Free Broken Shadows by AJ Larrieu

early, anyway?”
    “Actually I came to see if I still have a job.” My heart caught in my throat as I said it. “I’m really sorry about yesterday. I shouldn’t have run off like that, but I just freaked out.”
    “Wait up.” He turned around and faced me in the dim light. “You think I’d fire you?”
    “Well, I’d understand if you did.”
    “Mina.” He reached out and took my hand. “That was enough to freak anybody out.” He squeezed my palm, and I realized I hadn’t felt the heat I’d come to associate with an energy transfer. I yanked my hand back anyway.
    “I got these.” I took the gloves out of my back pocket. “Just to be safe.”
    He nodded. “I didn’t feel a thing just then.”
    “Maybe because I just grounded Paulie? I still don’t understand how this works.” I remembered how I hadn’t felt a charge from Bridget when she’d dropped me off at Jackson’s the night before. It must take at least half a day for me to be able to ground someone again, maybe more. If neutralizing Paulie’s powers meant I could be around shadowminds safely, maybe this wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. “Maybe I have to...recharge. Or something.”
    “You’ll figure it out. In the meantime, there’s a new shipment of Tanqueray to unpack.”
    “Just what I was hoping for.”
    We went into the stockroom, and Malik flipped on the lights. Sure enough, there were cases of liquor ready and waiting on the floor.
    “Sebastian usually brings it down,” Malik said. “We route all the deliveries through the upper bar so we can stay off the books.”
    “Who’s Sebastian?”
    “Owner of Featherweight’s.” Malik took out a box cutter and started opening boxes. “You haven’t met him yet?”
    I shook my head, and Malik chuckled. “He’s hard to forget.” He handed me two bottles of gin, and I took them and placed them carefully on an empty spot on the shelf. There was no organization to it whatsoever—eight different kinds of hard liquor jumbled together with bottles of wine and six-packs of beer from local microbreweries.
    “You know, even secret supernatural speakeasies should be organized,” I said, laughing. “How can you even tell when you’re out of something.”
    “It’s all up here.” Malik tapped his temple, and I shook my head at him. “By the way, the boss is coming in tonight. Wants to meet you.”
    “Simon?” I looked down at my faded orange V-neck and torn-up jeans.
    “Don’t worry. He’s not a suit-and-tie kind of guy.” He grinned. “Not like some people.”
    “Oh, shut up.” I grabbed the bottles he extended to me and shoved them rather harder than necessary into the first empty spot I could find. Malik was unfazed.
    “Speaking of your boy, what’s he think about all this?”
    “Jackson is not my boy.”
    “Uh-huh. What’s he think about it?”
    “I don’t see why he should care.” I thought about his offer to help me learn to control it, the way he’d looked with his hand outstretched. I hadn’t expected him to be so willing to take that kind of risk. As if it was nothing, not even a question.
    Malik slanted me a look. “Of course he cares, you moron.”
    I slid two bottles of gin into place. “Look, Dr. Ruth, I’m not in need of relationship advice. We’re just friends. Not even friends. Acquaintances. And I’m moving out as soon as I find a place.”
    “Good luck with that.”
    “Tell me about it.”
    We finished unpacking the gin and got started on the side work. I cut fruit while Malik transferred clean glasses from the dishwasher to the racks beneath the bar. I’d expected the place to feel a little creepy with hardly anyone in it—it was an old fallout bunker, after all—but it was almost calming. No street noise or slamming doors, just the quiet hum of the under-bar fridge and the electric lights. We worked in companionable silence until Simon showed up.
    I knew it was him right away. He came in through the back, a tall man with dark hair and