“Not even close. Try again,” he said, the edge of menace in his tone now.
I slumped a little. “It’s not what you think.”
“And tell me what I think.”
I wasn’t dumb enough to answer that question. “I have no idea what you think, but it’s not what you probably think.”
He chuckled, then his mouth went slack again. “Still not working for me. Do you like your job? Do you want to stay here? Or are you trying to get me to fire you? Because no one will touch you freelancing with a black mark on your record like this. Especially if you lose the Office’s protections.”
The rebellious part of me screamed, I don’t need protection! I didn’t need this place with its antiquated rules and superstitions.
Instead, I swallowed all that down and tucked my chin to present the submission he sought, but I couldn’t provide my gaze.
He slammed his hand on the desk. “Answer me, damn it. Do you want to keep working here?”
I pushed out a meek, “Yes.”
“And why don’t I believe that for a second? You think you have free reign in here but that ends. Now. I won’t see you go down because you didn’t follow protocol. I won’t see someone standing over your dead body like I found you standing over your parents.”
The mention of my parents jolted me, and I locked eyes with him. No hiding the anger in my gaze now.
“Does me mentioning your parents get through to you? Good, I’ll keep talking about them then if need be. But right now, you need to get your shit together or I’ll be sending Simon to pick up your corpse.”
I waved at the other room. “That mage had no power. I brought him down easily. Most of my time was sitting in the bar waiting for him to leave so I could grab him.”
“I don’t doubt your abilities, only where your head is at. You went after that mage for what? To find out what happened to your parents.”
I opened my mouth to speak again but
he waved me off. “No. I don’t need you to confirm what I already know. You think they have some kind of connection to the Black Mage. And just because you see one doesn’t give you the right to bring him or her in. You need the proof of deliverance for his power. Without that, you have nothing, and we have nothing to hold him. As of right now, if any of his family find out about this, you could be looking at jail time and losing your license. Did you think about that when you put him in the box?”
I sank into the chair. “I didn’t kill him. At the very most, I’ll be looking at a battery or assault charge. The man committed suicide. Crunched a pill, or something.” I shrugged. We didn’t know exactly how he’d died yet, but the mage had worked out a way to end his life quickly, and without us being able to stop him.
“Which brings me to my next point. Did you for one minute consider what a mage could do to you while stuck in a room under threat for his life? How did that play out in your head?”
“He never showed a hint of magic when we were fighting nor when I caught him.”
The chief shook his head and rolled his eyes. “And did you wonder why that was? Or did you just think, ‘well, this is my lucky day the mage isn’t using his best weapon against me’? Did you even consider if he was working for the Black Mage maybe he was dropped in your path? That possibly, with your never-ending hunt for him, he might be doing the same to you?”
I looked away in embarrassment. While I had considered I might be a target for the Black Mage, I never thought about Winston being sent as some sort of plot. And I excelled in paranoia.
The chief waited for me to answer so finally I conceded. “I considered some of that, but not all of it.”
“Which is what I’m fucking saying. It’s my job to think about what is right for the office and what is safe for my hunters. You are taking those choices away from me and when you do that, how can I keep you safe?”
His voice dipped on the end and I looked at the far wall over his right shoulder. Guilt stabbed at my chest and throat, seizing everything up. While he and I had a tense relationship, I hated the feeling I had let him down in some way. That I’d become a burden instead of an asset.
I clenched my teeth, hoping he didn’t hear them grind together. “What do you want me to do about this then? I’m sure you already have a solution in mind.”
“I don’t have a fucking solution because I haven’t found one of my hunters in a holding cell with a dead mage before. What do you suggest?”
I shrugged a little, annoyed with myself at not having an answer.
He leaned forward and let out a long sigh. “You want to know what happened to your parents. And you want to make that bastard pay for his crimes. I get it. But it’s going to take more than just a little hunter looking for answers to bring him down. He’s had a long time to perfect his crimes. But you’ve gotta stop running around halfcocked looking for someone to pin down. You won’t get anywhere like that.”
Holy hell, I hoped this scolding would be over soon. I hadn’t been chewed out by him so much since I was a teenager and stole his favorite butterfly knife. The same one tucked into my right boot at the moment.
As if he sensed my desire to run away, he paused. “Get out, we can talk about this again later, but for now, you’re on desk duty.”