I held up my hands. "I didn't do it! I only came inside Demie. You gotta believe me."She looked into my eyes intently. Suddenly, everything seemed to ...slow. I felt like I was floating. 'Believe me...believe me...' I hoped against hope.She paused and blinked, then stepped back. "Shit...you..." she said, and then turned and kicked over the coffee table before flopping down on the couch next to me. "You're not lying. It really was an accident?"She was a cop -- a detective -- so she must have had. I don't know. This is a real mindfuck." Iva laughed musically and cupped her chin in her hands. "You're adorable." "That's...patronizing." I thought only TV witches could wiggle their nose. Apparently not so. Fucking hell, she was cute. "All right, so what's a Shadow?" I asked. "One sec," she said, finally flagging down the waiter. She ordered another cosmotini. Then, after he left, she turned back to me. "Those things are just so awesome. I'd tell you to try one, but then you'd have to do your. We had a few early drinks at a pub near the university that was dodgy even by local standards, then left before its clientele got too drunk. We ate at a cheap kebab shop, then carried on though to a louder pub that let you get cheaply boozed up before the night clubs. I talked to several people, but somehow it was always Emma I ended up talking with.In a group of clever people, Emma stood out as clever. When she wanted to be a modern bluestocking –conversation about econometrics, baggy clothes,. James, a wealthy businessman who believed that the tales of the temple's curses were nothing more than mere fabrications brought about through human superstition. He wanted the yet to be retrieved ''Staff of Xzolotecl''. According to St James, his interest in the staff was not motivated by its supposed mystical powers, but by its status as a priceless artefact.To him the artefact not being recovered yet was simply due to the lack of skill of the explorers that he'd sent before Lara, but he had.