But if so, why hadn’t she called New York for backup? She was family. Any of them would gladly have rushed to help her, but she still hadn’t tried to call anybody, and she hadn’t replied to any of the phone messages left on her cell.
Tiago planned on asking her that very question when he caught up with her. She might be hell to track down, but he was old and steeped in Power and most of his talents were concentrated on the hunt. There wasn’t anything on this Earth he couldn’t track once he put his mind to the task. He recovered lost scent trails, made intuitive leaps no one else would think of and shit, more often than not, luck just fell his way. It might take him a while, but in the end he always brought down his prey.
His prey, in the end, appeared to be holed up in a motel room off the I-294 Tri-State Tollway.
He paused for a moment outside a door and listened. Her scent was all around on the surrounding sidewalk, but it was close to midnight and he didn’t want to knock on the wrong door by mistake.
He heard her inside. She was singing in a clear, sweet voice. His eyebrows rose.
“‘Down in the valley, the valley so low, hang your head over, and hear the wind blow . . . ’ ” The singing stopped. He heard her mumble, “Can’t remember what comes next, something, something . . .”
He grinned as he relaxed and leaned against the doorpost. If she was singing and talking to herself, she wasn’t dead in a ditch. It was all good.
She said, “Oh, that’s right . . . No, wait, that’s another song. Crap, I’m too drunk.”
That sounded like his cue. He knocked.
Silence. He imagined there was a startled quality to it.
He knocked again. “Tricks, it’s Tiago. Open up.”
She said with the slow incredulity of the inebriated, “Is that you, Dr. Death? There isn’t anybody named Tricks here.”
Dr. Death? He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Niniane. Open the door.”
“Wait, I’m in hiding. Don’t use that name either.”
He put his hands on his hips. “Then what the hell do you want me to call you?”
“Nothing. Thank you for stopping by and go away. I’m okay. Everything’s okay. It’s all taken care of now. Just don’t watch any TV for a while, okay? You can go back to New York, or wherever it is you lair when you’re not killing things.”
He scowled. No, thank you and don’t watch any TV? What the hell did she mean by that? He muttered, “I do not live in a lair.”
He settled his shoulder against the heavy metal door that was constructed to meet fire-safety codes and keep thieves out. After pushing with a steady increase of pressure, the lock and chain broke.
Cigarette smoke billowed as the door opened. He coughed, waved a hand in front of his face and stared at the scene inside.
The motel room was a pigsty. Shopping bags were piled on the bed nearest the door, with clothes and other items spilling out. Clothes tags littered the floor. Niniane lay on her back on the other bed, which was rumpled. She had kicked off the pillows, and they were on the floor too. She was dressed in some kind of porno version of camouflage, in very short shorts and a tiny stretchy T-shirt that left her narrow waist bare. Her head was hanging off the end of the bed. She held a bottle of vodka in one small hand. It was significantly low in liquid. She clutched a remote control in the other hand. A cigarette smoldered in a half-full ashtray and an open bag of Cheetos lay on the bed beside her.
Her compact, curvaceous body was laid out like some kind of offering to a pagan god. As someone who had once been a pagan god, he knew what he was talking about, and he definitely appreciated the view. As her head hung over the end of the bed, it accentuated the thrust of round luscious breasts that curved over a contrasting narrow waist. A gold ring glinted at her navel, just begging to be licked. Her graceful hip bones and the arc of her pelvis were outlined by shorts that Congress ought to make illegal. Slender, shapely bare legs tipped with toes painted a saucy pink completed the package, and his appreciative cock swelled to salute every visible succulent inch of her.
He glowered, thrown off balance by his own intense, unwelcome reaction. Rein it in, stud. Under the reek of smoke he could smell feminine perfume and—was that the scent of blood?
“Oh, you shouldn’ta done that,” Niniane said. Large upside-down Fae eyes tried to focus on him. “Breaking and entering. That’s against the law.” She sniggered.
Tiago took refuge from his strange feelings in the much more familiar emotion of aggression. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “What do you mean ‘go back to New York’? Do I smell blood?”