Dark Champion (Flirting with Monsters #4) - Eva Chase Page 0,65

put her through enough?” she’d said with a jerk of her hand toward the sink, which at that point had been sputtering alternating dribbles of pineapple juice and sour milk, and the hellhound shifter had been wise enough to shut his mouth.

I had to say the pineapple juice was actually kind of enjoyable. Hey, don’t judge. The warm iced tea that had been spewing from the showerhead for a few hours this morning? Not so much.

“We will need to fill up the gas again before we reach our destination,” Omen said to Ruse. “Pick the stop at your discretion.”

“Letting me play the boss? That could be dangerous.” Ruse motioned Snap closer. “Grab my phone and let’s look up our options for delicious satisfaction.”

Omen must have made a gesture of his own, because Thorn materialized a moment later and dipped his head before making a report. “No sign of concerning activity in the area. I don’t believe we’re being followed.”

The warrior had decided to stay the course for this potentially crucial stage of our mission, but I knew he still felt uneasy about the debt his fellow wingéd had suggested he owed them. His gaze slid to the landscape passing by the window, his face set in a pensive expression.

I passed my cards over to Gisele so she could shuffle and looked up at Omen. “If this is some kind of trap Tempest set up, she wouldn’t need to have anyone following us—she’ll be waiting for us there.”

He grimaced. “I wouldn’t put it past her to employ multiple tactics so she can keep an eye on us. We’ve already surprised her once.”

“I know you and Thorn enjoy worrying,” Ruse called back, “but I wouldn’t have suggested we embark on this voyage if it looked anything like a trap. The bits and pieces connecting the Company to this guy are mostly from months or even years back. We didn’t uncover any communication between them and him since he was sent off to Crete last month. Tempest didn’t even know we’d be looking for her back then.”

“I wouldn’t have agreed to your suggestion if I thought it was likely to be a trap either,” Omen muttered. “I just know that when it comes to the sphinx, more care is a much better strategy than not enough.”

Antic bounced on the sofa. “Too much doom and gloom around here. Are we playing another hand or what?”

I happily indulged in another round of that distraction, even though it cost me the last of my pennies and several nickels to boot. The imp was just crowing over her winnings when the RV slowed.

Ruse pulled off at a faded gas station with only two antique-looking pumps and a similarly scruffy café next door. I couldn’t read the lettering on the grimy sign over the door. The mock columns that ran along the front of the building on either side of it, designed to look like a Greek temple if those temples had been painted with red and blue stripes over the whitewashing, had gone dingy with time, and not in a way that gave them historic grandeur.

“Ignore appearances,” the incubus said as he led the way out. “This place is supposed to have the best dolmades in a hundred-mile radius.”

Rather than salivating, Snap was peering at the restaurant front with a faint frown. He’d jarred to a stop a few feet from the RV. When I touched his arm, he shook his head as if to clear it and aimed one of his brilliant smiles at me. “Should we discover what these dole mad Es are?”

Ruse took it upon himself to do all the ordering, but I trusted the incubus’s affinity for carnal pleasures. As he, Snap, and I schlepped the bulging bags to the RV, where the equines were basking in the sun, a man so skinny he could have passed for a signpost seemed to shimmer out of the shadow cast by an actual signpost and stalked over to Omen. I stopped in my tracks.

“What is the meaning of this excursion?” the unfamiliar shadowkind demanded in a haughty, nasal voice.

Omen reined in a bristle with visible effort. “Who the hell wants to know?”

The skinny guy, whatever sort of being he was, folded his arms over his chest. “The Highest expect you to be taking your commitment to them much more seriously. While Ruby is on the loose, this isn’t the time for taking vacations.”

Shit a slimy slug, they were following Omen to nag at him now?