Free My Wicked Enemy by Carolyn Jewel

her?”
    “Take me back to the store you got me from?”
    He didn’t laugh. Didn’t even crack a smile.
    She shifted her butt backward, but to maintain the moral victory, she didn’t move her legs. Was he going to just put her out on the street for Kynan to find? The thought induced more than a little terror. She’d be alone. With a dwindling supply of money and Kynan out there looking for her. Hunting. Her throat closed up. Nikodemus was right. She was fucked.
    He sat on the couch, and she scooted away, as far as possible while still maintaining her dignity. He stretched an arm along the top of the couch and rested an ankle atop his knee. “Even if I thought it was in my interest to let you go, which it isn’t, there aren’t many places where Magellan can’t find you.” He leaned over her, invading her space again. He had such a wonderful smile, and he could poison it faster than she could blink. “Could be there’s none.”
    She moved. Like him, she sat sideways on her end of the couch, one knee drawn to her chest. He looked completely the way she remembered, and she wondered if she’d imagined seeing him with black hair and green eyes. “People disappear all the time.”
    “To find you, all Magellan’s fiends have to do is use their natural affinity for a human with magic. The way you were telegraphing, a baby could have found you. You’re lucky Kynan didn’t find you first.”
    “Telegraphing what?” She ran a hand through her hair and wished she had a tie for it.
    He put his near arm along the top of the sofa, fingers stretching toward her. “Magic, Carson. It’s our sixth sense. It’s how we survive. We can’t live without connecting to magic one way or another.”
    “This is absurd.” Carson rested her forehead on her knees and shivered like there was a blizzard in the room. “There’s no such thing.”
    Nikodemus shot off the couch and started pacing. Carson turned her head to the side and watched him. He stopped midpace and stared at her. “Magellan’s been fucking with you. Mages like him don’t leave anything to chance. Everything you are or are not is calculated.” He frowned at her. “You are totally—hell, what’s the word?” He snapped his fingers. “Innocent? Naïve?”
    She lifted her head.
    “Clueless. I’ll be honest. I didn’t expect that. You don’t know the first thing about Magellan or what he is or what you are.”
    “I hate him.” It felt good to say the words. She hated Álvaro Magellan with white-hot passion.
    He threw himself onto the leather chair, hands clasped behind his head. “If I were you, I’d be wondering what the fuck Magellan did to me.” Nikodemus looked at the ceiling, and Carson could have sworn the stars started to glow. He was maybe two feet from her, but she refused to look away even though he was glaring at her now. “Everyone knows you’re his witch. Helping him. His right-hand man.” His attention flicked to her chest, and boy, oh, boy, was that glance unsettling. “So to speak. You resonate, Carson, and most fiends just can’t resist.”
    Carson didn’t say anything for a while, because she didn’t trust her voice not to break. She wasn’t crazy. Why didn’t that make her feel better? “I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he was doing until the day I ran away.” She rubbed her temples. “No wonder you want me dead.”
    “If it’s any consolation, now that I know you weren’t helping him on purpose, you’re off the kill list.”
    “Lucky me,” she said. So she could go out there with Kynan looking for her. “Does that mean I can leave now?”
    “You go out there unprotected like you were today and you better believe that big fiend of his is going to find you. If he does, you’ll wish I’d offed you instead.”
    “I have a little money.” She hugged her knees to her chest. “I was thinking of going to Los Angeles.”
    He didn’t say anything for a while. Neither did she. “Okay,” he said. “Look. I know