She snorted at Leo. "You have a problem? Try being in my shoes."
Leo rubbed the back of his neck nervously. "Yeah, well, you are the problem, Sue."
Her heart stopped beating. "How do you mean?"
"Civilians aren't allowed to know about us," Otto growled from his seat across from her. "Ever."
"Uh-huh," she said slowly. "You know with that sinister tone you should look into working for the IRS. I'm sure they're desperate for people who can cow others with a single growl."
Leo sat forward. "Sue, don't taunt the cobra. He tends to bite."
And by the look on Otto's face she could see that Leo wasn't kidding. She looked back at Leo as Kyl handed him a shiny black folder. He opened it briefly, then set it on the table.
Leo drummed his fingers on it while he addressed her. "Normally, we recruit members who have skills we can use. But sometimes we have unexpected things come up, such as the last twenty-four hours, where innocent bystanders accidentally get caught up by mistake. Those mistakes have to be corrected." His tone was deadly and threatening.
Refusing to be intimidated, she crossed her arms over her chest and gave him an equally withering stare. "And how do you propose to correct me?"
"You have a choice," Kyl spoke at last. "Either you become one of us or..."
She waited. When he didn't finish, she gave him an arch stare. "Or what? You kill me?"
It was the woman who answered. "Yes."
"No," Leo said sternly. He looked back at Susan. "But we can't take the chance that you'll expose us. Do you understand?"
Was he serious? But then all she had to do was look at the doom squad to know that answer.
"And what are you in all this, Leo?" she asked, needing to fully understand what she'd inadvertently been sucked into. "Why do these guys," she indicated the other three at the table with her, "listen to you?"
"Because I'm the Squire Regis for Seattle, since my dad retired. I run the Theti branch which, by default, makes me the head of all the Squire branches in this area."
"Theti?"
"Blood Rites," Otto said in a low, guttural tone. "We do other Squire jobs as well, but we're the ones who are licensed to enforce the Council's mandates."
"And we use any means necessary to keep our world a secret." Kyl narrowed his eyes meaningfully on her.
This had to be the weirdest day of her entire life, and given the fact that she spent time with her grandmother, who swore that her female dog was Susan's reincarnated grandfather and wore her clothes wrong side out to keep the lightbulbs from fading the dye, and with her coworker Joanie, who had a penchant for putting Post-it notes over her desk drawer to keep the little men from leaving it, that said something.
They really meant to kill her.
"So what's your decision?" Otto asked. He looked just a little overeager for her to say no.
"What?" she asked, unable to resist teasing the cobra-it just seemed like a moral imperative. "Had a dry spell of killing people lately?"
His face completely stoic, he responded dryly, "As a matter of fact, yes. If it doesn't end soon, I might get out of practice."
"God. Forbid," she said in a mock tone of awe.
Leo cleared his throat, drawing her attention back to him. "Sue, I need an answer."
"Do I really have a choice?"
"No," they said in unison.
Leo's face softened ever so slightly. "You know too much about us."
Susan sat there in silence as the events of the day replayed through her mind. It was all too much to take. God, how she wished that she could just go crazy like her grandmother to get away from it all. But life wasn't being that kind to her at present. Her sanity was intact, because heaven forbid she have any escape from her sucky situation. "And this new life you're offering me. What does it entail?"
Leo glanced to the others before he answered. "Not much. Really. You swear an oath to us to keep your silence and you go on our payroll and into our system so that we can monitor you."
Those words, combined with his tone, sent a chill down her spine. "Monitor me how?"
"It's not as ominous as it sounds," Leo assured her. "We just keep a tab on you from time to time to make sure you haven't been talking to any civilians about us. So long as you maintain your silence, you get a lot of perks."
"Such as?"
Leo pushed the folder toward her. "Private planes. Exclusive vacations. A 401(k) and stock options to beat the band. Funds to start your own business if you want. " He paused to give her a stern stare. "And the one thing you've never had. A family that'll be there whenever you need it."
That last bit stung and Leo knew it. Her father had abandoned her and her mother when Susan was only three years old. She had no memory of him whatsoever, and her mother had never taken her to meet his side of the family. An only child like Susan, her mother had been close to her parents, but they, too, had died while Susan was a small child and then her mother had died in a car wreck three days before Susan turned seventeen.
She'd been alone ever since.
Family had been the one thing in her life that she'd always craved with a burning passion, and much like her respectability, it was as elusive as a unicorn's horn. It was the one carrot Leo knew to dangle in front of her.
Sighing, she flipped through the folder to see a contract and a list of phone numbers for different kinds of services. She closed it and pinned Leo with a frigid glare. "You make it all sound so rosy, but one thing I've learned: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So what's the catch?"
"There isn't a catch, promise." Leo made a cross over his heart. "You can go about your life any way you please. You'll just be privy to a lot of things that the average person is clueless about."
"The drawback is you'll have a lot more days like today," Jessica said in an emotionless voice. "As a Squire, the Daimons will be drawn to you and they will come after you from time to time."
"But we'll train you," Leo added. "You won't be left alone to fight them."
Oh, joy! Who in their right mind would ever turn this down? It was all she could do not to laugh at their offer. "Is that it?"
Otto gave her a dry grimace. "Isn't it enough?"
"Oh, yeah," she said with a humorless laugh, "it's enough and then some." Susan grew quiet as she considered everything Leo had just dumped into her lap. But in the end, she knew what they did...
She had no choice.