“True, but I’m pretty sure he’s an enchanted broom. And sometimes when I get up in the morning, food is missing. Once there was a half-eaten bagel on my kitchen counter, and I know I didn’t eat it.”
I looked at Broom, leaning nonchalantly in the corner, against the back of the booth, and I thought he might have twitched a little. Probably, he was laughing at us.
“Too bad about your date tonight,” I said to Glo. “Why was he arrested?”
“The usual. He shot someone in the head with a nail gun. Honestly, I’m going to stop going out with carpenters. This is getting really old.”
It was after ten when I got home, and Cat was waiting for me. I closed and locked the door and bent to scratch Cat behind his ear. We went into the kitchen, I gave him a pumpkin muffin and some milk, and waited while he ate.
“I had another one of those strange days,” I said to Cat. “Diesel thinks the hunt is on for one of the SALIGIA Stones, and it looks like someone was killed because of it. What do you think?”
Cat looked up at me and blinked.
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I think, too.”
I turned the lights off, and Cat and I padded up the stairs to my bedroom. My bedroom walls are pale green, and the sheers on the window are white and floaty. I found my bed in a secondhand store, and it was exactly what I wanted. It’s queen-size and has a wrought-iron frame that has a fanciful, scrolly design on the headboard and footboard. I have a small table and lamp at bedside, and a small chest of drawers at the foot of the bed. No television. Just a notepad and pen on the table, and a book.
I puffed my pillows and snuggled under my genuine synthetic down comforter. Cat curled at my feet.
“This is the good life,” I said to Cat.
Cat didn’t look around at me. Cat knew it was good. Probably, he would think it was even better if he hadn’t been neutered, but there wasn’t much I could do about that. I thought about reading a few pages, but that’s as far as it went. It had been a long day, my stomach was full of cheeseburger, and I was tired.
I never have problems falling asleep, and I rarely wake up in the middle of the night. My eyes open every morning at 4:10 A.M., which is five minutes before my alarm goes off. So it was odd to wake to a dark room and see 2:00 on the digital display of my clock radio. I lay very still, barely breathing, listening, knowing something had dragged me out of sleep. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I saw that Cat was crouched in the middle of the bed, his tail bristled out like a bottle brush, his attention riveted on a shadow at the far end of the room. I realized the shadow was a man, and my heart stopped for a moment.
It was Wulf. He was standing statue-still, silently watching me.
“How long have you been here?” I asked him, my voice barely above a whisper.
“Not long.”
“What do you want?”
“Compliance. I want you to stop helping my foolish cousin. Without you, he would be forced to give up and move on.”
“I can’t see him doing that.”
“He would have no choice. He would be ineffective.”
“Why do you want him to give up?”
“I have my reasons. And some of the answer is obvious. I need to secure the Luxuria Stone, and he’s making it more difficult than it should be.”
“I’ll think about it,” I told him.
Truth is I’d tell him anything if I thought it would get him out of my bedroom.
“You have no idea how dangerous this hunt is,” Wulf said. “This isn’t a game. There will be terrible consequences if you continue.”
There was a flash of light, Cat growled low in his throat, and when the smoke cleared, Wulf was gone. I didn’t hear him leave. No footsteps on my stairs. I didn’t hear a door open or close. Only the rumble of an expensive car engine catching on the street below my window.
“Jeez Louise,” I said to Cat.
I switched my bedside light on and debated calling Diesel. It would be comforting, but it wouldn’t really serve a purpose. Wulf was gone. At least for now. I got up and turned every light in the house on, and checked to make sure all the doors were locked. I grabbed some cloves of garlic and my big chef knife, and I went back to bed. Okay, I know garlic is for vampires, and I don’t think I believe in vampires. At least I don’t want to believe in vampires. And Wulf probably isn’t a vampire. Still, it can’t hurt to carry some garlic with me just in case, right?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Clara watched me pipe frosting onto a batch of spice cupcakes. “You look like you’re asleep on your feet,” she said. “You just frosted a cupcake with your eyes closed.”
“I had a bad night. Wulf popped into my bedroom at two in the morning, and I couldn’t get back to sleep after he left.”
“He popped in?”
“I woke up and there he was . . . watching me.”
“That’s creepy. What did he want? Did he attack you?”
“No. He wanted to talk. The conversation ran somewhere between a threat and a warning. He wanted me to stop helping Diesel.”