A Wolf at the Door

Her back was covered. The iridescently white tattoos spread from the tops of her shoulders to the small of her back, ending right where a married man should stop looking anyway. Once I really tried to see them, I could see the intricate loops and whorls, the whole complicated design almost swaying under my gaze. I caught myself swaying in time to it and looked away.

So that’s what a trapped soul looked like. Many trapped souls, actually.

It was fascinating and sickening all at once, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to reach out and touch those faintly seen shimmers or turn and walk right out the damn door.

“Are you done?” Her tone of voice told me I was, whether I liked it or not. I stepped back, tucking my key chains and such away.

“Yeah. You’re all clean.” When I really thought about it, I guess it wasn’t surprising. I mean, Gretchen was some demon’s pride and joy. They wouldn’t want some skuzzy little parasite sucking on all those glorious souls she was carting around.

“Good. Now let me make a few things perfectly clear to you.” Again, the hands on the hips. “I don’t like you. I don’t want you here. The only reason I’m allowing this is because Reggie thinks it’s a good idea. So you will sit down, you will shut up, and you will stay out of my way, are we perfectly clear?”

Oh, that was it. “Then let me make myself perfectly clear. I don’t like you either. I think what you’ve done to other people puts you one rung below slime on the evolutionary ladder. I am here because I owed someone else a huge favor. At no time did I say I’d take orders from a spoiled little rich bitch, so what you do or do not allow really means diddly-squat to me.”

I don’t know what I expected from her, but it wasn’t a very satisfied smirk. She nodded once. “So long as we know where we stand.” Turning on her heel, she snatched a satin robe up off the couch—proving she could have dressed any time she wanted, she’d just chosen not to—and marched back into her bedroom.

I don’t know what I expected from the other men in the room either, but when Tai and Dante laughed, I felt some tension ease across my shoulders.

Even taciturn Bobby nodded his approval. “You’ll do just fine here.”

I had my doubts.

7

I escaped to the safety of my own room after that. “Freakin’ California.” I’d just tossed my suitcase on the bed earlier, so I made some vague motions toward unpacking it. “The problem with California is that it’s full of Californians,” I told the empty room.

It was a nice room. Not the sprawling paradise down the hall, but nice. I’d never had a king-sized bed, and most definitely hadn’t had one all to myself. The comforter was black satin, and looked like you could sink into it forever, and the bed was piled high with eleventy-billion pillows. I had a small bar to one side, and a fully stocked office area to the other. The closet was bigger than my den at home. Cripes.

I threw the curtains on the windows open wide, staring out at L.A. for a few long moments. Buildings stretched as far as the eye could see, all different and yet oddly the same as what I’d see in Kansas City. Somewhere out there was the ocean, and I wondered briefly if I’d be subjected to it during my stay. Sunlight and me, we don’t exactly get along. I’d wind up looking like a samurai lobster if I was out there for more than an hour or so. Still, a city was a city apparently, especially from this height. Stone and concrete, brick and asphalt. I had to wonder if all the seductive tinsel and bright lights only glimmered at night.

But enough of that foolishness. Top priority was getting Cam’s portable wards put down. When I opened up my suitcase, the first thing to catch my eye was a tiny piece of quartz, resting on top of my neatly folded T-shirts. I picked it up, rolling it between my fingers.

Ivan had given the crystal to me, years and years ago. I was supposed to do some meditation exercises with it or something, try to awaken the magic Ivan was just sure I had buried deep inside me. I think the crystal was supposed to react in some way if I ever got it right. Needless to say, it had always remained still and quiet, perfectly clear except for the one milky white flaw deep inside it.

Mira must have packed it for me, but I couldn’t for the life of me fathom why. I tucked it into the pocket of my suitcase, and kept digging through my clothes. I found the Ziploc bag containing my magical goodies stuffed under my socks. The canister of demon repellent had survived intact, and I hooked it on to my belt loop with the rest of my doohickeys. I uncoiled the lengths of blessed string from the bag, examining the tiny tingles that spread across my skin like a band of ice-skating fleas. The trip had no ill effect on Cam’s spells, then.

I eyed the expansive windows first. That was a lot of glass, a lot of entry point. With the coin on my key chain, I could make some holy water, paint protections on the windows. I finally opted not to. This high up, I didn’t think a window entry was likely, and I hated to waste spells when I didn’t have an easy way to replenish them.

So that just meant warding the doors. I briefly thought of doing the elevator too, but I wasn’t sure how the constant motion would affect the spell, and I wasn’t sure I had enough string, either. Only the occupied rooms would get the warding treatment.

It took me a few minutes to figure out just how to go about applying said string, but it finally came down to a liberal application of tape and staples, which I just happened to have on the nicely equipped desk. The string was long enough to make the entire loop around the inside of the doorjamb, and once in place, I verified that I could feel the boundary as I passed in and out of my door. It glided over me like a soap bubble, making the short hairs on my arms stand on end.

I had to wonder just how powerful it would be, though. Cam’s wards had failed us in the past. Granted, he’d also been close to “spelling” himself to death at that point, so I wasn’t sure I could hold that against him. I just… wasn’t sure I could trust him, yet. If it had been Mira’s work, I wouldn’t have questioned it at all. I had more faith in her than I did in myself, most days.

Speaking of…

With my room at least nominally secure, I flopped on the monstrous bed, listening to the phone chirp in my ear, and smiled when she answered on the third ring. “Hey, baby.”

“Jess! You made it there okay?”