Jenks, though, couldn't help himself, and he rose with his hands on his hips. "Why should I tell Rachel what a tight aura means? She's not insane. She had a massage today and it condensed it down. Lighten up—you hag of a washerwoman."
"Jenks!" I exclaimed, but Ms. Walker took it in stride. What is up with him?
Ignoring Jenks but for a warning twitch of her fingers, she focused on me, her brown eyes going black. I clamped down on my sudden fear. This woman could probably kill me as we sat, and she would get away with it though Edden sat two feet away. "I don't care what they say you are," she said, her low voice entirely devoid of anything but scorn. "We are more powerful than you. That you survived was a fluke."
She stood amid Edden's protests, but I sat, frozen in fear. Who I am? She knew. She knew I was a proto-demon.
Standing above me, Ms. Walker closed her eyes and breathed deep, sucking in my fear like a drug. Jenks rose up in a clattering of wings.
"Stop," he intoned as he hovered between us, and the woman's eyes flashed open. "Leave Rachel's aura alone or I will kill you."
Ms. Walker's eyes went even blacker, and my fear slid deeper and twisted. She had Ivy's eyes, full of an unsated hunger. She was a predator chained by her own will, and she didn't mind letting herself off the leash once in a while. But not me. She wouldn't have me. I wasn't prey. I was a hunter.
While Edden winced, the woman gathered up her small handbag. Today's paper was folded up next to it, and my gut clenched. Great, she knew I'd been shunned, too. As she looked at Jenks, her disgust poured forth. "Bug," she said simply, hiding her eyes behind a pair of dark glasses. "Shouldn't you be sleeping in a hole in the ground?"
"Shouldn't you be extinct, like the rest of the dinosaurs?" he snarled back. "Want some help getting there?" he added, and I cleared my throat even as I bristled at her racial slur.
"Ms. Walker," Edden was saying, having stood up and moved to her side of the table. "Please. The FIB could really use your help, and we would be most grateful. Ms. Morgan and her associate's opinions aside, one of your own is accused of murder."
The elegant woman stopped two steps from the edge of the revolving ring, her eyes hidden. "I've seen what I've come to see, but I'll look for little Mia tonight. It's unlikely she's left her city, and I'll inform you when I've dealt with her."
Dealt with her? I didn't like the sound of that. By his expression neither did Jenks.
"In return, any assistance you can give me in streamlining the adoption process will be appreciated," she finished, turning away and accepting the hand of a nearby waiter to make the step to the unmoving core of the building.
Adoption? Alarmed, I stood up. "Whoa, wait up," I said caustically, and the woman turned back with cheeks flushed in anger. "Adoption? You mean Holly? Holly has a mother."
Edden's hands went loose at his sides, his posture becoming threatening without his making one overt move. "Ms. Walker, we never discussed you taking the child."
The woman sighed before she stepped back down to our level, moving with crisp, precise motions. "The child can't be held by anyone other than another banshee until she gains control," she said with a wave of her hand, as if we were simpletons. "Almost five years. What are you going to do, put her in a bubble?"
"You are underestimating the child's control," Edden said. "Her father holds her."
Interest arched her eyebrows, and she took her sunglasses off. "Does he really?"
Great. Now she really wanted Holly. It was almost impossible to engender a child under the laws of humanity, and now Ms. Walker thought Holly was special. Mia wasn't going to live out the week, and Remus would probably die defending them if we didn't find them first.
"It's not Holly," I said quickly. "It's her dad. There's a wish involved."
Edden turned to me with accusation in his expression, and I shrugged. "I found out yesterday. I was going to tell you."
Ms. Walker's eyes squinted in the glare, making wrinkles at the corners, and Jenks smiled wickedly as a flash of worry crossed the banshee's face before she hid it away. "Your own son hospitalized, Captain Edden," she said, as if it might make us want to give the child to her. "You yourself, Ms. Morgan, attacked and nearly killed. How many lives will you sacrifice before you accept it? I can control her. You can't. In return, I will give the child a home."
"Temporarily," I said, and Ms. Walker's smile twitched.
"If Mia is cooperative."
Like I believe that would happen?
"Ms. Walker," Edden said, his earlier fluster washed away, leaving his usual hard-assed self. "We all want what's best for Holly, but neither Mia nor Remus has had due process yet."
