Chapter Five
Baxter
The calls started at five, not long after I’d left Blade’s tiny flat.
First Asher. Twice. I ignored them. Then Calisto.
I ignored that, too. It was while I was sitting on a park bench contemplating why an afternoon of alcohol-soaked sex had proved so disappointing, despite Blade being well-endowed and impressively enthusiastic, that my phone lit up again.
This time, Cade’s name filled the screen.
Grimacing, I brought my phone to my ear and did what I felt was a sterling job of sounding sober when I greeted him.
Cade didn’t bother returning the greeting. “I want your ass in my office an hour ago.”
A whole slew of vodka-fueled smart-arse remarks crowded the tip of my tongue, most of them revolving around not realizing Cade appreciated my ass that much. After a brief internal struggle, I emerged the victor and held them back.
“Did you hear me?” he demanded. He sounded annoyed enough that I regretted ignoring Asher’s calls. Had I realized they were acting as a mouthpiece for Cade rather than Calisto, I’d have answered. At least with Asher, you got frostbitten politeness instead of simmering rage.
“I heard you.”
“I don’t want to know where you are. I don’t want to know what you’re doing. The only thing I want to know is how long it will be before you’re standing in front of me.”
“I can get a cab.”
“Not an answer.”
I did a quick calculation based on traffic, distance, and the likely waiting time for a cab. And then I added ten minutes to be on the safe side. “Forty-five minutes.”
“I’ll expect you in forty. Don’t be late.”
The line went dead.
I made it in thirty-five. At least I had my ID this time, the journey to Cade’s office completed in under three minutes. Asher was waiting when I stepped out of the lift, his expression carefully neutral.
I raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t you have left already? Calisto will send out a search party.”
“I told Calisto I’d be late.” Of course he had. With Calisto, Asher was endlessly kind, thoughtful, and considerate. It was the rest of humanity he treated with disdain, which wasn’t entirely fair, given he’d been nothing but nice to me. “Cade said to go straight in.”
Typical. The one time I’d have welcomed a delay, Cade could see me immediately. I hesitated with my hand on the door. “Is he…?” I began.
“Just go in, Baxter,” Asher said. “It’s better to get this over with.”
“This?” I asked.
He didn’t answer, reaching past me to open the door. His proximity made me acutely aware that I’d left Blade’s place without showering. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. There was nothing I could do about it now except endure this meeting and escape as quickly as possible.
Then I could go home, lock myself away, and mentally prepare myself for when I closed my eyes.
How many times had I already relived the knife sliding into my back?
A hundred? More? It had to be more. At least when I’d been dead, there were no nightmares, because I hadn’t slept.
In hindsight, I should have been more grateful.
Cade wasn’t behind his desk. He was pacing.
Not a good sign. Neither was Asher following me into the office. Nothing positive ever came from being double-teamed. Cade swung around when I entered, dark brows knitting together.
“Thirty-nine minutes,” I said, attempting to lighten the atmosphere, which felt as heavy and volatile as an electrical storm.
It didn’t raise a smile. From either of them. I gestured toward Cade’s desk. “Should I sit?”
“No.”
Okay, then. I stood awkwardly in the center of the room, wishing I’d skipped the question and just done it. I deliberately closed my mind to any stray thoughts, figuring it was better if I didn’t know what either man was thinking.
“When I employed you here,” Cade began, his words coming out with a careful cadence that told me he was exercising a great deal of restraint, “I thought it was what you needed. Distraction. Something to focus on. Stability in a world that must have felt very far from it. You acted as if it were easy to return, but it couldn’t have been.
So much had changed. Technology. People.
Language. I thought a job would ground you.
Give you a chance to build relationships with your fellow psychics. ”
“Kendrick, Leo, and Silas are great.”
Cade’s sideways glance said he wasn’t buying it. “They babysit you.”
The accusation caught me off guard. “That’s not fair.”
“But it’s true. You think I don’t know how often Kendrick covers for you? You wouldn’t even make it into the building half of the time if it weren’t for him.”
“He told you that?” I couldn’t help feeling betrayed.
“He didn’t need to. I make it my business to know everything that happens here.”
“You didn’t know I was here, though. Before, I mean. You didn’t know all the things Calisto was hiding.”
Cade shook his head. “We’re not talking about the past. We’re talking about now.”
“I assume you didn’t drag me back here just to tell me how much you regret hiring me.”
Cade stopped by the window, staring out over the London skyline for several seconds that stretched uncomfortably long. “What happened this afternoon?”
I considered several lies. I could claim an emergency had come up. Only, who was I close enough to that rushing to their side would be believable? Asher would know I was lying if I said something had happened to Calisto, and who else did I have?
Cade stepped closer, nose wrinkling. “Jesus! You smell like a distillery.”
“Yeah, well,” I shot back. “It never bothered you with Griffin.”
“Griffin never walked away halfway through a job.”
“No. He just didn’t bother turning up for them in the first place.” Cade’s expression suggested he wished I hadn’t either. “It was wrong,” I admitted quietly. “And I’m sorry. But is it really that big a deal? It was shoplifting. You’ve been deliberately giving me all the nothing jobs.”
“For good reason,” Cade said.
“And the most dangerous thing that could’ve happened was some old dear tripping over a basket.
” I knew I wasn’t treating Cade with enough gravitas as my boss.
But alcohol, exhaustion, and irritation had joined forces to give my tongue a life of its own.
If I’d been thinking clearly, I would have taken a breath.
I would have read Cade’s mind before continuing to find out how he really felt.
But I was like a train careening downhill that had lost its brakes.
“Or maybe while I was gone, a dog got loose and ran in there. I hope not. I would have hated to miss that excitement. Or maybe―”
“At half-past two,” Asher cut in calmly, “a gang entered the store. One member provided a distraction while the other two made off with a large quantity of cigarettes, tobacco, and alcohol. The owner estimates the loss at over five hundred pounds.”
“Oh.” There wasn’t much else I could say.
“Where were you?” Cade asked. He leaned forward and inhaled deeply.
I stepped back automatically. “I’m fairly sure the workplace doesn’t allow sniff-testing employees. I should talk to HR about that. See what they have to say about it.”
It was already too late, a look of distaste settling on Cade’s face. “I see. Not just alcohol.”
“It was just shoplifting,” I said weakly. “I’ll…” I cast about for something that would make it better. “I’ll pay for the missing goods. Then there’s no harm done.”
It was the wrong thing to say, Cade’s cheeks taking on a ruddy glow. “No. Harm. Done.”
“I just meant…”
“Do you have any idea how many hours I worked to build this business? How many people told me it wasn’t viable?
That it would frighten clients? How hard it was to secure investors?
” When Cade’s torrent of words didn’t leave an opportunity for me to answer, I settled for shaking my head.
I’d be lying if I said I’d given it a moment’s thought.
Cade was just Cade. There to make people’s lives difficult.
“Do you know how many hours I still work to keep this place running smoothly? And that was before all the O’Reilly mess. Do you have any idea how much extra paperwork she and her psycho son added to my workload?”
I shook my head again.
“So what you dismiss as ‘just shoplifting’ is my reputation that I’ve worked so hard to build.
They requested a psychic, and I provided one.
I trusted you with a simple task. Stand there.
Read minds. Report any ill intent. And even that was too much, apparently.
You couldn’t go one afternoon without picking someone up. ”
Once, when I was nine, the head teacher summoned me to his office.
A girl in my class had told me to put a plastic bag over her head, and I had.
Mr. Whitehall had subjected me to a lengthy lecture about the perils of suffocation and the importance of not just following instructions.
How ironic, then, that I was currently being harangued for not doing what I was told.
It just goes to show you could never win.
“I should have listened to Kendrick,” Cade said.
That got my attention. “What did Kendrick say?” There was no keeping the note of hurt out of my voice.
“He said you weren’t ready. That you needed time to figure out who you are again. That although you were extremely good at blocking any attempts to read your thoughts, little snippets bled through now and again. Enough to give away your true mental state.”
“I know who I am.”
“Do you?” Cade’s gaze was sharp enough that I looked away first. “Because if this is who you are, then—”
“Then what?” It suddenly became all too clear where this was heading. “You’re firing me. Is that it?”
“Cade…” The warning in Asher’s voice was completely inappropriate for a PA to his boss, but then Asher was no normal PA. He had enough money to walk away and never work another day in his life. Yet, he’d chosen to stay because he was good at what he did and Cade needed him.
Indecision flickered across Cade’s face. Time slowed. “No,” he said at last.
Relief hit me harder than expected. If you’d asked me this morning whether I loved my job, I’d have said no.
But it gave me purpose. A reason to get up in the morning.
People to see. And, of course, it paid the bills.
More than paid the bills, if I were honest. Cade had paid me a considerable amount for doing very little.
“But you are suspended.”
The relief collapsed in on itself. “What? How long for?”
“Three months. Then we’ll meet and reassess whether you’re ready to come back.”
“Three months!” I’d turned into a parrot. “What am I meant to… I don’t know what…”
Cade’s expression softened. “Do whatever you need to do. I suggest facing your demons instead of drowning them in alcohol and sex. That didn’t work for Griffin, the alcohol part anyway, and it won’t work for you.”
“I’m fine.” Each time I said it, it rang hollower.
“Half pay,” Cade added, “for those three months. Perhaps you’ll decide once they’ve ended that you don’t want to come back, that this isn’t the place for you.”
After that, everything blurred. The next thing I knew, I was in Asher’s office instead of Cade’s. He leaned against the desk, arms crossed. He only needed a yacht in the background, and it could have been an aftershave commercial. John would probably have called it Frostborne or Subzero.
“Cade was more than fair,” Asher pointed out carefully. “No one would’ve argued with him firing you for the stunt you pulled.”
“Yeah.” What else could I say?
“And three months isn’t that long.”
“No.”
He pulled out his car keys. “Come home with me. Talk it through with Calisto. The two of you can put the world to rights. Maybe move back in for a while. We’d have to set some ground rules, but—”
I backed off, shaking my head. “I need to go.”
“Baxter…”
I’d already turned my back on him. “Tell Calisto I’m fine and not to worry.”
“I really think you—”
The lift doors slid shut, cutting him off mid-sentence.
For once, the lift gods were on my side.