Crap! I wrenched the door open, jumped into the car, slammed the door shut, and punched the lock button. Hatchet brought the blade of the sword down hard on the roof of the car and recoiled from the impact. I cranked the engine and roared away with Hatchet running after me. I lost him after a block and a half. My heartbeat returned to normal after three blocks. Lucky for Hatchet, he didn’t actually get to smite me, because Wulf wouldn’t have been happy. And ugly things can happen when Wulf isn’t happy.
I walked into my house twenty minutes later. Diesel and Carl were already there. Cat was keeping his eye on them.
“What’s new?” Diesel asked.
“Had an incident with Hatchet. He tried to smite me, but I was too fast for him. What’s new with you?”
“I have to pull the plug on someone on the West Coast, but I want to do a show-and-tell for you first.”
“Pull the plug? Is that like whacking someone?”
“No. ‘Whacking’ would imply death. This is more like cutting off someone’s electricity because they didn’t pay their bill.”
I thought this was a conversation I didn’t want to pursue. Sometimes you don’t want to know too much.
We all went into the kitchen.
“Can you cook at all?” I asked Diesel.
“I can scramble an egg, make a sandwich, and open a beer bottle. I leave the fancy stuff to other people.”
I was obviously one of those people who made the fancy stuff, so I pulled a couple chicken breasts and a bunch of root vegetables out of the fridge.
“How serious was the Hatchet incident?” Diesel asked.
“Hard to say. Serious enough to get my heart rate up. As it was, he put a big scratch in my car. Not that it matters.”
“Do you know what caused him to attack you?”
“I sort of knocked him off the launch and into the bay earlier today, and I think it ruined his hairdo.”
Diesel grinned. “Nice.”
I washed the vegetables and set them on the counter to chop. “So we’re one coin fragment and a map away from finding the stone. All that stands between us is a demon and Wulf. Our troubles are over.”
“The map will be easy, but I might have to trade you off to Wulf in exchange for his piece of the coin.”
“What?”
Diesel was close behind me. He leaned in and kissed me just below my ear.
“I was kidding,” Diesel said. “I wouldn’t give you to Wulf. You’re worth more than one piece. He’d have to throw in Hatchet to sweeten the deal.”
I elbowed him in the chest. “Jerk.”
“Yeah, but I’m hot,” Diesel said.
“When will you be back from your plug pulling?”
“Hard to say. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll be back in time to steal the map on Saturday.”
I took my chef’s knife out of the drawer and diced the heck out of a carrot.
“You’ve got some serious aggression going there,” Diesel said. “If you need to relax, I can offer something better than carrot mutilation.”
I looked at him with one raised eyebrow.
Diesel was hands in his pockets, back on his heels. “Just sayin’.”
Whack. I halved an onion.
“Maybe later,” Diesel said.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At four o’clock sharp on Saturday, Glo hung the CLOSED sign on the bakery door and we all assembled in the kitchen. We needed to load the van and arrive at Cupiditas for setup by six o’clock at the latest. The party was from seven to nine. I’d been told it was a fundraiser for the preservation of the Eastern spadefoot toad. I suspected most of the people attending didn’t give a flying fig about the toad. They’d forked over five thousand for a ticket to a Martin Ammon party and to get a look at his house.
Josh and Glo were going to help me serve. They were dressed in standard caterer attire. Black slacks, white shirt, and red tie for Josh. Black skirt, white shirt, and red tie for Glo. I was wearing my one and only little black dress. So far Diesel was a no-show.
We had the van packed and ready to roll a little after five o’clock, and Diesel strolled in. He was wearing a black suit, black dress shirt, and black tie. Wulf dresses like that and looks like a Hollywood vampire. Diesel looked more like a bodyguard for Madonna.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
“I’m your van driver. Once the party gets under way I’ll be a guest who will wander unnoticed around Ammon’s house and borrow his map.”
“Good luck with that one,” I said.
I couldn’t imagine Diesel ever going unnoticed. He was big and scruffy in a rugged movie star handsome kind of way, and he walked in a cloud of testosterone. You would have to be dead not to notice Diesel.
Twenty minutes later, Diesel drove the van through Ammon’s gated entrance and parked in front of a garage bay. Rutherford and two household staff were waiting to help us unload. By seven o’clock we were set to serve. Guests were directed to the large formal living room and from there onto a terrace that looked out over the ocean. I had my desserts displayed on several tables on the terrace. My bananas Foster station was indoors, in front of a bay window. Josh and Glo were circulating with sterling silver trays filled with cookies and homemade chocolates. Diesel was lurking in a corner.