Page 16 of The Night Firm

He grunts and opens his newspaper to begin reading.

"You don't find it tedious to read the news that way?" I ask, as Lily starts the limo and gets us back on the road.

"No. I do not."

"You can find all that and more online," I say, holding up my smart phone.

He sighs in exasperation and lowers the paper to glare at me. "I prefer analog to digital. Call me old-fashioned."

Lily giggles and doesn't seem the least bit intimidated when Sebastian casts his standard glare at her. She just laughs harder. "Oh, Uncle Seb, stop being such a brat."

I'm surprised to hear her teasing him like that, but not as surprised as I am when his face lights up in a smile and he laughs in return. It's the first time I've heard him laugh, and it's deep and husky, and makes his face even more handsome. Damn him.

The moment passes, however, and when he returns his focus to me, his energy shifts.

And not for the better.

"Look," I say, ready to settle this between us once and for all. "I know you think I'm not serious about this job because of what I told you on the subway, but I am. I don't even think I'd want to do art for my career. If I had to worry about drawing for others, for money, I might not get the joy from it I do now. I meant what I said during the interview: I'm smart, educated and resourceful. Granted, I'm still not entirely clear what my job is, or how your law firm even operates effectively if it's only open at night, but I can promise you I will learn everything I need to, and quickly. I work hard, study hard, and always excel at what I do. Always. So, if you'll just give me a chance, you'll find that I'm an excellent employee."

I say this all in one breath, and when I'm done I slump back into my seat, emotionally spent.

He stares for a moment and then says, “Do not presume to know my thoughts, Miss Oliver.” And with that he finds the next page of his newspaper and turns away from me once more.

I’ve clearly been dismissed.

Determined to make some use out of what is proving to be a long car ride with an unpleasant companion, I pull out my sketchbook and close my eyes. I take a deep breath and mentally count backwards from ten. As I do, I follow a staircase in my mind down, down, down until I’m standing before a large red door. Opening it, I step through into a secret garden where I instantly connect to my muse. She glows within a swaying willow tree, her form moving through the bark and branches, her hair falling around her in waves of green. Her voice echoes in the wind and the rustling of leaves.

She sings me a song. I catch it and smile. Then open my eyes and draw.

I don’t think too hard about what I’m drawing. I just let my muse’s voice speak through the charcoal and pencil.

Everything around me is silent as I work, and I don’t realize until the drawing is complete that Sebastian is staring at me.

Or rather, at my drawing.

I study it myself, now that my focus is returning to normal and my head is clearing. Four men—clearly the Night brothers—stand back to back, forming a circle around a woman, surrounded by a dark and menacing wood, with trees that look alive and hungry in the worst possible way.The brothers hold drawn swords, steel glinting in the moonlight.

I am the woman they are guarding.

We're all standing in the center of a pentagram burned into the grass beneath our feet.

Sebastian is still staring, and I quickly close my sketchbook and slip it into my bag, embarrassed that my boss saw what I drew. Embarrassed that my subconscious pulled that image out of my mind for this exercise.

And more than a little unnerved at what that image might mean.

“How did you learn to do that?” Sebastian asks.

“Do what? Draw?”

“Well, yes, that, too. But how did you learn to induce a trance state so easily?”

“Um. I taught myself. Both things. As a kid I loved drawing, and the obsession never went away. I drew on anything I could with anything I could. By the time I was ten, I was selling my drawings to the neighbors. My brother was my business partner and marketer," I say with a smile. "He could sell shoes to a shoemaker. He’d go door to door, and by the time he would come back all my art would be sold. I didn’t learn until much later that he was the one buying most of it, because he didn’t want me to give up on my dreams.” I suck in a breath to keep myself from rambling even more. He doesn’t need to hear about my childhood. And I don’t need to dive into stories about my brother right now.

Instead, I turn to his original question. “As for the trance, it’s just a silly self-hypnosis trick. It helps put me in a more creative mindset. It’s nothing, really. Anyone can do it. Just Google a YouTube video.”

He scoffs at that. “Trust me, it is not ‘nothing’ as you say. And I do not watch the YouTube.”

I snort-laugh at that in a very unladylike way. “What are you, ninety years old?TheYouTube? Oh dear. You have so much to learn.”