Playing God (Helford #2)

(21) Demons

South Africa was a significant change from most of the places I had been in the last several weeks, first off because of the location and secondly perhaps because I was out in the sunlight, not hunting someone but wandering until I found them, and I knew I would. I spent a couple of extra days too long meandering in the distance, watching, but Woodburn had sent an impatient text message this morning that told me that I was taking too long, and I was starting to get sick of my own game of hiding in the shadows.

I ran a hand anxiously down my pale pink sundress, biting my lip and ducking my head as I passed by natives, smiling shyly past my sunglasses when I caught a boy's eye. My big floppy sunhat gave me little to no feeling of security, no matter how much I tried to hide underneath of it. I knew where I was going, and I slipped through the crowds like smoke, and they would never catch me. I held my breath as I skipped around a corner, my eyes immediately going to the right place.

I slid my sunglasses off, breathing out heavily as I tucked them into my small purse hanging around my wrist. I cut across the marketplace to a stall of various fruits, picking up an apple and weighing it in my hand before paying for it, smiling at the elderly man selling the produce. I glanced to my left, my shoulders relaxed.

"I hear this is the best place in town to do some shopping," I said casually, watching as his shoulders stiffened. "I expected a little more bling to be hanging around but I don't know, maybe that's just me."

"It's been a long time since you've dared to show your face around me," the man I had been following told me, not turning to me, either, and I smiled at the confidence, the arrogance, the coldness. It felt fine because I had expected it all, but the show still had my nerves, still a live wire, feeling like everything could catch on fire around me at any second. I took a bite into my apple, appraising him as I turned toward him.

"You look well," I said, smiling. "Considering."

He turned toward me, his face blank, but a little pale at the shock of my arrival. He looked almost the same, but so much different, so much unlike what I had known but still familiar in the strangest way. I grinned at him, expecting a stand-off, but he surprised me by grabbing my arm and dragging me as civilly as possible away from the marketplace, not stopping his movements until the crowds began to thin and I began to run out of laughter. He whirled on me when he found a street empty enough for his taste, and I simpered up at him, attempting not to seem too condescending but feeling too self-destructive to do much to contain myself.

"What's wrong?" I asked Alexander innocently. "I was just there for an apple."

"You have a lot of nerve," Alexander DuPont told me in a growl as if I hadn't already known that little fact about myself to be true. "I can barely believe that you've come here to speak to me like we're old confidents or something. It's taken all the self-control I have not to pull a gun on you."

I spread my arms out. "Fire away. Just make sure you fill out an incident report."

His fingers twitched. I didn't doubt that the old politician was packing heat-I didn't know what else a sane person would do when assassins had nearly succeeded in slaughtering his entire family.

With the reminder of the DuPont family, and how much my family had their hands in their demise, my smile fell, and the guilt turned white hot in my stomach, falling into pity. I sighed and crossed my arms over my chest, showing some vulnerability in front of the man who had lost it all. I raised my eyes from the ground and centered them on his, showing him that I might show him some vulnerability but that damn well didn't mean that I wasn't the proudest person in the world.

"I'm not here to argue with you," I explained to him a concept that would be nonsense to him. "I'm here on orders."

Alexander nearly blew a gasket. "Are you going to kill me too?"