With her hands on her curvy hips, she glared at rum. "So you're going to dismiss it as trivial?"

"If by that you mean I don't think it warrants his immediate execution. Call me crazy, but yeah, I'm dismissing it."

She narrowed her eyes on him. "You are going softball."

Ash frowned until he realized what she meant. "Soft, Artie. You meant to say I'm going soft."

"Whatever." She moved to stand beside him. "The Acheron I remember would have sizzled him for half the infraction."

He released an agitated breath before he responded. "Fried, Artie, damn, learn to speak. I've got a headache from trying to fig­ure out what the hell you mean most of the time. And at no time in my life would I have ever fried anyone for something like this."

"Yes, you would have."

He thought about that for a moment. But as usual she was wrong. "No. Definitely not. Only you would move me to that kind of violence over something so insignificant."

"You're such a bastard."

At least she got that right, in more ways than one.

He leaned his head back against the column so that he could look up at her. "Why? Because I won't do your bidding?"

"Yes. You owe me this. You made me get rid of my assassin and now I have no control over those creatures that—"

"That you created," he added, interrupting her angry tirade. "Don't forget the important part here. The Dark-Hunters wouldn't exist at all had someone, and for the sake of your missing intellect let me clarify that, you, not stolen powers from me that could bring back the dead. I didn't need the Dark-Hunters to help me fight against the Daimons and protect the humans. I was doing fine on my own. But you wouldn't have it. You created them and made me responsible for their lives. It's a responsibility that I take most seri­ously, so excuse me for banning you from killing them because you have reverse PMS."