Her blood went cold. How the hell does he know that?
Just as she was stammering out a response, she caught sight of Rufus striding up behind him, a stormy look on his face. Her ex leaned on the bar, immaculate in a pressed white shirt.
“Ursula,” he said. “We need to talk about what just happened.”
Chapter 2
“In my office. Now.” Rufus inclined his head toward an open door behind the bar, his face pink with rage.
Flinching at his demanding tone, Ursula followed him through the door. She shoved her hand into her pocket, gripping her good luck charm—a smooth, white stone. Right now, it was doing fuck-all in the luck department, but touching it had become a nervous habit.
She plopped down in a chair. It wasn’t much of an office. Since it was a former storage closet, there was only room for the bare essentials: a dingy desk and two chairs. Rufus took a seat behind the desk.
The room was oppressive—either the lack of windows or the wanker behind the desk. Probably both.
Rufus pushed his blond hair back, appraising her with cool, blue eyes. Maybe his Nordic good looks had somehow fooled her into overlooking his serious personality problem.
“What the hell happened out there?” he snapped. “We could get sued. I could get sued.”
“There was a fight, and I was just trying to calm them down. That’s all.”
“By lighting a man on fire?”
The fever blazed behind her temples. She really should have stayed at home tonight. “I don’t know how…” She trailed off. She had no clue what had happened. “One second, I was trying to stop him from hitting some guy, and the next thing I knew, his shirt was on fire.”
“Was he smoking a cigarette?” Rufus narrowed his eyes. “Were you smoking?”
“Neither of us were smoking, as far as I know. I just looked down at my hand, and it looked—hot.” No idea why she’d said that last part. She realized it made her sound insane, and quickly corrected herself. “He probably was smoking, now that you mention it.”
“Did you say your hand was hot?” He winced. “You do realize what you could be accused of?”
Witchcraft. He was talking about witchcraft.
It would have sounded completely crazy a few months ago, but the world had changed, ever since a group of mysterious men had been caught on American TV slaughtering people in a Boston park, before disappearing into thin air in a whirl of demonic activity. Now half of London was talking about witches and magic. For her part, Ursula had no idea how they’d disappeared, but she liked to believe magic wasn’t the culprit. There was enough shit to worry about without adding in a supernatural threat.
She loosed a sigh. “Look, all I said was my hand was hot. I have a fever. You know, I think I should go home.”
Rufus leaned back in his chair. “It’s not as crazy as you might think. Madeleine knows all about witches. She’s been doing a lot of research since the attacks. She works with a professor at UCL.”
“I’m not a witch, for God’s sake. I don’t even believe in them. And who is Madeleine?” His new girlfriend, no doubt. Poor lamb had no idea what she was in for.
“Never mind that.” He gave her his puppy-dog eyes. “Oh, Urse. Why is it so hard for you to get things right? Why do you always feel the need to mess everything up?”
Somehow when he was trying to be nice it was worse than when he was just an arsehole. “That’s what you think of me? That I can never get anything right?”
For a moment, he pressed his lips into a thin line. “You always look so lovely, and that’s an asset in my club, though tonight you haven’t even managed that. You’ve achieved remarkably little with your life. You never managed to get into uni. You nearly got evicted last month. Again.”
She gritted her teeth. “We talked about this when you dumped me, and I told you, those are both the kinds of things that happen when you’ve got no money.”
He leaned over his desk. “It’s just that you’ve got no plan for success. No goals. I’ve been building an empire, investing money—”
“Your father’s money.” Shit. She shouldn’t have said that out loud. It would hit a nerve, and that wasn’t good for her employment prospects.
“Whatever,” he snapped, cheeks reddening again. “I’m building something. Just because you were famous once, you think you’ve made it.” He stood, throwing his shoulders back. “Honestly, you’re just a sad cow who won’t make anything of your life.”
It took all of Ursula’s willpower not to slap his smug face. Rufus had brought up that tidbit up all the time when they were dating, as if her former celebrity status was some kind of personal affront to him.
“I never asked for my fifteen minutes of fame. The press showed up as soon as they found me. And besides, after that fourteen-year-old gave birth to sextuplets, I was pretty much forgotten.” She was desperate to tell him to sod off and head home, but she needed this bloody job.