Sacrificed in Shadow Read Online Free Page B

you called? Was it Deputy Marshall?”
    “I don’t know whose number that was. It was attached to the email.”
    “I think I want to see this email, Brick,” Elise said. “I would like to see it very much.”
    To her surprise, he extracted a smart phone from his pocket. Brick hardly looked like an iPhone user.  
    It only took a moment to load the message in question. The attached image was an illustration, not a photo, and whoever had drawn it was obviously more familiar with Elise’s human form than her demon one. Her current nose was smaller than in the picture—the curved bridge had been straightened after her transformation, and the Aquiline arch was reduced to something more proportionate for her square features. Her broad lips were turned into a frown, which would always be accurate.
    Elise touched her eyebrow. The piercing was missing, too. McIntyre had driven the needle through her brow himself, wearing rubber gloves so that he wouldn’t be electrified. They’d had to attach the needle to a car battery in order to keep her body from rejecting the metal. Electricity was the only thing that seemed to damage her now—electricity, and very bright lights.
    That drunken experiment had been a year ago. The eight-gauge ring was a permanent fixture on her face now, and it wasn’t in the illustration.
    But everything else was there: the lips, the hair, the scowl. The illustrator seemed to know the lines of Elise’s face as intimately as she did. Maybe even more so.
    The body of the email was short.
    Reward offered for sighting the woman pictured in the attachment. She is armed and dangerous. Do not attempt to restrain. Comply with all demands. $2000 cash reward offered for evidence of arrival, to be delivered to 234 North Ransom Boulevard. Leave a message at the following number to report sightings.
    The email address was a random string of numbers and letters. Judging by the six “forward” abbreviations preceding the subject line, Brick hadn’t received it directly anyway.
    Elise kept her grip on the clerk as she forwarded the email to Anthony and McIntyre, then slid the phone back into his pocket.
    “I’ll deliver the tape,” she said, tucking it under her arm. “The reward is mine.”
    Brick’s face went ashen. “But…”
    “It’s mine.” She had no use for the money personally, but Anthony and McIntyre got commissions from money collected during hunting activities, and the rest went to an education fund for McIntyre’s daughters. They were going to be able to go to a very nice college at this rate.
    He looked like he wanted to argue, but Brick choked on the words. Elise released him. He hugged his arm to his body, rubbing the tender skin.
    “Don’t tell them where you found the email,” he said.
    “I doubt they even know you exist,” Elise said. She returned the tape to the envelope and tucked it under her arm. “By the way—if you try to report this preternatural to the OPA, I’ll come back for another visit.”
    Brick scrambled to get in his car. He locked the doors, as if that might somehow keep Elise from getting through to him. Breaking into a locked car was as easy as slipping through the vent, but he didn’t need to know that. Elise was done with this asshole.
    She weighed the tape in her hand. Deputy Lincoln Marshall hadn’t only hired Elise to handle his werewolf problem. He had notified the local businesses to keep an eye out for her. The fact that there was so much money behind the sighting made her doubt that the Sheriff’s Department knew anything about the deputy’s activity.
    But he couldn’t be the mastermind, either. He wouldn’t know Lucinde Ramirez. He wouldn’t have known Elise when she had fierce, hawklike features, and no eyebrow piercing. And he didn’t look like the kind of guy that could afford to throw that kind of money around. There was another chess piece on the board she didn’t see yet—one that was wealthy and influential.
    Elise could already tell