The silver familiar uncoiled from its role as a sedate neck circlet and icily eeled into my concealed cleavage. As my spine shivers settled in my stomach, it wove in and out through my navy jacket's front buttonholes, leaving the top two gaping open.
"Way to dress up a dull navy suit," Ric said.
I depressed Dolly's gas pedal hard enough to slam him back in the seat.
"Jerk," I said, smiling. "If you think a little sex will make me feel better about being a bureaucratic forbidden zone ... you may have a point."
"I was thinking ... a lot."
"Is that why you sent Quick on a sleepover with Tall-grass last night?"
"I figured we needed downtime alone. Together."
I nodded. "It's so far past lunchtime it's dinnertime. We'd better stop for fast food. Remember, chicken or fish."
Ric consulted his cell phone screen. "Right at the second light."
I followed directions and slowed Dolly on a wide turn into a drive-through lane before I saw and read the big sign on the tall pole. Ric was not only back, body and hopefully soul, so was his sense of humor.
"Jack in the Box, dude?"
When he shrugged, I noticed that even his lowbrow suit had great shoulder tailoring. "And you are so going to get fries with that."
I did, in fact, feel a lot better.
Chapter Fifteen
A SCRATCHING SOUND, like a cat claw raking across a hard surface, awakened me from dreams of being bound to an ancient Egyptian mummy preparation table.
Not only a dream. A memory.
I'd been sleeping on my side, as usual, so in one motion I rolled out of bed and was standing on my feet in the shadowy room, my bare toes curling into nylon shag, something unlikely to carpet any ancient chamber. The silver familiar filled my right palm with a cold metal weapon of some kind.
"Del," Ric's sleep-slowed voice drawled from behind me. "Where's the fire?" He was half-sitting on the ... yes, bed - not a stone table edged with a slim gutter for draining blood - behind me.
"I heard something," I said.
"I guess," Ric said as he turned on the bedside lamp. "What're you carrying?"
I turned my hand over in the weak light. "A humongous biker switchblade. The haft is etched with a screaming dude face wearing buffalo horns etched like a bad tattoo."
"Place-appropriate, I'd say," Ric said, yawning and checking his watch. It was so multifunction I couldn't even find the time display. "Ten a.m. I didn't hear any - "
The scraping sound came again, longer and louder. From the motel's metal door. I went to the curtained picture window and peeked out the side.
"Quicksilver wants in."
"That's new. Tallgrass must have dropped him off as a wake-up call."
"They've both had enough of our long, luxurious coed bedroom time," I guessed, going to undo the chain lock that was shimmying like a stripper from Quick's latest "knock." Luckily, even his big nails couldn't etch steel.
I looked around before I opened the door wide enough to admit him. Most of the parked cars that were here when we came back for the evening were gone. The motel was in the dead zone between guest shifts.
Ric had already retreated to the bathroom, so Quick gave my weaponless hand a lick in greeting and headed for the stainless food and water bowls next to my side of the bed. I hid them under the chintzy chintz dust ruffle when we were out during the day. No problem. The maids never cleaned in the closet or under the bed, and, frankly, I didn't blame them one bit. I hurried to the bedside to slide my feet into my cowboy-boot mules.
Meanwhile, I'd lost the awesome knife, replaced by a bicycle chain - style bracelet.
I put kibble in Quick's bowl and turned on my bedside lamp to use my first chance to inspect him for damage, although he'd probably licked it all away at Tallgrass's place. The big black leather collar he'd come with at the Sunset Park adoption event had a few more fang scratches between the silver circles that never dented, although they changed shape with the moon cycles and were now nicely three-quarter shaped.
"You're my Moondoggie," I told him, causing his perpetually perked wolfish ears to flatten a bit. Quicksilver wasn't one for mush. "I wonder what this collar is about?"
I gave his hackles a rough fluff with both hands and ran them deep into the thick silvery gray hair of his back and chest. It's unusual that a big dog,