“His stuff?” I asked, and my voice broke into a tiny yelp on the end.
“Yeah,” the Kid said. “I’m sending you info on the Damours’ potential lairs, to add to any Adelaide sends you. You shouldn’t need to fight once you find them, but you never know. And it’s less than two hours before sunset. You better get weaponed up.”
Not knowing where else to go, but absolutely certain that I didn’t want to stay in the room with all the guys, I went to my room, shut the door, and started changing clothes. As I left the room, I muttered just loud enough for them to hear, “Men.” They laughed. Great. I was an amusing tension reliever for them.
Deep in my mind, Beast said, Mine.
And deeper still, I ached quietly for Rick. Which was just too incredibly stupid of me.
? ? ?
It didn’t take long for me to gear up. But it was weird. We were taking orders from the Kid. When had that happened? He texted our cells with the addresses for the Damours’ possible lairs and GPS coordinates and sat maps of the locations. Back in the foyer, we checked com gear and turned for the SUV parked out front.
Big Evan stepped in front of the door. “Shotgun,” he said.
He wasn’t asking for one. He was claiming the passenger seat, intending to ride along. I nixed the idea fast. “You are the only one who stands a snowball’s chance in Hades of controlling your daughter,” I said. “You cannot leave her with the Kid or Tia without her making them think they need to follow us.” At his confused expression, I muttered, “Trust me, big guy. Your daughter is doing magic, magic with raw power and no math or spells. And she’s got scary good control. So move. Now. I’ll find Molly and bring her home to you.”
“And if you need magic to help?”
“Then we’ll back off and call you. Deal?”
He heaved a breath that I felt across the foyer, and rubbed his face, sliding his hand down his beard. He smelled of sweat and fear, a slightly sour stench. His massive shoulders slumped. “Okay.” He went back to the sofa and sat down beside Bruiser.
“What’s wrong with this picture?” Eli asked.
“Too much to list,” I muttered. “Let’s go while we can.”
CHAPTER 20
What Took You So Long?
The first place on the Kid’s list was on Ulloa Street, near I-10, and out of the French Quarter, a world away from the lair of the three vamps, well, two, now that one was true-dead, a bag of ash. It was a narrow single-story building—empty of inhabitants but full of a mixed ethnic bag of carpenter types, a plumber, and maybe an electrician, standing around doing that guy thing that looks lazy but is actually part of working. Or so they say.
Eli stuck his head out the window and called out to the man closest, “Yo. How long this place been empty?”
“We been here, like, six weeks,” the Latino guy nearest said. “It was a doctor’s office till then, man.”
“What are you turning it into?”
“Some rich dude’s digs. Guy’s got it all.” He rubbed his fingers against his thumb to indicate money. And made another gesture that suggested the client was getting a lot of other kinds of action too. The men all laughed, Eli too. He gave a lethargic wave—another one of those manly gestures that suggested they all understood one another—and raised the window so the men wouldn’t get a good look at me as he drove off.
I snorted. Eli just slid his eyes to me and headed for the bridge and the Mississippi. “No rich guy’s gonna live here,” I said. “They’ll buy something in the Garden District or out at the lake.”
“He was shooting a line,” Eli agreed, with what might have been a teasing note in his voice, “’cause he saw I was with a woman.”
“Oh. Suave.” I would never, ever, understand men.
We accelerated down the street and I felt a prickle on the back of my neck. I looked around but saw nothing, and the unease dissipated into exhaustion and lack of sleep. Behind the seat was a blue cooler I hadn’t noticed before. I heaved it over the seat and into my lap.
Eli glanced at it and warned, “The Kid packed it for us. It’s probably full of crappy food.”
He meant it would contain sweets and carbs and he was both right and wrong. We had snack cakes stuffed with creamy centers and slathered in icing, energy bars, nuts, dried fruit, trail mix with Chex cereal in it, three kinds of meat jerky, two energy drinks, and cola. I downed a Coke nearly as fast as Bruiser had drunk the blue Gatorade and opened a pack of the snack cakes. “Caffeine and sugar,” I explained to Eli, who hadn’t asked. He shook his head but held out his hand. Without asking what he wanted, I popped the top of an energy drink before handing it to him. Then I opened a stick of jerky, which smelled like vinegar and preservatives. “Whatever floats your boat,” I said.