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“Are you a Shadow Breaker?”

It was impossible not to notice how tall he was. Goddess only knew what he thought of my short stature. I kept my gaze ahead and my chin lifted. It was my trick for letting others know I didn’t care.

Conn walked behind us with the now unconscious demon dangling from his hand. I hope he hadn’t killed him. Sometimes when Conn got fed up accidents happened.

“I’m not currently an employee, but I once worked for them. At the moment, I’m an independent contractor.”

“So you’re not indentured to the Shadow Breakers?” he asked.

There was a note of surprise in his voice that had my eyebrows raising. “No,” I said, curious why he would ask such a question. “Conn and I both serve my Irish ancestor who was a god, or a demigod, or an ascended human depending on what ya believe about theTuatha de Danann.”

“Oh, you’re Irish. That’s why you speak so strangely.”

Conn chuckled behind me. I held back my sneer but couldn’t hold my tongue. “Ya’ve got a bit of an accent yerself, but I wasn’t going to mention it. I try to be nice to people I might one day have to work with.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean that to sound rude. Your speech is just different. I like it.”

I rolled my eyes at his back-pedaling. He reminded me of Fiona. “What are ya? Twenty-two?”

“Thirty-two,” he said.

“Ah...” I said while I fought twitching lips. I wasn’t a whole decade older, but I felt ancient compared to him. “How long have ya been with the Shadow Breakers?”

“Two weeks now,” he said, glancing back at Conn. “The troll was my first solo job.”

“Well, ya almost brought him in by yerself. That’s a splendid effort for yer first one. Trolls are tricky to catch even by those of us who’ve done it hundreds of times. It helps to know their weaknesses. Have you received any training?”

“No, and I never saw a troll before this week,” the man in the mask said.

And that, I decided, explained his brute force tactics. It hadn’t occurred to him to track down the troll and put a sleep potion in his food.

We walked until a hallway split off. Down that hallway was a room full of cages. The masked guy opened the door to one with his palm print. He stepped aside as Conn ducked his giant head and carried the still unconscious troll to the stone bench jutting out of the wall.

The guy stared as Conn exited the cage and morphed back to a human male closer to my size.

“I can see I have a lot to learn about demons,” he said as he locked the cage and activated the security system for it.

Conn walked to another cage, two down from the troll’s. “Aran, put the cat in this one until we find out what accommodations are available for paranormal pets.”

The guy walked by Conn, warily eyed the still-bound animal in my hand, and unlocked the second cage. This time I walked inside and deposited the cat. I undid Conn’s ropes from it before leaving. Once outside again, I spat out the release spell while the masked guy locked it tight.

He seemed startled when the cat grew to five times the size it was a few moments before. If everyone Ben hired was as green as this guy, convincing Ben to pay me to train them was going to be easy.

ChapterEleven

Now that the danger was over, the guy in the face mask dropped all pretense of aloofness to openly study me.

“You didn’t come here to help me catch that troll. What can I do to help you?”

I gave a small shrug. “Ben asked us to stop by. Is he around somewhere?”

The man in the face mask nodded. “Colonel Benson’s in the place that will be his office once the renovations are done.”

“Can ya take us there? He probably thinks we’re not going to show because he was expecting us earlier.”

His gaze dropped to meet mine as he nodded. “I’m sorry I delayed you.”

I shrugged. “No worries. All that action got our blood pumping.”