My words are deep and threatening: “Don’t move.”
Vuur turns nose to snout with me. “I wouldn’t think of it. However, if you will just let me up, I’m sure we can handle this situation one monster to another.” Vuur’s nose wrinkles. “Your breath is horrid. What do you feed on?”
“Honey,” Gracie says. “Just back your snout up a bit, Gaire, and if Vuur even looks like he’s going to shift into the dragon, you have my permission to kill him.”
Vuur slowly turns his head back to Gracie. “Young lady, you are just as obnoxious under that host.”
“Yeah, I taught her everything she needed to know,” Luna’s mother says out of Jane’s lips. “Now youse guys back it down a level … or five. You’re stirring the bitch in me.”
My eyes pierce where my teeth cannot, as I straddle Vuur, daring him to move a muscle. Deep in my chest the growl is soft but menacing.
Gracie slaps my snout. “Stop that! Settle down.”
“Well,” Luna’s mother says, gliding over me like a black storm cloud. “Now that I’ve managed to destroy the doppelganger who fully intended to destroy Luna, I believe I will be leaving before day breaks. I have a group of elders to address.” She smiles wickedly at me. “Damn, I wish I could have worn Jane to the meeting.”
As she glides toward the bolted door, she says, “It looks like Rogaire can clean up here without further assistance.”
“And who, per se, are you?” Vuur asks Luna’s mother. “But more importantly, what have all of you done with my Jane?”
“Your Jane?” we all say at the same time.
“Yes, I’ve grown rather fond of her. It’s a good thing I have such excellent sleuthing skills and was able to find Jane on her street corner. It seems you owe me, wendigo.”
I’m nose to nose with the shifter again. “For what?”
“For not leaving your doppelganger in Purgatory and instead taking her to Michigan to find you.”
“He’s right,” Luna says through Gracie’s lips. “If he didn’t take Jane and me with him, I might not have found you. He might not have fallen in love with Jane, and she might be dead right now. Heck, I might be dead by now. This could have turned out a whole lot different if Vuur had just started looking for you again.”
“He almost killed me,” I growl.
“I do believe the strength in that sentence is the word almost, wendigo,” Vuur says. “Your breath is fetid, your skin is oily, and your weight is making the dragon in me stir. Do we wish to go there?”
My chest rumbles.
Luna puts her arm over my hairy shoulder and plays with my white mane. “Can we leave now?”
“Where is Jane?” Vuur asks.
“Why don’t you both go set Jane free? We’ve—let’s not forget my part in all of this—created enough drama in the human world for one day,” Luna’s mother says as she seeps through the door frame. “I’ll be watching all of you,” her voice echo’s down the hall over the sound of approaching sirens.
Chapter 24
Gaire
“How long will you keep Gracie?” I ask.
“Until I shed her,” she answers. “She’ll be home in a few days.”
“I think it’s a good idea to hang onto her until then,” I tease. “She tempers the monster inside me and there’s the necromancer-witchy thing. She may turn out to be helpful.”
“What if I don’t want to temper your bad side?”
“But you never know when summoning a ghost can come in handy,” I say.
“Good thing I know where Gracie lives,” she playfully says. “I mean, in case we lose her or something.”
“I thought you said you’re strictly catch and release.”
“That was yesterday,” she says, a taunting grin on her face, eyes making quick movements toward the kitchen.
“Great to know. There’s two previous ladies I wouldn’t mind revisiting,” I say and run an index finger down her jaw and over the corner of her lip.
Gracie wiggles nervously, gently wraps her fingers around my promiscuous one, and pulls my hand to her lap. I give her gesture a friendly pat. We sit on her terribly uncomfortable sofa in the middle of way too many scents wafting off the candles in the room, and exchange a mild electric current flowing between us.
She’s still wearing the halter top, jeans, and strappy sandals I’m sure Gracie felt was risqué enough advertisement for a corner on OBT. The outside of my lips quiver a grin and I mentally laugh at the thought of her trying to hook in the outfit. It shows plenty of body for me, but on the street … not so much.
My mind wanders to the featherbed upstairs, and the open French windows drawing the night inside.
Gracie lifts her lids and stares at me through Luna’s eyes, speckled with darting red flecks. In a quick fluid movement, I grip her hands, lean my upper arm into her chest just under the ribcage, and roll her over my shoulders and around my neck.