The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) by J.P. Sloan Page A

kid probably wouldn’t have made it a half-block without something unnatural in his thorax. Taking a moment, I continued across the street and on to the Green Tree.
    The old birch door creaked as I opened it, and one pathetic brass bell jingled as I stepped inside. Warped hardwood slats groaned as I took the first few steps, their surfaces worn from years of snow-tread and street salt. The room swam with the scents of cedar and old books. The walls of the narrow retail slot were lined with bookcases. Near the front all I could find were dog-eared paperbacks, mostly recent. But as I ventured deeper toward a clutch of wrought-iron tables and a coffee bar, I spotted more and more leather bound spines peeking at me through the dim halogen lights.
    I ordered an Americano and took a seat at the rear-most table, watching the front of the room. There was only the one goateed barista working, and an elderly man near the front windows, his face buried in a faded paperback. I sipped the coffee as quickly as the heat would allow. Something about the claustrophobia of this joint made me edgy. The cedar was fairly strong, perhaps more than the bookcases merited, even if they were hewn from solid cedar planks. No, this was an essential oil, probably burning in a censer somewhere behind the coffee bar.
    And as cedar was a powerful warding reagent, I made sure to keep my energy wound tight around my mainline.
    At ten after noon, the door opened with its creek and jingle, and a woman stepped inside. She was tall, remarkably so. Her broad shoulders were draped with a dark trench coat. The coat was clearly more of a fashion statement in the middle of summer, but somehow it seemed to work for her. The rest of her clothes were tidy, but bland. The sides of her head were shaved bald, with the middle swath of close-clipped copper-red hair settling into a rat tail. Her nose and eyebrow were pierced, and her ears sported a half-dozen shiny dark stones. Probably hematite.
    But it was her eyes that put the hook in me. They were clear blue, and burned with a kind of nameless anger that I had come to recognize in the few people Emil called “friend.” Despite her youth, this woman was clearly Old School, and I wished I was more prepared for her.
    She stopped directly in front of my table. I stood out of a sense of respect and etiquette, but couldn’t find anything intelligent to say.
    She reached into her coat and pulled out an e-reader, setting it onto my table without ceremony. The barista steamed some milk without order.
    Finally, as she pulled a chair to take a seat, and I found myself following suit, she spoke.
    “So, you’re Lake?”
    “Quinn Gillette?”
    She cocked her head in a half-shrug and reached for her reader. She clicked it blandly, eyes moving in sharp jerks. The barista brought her coffee and withdrew without a word. I sat in silence, watching her sip and read, never once looking up at me or further acknowledging my presence.
    It was horribly awkward.
    “Ms. Gillette, I wanted to speak to you about, well, sensitive matters. Matters relating to our chosen Craft.”
    She cleared her throat and clicked her reader.
    “Soul magic, to be specific.”
    “So you said.”
    “I’m lead to believe you’re practiced in creating servitors.”
    Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine. “That a fact?”
    “And that you powered these servitors with shards of your own soul.”
    She returned her attention to her reader. “Not an unusual practice.”
    “Unusual in my particular corner of the nation.”
    “Where did you say you were from?”
    “Baltimore.”
    Her eyes lifted again, this time in genuine surprise. My phone call had made precisely zero impact on her.
    “You live in the lap of the Presidium, you dolt. Of course you’re not going to practice soul magic.”
    “I realize that.”
    “Then what are you talking to me for?”
    “I have a problem.”
    The door creaked open, and Gillette jerked around in her seat. A trio of college