the hell did you know where we are?”
“Can I come in and not have this discussion on the sidewalk?”
I wanted to thump my head on the doorframe. “Ronan, I have been awake for three straight days, fought a werewolf pack and a horde of gravelings, and had my magic retooled. I am so not in the mood to ask again, but I will. How the hell did you find us?”
“I paid Charles Vaughan to put tracking devices in the bags of food you bought at the roadhouse.”
My mind conjured up the memory of seeing Ronan slip Charles a roll of cash. I stifled a growl. Unbelievable. Charles Vaughan: not trustworthy in any world.
“Please bite him,” I told Daisy.
She showed me her teeth.
Ronan held up the bottles again, indicating the unlabeled one with a nod. “This is from Charles’s personal stash. I’m told it’s worth dying for. It certainly cost me a lot of money.” He looked down at the ward I’d placed on the threshold. “May I come in?”
His politeness and apparent honesty had me on guard. Then again, Daisy had insisted we go to the roadhouse so we could cross paths with him. Torryn had told me we would need him. The universe had clearly conspired to bring him to my door. My natural contrariness—not to mention my exhaustion—urged me to slam the door again, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over my head.
Instead, I flicked on the light and traced a rune on the doorframe with my finger. My ward shimmered. “Fine. Come in.”
He brushed past me, smelling of leather, tequila, the sea, and the open road. I shut the door, raised my ward again, and turned around.
He set the bottles on the little table and studied the cat-dragon, who stared back at him with emerald eyes. “You have a pūķis.”
“No wonder you’re such a good bounty hunter, with observational skills like that.” I knew I was being petty, but I was bone tired.
To my annoyance, he ignored my taunt. “Got any glasses?”
I spread my hands to indicate our surroundings. “Does this look like the kind of place that provides glasses?”
“Cups, then.” Without waiting for permission, he went to the bathroom and returned with two paper cups. His ice-blue eyes sparkled with some secret joke.
I sighed. “Yes, my bra is hanging in the bathroom. What are you, twelve? You’ve seen bras before.”
“I was actually amused by your travel bag, which is rather minimal in its contents, for a woman.” He released the stopper of the moonshine bottle, poured a generous amount into a cup, and offered it to me. “I didn’t see your bra, but I will go back and look if you’d like.”
Scowling, I took the cup. “Stay out of my bathroom.”
He poured himself a cup of tequila and raised it. “To long journeys and wondrous travels to faraway lands.”
I tapped my cup to his and sipped my drink. Ronan hadn’t lied. This moonshine was far and away better than what Lucy and I had drunk at the roadhouse. Something else this Charles had in common with his counterpart back home: a taste for the good stuff.
In one gulp, Ronan drained his tequila. He reached for the bottle to refill his cup. Daisy settled in beside him. My cat-dragon returned to her pillow and curled up with her eyes half-lidded.
“Why did you track us?” I asked as he refilled his cup. “I thought you wanted nothing to do with us.”
“I wanted to collect my hard-earned bounties first.” He set the bottle down. “Then I wanted to see you in action, so I knew who you were, how you fought.”
“You didn’t see enough when the werewolves attacked?”
“They weren’t much of a challenge for us, were they?” He knocked back his drink and poured another. “I learned a little about you, like the fact you aren’t from this world, but you were on your guard with me there.”
“So you tracked us.” My eyes narrowed. “How long have you been following us?”
“I caught up with you in Oakdale.”
My hand closed on the paper cup, crumpling it. Liquor ran down my fingers and dripped to the carpet. “Were you watching when the gravelings attacked?”
He took a drink. “Yes.”
I manifested my whip of earth magic and lashed at him before my brain even formed the thought that I wanted to attack. My anger gave me speed. It was my magic, and I’d formed the whip with ease. Yay for Tom’s magical tuning.
He raised his arm, moving with the lightning swiftness I’d