The Unleashing
Page 23

Great. Thank you.
Just let me know if you change your mind.
Kera stopped again. Change my mind about what?
Needing an office.
Kera scratched her head and finally asked, What?
Paula relaxed back in her office chair. Look, kid, youve gotta do something with your life. You cant just sit around here during the day doing nothing.
I just saw a room full of women doing absolutely nothing.
Theyre all actors and models. Theyre waiting for callbacks and job offers. But with your thighs
Yes! I know!
So you need to find something to do. Maybe when you were a kid you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. So be a doctor or a lawyer. We dont give a shit. Well pay for it. All you gotta do is help a sister-Crow out when she needs it and be there for your night job.
And when would I sleep?
Crows need two to four hours sleep. Tops. What Im saying is, the world is your oyster. Fucking shuck it already.
I just got here!
Paula rolled her eyes and went back to her computer. Like thats an excuse.
Fed up, Kera walked out of the office, slamming the door behind her.
She stood in the middle of the hall for several minutes, her mind all over the place, anxiety creeping up on her like a vicious house cat.
It suddenly occurred to Kera she had no control. Not of her life. Of her situation. Of anything. And that realization led to the realization that she was about to have one of her panic attacks.
Unwilling to let that happen, Kera did what she did so naturally. What shed done for ten years while in the Marines. What shed threatened Amsel with.
She got organized.
CHAPTER SIX
Erin was happily lounging by the pool, her body slathered in a lotion with the highest SPF she could find on the market and two giant standing umbrellas protecting her from the harsh rays of the Los Angeles sun.
Shed cleared her schedule at her shop for the next week so that she could work with the new girl, but since the new girl was off . . . doing something, shed decided to relax. Erin loved to relax. And she was really good at it.
Even better, she wasnt the only one relaxing. Three members of her team were relaxing by the pool as well.
Leigh was a painter and a really good one. She had a show coming up soon in Santa Monica, which meant she was doing her best to procrastinate until the gallery owner called her in a tizzy. Then Leigh would bang out the most amazing paintings in three weeks instead of using the two years shed originally had.
Maeve, convinced she was dying, was taking her temperature at ten-minute intervals and noting the tiniest changes in her laptop. Now, to the layman, that might seem like Maeve was doing nothing, but she actually was. Because Maeve owned and ran a medical blog that tracked deadly diseases across the world and her site was huge. Absolutely gargantuan. She made afortune off her site, too, although Erin didnt really know how any of that worked. But Maeve was rich, and shed used that money to build a medical fortress about ten miles outside of Malibu. There she was hoarding all kinds of medication and the latest medical equipment in a panic room under the house. Word was shed just gotten a standing MRI machine. From money she made off her blog.
The whole thing was bizarre, but in Maeves weird way, she was really happy. Disturbed and a clinically diagnosed hypochondriac convinced that zombies would be taking over the world in the next twenty years . . . but happy.
Alessandra Esporza came from family money that she still had access to, despite her death six years ago. But like most Crows, she didnt just sit on her money and do nothing. Three years back, with the help of some other Crows, shed bought a Spanish-language TV station and began producing Mexican soap operas. Theyd become so popular in the States, Mexico, and Central America that Alessandra made it to the cover of Fortune magazine as the new face of television.
She was one of those power brokers in the industry that most of Hollywood knew nothing about. Of course, she was currently on the phone with her long-distance boyfriend, who lived in Germany. They were in one of their arguing moments, which meant that Alessandra yelled at him in Spanish and he yelled back at her in German.
But . . . again . . . Alessandra seemed happy, so who was Erin to question?
Besides, Erin had bigger issues to deal with right now. Like the new girl. Ex-military types could be such a pain in the ass. They were used to everything being spelled out for them in detail. Usually in writing. They were told how to do everything, including folding their clothes, cleaning their living quarters, even how to wear their hair.
Crows didnt do any of that. They had kind of a uniform when they went out hunting, but even that was open to personal style. One Crow painted the Hello Kitty logo on her jeans. Another, instead of wearing a racer-back tank so her wings were unhindered, wore full T-shirts with slits cut into the back of the cotton so that her wings could come out. And at least three Crows wore designer boots on their hunts with six-inch heels. It was all about what a Crow was comfortable in. There was only one hard and fast rule among the Crows: Never betray a sister-Crow. Ever.
And Erin didnt doubt the new girls loyalty, but she did doubt that she was a girls girl. She seemed like one of those chicks who was just more comfortable around men. That would be a problem for her in the long run. Maybe Erin needed to find her a loyal friend. Maybe Jacinda. They called her Jace for short and she was . . . uh . . . shy. Yeah. You could call her shy. Great in battle, but said little otherwise. Even now, she could be lounging by the pool with the rest of her team, but instead she was behind the toolshed on the other side of the yard. It used to bother the other Crows when she first got here, but after realizing what a benefit she was in battle, they let Jaces terrified reaction to basic conversation go.