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she said, releasing him.
    He pivoted around to face her. “Damn it, Alex. That hurt.” He rolled his head around slowly, stretching it out.
    “Good. Maybe now you’ll think twice about chaining people up.”
    He sighed. “Let me see your hands.”
    She showed them to him. A red rash ring was burned around each of her wrists. Logan unlocked the clamps, and they fell to the ground. He brushed his finger across her wounds.
    “That bad?” he asked.
    “No,” she lied through clenched teeth. She tried to relax her face—to hide the pain—but her skin was as raw as an uncooked steak.
    “I have a cream that might help with that,” he said.
    “No, thank you. I’ve been poisoned quite enough times for one week.”
    “Are you trying to be difficult, or are you just naturally that way?”
    “That depends. Are you trying to be obtuse, or are you just naturally that way?”
    “That smart mouth is going to get you into trouble someday,” he told her.
    “Thanks for the warning, but it’s about twenty years too late. That day has long since come and gone. But if you stick around long enough, it will surely come again.” She shrugged. “It happens at least once a week.”
    His blond eyebrows lifted. “You’d like me to stick around?” He looked happy, but you never could tell with assassins.
    Err… “I said a week, Romeo, not a lifetime.”
    “Romeo, huh?”
    She tapped her fingers across her arms and waited for him to get to the point.
    “I don’t like Romeo,” Logan said. “He mopes about, spouting silly poetry. Then he kills himself with poison because he’s an idiot.”
    “There are a few things in between.”
    “Yeah, more poetry.” He rolled his eyes. “And more killing.”
    “Assassins are no strangers to killing.”
    “No, we’re not,” he agreed. “But we are strangers to getting ourselves killed due to idiocy. At least the good assassins are. The others are dead, so I can’t ask their opinion of poetry. Or poison.”
    She tried hard not to laugh—but only half succeeded. A garbled chortle burst forth from her lips, and she turned it into a cough. Logan didn’t look fooled.
    “I take it from the fact that you haven’t resumed your efforts to chain me to you, that you’ve agreed to take my help in finding the Orbs,” he said.
    “Why do I need your help? What can you contribute? Besides the assassin jokes, that is.”
    “You want to work with me because I have contacts. I’m in the same circles as the people who will be after that bounty on the Orbs.”
    “Circles of assassins and thieves,” she said. “Forgive me if I don’t find your association with them particularly comforting.”
    “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”
    This time, she didn’t even try to hide the laugh. In fact, she added an extra sarcastic kick to it.
    “Look, all that matters is I can get you close to people who might know something about who’s after the Orbs,” he said. “You can take my offer. Or not. But if you don’t, I might decide to collect on that bounty myself.”
    Alex sighed. “Fine. You might be useful after all, but I’ll need to run it by Gaelyn first. Where’s my stuff? I’m going to forewarn you now. If you tell me you’ve already pawned it off, I promise I’ll retaliate in kind.”
    “Relax. It’s in the other room. Just what sort of assassin do you think I am?”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    House of Thieves

    AS IT TURNED out, Logan was the sort of assassin who had your stuff cleaned and neatly sorted—you know, after he chained you up in his basement. Alex strapped on all her blades, just in case the assassin decided he’d like to kill her after all. Assassins were fickle like that. She took a moment to greet her boots and then dialed Gaelyn’s number.
    “Alexandria,” the immortal answered in his calm, grandfatherly voice.
    “Hi. So I kind of got tied up last night.” In an assassin’s basement. “That son of a harpy who bartends at Impulse poisoned me.”
    “Alexandria,