face, like she’d caught one of the diseases that rarely hit humans these days. Chicken pox, maybe.
Drugs had hit her hard.
Death had hit her harder.
They’d found her a hundred and fifty miles south of East Orlando, her body naked, scraped up, scratched up and marked by mosquito bites.
Judging by the sign of her feet, she’d been walking a long, long time, I thought.
I reached for the phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Ignoring you,” I said to Damon.
He glared at me and came around to study the report.
He eyes locked on it, skimming it over. “Keeli…” Then he snorted. “Shit, that bastard was trying to work you over.”
“No.” I dialed TJ’s number. “Must be sad, Damon, not having friends you can trust.”
The hand resting on the table curled into a fist.
I looked away as TJ answered.
“Hey, TJ. I need to ask you a question…”
Keeli’s death was so far the only thing I’d uncovered.
Four days in and I hadn’t found much of anything about the boy I’d been hired to find. The boy I had to find if I didn’t want a death warrant placed on my tail.
I was about ready to just throw myself off the top of the Epcot Center just to get away from it all.
The only problem I wasn’t sure if it would kill me. Wolf bites wouldn’t do it, and neither would nearly being strangled. Would that jump? Nah. Probably not. It would just hurt. And probably hurt like hell.
I wasn’t human enough to die easily.
The sound of the phone ringing was enough to shatter what remained of my frayed nerves but I pretended not to hear it. No reason to act as though I had, after all. Somebody was calling Damon on his phone and it might not have anything to do with me.
Except I recognized the odd, blank look that came over his face when he was talking to My Lady. Shit. That title was enough to turn my stomach.
There was both an upside and a downside to these conversations. He’d be taciturn and quiet for hours. Awesome. The downside? He’d be even more of an asshole after the silence passed.
Not so awesome.
Pushing open the front door, I leaned against the doorjamb as he carried on his conversation behind me. Reports being checked, had investigated a number of possible areas in East Orlando where he might have gone—no luck at this point.
Yes, yes, My Lady—I’m so very sorry…
I tuned him out. I didn’t need to worry about the asshole behind me because there was a problem in front of me. Walking toward me with a small smile on his pretty face.
The rays of the setting gilded his features. Golden hair, made silver by the bright light. Long, lean easy grace. Lovely green eyes.
There he was…Jude in the flesh. Out in the bright light of the evening sun.
But why now?
“You keep refusing to come when I call. So I do as you said to Evangeline. I came to you,” he murmured into my mind.
I tensed, mentally going on retreat, but it didn’t help. He was still a presence crowding into my skull, one I couldn’t shut out no matter how hard I tried.
As he came to a stop in front of me, I tried not to gape at him. Tried not to glare.
I also, to my disgust, had to try not to drool.
Jude was a sexy, sexy work of art, one that got better with age, but I didn’t want to think about that. Didn’t want to think about him at all, really.
“I wish to hire you,” he said quietly, keeping his voice low.
That didn’t stop Damon from hearing him.
I heard the shifter’s voice trip over the phone, then steady. Yes, yes, My Lady, everything is well…
I stepped aside and gestured. The small, inner office was spelled—work by some of Colleen’s fellow witches. It would work well enough.
And hello…I could piss Damon off.
He came off the couch the second he saw Jude.
I waggled my fingers at him.
“I assure you, we are making progress, My Lady. Ruling things out is part of the process,” Damon said, his voice calm and easy even as he swiped out a hand for me.
Jude blocked it, summarily shoving me forward.
Good grief. I stumbled into my office just in time for Jude to slip in behind me and shut the door.
That was all it took to activate the spelling.
I’d have to open it for anybody to enter. Unless somebody busted the wards. A witch could do it. Weaker shifters couldn’t. Vamps were incapable—wards were