“Spells of binding. Rick, that’s why the moon can’t call you. You’re already partially bound to something else.” At his expression I said, “And you knew that.” He nodded. “But did you think that Molly and her sisters”—I stopped for a heartbeat. Not Evangelina. I have to be sure of that. I found my place with only a bare hesitation—“might be able to break it for you?”
“It crossed my mind. But I might go furry, and if the spell goes active when I change, it might keep me in cat form, which is not how I want to live my life. At this point, I’m waiting it out. See what happens at the full moon,” he shrugged mildly, which was false body language. Had to be.
I thought about that for a while, about not knowing what your body might do, about living forever in Beast form. I had spent over a hundred years as Beast, and it had changed me. “Okay. I can see that. So. What did Kem send you to do? Buy beer?” Instead of answering, Rick lowered his head and touched my lips with his. I sighed into his mouth and pulled him over me. “I like playing,” I murmured. Rick laughed again, the amused vibrations throbbing through me.
By late afternoon, I was exhausted and lethargic and energized all at once. I watched from beneath half-closed lashes as Rick dressed and left the room. I heard him speak to one of the twins on his way out, and caught the tenor of the exchange, one of those manly tones that said they knew what we had been up to for the last few hours, which they would. Blood-servants can hear better than humans and we hadn’t been trying for silence. We’d been playing. Yeah. For hours. Still smiling, I rose and made my way to the bathroom for a hot shower.
I was still steaming when my phone rang. “Yellowrock,” I said, cutting the water.
“I understand that you believe you have located the grindylow’s lair,” Kemnebi said.
“Yeah. Pretty much.” I had told Rick I had a good idea where the grindy had holed up. It hadn’t taken him long to report back to the black were-leopard. “Do you wish for me to go with you to track him down?”
I pulled my hair to the side so it would drip into the tub instead of on the phone. “Yes.”
“Provide me with the coordinates. My cat will lead the hunt. My . . . associate,” he spat the word, “will assist us.”
I figured that the associate was Rick, the man he planned to kill as soon as Rick shifted. Which was not gonna happen, even if I had to start a supernatural international incident to prevent it. “Fine by me.” I gave him the location, an address in Hot Springs where he could leave his car. “I’ll be there in ninety minutes,” I said.
“Excellent.” The call ended, and so did my long steamy shower. I dressed and dried my hair with the hotel’s blow dryer, braided my hair out of the way into a fighting queue. Slid vamp-killers and wood stakes into my clothing and hair, made sure I was wearing crosses. Last thing, I double-checked that half of my ammo was silver and half was regular. The sun would set in a few hours, and there was no telling what might happen after dark with a pissed-off black were-leopard and empty hunting territory. Into a zippered pocket I placed a mountain lion tooth, my backup emergency tooth for shifting into Beast.
Dressed for hiking and hunting, I found three more messages from Angelina, messages I couldn’t deal with, not and let Big Evan do things his way. But I was going to have to make an appearance at Molly’s. Soon. I exited my room, texting instructions to Derek, not thinking about the blood-servant twins with big ears and bigger libidos. I made it five feet into the common room when Brian was in front of me, nearly vamp-fast. Leering. I almost dropped the cell.
“I just earned twenty from the ugly brother,” he said. I didn’t respond except for the blush starting somewhere below my waist and quickly spreading up my chest. It suffused up my throat and into my cheeks. Brian’s smile widened. “You are a screamer.”
I pursed my lips to keep in an instinctive retort, and pushed past him. This was just teasing. Or jealousy, which made me grin. I was closing the door to the suite when I heard him say, “Derek retrieved your SUV. Do you want to tell us why it was hidden in the driveway of a burned-out homesite?” I didn’t. I closed the door and sent a second text to Derek, thanking him for getting the vehicle back and thinking of all the uses of GPS and how they could trip me up. I had to do better about arranging recovery of my own vehicles. I was getting complacent in the world of vamps, weres, humans, and tech. I needed to take better care.
A little over an hour later I was parked a mile downstream from Evangelina’s, and ready to hunt. The battered, rusted, red pickup truck pulled in beside me, rolling through the mud, with Rick driving, Kem sitting pretty on the front seat. Minutes later we were on the hunt.