A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency) Read Free Page A

demon deal. It’s not pretty. If you make me take you back by force, Valefar’s gonna dunk you. You don’t want that.”
    Swain shook his head, backing up toward the kitchen cabinets. “I’m not mooching. I’m renegotiating for more time.”
    “This isn’t an auction.” Was it too much to ask for things to go smoothly for once? I had a stack of office paperwork to get through, an English paper to write, and a boyfriend to kiss. This was eating up time I didn’t have. “Besides, I don’t have that kind of power.”
    Poor Fred Swain was pale. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he peed himself at that point. His bottom lip quivered, and his left eyebrow kept twitching. I contemplated saying something soothing. Hell, I wasn’t above lying to ease his fears. For all I knew, he’d never know the difference. I had no idea what Valefar did with his collections.
    But Fred surprised me and after a moment, smiled. “This whole argument is silly. I’m sorry,” he said, relaxing.
    Oh, thank God. He wasn’t going to make this a federal case. Maybe I could squeeze in a little Lukas-time after all. I held out my hand. “You’re ready then?”
    “Not even close.” He snorted and batted my hand away. “I mean, you’re what, twelve? You can’t force me to go back with you. You’re just a stupid kid.”
    It was bad enough to have the agency’s clients looking at me like I was still in pigtails and sucking on a pacifier, but this guy? That tweaked me. Granted, I wasn’t sporting a killer chest and dangerous curves like Kendra, but I didn’t look like a grade schooler, either. “You know,” I said, advancing. “That’s totally uncall—”
    A black and silver blur flew at me. I ducked to the right as a huge frying pan missed my head by inches and crashed into the closet door. It clattered to the floor, rattling around before stopping facedown at my feet. Time kind of slowed. I looked up from the pan to Fred, and he let out a very unmanly yelp. In a flourish of flailing arms and girly screams, he bolted from the room.
    Really? We were going to play chase the rabbit? This wasn’t going to improve my mood.
    I took off after him, rounding the corner just in time to get pelted in the face with a couch cushion. “Are you serious?” I yelled. “Don’t you know anything about self-defense? At least use something pointy!”
    “You’ll never take me alive,” he screamed, continuing through the room.
    “Keep this up and I might be okay with that,” I mumbled, dashing forward. He had every light in the damn place turned on, so shadowing was off the table. I had to rely on good old-fashioned reflexes.
    Swain raced through the apartment, knocking over everything he could get his hands on to slow me down. I almost grabbed hold of the edge of his shirt as he turned the corner on the kitchen again, but caught air instead. I didn’t need much. Just to be touching him somehow. First fistful of anything and I was hauling his ass downstairs . He’d made his choice, and even though a small part of me felt sorry for him, he’d sealed his own fate.
    Through the living room and past the hall, he swung around and hooked a right back into the kitchen. The whole circle thing was starting to make me dizzy. A book, several pens, and even his cell phone—everything that wasn’t nailed down became a projectile. I managed to dodge most of them.
    Two steps over the threshold on our third trip through the kitchen and that all changed. A glop of cold hit me in the face. It landed on my neck, then oozed down the front of my shirt. Without thinking, I went to brush it away and ended up smearing the goop across the entire front of my shirt. Thick and sticky.
    Swain was standing a few feet away, armed with a scowl and brandishing a store-brand bottle of maple syrup. “I’m warning you,” he said, dropping the bottle and backing up to the counter. “Stay away from me…”
    “Or you’ll what, use the waffle iron next?”
    He reached