him in his useless nuts. But you get the point.

I smiled as I let myself into the loft and tromped to the bathroom.

Showered, clean, and warm, full of some great over-the-counter drugs, I went to bed. Seeing as my client wasn’t in any real danger, I would go in the morning when I was ready to face the world.

Besides, I had an idea of who was going to give me a ride out to the boonies, and I needed to catch him when he was sleepy and amiable.

I smiled as I fell asleep, thinking that I had it all planned out.

Boy, was I wrong.

The next day I made my way down to Factors Row. I wore my leather pants that Gerry had made for me, paired with a loose white T-shirt instead of a tank top. The sound of Robert keeping pace behind me helped me not freak out about the possibility of running into Jinx.

The mere thought of the oversized spider had my guts twisting into knots and I had to stop once to use a public washroom, sweating as though my insides were going to remove themselves on their own.

Sure, I had my daggers and my bad-ass leather outfit, but honestly there had been no real training I could lean on. Nothing recent. I needed to tap into the training Gran and Officer Jonathan had given me, and it was so long ago, I could only remember bits and pieces.

Eammon seemed inclined to let me just stumble through the tests that the other mentors had been setting up. I’d done plenty of exercising and reading, and not a whole lot else.

Under the shadow of the walkways, I knocked on the boarded-up door.

“Feish, open up,” I said. “I need to talk to Crash.”

There was no response at all. I pushed on the door a little and the wood groaned, opening just a crack. “Hey, I’m coming in, you’d better have clothes on!” I grinned as I pushed a little more and squeezed myself through the opening. Robert slid through behind me, his skeletal fingers clutching at my shirt for just a flash of a second.

The darkness was absolute, and I fished around in my bag, pulling out my flashlight. A single click and it was on. I swept the room with it, took a few steps and paused. “Hello?”

A whisper of cloth turned me to the left. I panned my light in that direction, but no one was there. Chills skittered up my spine, but I shook them off. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I whispered with as much menace as I could. I mean, if they wanted to play the scare-the-poop-out-of-you game, I could do that too.

I kept moving forward, hearing that cloth rustle to my right now. I didn’t bother to pan that way—my eyes were drawn straight ahead to where I’d sat with Crash and had tea. The space was bare, the urns gone, the weapons nowhere to be found. He’d left, apparently.

Which meant I was in this place with a critter of indeterminate breeding.

Well, crap. The chills that I’d pushed away as nothing to be worried about came back full force. “Jinx, that you?”

The rustling came faster now, and with it, the sound of something metallic sliding across the floor. Still to my right.

I turned to my left, away from the noise, and bit back a scream.

Robert stood there, swaying, his head down, his skeletal hand pointing at the exit. “Jaysus,” I breathed out.

“Robert,” Robert said, correcting me. Because, of course, he wasn’t Jesus. He was Robert.

Not a time for laughing, though the urge ran through me in a rather quick, so-scared-I’m-giddy moment. I walked as normally as I could toward the barred-up door. I stuck the flashlight in my mouth and ran my hand over the edge of the door to let myself out. Only the edge was not an edge anymore.

The whisper of cloth and sound of metal being dragged on stone drew closer.