Free The Inner Circle (Return of the Ancients Book 3) by Carmen Caine, Madison Adler Page B

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. 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. 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.
    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.
    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 responded by kicking me in the shin.
    I glared down at him. Maybe he really was a demon. Picking the squirming kid up under the shoulders, I lugged him towards his mother as she sputtered at Jareth.
    “And just who do you think you are?” she was asking him. Without giving him a chance to respond, she turned and yelled at me. “What kind of place is this?”
    I gaped at her audacity but then took control of the situation. “Would you like me to help you move to a different table, somewhere nicer?” I offered.
    She stood up with a huff. “My latte’s cold now,” she complained, waving at the cup