Joshua Langford
Joshua blinked calmly, even though he was starting to feel pretty annoyed. What was it with people jumping to the conclusion that he was out to get them? It only seemed to happen around girls and only around ones in their teens. Well, Martha would have found it amusing, in any case.
"I never said that you couldn't handle yourself," he said as he took the dagger back, setting it down nearby. "Most people, however, have this tendency to stick themselves with sharp, pointy objects. From time to time, there's always that one smart alack who likes to scream very loudly about how I'm going to get sued for the new hole in their hand because God forbid that a weapon actually do what it's intended to."
"And then there was that girl from last year," the man went on, ranting in the flattest tone he could muster. "Couldn't have been more than thirteen, maybe. Threw the biggest tantrum I've ever seen, with some crap about being all-powerful and richer than God. Thought it was all gibberish until she put a hit on me and now, two attempts later or something, my lawyer's gone and disappeared on me so I can't really do anything except hope that she fucked off and got distracted by something shiny."
Somewhere along the line, he had found a cloth and had started to polish the blade a bit before putting it away in a box for her. "Register's up front," he digressed for a moment, almost absently. "The point is, lots of people are awful and if I don't treat all of the competent ones in the same way as them, the awful ones like to push the issue and long story short, I really don't have the time to deal with another assassin."
Okay, so he was kind of stretching it a bit but Joshua felt this was perfectly justified. First there had been that one idiot with the brother who had come with a far more sensible partner. And then there had been that incident with the selkie. At least nobody seemed to care to figure out where he lived, Joshua supposed.
