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“Kate, you’re a pushover,” the clerk said.
I leaned over the counter and offered him my best deranged smile. “Wanna push and see if I fall over?”
“No thanks.” The clerk slapped the stack of forms on the counter. “Fill these out.”
The inch-thick stack of paperwork promised to occupy me for a good hour. The Guild had pretty lax rules—being an organization of mercenaries, they took keen interest in profit and little else—but death had to be reported to the cops and thus required red tape. The small significance of Jeremy’s life was reduced to the price on his head and a lot of carefully framed blank spaces on a piece of paper.
I gave the top form the evil eye. “I don’t have to fill out the R20.”
“That’s right, you work with the Order now.” The clerk counted off eight pages from the top of the stack. “There you go, VIP treatment for you.”
“Yipee.” I swiped my stack.
“Hey, Kate, let me ask you something.”
I wanted to fill out my forms, go home, and take a nap. “Shoot.”
He reached under the counter. The Mercenary Guild occupied an old Sheraton Hotel on the edge of Buckhead and the clerk’s counter had been a lobby bar in that previous life. The clerk pulled out a dark brown bottle and set it in front of me with a shot glass.
“Why, no, I won’t drink your mysterious love potion.”
He guffawed. “Hennessy. The good stuff. I’ll pay for the info.”
“Thanks, but I don’t drink.” Not anymore, anyway. I still kept a bottle of Boone’s Farm sangria in my cabinet for a dire emergency, but hard liquor was right out. “What’s your question?”
“What’s it like to work for the Order?”
“Thinking of joining?”
“No, I’m happy where I’m at. But I’ve got a nephew. He wants to be a knight.”
“How old?”
“Sixteen.”
Perfect. The Order liked them young. All the easier to brainwash. I pulled up a chair. “I’d take a glass of water.”
He brought me water and I sipped it. “Basically the Order does the same thing we do: they clear magic hazmat. Let’s say you’ve got a harpy in a tree after a magic wave. You’re going to call the cops first.”
“If you’re stupid.” The clerk smirked.