I feel Gaire right down to my toes before I see him. Vuur is still watching the girls as they turn the corner of the building and run across a thin strip of pavement meant for bicycles. My eyes are more focused on the six feet and hundred-and-ninety pounds of head turning yumminess as he walks out of the coffee shop and jogs down to the sidewalk in time to watch CeCe corner the building.
Gaire’s wearing a different body. He has shoulder-length blond hair and a Florida tan. I can see his eyes—gray rimmed in black—as he cuts across toward the parking lot and down a sidewalk on this side of the road across from the coffee shop. His smile is melt-in-your-mouth sweetness, but what makes Jane’s heart beat wildly in my chest is a gust of wind carrying his scent: fear-stoked danger, musky copper, and dark damp woods. I know in an instant it is Gaire. I also know that although the wind is at his back, it won’t be long before he picks up my scent, too. Without an explanation, I jump in Vuur’s jeep, shut the door, and sit hands in lap, staring at the dragon.
“Would you care to explain your eagerness to leave?” Vuur asks as he slides into the driver’s seat.
“Aren’t we going to follow them?” Looking in the direction the girls went, I’m watching as the black sedan passes Gaire and two buildings, and then drives out onto a city street beside the Ferris campus; I wonder if it’s the street CeCe lives on. And I wonder what in the hell Jane’s john, Dick—the murdering-bastard I let live when I doubled up on Jane—is doing all the way up here in Big Rapids, Michigan, fifteen hundred miles from the Ambassador hotel in Orlando.
Chapter 14
Jane
“Will youse two just let me outta this damn car?” Jane says.
My eyes are locked on the entrance of the last building CeCe entered, but my mind is wandering.
Jane’s trick from Florida is in Michigan. Why?
Dick was definitely at the college taking pictures of CeCe and the dark haired girl.
But why? Maybe he knows the girl with CeCe. Damn, that would be a bigtime coincidence.
There is no other explanation, because stalking my last host is a totally unacceptable one. Better to think CeCe’s friend lives in Orlando, and that’s where she got Dick’s attention. But still … why follow a possible victim all the way up here?
Because I’m here...
“...is purely bait. We are simply here to observe and follow the girl,” Vuur is saying, “with a hope the wendigo will show.”
As I roll the word bait over in my mind, Jane carries on our half of the conversation.
“Two freakin’ hours? I say we reel in the damn hook and make sure it’s still baited,” she whines. “Jesus H, I coulda—”
“Completely destroyed the mission had I allowed you to follow them into that building,” The dragon tells Jane.
I feel like a third party, having missed part of their conversation, my eyes still locked on the doors of the building across from us.
“I gotta take a piss,” Jane blurts, hand reaching over the center console where a childproof lock-switch is located in the middle of the dashboard.
I barely notice Vuur grab Jane’s hand.
“Well, it’s about time,” I say and point to our girl bouncing through the door with a thick guy, with short hair, tight jeans, and tighter tee. The guy is smiling down at her like she’s a set of posts at the end of a football field waiting for him to kick the winning field goal.
“Finally, youse guys, I thought she’d died and gone to Hell,” Jane says, eyes locked on CeCe walking down the sidewalk away from the building. “Anybody else notice how skinny she is? Flat chested too. Hey, is she leaving campus?” She looks at Vuur. “Crank this baby up.”
“I was under the impression you have to urinate.” Vuur says with an unnecessary grin.
“Suddenly pissing don’t feel that important,” Jane says. “So turn the key, back’er up, and let’s move it, Warden.”
“Your absence of patience borders on barely tolerable,” Vuur says, watching CeCe cross the road to the parking lot as he turns the key in the ignition. “It is not especially endearing.”
As CeCe climbs into a yellow Volkswagen beetle, Vuur puts the Jeep in reverse.
“Yeah, how ’bout I find some patience when you unclench your ass and grow a pair.”
There’s a snappy richness in Jane’s voice and a hefty portion of colorful personality in her exaggerated hand gestures and facial expressions. I concentrate on memorizing them.
Vuur eases out of the parking space and inches toward a yellow Volkswagen.
“You used the word ass inaccurately during your tirade in an ignoble attempt to debase me. It was not effective.”
The dragon effortlessly guides the jeep over a small speed-bump and bounces out onto South Michigan, the street directly across from the Ferris campus.