“Carter says he doesn’t know when Gulakah got here, but it can’t have been more than two weeks ago from what he can piece together. I’ve looked up everything I can find on this demon, but the mentions are sparse. A few websites from paranormal investigators who’ve turned up the name in séances or through mediums, but nothing concrete.” He circled a note on the steno pad. “I’ve got an idea, but you aren’t going to like it.”
“Tell us. Right now we have to entertain every possibility.” Things were getting worse and worse, and we couldn’t afford to lose any more innocent victims.
Vanzir straightened up. His eyes were sparkling. He tipped his head to the side. “We ask Trytian for help. We go to him and tell him we have information he’ll want, but in exchange he has to first tell us where to find Van and Jaycee. Then we hand over the info on Gulakah to him.”
“Trytian—you want us to deal with pond scum?” Camille slammed her mug on the table so hard the soup spilled. Hanna moved to clean it up, but Camille motioned her away and grabbed a napkin to wipe up the steaming broth.
Trytian was the son of a powerful daemon who was building an army in the Subterranean Realms against Shadow Wing. The daemon had sent his son Earthside—none of us was sure how, and Trytian wasn’t spilling secrets—to rally the Demon Underground to help them. Trytian had threatened Camille, tried to blow us all up, and then turned around and offered to build a truce with us. He was about as trustworthy as snake oil.
“I know you don’t like him, but look at the facts. He came to us to warn you about Hyto. He reached out first. He’s fighting against Shadow Wing, too—”
“That may be so, but he also has no compunction about destroying innocent people who he thinks are in his way!” Camille was pacing the floor. She stopped and whirled to me. “What do you think?”
I looked at the information Carter had sent us. Gulakah sounded like a badass motherfucker, and we were on the end of our tether with regard to Van and Jaycee. The thought of dealing with Trytian was stomach-churning, but the thought of letting the pair of sorcerers go on to cause more havoc was far worse.
“I’m with Vanzir on this one. If Trytian knows about anything at all that will help us catch them, then we need to take advantage of it.”
“What about the computer at the shop? The phone book? Can’t we go through them first to see if we can find anything that would keep us from having to contact him? If we come up empty, fine then…we have Vanzir put in a call and we make a deal with the devil…or daemon, rather. But maybe, if we’re lucky, we won’t need to.” Camille clenched her fists.
“Sounds good to me.” I looked at the others. “Everybody willing to pull a late-nighter? If we divide up, we can check out everything that much quicker and get some sleep in the process.”
They all nodded, including Hanna. “I’ll keep the tea and coffee coming,” she said.
“Then, I guess we take a quick shower break to wash off the soot and smoke, and we knuckle down to combing through all of this crap.”
After making sure Marion and Douglas were comfortable in the parlor, Shade and I trudged up to the bedroom. I stripped and jumped in the shower first, lathering up and—for the first time in a while—I actually enjoyed the feeling of the soap and water on my skin. Climbing out of the shower, I toweled off and climbed into a clean nightshirt and pair of sweatpants.
Shade was sitting on the bed, waiting for his turn in the shower. He stopped me to gently press his lips against mine. I sank into his arms, enjoying the safety of his embrace, feeling weary and sleepy and wanting only to crawl into bed for a nice long nap. Before I realized what I was doing, I was in my Tabby form, staring at him from the floor.
He sat back down on the bed and held out his arms, whistling for me. I leaped up on the bed, crawling onto his knee. He scritched me behind the ears.
“A little stressed, aren’t you, girl?” As he rubbed the fur under my chin, I began to purr and stretched my head for him to reach the sides of my face. It was such a relief to be in my Tabby form. Even though I was still facing the same stressors, when I was in cat form everything seemed muted, like I was wearing earmuffs in the middle of a cacophony.
After a moment, I began to relax. I hopped off Shade’s lap and saw my favorite squeaky mouse. Batting it, I felt my blood race at the sound of squeak. I picked it up by the tail and raced out of the room, down the stairs to the second floor where Camille was just coming out of her room. I dropped the mouse at her feet and looked up, twitching my tail.
Camille laughed gently and reached down to scoop me up. “Feeling a little out of sorts, Kitten? Thank you, thank you for the toy. And thank you for making me smile.” She buried her face in my fur and kissed me soundly. “But, Delilah, we have a lot of ground to cover tonight. We need you, as a woman. Your reading skills aren’t all that developed when you’re in Tabby form.”
I let out a little mew and then, licking her quickly on the face, I jumped down and moved to the side. She was right. I didn’t have time to play with the mouse, or to curl up for a catnip. Resigned and a little sad, I transformed back.
As I shook my head, coming out of the shift, Camille helped me to my feet. I noticed she was wearing a floor-length terry-cloth robe over a loose babydoll. Smoky, Trillian, and Morio were already downstairs.
I took Camille’s hand in mine. “Thank you. Sometimes, I still need my big sister…though I think I’m finally growing up.”
Camille squeezed my fingers. “Kitten, we all need to grow up. But you’ll always be Kitten, and you’ll always have the playful kitty inside. We need that part of you—it keeps us all hopeful. Just like Maggie keeps us innocent. Menolly can never have that innocence again. I will never be able to trust anybody fully again. But you…we need your joy. Please, don’t ever lose it.”
I misted over. “I’m trying not to. I don’t think I’d like myself if I did.”
I took the store laptop while Camille started flipping through the day planner and the guys divided up the address book. Settling on the sofa, with a bowl of Cheetos to my right and a big glass of milk to my left, I opened the lid of the laptop. Before we left, I’d made sure that the battery had enough life left to make it home where I could plug it in. I’d been careful not to close the lid so it wouldn’t go to sleep. It was still running, so I didn’t need the password.
Before I started doing anything, I plugged in an external hard drive and began to download everything on the laptop. That way, if something happened, we’d have a backup of all the files. I examined the programs. The computer had only a handful of programs on it. I guess Tregarts weren’t prone to playing games or writing long documents. I opened the mail and waited for it to download.
Five incoming e-mails. I opened the first and it asked for a return receipt when opened, but I closed the request without answering. No use letting Van and Jaycee know we had the computer. Yet.
It was a simple two-line message asking for the daily report, and giving a heads up that “MV” had not perished yet, with a stern warning that they’d better take care of the matter for once and all.
“You think this group torched Marion’s house?” I stuffed a handful of Cheetos in my mouth and swallowed a gulp of milk.
“Doesn’t have to be all of them. There were plenty there to play at arson while the others waited at the store.” Morio was thumbing through his part of the phone book. He and Vanzir were using the household laptop as well as mine to do a reverse lookup on the phone numbers. We didn’t want to call them at this point. Hang-ups would give us away.
“Any luck on finding out who those numbers belong to?”
“Some are listed—dealers, companies, services…everything you’d expect for a sex toy business. But there are three I’ve been unable to trace so far, and two that I came up with names for. One connects to a fortune-teller’s shop in the Industrial District. Future Glimpses. I looked them up on the Net and they sell spell components, they advertise spells, and they read the cards. But it says t
hey’re closed for business until the first of the month.”
“Bingo. Sounds like Van and Jaycee’s last shop.” Camille looked up from across the room, where she was meticulously going through the day planner, jotting down notes. “Who does the other number belong to?”
Morio leaned back. “It leads us right back to the Energy Exchange club.”
I stopped. “Right. I knew they were involved and this proves it. Which means they’re probably into both the Wolf Briar business as well as magical weaponry.”
During our last interaction with the Koyanni, we’d encountered a weapon that we’d been pretty sure was fashioned at the Energy Exchange. It was like a magical stun gun. While Camille and Morio were able to charge it up, to some degree, the exact spell for empowering it with charges still eluded them.
“We have to raid that place. I’ll bet you anything Van and Jaycee are holing up there. Come on.” I set the laptop aside and jumped up, but a wave of dizziness swept over me and I sank back down to the sofa. “Or maybe not tonight. I’m exhausted.”
Camille nodded. “Me, too. We aren’t strong enough tonight. I don’t care how much caffeine and sugar we pour into ourselves. Vanzir—take one of the laptops and start hunting around for any information you can find on the club. Meanwhile, let’s finish going over all this crap. We don’t want to miss something that might be hiding right in plain sight.”
“I need a nap, though, even just an hour or two.” I yawned, stretching.
Camille rubbed her head. “Yeah, we’ve been burning the midnight oil a lot lately. Okay, you guys keep on with what you’re doing. Take over the notes. Morio, are you still good to go for a bit?”
He nodded. “Yeah, and Trillian can take over the planner. You and Delilah get a couple hours of rest. In fact, Smoky, Shade, you go chill, too. We’ll keep looking and wake you up in a few hours if we need to. When Menolly gets back from the bar, she can help us.”
Exhausted, I dragged myself to my feet and, together with Camille and our two dragons, climbed the stairs. I barely said a word before I climbed into bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
“Delilah, honey? Wake up.” Shade’s voice echoed through the room.
I blinked, fuzzy. It wasn’t light yet, but Shade was insisting I wake up and I didn’t want to. I growled, pushing his hand away. “Go ’way. I’m sleepy.”
“Honey? They need you downstairs.” Shade pulled the blanket off me, and the chill in the room descended to shock me awake.
I groaned and forced myself out of bed. I glanced at the clock. It was barely three and a half hours after we’d gone to bed. “Gah, I really want a full night’s sleep. I haven’t had one for a week.” As I stumbled into the bathroom, I heard Shade curse. “What’s wrong?” I peed, then washed my hands and brushed my teeth.
“I found one of your hairballs. The hard way.” He sounded grouchy.
I grimaced as I swished a mouthful of breath rinse and then spit. As I trudged back into the bedroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wiping off one of his feet.
“I’m sorry.” I tried to keep a straight face but couldn’t help myself. I let out a snicker.
“What are you laughing about? Delilah, honey, can you please clean up after yourself? This is the fourth hairball you’ve left on the floor after you transformed back. I’ll help clean your litter box, but damn it, take some responsibility.” He wasn’t laughing. In fact, he looked downright out of sorts.
“It’s just a bunch of fur and spit.” I slipped off my panties and put on a clean pair, then wiggled into my jeans. As I hooked my bra and pulled on a turtleneck, Shade finished wiping his foot.
“That’s not the point. The point is that you need to develop better habits. I love you. I can live with the clothes on the floor, and I can handle the empty water bottles everywhere, but you have to start cleaning up your own messes. The hairballs and the dirty litter box and the overflowing garbage can are too much. How hard is it to spend ten minutes a day picking up around here? I thought cats were clean.”
I stared at him, both embarrassed and feeling a little guilty. I’d promised to mend my ways a dozen times—to Iris as well as to my sisters, and now Shade—but I kept forgetting. It just seemed easier to leave it for later.
“I didn’t realize my slovenly ways bothered you so much.” My face started to feel hot and I pressed my lips together.
“We have to be able to talk about these things—habits that annoy us, things that irritate us. If we don’t keep the communication flowing, then we stand the chance of bottling emotions up and that’s not a good thing. Especially since I’m part dragon.”
He put his hands on my shoulders, but I pulled away. “Well excuse me. I’m sorry I’m so disgusting.” Hot tears welled up and I dashed them away. I was so weary, and so frustrated, that every thing he said seemed to be colored with disgust.
“I called you no such thing. I get that I could have put it better, but Iris herself dumped your litter box on your bed. I live here too, now. Do you want me to go? Is this your way of pushing me away? I will if that’s what you want—but I love you. I just want to have a nice, cozy nest where we can curl up in comfort together. Why are you getting so pissed at me?” He looked so confused that I felt a tremor in my stomach.
Chase had lived in his own apartment. He’d stayed over, but we’d never shared a house or apartment. Shade and I’d been in the adjustment phase for the past couple of months, trying to figure out our routine, learning each other’s habits. Chase had been a neat freak. I hadn’t expected Shade to be one, too, but though I’d tried to ignore the signs, it seems like I’d been paired up once again with a tidy, organized lover.
I sighed, then dropped on the bed, reality crashing in on me. It wasn’t just me anymore. I wasn’t alone. “Fuck. And you know I don’t say that often. I’m sorry. I did promise Iris and my sisters I’d try harder. The truth is, I do shirk chores. I hate housework. And yeah, I do make excuses for not doing so.” Reaching out, I took his hand and drew him down beside me.
“Change is hard. I know you aren’t used to sharing your space.” He wrapped his arm around me and kissed my forehead.
Snuggling into his arm, I looked around the room. When really forcing myself to look at it, what I saw was a giant pigpen. My clothes were scattered everywhere. Two hairballs had dried on the floor, and the third that Shade had stepped in was still wet. Candy wrappers scattered across the floor beside my side of the bed, along with empty soda cans and a half-finished bag of Cheetos. My closet was a whirlwind.
On the other hand, Shade’s closet was ordered, with his clothes neatly lined up on hangers. His nightstand was clear except for what he needed. It wasn’t OCD-clean but definitely tidy. As I looked at him, at the warmth in his eyes, I suddenly understood. I was in an adult relationship. I was sharing my life and my room with a man I loved. The house might be in my sisters’ names and my name, but it was also Shade’s home. And he was here for the long run.
“Okay.” I straightened my shoulders. “How about this: We clean together. Every night, we pick up a little. I’ll clean up my hairballs and keep the litter box clean. You take out the garbage. We do laundry together. I guess it’s only fair. Hanna’s going to have her hands full with so many people here, and Iris isn’t going to be in any mood or shape to handle the work after a couple months.”
Shade brightened. “You’d do that, for me?”
“If you do something for me.” A thought occurred to me—something I knew that I probably couldn’t budge him to do without leverage.
He seemed to sense I was up to something. “And what is that?”
Grinning, I licked my lips. “You know that fantasy I told you about? The Jerry Springer one?”
He closed his eyes and began to shake his head. “No, oh no—I told you I wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face.”
I pressed my fingers to his lips. “Oh yes. Yes, you will. It’s called compromise. Couples compromise. I learned that from Camille and
her men.” Laughing now, I stood and turned to straddle his lap, pushing him back on the bed. “And you, my love, are going to compromise with me.”
“Am I really, now? Are you so sure I’m ready to…compromise?” He wrapped his hands around my waist as his breathing deepened. I leaned down and pressed my lips to his, feeling the warmth of his breath fill my mouth. I nibbled his neck, tripping my fingers down his chest, sliding my hands under his shirt.
“Oh, you’re ready. Trust me.” But as I leaned in for another kiss, someone pounded on the door.
“Delilah! Shade! We need you downstairs, now.” When Menolly spoke in that tone of voice, everybody jumped. “Get off your asses and hurry!”
Whoa. I hadn’t heard her that upset in a long time.
We scrambled up and adjusted our clothing, then hurried downstairs. Menolly was already back in the kitchen when we came dashing in. Camille was there, along with Smoky, Trillian, and Vanzir.
“What’s up? Please tell me not another explosion.” Shade and I accepted mugs of tea from Trillian.
“We got a call from Chase. There’s been an ugly incident. We have to get down to the FH-CSI.” Camille jumped up and yawned, grabbing her keys.
“What’s going on?” A voice from the kitchen door startled me. I whirled around to see Marion standing there, clutching the terry robe tightly around her. She’d borrowed it from Menolly.
“Yet another incident. We have to roll. You and Douglas stay here. Just go back to bed and get more rest.” I patted her shoulder. She bit her lip, then nodded. She looked so tired and so lost.
As Marion vanished back to the parlor, Camille let out a long breath. “She’s gone through so much. The loss of her sister. The loss of her house.”
“Yeah, that’s why we’re doing this. For people like Marion. To keep the Tregarts—and their boss—from turning this world into a far worse hell than it already is.” I swallowed my self-pity. So I’d only had three and a half hours of sleep. At least we still had our house to come home to.
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