Free A Girl's Guide to Demon Hunting by Emily Miles Page A

driver’s license; that didn’t mean I couldn’t rip his spine out if I wanted to. Seriously, I was too young? He looked as if he should be modeling underwear in a magazine, not fighting Demons but I wasn’t about to judge him on that. Well, not a whole bunch anyway.
    “Max, you came to me for help. Those four are what I can offer. You won’t find anyone more capable, not for something like this. Just give them a chance. If it doesn’t work you can always call it off.”
    There was a few seconds of silence and I figured Max was making his decision. Whatever was going on must be important to him.
    “Fine; but they better impress me.”
    We’d climbed off the table and regained our original positions by the time Father Henry and Max (aka Douche-tasmo) came back into the kitchen. ‘They’d better impress me.’  What an ass. Seriously, who died and made him King? I had to impress him? More like he had to impress me. I was so caught up in my not entirely unsnarky thoughts, it took me a moment to realize Max was trying to hand me something.
    It was a wallet-sized photo of a blonde girl. She looked around my age with hazel eyes; pretty in a delicate way. Passing the photo to Shooter, I listened to Max.
    “This is Julie Leland, a Guardian out of San Francisco. She was supposed to be traveling with her cousin to visit a prospective college in Nebraska.
As you may have guessed, she never made it to Nebraska. When she didn’t complete her morning check-in with her mentor, he asked me to run a check on her cell phone. Which is why I’m here; as of this morning, when her last call was made, she was somewhere in Las Vegas.”
    “And the cousin?” Jenny asked.
    “Julie never picked her up, she’s on her way here.”
    “What was she doing here?” I asked.
    “I don’t know. Her mentor said she hadn’t asked for an exception to the travel ban.”
    “Travel ban?” Ace asked.
    “Las Vegas is on the list of areas considered unsafe for underage Guardians.” Max answered.
    “I’m Father Henry’s ward, I go where he goes.” I said, answering what I knew would be Ace’s next question.
   Jenny, already knowing this, brought the conversation back to the topic at hand. “Do you think her mentor could be jumping the gun a little here? The Council doesn’t send investigators until a Guardian is missing for seventy-two hours.”
    Max took a moment to answer, giving Jenny an impressed look that she of course returned with an innocent one that said ‘I totally did not hack into the Guardian Headquarters server months ago.’ 
    “Hopefully you’re right and we’re overreacting. I’m praying she just lost her phone but I’m not willing to leave it to chance. She’s like family.” He said, looking at the five of us. Okay, so that I could understand; if anything happened to the people in this room, I’d tear Vegas apart brick by brick. Well, maybe not Max. Looking at everyone, I saw they came to the same conclusion.
    “We’re listening.” I said.

Chapter 12
     
    "It's not nice to bet on how many broken ribs I'll have."
                                                                                 -Allie
        The first step, according to Max, was to get everyone killed. As usual, a plan involving imminent death struck Ace and Shooter as brilliant. I don’t think they were any more on the Max-is-not-an-ass bandwagon as I was but they were always up for something truly stupid. I kept having to remind myself a Guardian was missing, which was why I was even listening to Max’s ideas and not trying to see if his hair was flammable.
    “I won’t let you do this.” I said, stopping this particular crazy train in its tracks.
    “What do you mean?” Max asked, “It only makes sense that we start with the