Free The Inner Circle, Book 3 of the Glass Wall ( A YA Urban Fantasy Romance ) by Carmen Caine, Madison Adler Page B

his voice, “Maybe … just maybe I am one of them.”
    “Impossible!” I disagreed vehemently even as
I tried to prevent myself from thinking of the lizard scales that
I’d seen on his skin.
    He cast me a churlish glance. “Exactly,” was
all he said.
    And then a new thought popped into my head.
“So, that’s how I, merely thinking of numbers, can summon you. You
can sense the tulpa that my thoughts generate?”
    “I’m not one of them, Sydney,” he said,
ignoring my question. “I don’t belong to the Brotherhood.”
    “Of course you don’t,” I agreed, but I wasn’t
super confident.
    He seemed desperate to believe it. I couldn’t
blame him. Yet, everything was getting so mixed up.
    I was downright relieved that my shift was
starting, and telling him that I’d catch up later, I left.
    I don’t think he even noticed.
    Samantha put me to work steaming milk for the
baristas. I actually didn’t mind, because from that position, I
could still keep an eye on Jareth.
    I was worried about him.
    He had wadded a bunch of napkins into a
single ball and had absently begun to toss it against the wall and
then to catch it again with one hand.
    “Keep an eye on that one, will you, Sydney?”
Samantha asked curtly as she swept by with her arms full of her
pastry-order books. Groaning, she sat down, looked at the pile, and
murmured, “I’m going to have to expand at this rate.”
    Jareth didn’t do much. He just sat there, as
if lost in thought.
    A little bit later, a rail-thin woman with
penciled eyebrows arrived with a squirming toddler in tow. After
collecting her latte, she took the seat behind Jareth’s and began
chatting loudly on her phone about her latest diet.
    The toddler wandered off.
    Samantha raised a brow as the little boy
zeroed in on the Christmas tree and began pulling off the ornaments
one by one. With a tightening of her lips, she asked me for a plate
of cookies. And then, armed with sugar, she corralled the little
boy and escorted him back to his mother—who hadn’t even noticed
he’d left.
    The cookie solution didn’t last long.
    As soon as Samantha sat down, the little boy
got tired of eating them and began lobbing the cookies at various
customers.
    His mother continued chatting on her phone,
making several loud, snarky comments about how much weight one of
her other “friends” had gained.
    One of the cookie pieces zinged past Jareth’s
ear.
    It shook Jareth from his stupor. Expelling a
long, dramatic breath, he turned to glare at the little boy.
    The toddler paused and stared back at Jareth
with his finger up his nose. And then he grabbed another cookie and
hurled it straight at the rock star’s face.
    Jareth’s reflexes were amazing. With two
fingers, he caught the cookie in midair and flung it back like a
Frisbee onto the plate. He then reached over and plucked the phone
out of the woman’s hand.
    Snapping it shut, he said in a voice riddled
with annoyance, “Control your offspring!”
    Samantha frowned.
    The woman’s mouth dropped open.
    And then the toddler picked up the cookie
plate and with a loud squall, dashed it onto the floor before
zipping off to the Christmas tree once more.
    “That thing isn’t human.” Jareth’s voice
carried through the entire shop. “It’s clearly a demon, zipped into
a baby suit.”
    We were all thinking it.
    I saw more than one customer grin.
    The mother’s breath came in one huge, sucking
gasp.
    And then Samantha turned the full force of
her shrewd eyes on me. She waved at the situation and silently
ordered me to handle it.
    “I beg your pardon ?” the mother’s
voice rose in a shrill crescendo.
    Dropping everything, I hurried toward the
out-of-control toddler. After all, he would be much easier to deal
with than a cranky Samantha. Being on the receiving end of her
displeasure was worse than being roasted alive.
    Reaching him, I held out my hand. “Why don’t
you come back over here to your mom,” I offered with a bright
smile.
    He