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I hold a hand up. “Don’t.”

Just get it over with and get the hell out before you promise the girl more.

I release my magic, letting it sweep through the room. First it burns away the blood, scrubbing every last trace of it from the kitchen. If the police were to investigate this place, the kitchen would come away clean. Even the Politia, the supernatural police force, wouldn’t be able to discover a trace of blood, though they might pick up on the faint magical residue my power leaves behind.

Next, I do away with the broken bottle. Normally for jobs like this, I stow away the evidence. I’ve done this long enough to know that clients love to renege on commitments. Keeping around little damning reminders of their deeds goes a long way to ensuring bad men and women stay honest.

I find now that I don’t have it in me to hold this evidence over the girl’s head.

Soft-hearted sucker. Even if she is who I think she is, having some leverage would be the smart thing to do. Instead I burn it all away.

Once I finish removing the evidence, I focus my attention on the body.

This piece of shit. I can reconstruct this girl’s evening well enough from the things left behind. There’s a textbook and handwritten notes on the kitchen table. Homework. Sometime between a school assignment and dinner, this girl’s life went to hell.

Between the broken bottle and the dead man’s neck wound, she must’ve used the bottle as a weapon, thinking he’d keep his distance. But he didn’t, he came at her, so she swung at him, slicing his neck and clipping an artery in the process. And, well, as soon as that happened, it was game over.

This slip of a girl killed a man, and instead of calling the police or the Politia, she called me. The hairs on my arms rise. This is more than serendipity; this is either my death at hand … or it’s fate moving through us.

I refocus my attention on the man at my feet.

His features look familiar …

I still.

“Is that who I think it is?”

She doesn’t need to answer; I hear it deep in the dark corners of the house.

… Hugh Anders …

I let loose a string of curses.

The recently deceased is a respectable seer in some circles and an infamous one in others. No wonder I recognized him; he was a colleague of sorts. Both of us lived off the fortunes of criminals.

This girl just made my pro bono ten times harder.

“Fucking cursed sirens,” I say under my breath. “Your bad luck’s rubbing off on me.”

As soon as the supernatural world realizes Hugh’s gone, all sorts of people are going to start poking around and asking unpleasant questions. There are dozens—if not hundreds of Hugh’s clients that are going to come calling with their own cleanup crew, ready to erase any damning clues that could link them to the dead man. It’ll be open season on anyone remotely tied to Hugh.

And I’m staring at the person closest to him.

I’m going to have to cash in favors for this. People’s lives or their memories are going to have to get wiped. All for a girl with haunted eyes … who may or may not be my mate.

My heart skips a beat.

“Have any relatives?” I ask. It would be too good to be true.

She shakes her head, her arms wrapped around her midsection like she’s hugging herself, and I pretend that I’m not having all sorts of strange urges to protect and comfort her.

I curse again. Teenager orphaned, father murdered … This story is beginning to sound familiar.

“How oldareyou?” I ask.

“I’ll be sixteen in two weeks.”

I relax at her words. I can work with sixteen.