by Alyssa Day
“Get to the chopper,” it shouted, shaking its head and fluffing out and then resettling its wings. “Get to the chopper!”
“Your parrots are Schwarzenegger fans?” Damon looked at Lily with disbelief.
“We’re gonna need a bigger boat,” the other bird told him.
“Hugging is. Mugging prefers Jaws,” Lily said dryly, but her cheeks turned a little pink.
“That is so cool!” Parker said, grinning like an idiot. “Have you ever shown them Princess Bride? It has so many great—"
“Back to Bannon,” Damon interjected, before they could get caught up in a Bird Movie of the Week discussion. “We know he’s coming after you. We’d like—”
“To use me as bait,” Lily snapped. “Yeah, I get it. I’m not as stupid as I look.”
He couldn’t help it. It was the way the word “look” came out from between those sensual lips. He tried, he really did, but he was physiologically unable to keep from, well, looking. Again. And, hell, in that outfit she was definitely something to see.
But he was better than that. He wasn’t a sexist ass, and he certainly wasn’t going to invade her home and then make her feel unsafe by leering at her.
Not that a woman who could set him on fire had any reason to feel unsafe.
Still.
He swallowed, hard, and met her gaze. “You don’t look stupid. I don’t think you’re stupid, and I don’t think you’re a criminal. I think you’re a smart, law-abiding person who got caught up in something really, really bad.”
She started to make a sarcastic retort—he could read it in her eyes—but then she stopped. Thought about it. When she finally spoke, he could see that he’d rattled her.
“Harry always gets whatever Harry wants,” she said, so quietly she was almost whispering.
He nodded. “And he wants you.”
“And he wants me.”
Driven by a powerful urge he didn’t understand, he shook his head. One sharp, decisive shake. “He’s not going to get you. I will keep you safe, Lily.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m used to keeping myself safe.”
“Then let me help. Let’s get this psychopath behind bars where he belongs.”
She hesitated for a long, long moment, but then she nodded and held out her hand. “Deal. And you leave the minute we get him?”
“Absolutely,” he said, knowing he was lying, even while he shook her hand.
Because, suddenly? He didn’t want to leave her at all.
Which was crazy. He didn’t do relationships. He was too busy. He lived for the job. Blah, blah, blah, all the words that basically meant he was great at sex but worse than awful at the stuff that came with the sex. The ugly stuff: the “what happens next” discussion. The long conversations about feelings. The “meet my parents” demands.
Cuddling.
He shuddered. It was enough to neuter a man.
One of his exes had accused him of being more lion than man; of wanting a harem he only had to screw and forget, leaving them to cater to him. She’d been wrong, of course. He didn’t want anybody catering to him. He just wanted to eat his breakfast alone. Read the paper alone, with nobody stealing sections out of order.
Not have to talk about his feelings.
He respected and admired women. His female colleagues in P-Ops were among the smartest, toughest people he’d ever met in his life. But they never tried to talk to him about their feelings, either.
Lily snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Jones. Are you in there? Parker asked you a question.”
Damon blinked. This was bad. He’d totally zoned out there for a moment.
“Sorry. I was thinking about the job,” he told them.
Parker nodded. “Yes, sir.”
He’d always liked Parker.
“What’s first?” Lily asked, but her phone rang before he could answer. She held up one finger, snatched her phone off the counter and answered.
“Lily Cardinal.”
There was a silence, during which Lily’s eyes got bigger and bigger and her fingers started glowing again.
“Better hide your shoes,” he told Parker.
“What do you mean, my furniture is in Canada?” Lily shouted. “No, I don’t want any maple syrup!”
“Get to the chopper,” Hugging warned.
“I hear you, bird,” Damon said.
* * *
Damon closed the door behind Parker, and he and Lily stared at each other across the floor of a room that had suddenly grown too small.
“So, that’s all the surveillance and recording equipment installed, then?” Her voice sounded surprisingly tentative, which surprised him. She was more of a “give commands” than “ask questions” kind of woman.
“He’s not coming back to monitor things or whatever?”
Her phone rang, and she made a weird growly sound, deep in her throat.
“It’s that idiot again. My damn furniture is probably in Guatemala by now.”
“Why—”
She thrust her phone at him. “You handle it. You’re the FBI, right? You handle interstate crime.”
He took the phone. “Crime?”
The parrots shook their wings in his direction. “Crime. Crime. Crime.”
He shot them a look, and they went quiet.
“My furniture has gone from California to Washington D.C. to Canada, on its way to Ohio. If that’s not a crime, I don’t know what is!”
“Point taken,” he admitted.
“Point taken!” the birds intoned. “Point take—”
He glared at them. “Stop repeating me, or we’re going to be talking bird soup for dinner.”
The parrots looked at each other, at Lily, and then back at him. When they opened their stupid beaks, he knew what was coming and tried to warn them. “Don’t even think about—”
“Don’t be a pussy.”
“Dammit.”
Lily tapped her foot. “My furniture?”
Right. Zane would be laughing his ass off right now to see his normally calm, cool, in control partner driven bat-shit crazy by a couple of birds.
Parrot-shit crazy?
“Hello,” he barked into Lily’s phone. “Who is this?”
Silence, broken only by heavy breathing.
“Louis. I’m in the FBI. You realize I can track you by computer tracking and satellite retasking, right?” He glanced at the phone. “Not to mention call waiting.”
The breathing grew frantic, and he heard the sound of a hushed but frantic argument. Lily made big “What the hell” gestures with her hands thrown out to her sides, and Damon shrugged and put the phone on speaker.
Finally, a man who sounded like Darth Vader crossed with Scooby Doo spoke up.
“What’s retasking a satellite mean? Do satellites have tasks?”
Lily groaned and clutched her head with both hands. “That’s him. Shawn Louis, of AAA Moving. Possibly the stupidest man on the planet.”
“Hey! I heard that,” Louis huffed out. “I’m not—”
“I don’t care,” Damon said, in his coldest, badass FBI agent voice. “This is Damon Jones, of the P-Ops division of the FBI. You have now crossed over into the territory of interstate trafficking in stolen property. You have five minutes to tell us where Ms. Cardinal’s property is and five hours after that to retrieve it and deliver it here, to her address, undamaged, or we will be talking about fifteen to life in a very dark cell in a very dark prison.”
Silence. He looked at Lily. Lily closed her eyes and shook her head.
Damon tried again. “Did you understand me, Louis?”
“So,” Louis said, sounding interested. “Does my satellite for my satellite TV actually track me?”
Lily started banging her head against the wall.
It looked like it hurt.
“Eff. Bee. Eye,” he told the phone. “I will make it my personal mission to make your life a living hell if you don’t find that furniture and get it here. Do.
You. Understand?”
Silence.
Then an older woman’s voice came on the line, and Damon winced. Suddenly, he knew exactly where Louis had gotten the Scooby Doo component of his voice.
“So, Mr. FBI. Does that come with good benefits? Because my Shawn, he works hard and he tries hard. We used to watch that X-Files show all the time. Do you work with Scully and Mulder?”
Damon eyed the wall, considering banging his own head against it. “No Scully, no Mulder. But arrests for illegal substances you may happen to have in your home? Sure. I’m an expert at that one.”
Mama Louis’s voice turned brisk. “We hear you. I’ll call Joe Bob’s mama, and you can bet she’ll get his sorry butt moving and on his way to you. It might take more than five hours, but not by much.”
Realizing he had made his point to the power behind the Triple A Moving throne, Damon put his professional FBI agent voice back on. “That will be sufficient, if you continue to give us regular reports. You can contact Ms. Cardinal—”
Lily shook her head and made “no way” motions with her hands. Either that, or she was signaling that the runner was safe.
Nah, probably the no-way thing.
“…by text,” he continued. “Every hour on the hour, starting now until her undamaged furniture is in the driveway here. You have this address?”
The woman rattled off the Wildflower Lane street number. “And this means you’re not coming out here with none a’ them drug sniffing dogs, right? Don’t like no dogs on my property except for Mrs. Puddles, here.”
“No dogs. So long as you deliver.”
He ended the call before she could ask him if the truth really is out there and handed the phone to Lily. “You’re welcome.”
“Really? You want me to thank you for a phone call when you’re commandeering my entire house and my entire life?” She brushed past him and headed for the back of the house. “How about this, Cat? How about you start holding your breath now, and keep doing that until I apologize?”
“That long, huh?” He tried not to notice her extraordinarily fine ass as she walked away from him down the hall, but it was a losing battle.
“Leopard?” she called over her shoulder.
“Nope.”
“All right. Give me a minute and I’ll take you out for some pizza that is so good you don’t deserve it, before my hangry gets too much for me and I blast you again.”
“Pizza sounds good,” he caught himself telling the birds.
Damn. Now he was talking to birds.
Screw dog psychologists. He was probably going to get his own man card revoked.
“Be nice,” Mugging advised him. “Until it’s time to not be nice.”
“ROADHOUSE?” Damon shouted down the hall. “You’re ROADHOUSING me?”
The silvery sound of her laughter was the only response.
“I’m in big trouble,” he muttered.
4
Lily changed into her oldest jeans and a worn, long-sleeved Buckeyes t-shirt, and then pulled her hair back into a knot, because she certainly wasn’t trying to impress this guy. No matter that he was totally hot, wickedly sexy, and clearly smart. No, her problem was that he was interesting, and she was a sucker for interesting in a world filled with dull.
Dull men with dull jobs and dull lives, talking to her about their dull cars or dull money or dull exes, wanting to have dull sex with her in dull places. But interesting was a problem—interesting had gotten her involved with Harry, who’d taken interesting to its extreme: the psychopathic, kidnapping, murderous, drug-dealing scumbag that he was.
She’d had enough of interesting. So Special Agent Interesting could just do his job and get the hell out of her house--and her life--as soon as possible.
She headed back down the hall and grabbed her keys.
“Let’s go get a pizza.”
“I like pizza,” her birds said in unison, and she laughed.
“I know babies. I’ll bring you some home, okay? Back soon. Let me know if anybody tries to break in or—worse--visit.”
Damon stood by the door, his hands in his pockets and a different pair of shoes on his feet.
“You keep shoes in your car all the time?”
A slow, devastatingly attractive smile spread across his unfairly handsome face. Those cheekbones. Goddess. Totally unfair.
“I never know when I might run into a fire mage with anger management issues.”
“Funny. Fine, let’s go get pizza. I’ll be able to think better when I’m not hangry.”
He nodded. “Sounds good. But what about…”
She rolled one hand in a “keep going” circle. “What about…”
He cleared his throat. “What about the birds? I see you don’t keep them in a cage—”
The parrots let loose with an eardrum-damaging squall of angry shrieks at the word ‘cage.’
“We don’t say the C word,” she told him, when they finally calmed down.
“Nobody puts Baby in a corner,” Mugging said, ominously, from his new perch on top of the light fixture about six inches from Damon’s head.
“Heard and understood,” Damon said, holding his hands, palms out, to the side. “My apologies.”
“They’re magical birds,” Lily explained, when she was able to quit laughing. “They sort of pop in and out when they need to…do their business.”
His eyebrows rose. “Pop in and out? Are you telling me that your parrots can teleport?”
“I guess I am. But let’s keep that between us, okay? The last thing I need is for the news to get out and one of the damn supernatural creature smuggling rings to get wind of it. They can teleport, but they’re no good at self-protection beyond that.”
Mugging flew down to the counter, landed next to Hugging, and ducked his head under one wing, as if embarrassed by the revelation. A wave of guilt washed over Lily. She knew the birds, especially Mugging, were still upset that they hadn’t been able to help her escape Harry.
“But you do a great job taking care of Hugging, baby,” she said reassuringly. “It’s my job to protect both of you, okay?”
Hugging trilled out a long, melodious, bit of tune, and rubbed her head against Mugging’s neck until he popped his head out from beneath his wing.
“So. Pizza?”
Damon nodded. “Pizza.”
Lily locked her door out of habit, even though the Cardinal witches’ enclave in Garden City was one of the safest neighborhoods in the country. Maybe in the world. There were so many safety, anti-theft, and anti-predator spells laid on the grounds and homes that they’d had problems with the city over it. When one of Sue Cardinal’s protection-against-bad-intentions spells had zapped a mailman so hard he’d nearly died of electrocution, they’d all had to dial it back. They’d learned that the guy had a gambling problem and had been planning to steal his wife’s engagement ring to go to Vegas, which is how he’d triggered the bad intentions spell.
Nothing about this story, which had left Lily in tears from laughing so hard, had amused the city officials, who’d still been mad about the unicorn incident, anyway.
This and many, many more bits of Cardinal family lore had regularly arrived in her email inbox, courtesy of her cousins. Rose had been pretty good at writing before she’d married Alejandro, gotten knocked up, and started a potions business with a troll. Amy only ever wrote sporadically, and even more rarely now that she was on an around-the-world trip with a vampire named William who was searching for a cure to his curse.
Lily grinned. Only Amy would get involved with a vampire who was allergic to magic. How would that work?
“Penny for your thoughts,” Damon said, walking along next to her with the easy lope of the cat he surely was.
“Bobcat?”
He laughed. “Not even close. Are you really curious, or just trying to distract me from asking about your thoughts?”
“Both,” she admitted. “But it wasn’t anything exciting. Just about my cousins and how they’v
e always written to keep me informed about what’s going on here in Cardinal Village, where everybody knows your name, and nobody will stay even an inch out of your business.”
She took a deep breath in spite of herself, breathing in the familiar scents of home. Flowers, all things green and growing, and the occasional whiff of meat being grilled in backyards. Small town Ohio was every bit of what you expected it to be, even when magic filled the air and homes. The barbecue grill might be lit by an incantation instead of a lighter, but the burgers and hot dogs would taste just as wonderful.
Damon made a noncommittal sound, so she was surprised when he spoke, a few moments later. “Sounds great.”
She glanced up at him. He’d sounded . . . wistful.
“It’s not. It’s awful. Intrusive and annoying and really no fun at all. I could never, ever get away with anything growing up. Every mom and dad in the neighborhood would call my parents and report in on me.” She shook her head ruefully, remembering. “I once had the perfect date planned with a college boy. I was sixteen. I’d planned how to sneak out, how to cover my tracks—everything. But I’d no sooner climbed out the window when my dad showed up on the lawn beneath me with his arms crossed and a gleam in his eye. I was grounded for a month.”
Damon’s lips quirked. “For a month? For a date you didn’t even go on?”
“Wellllll. He was a warlock.” She shrugged. “I guess that was a big part of it.”
“A warlock? As in black magic?”
“Yes, but he was only in college! He hadn’t even done any blood magic yet!” Even as the words left her mouth, she realized she sounded like she was still sixteen and stupid.
“If I ever have a daughter, and a warlock even thinks of coming anywhere near her, I’ll end him,” Damon said. “So I’m on your dad’s side in this.”
A little shiver of awareness and something else—something dangerously delicious—lifted the hair on the back of her neck at the idea of Damon as a dad. He’d probably be great at it, all fierce and protective.
Argh. No. She immediately put the smack-down on all Damon Jones shivers, delicious or otherwise. She was not in the market for shivers. No way, no how.
Anyway, the smell of Italian ambrosia told her that they were almost to Gianni’s, and her stomach started rumbling in happy anticipation. The sight of the familiar red awnings cheered her up by an unreasonable degree, considering her new house had just been commandeered, Harry was soon to be back in her life, and her belongings were probably lost for life or at least getting a Brazilian wax.