Gunmetal Magic: A Novel in the World of Kate Daniels

not sweatpants, they are slacks and they have a belt. I have to wear shoes with fucking laces in them.”
    “I don’t want to do it! I hate the ceremony crap.” I so didn’t need the Guild politics in my life. It was complicated enough, damn it. “I don’t have time for it.”
    “Everybody hates the political stuff,” Curran growled. “You’ll do it.”
    “Give me one reason why.”
    “Because you know those people and some of them are your friends. The Guild is sinking and they’re losing their jobs.”
    I opened my mouth and clamped it shut.
    “Also, because I’m asking you to do it,” Curran said. “Will you please resolve this, baby?”
    I would punch him. I would punch him straight in the face, hard. “Fine. I’ll need a lot of backup for the Guild.”
    Curran looked at Jim. “Make sure she has everything she needs.”
    “Okay,” Jim said. He picked up the pieces of his clipboard, pulled a piece of paper out, and handed it to me with the pen. “Write it down.”
    I did and gave it back to him.
    Jim read it. “I’ll take care of it, Consort.”
    “Thank you, Alpha.”
    If it had been raining, our voices would’ve frozen it into hail.
    “Is there anything else?” Jim asked Curran.
    “No.”
    Jim nodded and left.
    “I hate you,” I told Curran.
    He chuckled. “You’d hate me more if Jim quit. We’d haveto find a replacement. I don’t trust that many people. Just think how much more shit you’d have to put up with.”
    “Don’t,” I warned him.
    “Mhm, Kate, the chief of security. Sexy. Who better to guard my body than the woman who owns it?”
    “Curran, I will punch you.”
    “Rough play.” Curran pretended to shiver in excitement.
    I raised my fist and tapped his biceps lightly.
    “You knew it was inevitable,” he said.
    I knew. The moment Jim sent me the file I had known exactly how it would end. But I’d put up a valiant fight. “Yes, but I don’t have to like it. Can we eat now? I’m starving.”
    “Oh so am I forgiven?” he asked.
    “Sure. The next time you decide to flex your claws and come up with a plan to invade the home of a high-ranking civil servant, I’ll bark, ‘Enough!’ and expect to be obeyed, how about that?”
    “You told me no,” he said.
    “And?”
    “And I didn’t like it.”
    “You can’t assault the DA’s house, you crazy bastard!”
    “And you can’t check out of the Guild’s mess. We both have to do things we don’t want to do. I consider us even.”
    I rolled my eyes and we went upstairs to our cold food.
    “I know what that ass is getting from me next Christmas,” I said.
    “What?”
    “Clipboards. Lots and lots of clipboards.”

CHAPTER 8

    Before the Shift and the return of magic, a person’s power could be readily judged by the kind of car they drove, by the clothes they wore, and the company they kept. In post-Shift Atlanta, visual clues still proved true in some cases, but not nearly often enough. A bum in tattered jeans and ragged cloak could walk out into a crowded street, raise his arms, and the sky would tear open and weep a rain of lightning and hail the size of coconuts, leveling everything in a three-mile radius.
    That’s why post-Shift Atlanta’s movers and shakers preferred both a show of power and dressing to impress. Still, if you did dress like a badass, you had better be able to back it up.
    When I woke up in the morning, a pair of gray jeans, a gray T-shirt, and a gray leather jacket waited for me, folded on top of a gray cloak edged with fur. Just as I requested. Gray was the Pack color. I was going to put on a show for the Guild and this was my costume for it. I put the clothes on, added my boots, my saber in the back leather sheath, my throwing knives, and my wrist guards filled with silver needles. I braided my hair away from my face and examined myself in the mirror. I was broadcasting dangerous loud and clear.
    Normally I stayed away from clothes like that. The less attention I drew when I worked, the better. Most mercs knew I was good at my job, but I wasn’t very impressive. I didn’t put on a show. Some of them had problems with me, most didn’t. Today was different. Today I needed to be less Kate Daniels and more Pack Consort. I needed to knock them off balance, so they wouldn’t question why I showed up there and told them what to do.
    I marched into the bathroom, where Curran was brushing his teeth. His blond eyebrows crept up. “That’s your Council meeting outfit from now