Burned Read Free Page B

my arm around her shoulder. So she was coming with me just like that. Something about it made my heart sing. “I mean, even if you weren’t shambling like a drunken leprechaun, you only have one shoe.”
    “You should trust him,” Ricky whispered, looking up at me. “But if you don’t want to trust him, I’ll follow you anyway. Screw him and his lightning.” She made a psshaw noise that warmed the cockles of my curmudgeon’s heart. At least I think it was my cockles. I’m not really sure what they were to be honest.
    “I want to get back to the park before daybreak. Fighting through police and staff might make searching for clues more difficult,” I replied, glancing at her. Her red hair had caught the moonlight and seemed to burn with radiant fire. I must have had a weird look on my face because she stopped moving and looked up at me.
    “What?” she asked, touching her hair with one finger. “Is something wrong?”
    “No,” I replied, smiling at her. “I was just looking at you and forgot how to breathe.”
    “Mac Brennan, I’m not sure who taught you how to talk to the ladies, but it’s certainly working.” She smacked my chest. “But right now, let’s focus on what we’re doing. What is that by the way? It isn’t like you to be super concerned with the park’s workers, especially since you just shot a ton of them.”
    “While I may be okay with breaking eggs when making an omelet, I don’t want to break any more eggs than I have to. That’s just wasteful. I just want to go back to where I left Todd and look for clues,” I said even though I was pretty sure I’d told her that already. I was also pretty sure I wouldn’t find him there, but there had to be a clue. Either way, I was checking it out. If I had to go all “demonic arm” on some locals, I wasn’t above it.
    Part of me still couldn’t believe that after everything, Todd had betrayed me and not returned my family. Actually, I could believe it. Todd was a demon and had kidnapped my family to get me to murder Pierce Ambrose. I should have expected the demon’s betrayal. After all, he was a demon, and if Faust had taught me anything, deals with his kind never ended well.
    Now, I just had to hope he hadn’t already fed my family to his wood chipper. I mean, I was going to kill him either way, and even though I couldn’t really remember my sister or her son, if it was a choice between killing Todd and letting him go to save my family, I’d pick my family. After everything I’d done, he’d have to know that. Keeping them alive for now was the smart play.
    Still, something about the situation was bugging me. I was getting the feeling I’d been a damned good assassin in my past life. If I’d failed to kill Pierce, why had Todd felt the need to kidnap my family in order to get me to try again? Why hadn’t I tried again, anyway? I certainly seemed like the type to try again. Had I been in the process of doing so and just been too slow for Todd’s liking? That didn’t make any sense though. No one would unnecessarily complicate things by kidnapping an assassin’s family to get the already willing assassin to carry out his task. So why had Todd done it? I didn’t know, but I was going to find out.
    “Has it occurred to you that I might know where the demon in question is?” Danton asked from behind us, and I heard the sound of his work boots on the concrete behind me. He was following us. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Partially relieved but mostly worried because he hadn’t just left me to my own devices. Something about that made me think he’d be sticking around for a while.
    “That’s an excellent point.” I stopped and turned around. Maybe walking a couple miles with one shoe wasn’t the best idea. If I could skip right to Todd, I owed it to my sister and her son to do so. “Where is Todd?”
    “Why do you keep calling him Todd?” Ricky interrupted, fixing me with a look I couldn’t quite read. It seemed