“Your heart rate was too slow.”
“I was willing myself into a catatonic stupor. The only way I can really get any sleep with you in my home.”
“What was going on?”
Swearing, I flung the pillow away and twisted into a sitting position. “Would you leave me alone?” I glared up at him and wished that I wasn’t able to see so clearly in the dark. It was a handy skill for a born killer, but still.
Seeing in the dark made it that much easier to see that he was, indeed, naked from the waist up.
And…wow. I hadn’t seen that in the dream. He had a tattoo on his chest. A vivid, rather tribal looking creation that spread up over his entire right pectoral, across his shoulder and curving down over his right bicep. I stared at it for a second while some part of my brain tried to wonder how it was possible for him to even have a tattoo—tatts weren’t that much different than scars, implanting the pigment under the skin…shifter bodies rejected shit like that.
So how was it even possible?
Then he crouched down, eyes on level with mine. The storm clouds, for once, weren’t so brooding and angry, but the look on his face was just as disturbing to me as the anger, although for different reasons entirely. I’d rather he be angry with me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asked softly. “You sounded like you were having a nightmare, but then it just…stopped.”
“Apparently the leave-me-alone thing falls on empty ears,” I muttered. Fighting free of the blankets, I clambered out of the bed and stormed toward the bathroom. “Just what in the hell did I do to deserve having a death sentence on my head and a couple of psychotic cat shifters breathing down my neck, on top of all the other shit I’ve dealt with?”
I made into the bathroom and slammed the door. Magic shimmered as wards settled into place. Flipping the lock, I grabbed a spare pillow and a blanket out of the closet. I had a safe place in my office. And another one here. It was the bathroom, the smallest room in the house, the easiest to secure. Not the nicest place to spend the night, but I could do it.
As I settled down in the bathtub, I called my sword.
I could hear him moving around, heard the door shut. But I didn’t bother getting up.
I hadn’t stopped having the nightmares until a few years ago.
When they’d gotten really bad, I still ended up in here, certain that I’d awaken and find Fanis standing over me.
This was one place I almost felt secure. Miserable enough to some, I figured.
But for nearly thirteen years, I hadn’t ever had a bed to sleep in. After my mother died, I’d been pretty much treated as a stray dog in my grandmother’s house. And the dogs had been fed better.
After I’d fled Aneris Hall, I’d been so busy running, I ran until I was too tired to go any farther so I dropped where I was. Often, I hadn’t even had a warm place, or a blanket, or pillow. At least here, I had those…and safety.
Not to mention the psychotic cat sleeping out in my living room.
I woke to hear my phone chiming.
Shit.
I hadn’t thought to bring it into the bathroom with me.
If it was Linc…
Muscles shrieked and protested as I climbed out of the tub and stumbled into my room.
Damon was already standing in the doorway. Storm-cloud eyes studied my face as I snagged my cell from the bedside table. It wasn’t Linc. Good. That was good.
Colleen.
Call me.
Okay.
I’d call her. But caffeine first.
Knuckling at my eyes, I headed toward the door, only to stop a foot away as I realized the bane of my existence was still standing there. Balefully, I lifted my eyes and glared at him.
A faint smile, there and gone, twisted his lips and he stepped aside.
Coffee.
Cyanide.
For me. For him—he said it would take a tank load, but maybe Colleen could work up something that would work. It was possible, right? Had to be.
Five minutes later, I was thinking clearly.
Clearly enough to realize he wasn’t hovering at my back.
Nor was he in the living room where he normally slept. He’d already made up the bed—thank God he was fairly neat. His clothes had already been packed away, which meant he’d been up for a little while. A T-shirt was draped over the back of the chair close to me, along with a towel, so he must have been in the guest shower when the text woke me up.
But he wasn’t out here now and he wasn’t in there—
Storming into my room, I found him leaning against the wall just outside my bathroom, staring inside.
“You slept in the bathtub.”
“Yes.” I cradled my coffee and took a drink, burning my tongue. Didn’t matter. I had caffeine. That immediately made the day a little bit easier to face.
Storm clouds flashed in his eyes as he shoved off the wall and faced me. He crossed his arms over his chest and I briefly found myself distracted by the way muscles played under his golden-brown skin. Pretty—
No. No. Not pretty…asshole. Capital asshole.
“Why did you sleep in the bathtub?” he asked, a growl edging into his voice.
“Because I didn’t want to talk to you and you wouldn’t leave me alone. I figured you’d at least give me five minutes to pee in peace and quiet and when you didn’t barge in immediately, I thought maybe that would be the ideal place to sleep.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw. “I left you alone because I figured you wanted to be left alone. You weren’t in there pissing or anything else. You could have come out.”
“Oh, like you’ve been so respectful of my privacy or anything else.” Another drink sent more caffeine pulsing through me and I imagined I could see the cobwebs blowing away. Jude. The dream. South. And those kids had said something about the Everglades…
“I left you alone last night, didn’t I?” he snapped.
I took another drink. “A fluke. Although if you’re really trying to grow some manners, you could always leave me alone again. I need to change.”
I needed forty-five minutes in my gym. I needed to call Colleen, but I had to work that dream out first or I was going to go crazy.
Such a little weakling…
Yeah. Better to work it out now, than lose my mind later.
I’d much rather work out alone, but that wasn’t going to happen. At least he was busy with the weights he’d had delivered. They had shown up on the second day of our not-so-ideal arrangement and half of my space was surrendered to his equipment.
I would have hauled the crap onto the front lawn if I thought it would accomplish anything.
It took a good twenty minutes before I managed to clear my mind enough to fall into my routine. Sweat dripped, muscles burned, and finally, my mind felt clear.
The sword that felt like a part of me sliced through the air.
Everglades.
Groups of them—
Just kids.
Children—
Child. Weak, ignorant child—The crack of a whip slicing through the air. If it kills me, I’ll make you something stronger.
My breathing hitched in my throat.
Hold that weapon steady, Kitasa—useless waste. Oh, dear. You dropped your guard—
I stumbled as her voice rang through my mind and I remembered the sickening, wet crack of my bones breaking. The ghostly ache danced up my arm.
“Shit.”
I stopped in the middle of the floor and brought my hands to my face. My right hand still clutched my sword and I squeezed it, tighter, tighter.
Get out of my head, you evil bitch, I thought, half desperately.
“You know, whatever those demons are that are eating you up…”
I gulped in another breath of air and lowered my hands, ready to tear into him, ready to turn around and bury my blade in him and screw the consequences.
I turned around. Saw him standing three feet away. “Seems to me you managed to leave them far enou
gh behind. If you can pick fights with vampires, crazy cats and entire packs of rats, I’d think you could deal with whatever those demons were, too.”
Then he went back to his weight bench.
“Bad vibes. I want you to know, going in, I’ve got a bad, bad feeling about this,” Colleen said when I called.
I had two cups of coffee and a pastry nearly as big as a plate in my belly and I suspected I’d need more sugar and more caffeine just to get through this. “I get nothing but bad vibes about this entire mess,” I said into the phone as I leaned in and studied the donut case.
Chocolate.
That was the ticket.
Pointing to one liberally smeared in it, I smiled at the lady behind the counter. She wasn’t paying any more attention to me than she had to. She gave me the donut and then went back to staring at Damon.
Human. Even if I hadn’t been able to tell just by looking at her, I would have figured that out after she continued to stare at him for the first thirty seconds and didn’t look away even after he pointedly shoved his sunglasses onto his head and glared at her.
Another shifter wouldn’t have done that with him. Hell, most of them would have been cowering the second he walked inside.
“Okay, we both have a bad feeling about this,” I said. “Glad we have that established. Now that we do…why am I calling you?”
“Three witches from one of the outer houses have seen…something.”
The outer houses were basically subsets of the main houses. Green Road was huge and its outer houses covered most of the south. “Oh? And how does this have anything to do with me?”
“All ties into kids. One of our girls went missing, but we were able to find her and get her back. She’s still in seclusion and I don’t know what all happened, but I thought it was kind of odd, especially after I heard another witch—unaffiliated—disappeared a week later. She hasn’t been recovered yet. She’s seventeen.”
My skin started to crawl. Unaffiliated witches didn’t practice with a house. It wasn’t common, but it happened. And it wasn’t a good thing, either. Witches were more vulnerable on their own. They pretty much defined the phrase strength in numbers. One or two witches alone, especially young ones, were easy targets. Warriors were far and few between. Now one warrior witch was a sight to behold, but still, even they needed to be trained.
Sitting up a little straighter, I braced my elbows on the table as Damon slid into the booth across from me. He had a massive pile of toast. Just toast. And milk.
“What else?” I asked, staring at those neat little triangles of bread.
“I heard from a contact that somebody from the wolf pack had a kid go missing, too. I can’t confirm, but…”
“I can.” Images of a boy’s battered face flashed through my mind.
Four teenagers. Wasn’t exactly a pattern, but…
“You can, huh?” Colleen made a little humming sound under her breath. “Curiouser and curiouser.”
“Well, I can’t confirm he was with the wolf pack, but I do know that a wolf kid was found. I saw his body the other day.” Made me think about the tests I had yet to see. Needed to log into my other email. While Damon sat there contemplating his mountain of toast and listening to my phone call, I pulled my tablet out of my bag.
“So four kids. All NHs,” Colleen said.
I thought of Keeli and murmured, “Maybe five.”
Hell, considering all the reports I had to go through, there could well be more. But no way to know yet. Yeah, decent parents would report the runaways, but despite what Damon said, not all parents were decent and that didn’t change just because somebody was a shifter. They were still people, and people often sucked.
Colleen continued to speak as my tablet powered up.
“The witches in the outer house are located near the Everglades.”
My gut roiled. “The Everglades.”
“Yeah. One of them thinks she saw the witch, the day before she disappeared. After I sent up an alert about the kid you’re looking for, I got a call. Came in late last night. The witch says she saw the boy you’re looking for.”
Damon’s cup clattered onto the table.
I saw him reaching for the phone and jerked up a hand to stop him.
“Saw him?” These were witches we were talking about. They could see them with their eyes…or other ways.
“That’s all I got out of her. She won’t tell me anything else. Says if you want more, you have to go to her.”
I blew out a breath as I logged into my email. “Okay. So I get the feeling I’m planning a trip to the Everglades.”
“Yes. And now…why aren’t you more surprised about that?”
Sourly, I stared at my donut. I wasn’t hungry for it now. “A little birdie told me.”
My e-mail loaded and I didn’t even have to skim through it. There was a bunch of junk, a bunch of spam, a bunch of old contacts. I’d changed the e-mail because of all the spam, junk and shit. But the one e-mail that I did need was right there at the top. Linc. Damn, the man really did know how to come through.
“I’ll be in touch, Colleen,” I said, disconnecting the call and putting the phone down.
I clicked on the e-mail and started to read.
“The Everglades.” Damon was staring at my bowed head.
“Yes.”
“Was that your witch friend?”
“Yes.”
Lab samples. Soil.
My gut churned as I read some of the notes Linc had thoughtfully thrown in. Several different kinds of dirt…soil. Whatever. The specialist who had done the tests thought it might be consistent with the sort found in the Everglades.
Spinning the tablet around, I shoved it at Damon as I drank the rest of my coffee.
A muscle worked in his jaw when he looked up at me. “Why am I reading lab tests on a dead wolf kid?”
“Because it appears he was down in the Everglades,” I said. “And because, as I’m sure you heard since you were listening in, one of the witches affiliated with one of the outer houses down there thinks she saw Doyle. A couple of the witch kids have also gone missing. All in that general area. There’s a connection, so it looks like we’ve got a road trip.”
“It’s a drive.” He nodded shortly. “We should get going.”
“We need to make a stop first.” I shouldn’t have had the coffee. My stomach was already pitching. The last thing I wanted to do was go back the rec club. “I need to talk to Marcus.”
“Why?”
“Too many coincidences. All these kids tied into the ′glades. I want to know if there’s a connection.”
Damon narrowed his eyes. “If there was, the kid would have said. He knows better than to lie when I’m around.”
“He might not have lied.” I shrugged as I slid out of the booth. “There’s a difference between lying and not telling everything you know. And he might have thought he was doing his friend a favor.”
“By not telling you what you needed to know to find him?” Damon was on his feet now, too, crowding into my space under the pretense of carrying on a private conversation in a busy place.
Instead of tipping my head back to stare at him, I busied myself scooping papers and reports into my bag, shutting down my tablet last. “Kids don’t always have that vaunted foresight. For all we know, the kid thought he was doing Doyle a favor by keeping quiet, even assuming he knows anything.”
“How does not helping bring him home protect him?”
Useless waste—the sound of the whip whistling through the air. I turned around and looked up at him. “You know what the holy hell happened to my back? My grandmother did it to me. While my aunts watched. The first time happened when I was eight. The second, when I nine. It was a yearly, sometimes monthly, occurrence until I ran away when I was fifteen. And if somebody had tried to take me home? I would have either killed them…or myself.”
Slinging my bag over my shoulder, I headed outside.
Maybe the Queen Bitch hadn’t
beaten that boy, but somehow I knew life at the lair hadn’t been easy for him.
I’d figured that out just by the look in Marcus’ eyes.
Chapter Ten
Marcus wasn’t at the club.
We found him at his house and his dad didn’t want to let me in.
If it wasn’t for the bruiser at my back, I knew I wouldn’t have gotten in, either.
“He’s starting to spike,” the man said, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “A human girl—a pretty one—walking in there isn’t going to help. Especially once she starts smelling scared.”
“I’m not going to freak out on him,” I said. “I just need to ask him a couple of questions about Doyle.”
“He doesn’t know anything.” The father shook his head.
“I think he might know more than he realizes.”
“Are you calling my kid a liar?”
Oh, for crying out loud. Mildly, I pointed out, “That isn’t what I said. I said, very clearly, I think he might know more than he thinks. I found out some information about some other missing kids and I need to ask him a few more questions.”
“And when he starts coming after you because you smell like dinner or sex, what are you going to do?”
“He’s not going to get within a foot of her,” Damon said, edging in front of me. “But, Conley, you’re going to let her in, and you’re going to do it now before I decide to get pissed off.”
A growl trickled from the father’s throat. “You can’t threaten me for protecting my kid.”
“She’s not a fucking threat to him.”
“She’s human! And when he scares the shit out of her—”
“She doesn’t have the sense to be scared,” Damon snapped. “Trust me, I’ve seen her in action. And I won’t let the kid get near her. Now let her do her job.”
I rubbed my temple as the headache pounded, ever close. This job was proving to be so much fun. Maybe Colleen could brew up some sort of tonic for the permanent headache I was living with.
It took a few more minutes and once Conley agreed, reluctantly, he looked me over with a critical eye. “Just how good are you with your weapons?” he demanded.
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