“I’m no good with kids, Lizzy.”
“She’s not a kid.”
“I’m no good with baby shape-shifters, either.”
“What’s up with you?” I asked softly. “I’ve asked you for worse things, Jimmy, than watching over a kitten-kid.”
“And I gave you every one.”
Something in his voice made me swallow hard against a sudden thickness in my throat. When I had myself under control, I murmured, “What’s one more?”
CHAPTER 13
“Hasn’t he done enough?”
Summer had left Luther and Faith behind and fluttered over to horn in on our conversation.
“Yes,” I said.
She’d opened her mouth to argue, but when I agreed, she shut it again. Summer had no more idea how to handle me when I was being pleasant than I’d know how to handle her if she were.
“But I still need his help and I have to leave, preferably today.”
“He wants to keep you from leaving”—she shot Jimmy a disgusted glare—“by giving you a hard time about babysitting. Try to keep up.”
Well, duh. That made sense.
“So have a nice trip,” Summer said. “Try not to die.”
“I never knew you cared.”
“I don’t. Problem is, you die and we’ve got Doomsday—new leader of the darkness, death, destruction, crack in hell’s doorway, and so on. I’m bored.”
“Yeah, it does get old. I’ll try not to get killed and ruin your life. Getting back to the baby . . .”
“I’ll watch her.”
Actually, that worked. Summer might look like a petite, blond rodeo groupie, but she was dangerous. She also had a virtual fortress in New Mexico.
“You’ll bring her to your cottage?” I asked.
“Of course.”
“And Luther?”
“Wouldn’t leave without him.”
“What about—?”
We both turned to Jimmy. He stared back at us with no expression.
“I could knock him over the head and take him, too,” Summer mused.
Yeah, that oughta work.
“Got any gold chains?” I asked.
“Not on me.”
“I have some in the trunk of the car that you can borrow.”
“Good ones?”
“Worked on me.”
“That’ll do.”
Jimmy lifted his eyebrows. “You through?”
“You going back to New Mexico with Summer the easy way or the hard way?”
Now his eyebrows shot downward, and his fingers curled into his palms. “I’d like to see you try it.”
“I’d like to see me try it, too.” I took a step forward, spoiling for a fight. Sometimes that was the only way to feel human these days.
But Jimmy shook out the tension in his hands and held one up. “There are a lot of people—or un-people,” he conceded when I took a breath to correct him, “that are after this child and we don’t know why.”
“Do we know who?” Summer cast a glance at Luther and the kitten, but they lay on a small patch of grass watching the clouds drift by and paying no attention to us, or at least pretending not to.
“Not really,” Jimmy answered, then explained all that had happened at the motel.
“Why send humans?” Summer asked.
“That appears to be the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” I murmured.
“No,” Summer said slowly. “It’s pretty clever. You didn’t get a read on them. No whisper from Ruthie. No buzz. Because they’re human.” Her perfect pink lips tightened. “Brilliant.”
“Except most humans would be hamburger if they tried it.”
“If they were unprepared, as most humans are. But these weren’t,” Summer said. “We’re going to have to stay on our toes. This could be the new norm.”
“Hiring human hit men?”
“I bet they do it again.”
“Frick,” I muttered.
Summer laughed. “Frick? Since when do you watch your language?”
“Since—” I jerked a thumb at the kids.
“Oh.”
“I—uh—better go.” All of a sudden I didn’t want to, and I wasn’t sure why. Summer drove me insane; Jimmy wasn’t much better. The baby, cute as she was, made me nervous. The only one I could stomach lately was Luther, and I had to leave him behind.
I headed for the Impala. Luther hailed me before I got there, and I made a detour over the crunchy August grass toward him and Faith.
Luther stood. “They gonna watch her?”
“Summer is.” Luther nodded, as if he’d expected nothing else, then headed for the Impala.
“Whoa, big guy.” I put a hand on his arm, got a flash of lions roaring, teeth and claws flailing, blood flying, before I yanked away.
I needed to do a better job of shielding myself or I was going to blow a blood vessel one of these days. I used to be much better at it, but my mind was so full of . . . everything else, sometimes I lost my focus.
“You can’t go,” I finished.
“Like hell.” Luther started for the car again.
“I’m serious.”
He didn’t stop. “Me too.”