A Wolf at the Door: A Jesse James Dawson Novel

by K. A. Stewart

  Five minutes later, she managed to extract herself from his blatant ass-kissing, and as we walked away I heard him yell, “Well, what are you all standing around with your thumbs up your asses for? Reset!”

  Gretchen made it all the way out to the street before all the color drained from her face and her knees buckled under her.

  “Easy. I gotcha.” I wrapped my arm around her waist before she could fall, and she leaned on me, trying to keep from hyperventilating.

  “I don’t…I don’t understand…that man was going to kill me….” Her eyes were wide, shocky, staring at the teeming street around us without really seeing anything. I debated on slapping her, but settled on some firm talk first.

  “Gretchen.” When that didn’t work, I gave her a little shake. “Gretchen!” Finally, she looked at me. “Do you have your cell?”

  “Oh…um, yeah. It’s in my purse.” She fumbled it out.

  “Call Tai. Tell him to meet us at the car. We need to get back to the hotel where it’s safe, okay?”

  “I…” Nearby, someone knocked over a barrel, and she almost jumped out of her skin. I admit, I flinched too.

  “Hey.” I tipped her chin up with one finger, making sure I could look into her eyes. “Call Tai. Let’s go.”

  After a moment, she swallowed and nodded, making the phone call. There was no mistaking the tremor in her voice as she spoke to her bodyguard, and I noticed that Tai never asked what was wrong.

  I kept hold of her elbow as we marched back toward the Town Car, ready to bolt and run if we had to, but there was nothing there. No stomach-twisting nausea, no goose bumps, no cold wind, no smell of damp soil. Just a plain, ordinary, movie lot, full of plain, ordinary movie people. No one even looked at us twice.

  “Dante’s not answering his phone.” Just once, Gretchen hesitated in our hasty retreat. “We have to find him.”

  “Do you have any idea where he was going, here?”

  “No.”

  “Then he knows his own way home. We’re not waiting.” I wasn’t going to be happy until I could get her back behind wards. Sorry, Dante. I wasn’t here to protect him.

  Bobby had the Town Car door open when we reached it, Tai already behind the wheel with the engine running. I shoved Gretchen inside with little ceremony, then climbed in beside her. “Get us back to the hotel.”

  We rode in tense silence all the way back to the hotel, Gretchen turning to look behind us often enough that I finally had to look too. Now, I’m not an expert at spotting tails or anything, but I truly didn’t see anyone following us. Still, I didn’t relax until we’d made it up to the penthouse and I felt the thin bubble skin of Cam’s protective wards slip over my arms.

  Gretchen slumped onto the couch and dropped her head into her hands.

  “What the hell happened?” Bobby finally broke the silence.

  “He tried to kill me.” Gretchen’s whisper was barely audible. “He really tried to kill me.”

  “Who? Who tried to kill you, honey?” Tai crouched down in front of her, gathering her hands into his, and I caught the faintest whiff of cloves. Almost instantly, I saw some of the color come back into Gretchen’s face, and the trembling in her fingers stopped. She took a few deep breaths, then gave Tai a grateful smile. Did she understand, I had to wonder? Did she realize he’d just magicked her into calm? Hell, did he even know what he’d done? It was a mystery to be pondered another time.

  “I don’t think he was trying to kill you, actually.” Everyone looked toward me, puzzled. “I’ve been replaying that fight in my head, and he never went for you. He went straight for me.”

  It was true. Twice, in my mind’s eye, I could see openings, moments when I’d left him with a clear path to Gretchen. Mega-bad on my part, but he hadn’t taken advantage of it. Either he sucked worse than I did, or he wasn’t interested in her.

  “So what does that mean?”

  I found a seat on the back of the sofa, picking at the leather stitching a bit. “It means this is about that.” I nodded toward her tattooed arm. “Your contract. Someone wants something from you, and they don’t want me in the way.”

  Bobby frowned, waving his hand to get attention. “So who was this asshole? Did security get him? Did you call the cops?”

  Gretchen snorted weakly, and I shook my head. “The cops can’t help. This thing…I’m ninety percent sure it wasn’t human.”

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘not human’?”

  “I mean, I kicked that thing hard enough to put four ribs through a lung, and almost shattered my knee in the process. I don’t care how much muscle you have, a human body doesn’t stand up to that much punishment.”

  “On drugs, maybe?”

  Again, I shook my head. “Even on drugs, bones break. Joints fold.”

  It took Tai, the nonbeliever, to ask the important question. “So…if it wasn’t human, what was it?”

  “No freakin’ clue. I’ve never seen anything like it before. But I will say that this thing didn’t make a sound. Not one peep, not one groan, not one hiss. In my experience, that means whatever it was, it had no soul.” Voices came from the soul, offered a direct line to it even. People that I called soulless, like Gretchen, really weren’t. I mean, the soul was still in the body. But if it got yanked out? Poof, voice all gone. A creature like that would be able to mimic back other voices, but their own was forfeit.

  The thing had looked human. Not unusual in the demonic world, really. Much easier to slip by unnoticed if you look like one of your prey. But like most otherworldly things, it had been off slightly. That blank, mannequin-like face, for example. Even in the era of Botox and silicone, I’d never seen a face that devoid of identifying marks. It meant something. I just had no idea what.

  “Great.” Bobby sighed, running a hand over his cropped hair. “How the hell do you protect against something if you don’t even know what it is?”

  “And there’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.” I pushed off my seat, stretching a little. “First things first, I’m moving my gear in here. I can’t do any good if I’m clear down the hall when the shit hits the fan.”

  “And what do you want us to do?” Bobby wasn’t standing at attention, but it was a near thing. The good soldier, waiting for orders.

  Despite the fact that I desperately did not want to be the one in charge, there really was no way around it. I was that guy. I pursed my lips thoughtfully. “If this was a normal stalker type, what would you do next?”

  “Call the cops. Notify hotel security. Get a restraining order.”

  “Notify hotel security, then. They already know to be on the lookout for people who don’t belong, so leave it vague, and tell them that only known personnel are to be coming up to this floor. Anybody else has to be cleared by one of us first.” Surely, even Bobby or Tai could spot a six-foot-tall Roman centurion, right?

  “I’m gonna take a shower,” Gretchen announced, standing suddenly. “Things are getting too weird for me, I just need to chill out a little.”

  While she went to do that, I skedaddled down to my room to get my stuff. Unfortunately, someone else had the same idea.

  Now, I know I’m not the most organized guy in the world, but I think I would have remembered flinging my clothes all over the damn room. “Shit,” I muttered, surveying the damage.

  Like any truly paranoid person, I did have the stray thought that whoever it was might still be in the room, and I stood in the open doorway for long moments, just being still. A living presence leaves a mark, something felt beyond sound or scent. A tremor in the Force maybe. But no…in the end, there was no one there. The door had been shut and locked. Whoever had paid me a visit was long gone.

  My first thought was for my sword and armor, but both were tucked in the back of the closet right where I’d left them. What kind of robber didn’t check the closet? Just to be sure, I flipped the case open, holding my palm just above my sheathed sword. Prickles rose all up and down my arm as the tiny hairs stood at att
ention. Yup, spells still there. Examining my armor found the same result. My gear hadn’t been touched.

  The only way to see if anything else had been taken was to start the process of cleaning up. I had the feeling reporting it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good. “Can you describe the suspect?” “Sure, he was about this tall, plumed helmet, bit on the stocky and indestructible side.” It would have been easy for the centurion to ransack my room while we were having our shopping spree, then meet us at the movie lot for our exercise in fleeing like a little girl. All the more reason for me to move into Gretchen’s suite. We were too separated here, too vulnerable.

  As I gathered up my scattered belongings, I was puzzled to realize that nothing seemed to be gone. The drawers had been turned out, though most were empty. The bed had been stripped with no attempt made to put it back together. The desk was rifled through, Post-its and pens tossed all over the floor. But every personal item of mine was accounted for. Even the slashed-up black T-shirt. “What the hell were you looking for?” Worst burglar ever. I had to be missing something.

  It took me another fifteen minutes to find it, and even then I couldn’t be sure it had been taken by nefarious forces. My trash can was empty. The trash can where I’d unthinkingly dropped the extra few inches of Cam’s blessed string that I hadn’t needed. Most likely, housekeeping had come in and cleaned. Perfectly innocuous. But I had no way to be sure.

  What could someone do, with a snippet of magic string? I had no idea, and I mentally kicked myself as I dragged my repacked bag down the hallway behind me, my armor riding on the top and my sword case tossed up on one shoulder. Careless. So damn careless to just discard it that way.

  “Well, either housekeeping in this place is the worst I’ve ever seen, or my room was ransacked.”

  “No shit? Anything taken?” Tai was at the bar making phone calls apparently, but he put the phone down when I came in.

  “Not sure yet. But they didn’t touch this,” I nodded toward the case on my shoulder. “And if they wanted to hurt me, this woulda been the thing to snatch.”

  “What is it?” I laid the case on the couch, opening it for him. He whistled lowly. “Daaaamn. You really know how to use that thing?”

  “Yup.” I lifted The Way out and handed it to him hilt first. “Watch it, it’s sharp.”

  Tai was used to handling weapons. I recognized it in the careful way he held the sword, keeping his fingers away from the blade, not because it was sharp, but so he didn’t get fingerprints on the metal. “This is too pretty to use.”

  “I’ve had the same thought myself.” I packed it away, piling my meager belongings in an out-of-the-way corner. “Let’s hope I don’t have to.”

  “Bobby went downstairs to talk to security. We should tell him about your room.”

  “Yeah, we need to get this door rekeyed. Too many people have access, the way it is.” I gave him a pointed look. “And, we’ll need to re-ward the door. I can’t be sure mine will hold anymore.” That’s all I could come up with. What better way to figure out a way through a magical ward than to steal a piece of it?

  He raised a dark brow at me. “You need me to ask the kitchen for more string?”

  “Um…no. No, we’re gonna try something different. More precisely, you’re gonna try something different.”

  “I’m gonna what?”

  Back in the day—I say that like I’m eighty years old or something—Mira and Ivan worked tirelessly to awaken the magic ability they were sure I had. Needless to say, it hadn’t worked. But I remembered those exercises. If I could walk Tai through them, get him to consciously access his magic, I was sure I’d at least be able to tell if it was working. I had to get Tai to reset the ward.

  First, we had to wait for Bobby to return. I didn’t want people passing in and out of the door while we were trying to do this. And while we were waiting for him, Dante returned, no worse for the wear for being abandoned at the movie lot.

  “Oh, Boo! I heard what happened! Are you all right?” Gretchen, fresh out of her shower and wrapped in a big fluffy robe like armor, allowed herself to be comforted.

  “Sorry we had to leave you behind, Dante.” I did feel a bit bad about that, after the fact.

  He just waved a hand dismissively. “Ain’t no thing. You did right, protecting my girl here.” He hugged her tightly and they sat quietly on the couch, her head nestled against his shoulder. Part of me felt a teensy-weensy bit jealous. Must be nice to have a best friend that didn’t hate you.

  Not that Marty and I would ever have cuddled like that or anything. But you know what I mean.

  Once everyone was safely inside, I stripped Cameron’s string ward down, carefully balling up the blessed thread and tucking it into my suitcase.

  “I thought that was supposed to protect me.”

  “It was. It may have been compromised now, so we’re gonna see if Tai can reset it on his own.”

  Gretchen frowned in puzzlement. She made even that look stunningly beautiful. “Why aren’t you resetting it?”

  “I can’t. I don’t have any magic.” I shrugged, and her confusion made me smile. Without warning, I tossed Ivan’s quartz crystal at her Maori bodyguard. He caught it on instinct, and immediately the white flaw within it sent out a strobelike pulse. Hunh. So that’s what it was supposed to do. “See that? Tai has more magical ability in one strand of his hair than I have in my entire body.” I held my hand up when she would have asked more. “He’s gonna need to concentrate, so no more questions. This may not even work.” I had no idea what I would do then.

  Tai toyed with the crystal for a moment, the flashing settling down into a steady glow. When he handed it back to me, it faded into inert nothingness. “I don’t believe in magic.”

  “Pretty sure that doesn’t matter now. Come with me.”

  Standing on the stairs, I eyed the doorway, frowning thoughtfully. Tai moved up behind me, mimicking my stance. “You know I have no idea how to do this, right?”

  “’S’okay, neither do I.” I wracked my brain for what little magical theory I’d managed to absorb over the years. “See, thresholds are the easiest things to ward. People have attachment to their homes. They want them to be safe. But because this is a hotel, a temporary dwelling, the attachment usually isn’t there. How long have you lived here?”

  “A year,” Gretchen supplied.

  “Hope it’s enough.” Next, I looked at Tai long enough that he got uncomfortable and squirmed. “How attached are you to your Maori roots, Tai?”

  He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I know the stories. My grandmother used to tell them to me all the time. They’re just stories.”

  “Okay, well, think of those stories. Think of something that epitomizes strength and protection.” He opened his mouth to tell me, and I shook my head. “I don’t need to know. It just needs to be something that means something to you. Hold it in your head, okay? Think of how it looks, sounds, smells. Make it as real in your head as you can.”

  After a moment, he nodded. “Got it.”

  Now, here was the tricky part. “Stretch out your hand toward the doorway. Remember what it felt like before, when the string was there? Feel that again. Feel that tingle, picture it constructing your mental image into this doorway. Build a wall, build a barrier, make it real.”

  I’ll give the man credit. Believer or not, he tried. I extended my hand beside his, I could feel the sparks of burgeoning magic over my palm. The aroma of cloves swirled around us with enough force to ruffle my hair. It built, gathered, and just when I thought it was strong enough to become visible, Tai gasped and it all vanished with a pop of pressure in my ears.

  “Shit.” Tai sagged a little, bending to brace his hands against his knees. “Did…did it work?”

  I walked through the door several times, just to be sure, then shook my head. “No. It almost did, but it slipped away.” Damn damn damn.

  “Sorry.” Finally, he slumped down on the carpeted stairs. “Is it supposed to feel like
this?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I got hit by a truck?”

  “Yeah. Unfortunately. The bigger the magic, the bigger the drain. Rest a little, you should be fine.” Defensive spells were easiest to set, easiest to recover from. I watched him for a bit, but other than being wiped out, he didn’t seem to be suffering ill effects.

  “So now what?” Bobby came to look at the doorway. “I mean, if Tai can’t do this, what do we do now?”

  “Tai can do it. Even untrained, he’s got the brute strength. I just gotta figure out why it didn’t stick.”

  “Well…it’s a hotel, right? We’re not attached to it. Tai’s not attached to it.” When I turned to look at Gretchen, she shrugged. “You said that, just a minute ago.”

  She was right. We needed something to connect Tai to the threshold. An anchor. It hit me like a slap in the face, and I decided that a good old face-palm was in order. “Dammit. I even said it! Bobby, get me some scissors.”

  You shoulda seen the look on Tai’s face when I headed at him with those scissors. “Hey!”

  “Oh, quiddit. I’m just taking a couple of hairs.” More magic in one hair than in my entire body. I was even careful and took them from the underside at the back of his neck, so it would never be noticeable. “Our anchor,” I told him, displaying the four raven black hairs in my hand. “Get me some tape.”

  With the hairs taped at the four corners of the doorjamb, I coached Tai through trying again. “Picture it clearly. Think of all the things you want to keep safe, and picture anything else being trapped on the outside. Push that out through the palm of your hand.”

  Like before, the power swelled around us, stronger than anything I’d ever sensed. Even Mira, the strongest witch I knew, paled in comparison to Tai’s innate talent. I could almost follow the seal with my eyes, watch as it crawled along the jamb. There was a faint flare each time it touched a piece of his hair, and the pressure in my ears snapped like a nail being hammered home. I couldn’t help but smile in triumph, even before the last of the four anchors locked in. This was going to work.