Ignoring me, Mr. Ray leaned across the table to Mrs. Sarong. “You don’t have the balls to warn me off of what’s mine by right. We will find the statue, and you will sit at my feet like the bitch you are.”

Whoa! I thought, and a sudden wash of cold reasoning shocked through me. This was about the focus, not their respective dead. I glanced at David, and his lips pressed together. Case solved. They were murdering each other.

But Mrs. Sarong was inching her hand to her waistband and the one-bullet gun she probably had there. “I didn’t kill your secretary,” she said, keeping Ray’s attention on her face and not her hands. “But I’d like to thank whoever did. Killing my aide to feign that you don’t have the focus makes you a coward. If you can’t hold it by strength and must rely on stealth, you don’t deserve it. I have more control over Cincinnati than you do anyway.”

“Me!” the incensed Were shouted, bringing Steve in for a quick look around. “I don’t have it, but I damn well will get it. I haven’t so much as sniffed the footprints of your dog-infested pack, but I will take every last member of it if you keep up this farce.”

From the corner of my sight, I watched David take a threatening grip on his vamp killer of a weapon. The two factions were getting antsy.

“That’s enough,” I said, feeling like a playground monitor. “Both of you shut up!”

Mr. Ray turned to me. “You’re a thieving, mewling bitch!” the pudgy Were exclaimed, his supremacy firmly entrenched in his mind.

David hefted his rifle, and the Weres brought for muscle started to shift on their feet. From my other side, Mrs. Sarong smiled like the devil and crossed her legs, saying the same thing as Mr. Ray without uttering a word. I was losing control. I had to do something.

Pissed, I drew myself up and tapped a line. Immediately my hair started to float, and from the middle of the room came an uneasy murmur. I focused on the two of them, unable to break eye contact after I took it. “I think you mean witch,” I said softly, my fingers moving in nonsense as I pretended to set a ley line spell. But they didn’t know that. “I suggest you relax. And that fish was a rescue, not a theft,” I added, my face warming. Okay, maybe my conscience was still smarting.

“You’re both idiots,” I added, staring at Mr. Ray. “Killing each other for a stupid-ass statue when neither one of you has it. How lame is that?”

Mrs. Sarong cleared her throat. “You know he doesn’t have it…how?” she drawled.