A Wolf at the Door

“Bacon is perfect.” I stuffed several pieces in my mouth, then realized that Spencer was still standing there, staring at all of us. “I’m still not tipping you. Get the hell out.”

With a sigh, he departed.

“You know that guy?” Tai asked, and I just mumbled something around my mouth full of bacon. I wasn’t claiming responsibility for Spencer, no how.

Before I could gorge myself completely on my breakfast, something buzzed in my jeans pocket. I hadn’t thought about my phone in so long, I’d forgotten I even had it. I’d also forgotten to call my wife for like two days. Oops.

Taking the bacon with me, I retreated to the spare bedroom. “Hey, baby!”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line, and then Mira sighed. “I’m guessing from the sound of your voice that you’re perfectly fine. So now I don’t know if I should be relieved, or furious.”

“I vote both. I deserve it.” I flopped on the bed, munching on my breakfast. “I am so sorry, baby. Things got a little nuts out here and I completely lost track of time.” Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure what day it was. Not good, when we had a mysterious New Year’s Eve deadline breathing down our necks.

“Yeah, we saw.”

“What?”

“You’ve been all over the tabloid shows this week. Beating up paparazzi, going in and out of hospitals and dance clubs…. That was a nice silk shirt she bought you, by the way.”

Inwardly, I cringed. I could only imagine how those pictures looked. “Would you believe I’ve destroyed that shirt already?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me any.” She hesitated a moment. “You are okay, right?”

“Fine and dandy. The hospital trip wasn’t mine.”

“Oh. That’s good, I guess.”

There was something important I was supposed to ask her, but it took me a few minutes to remember what it was. “Oh! Hey, do you know any more about…y’know.”

“No. Test is still negative. I’m still late.”

“Maybe you should go see Bridget. I mean, what if something’s wrong?” That thought chilled me clear down to my core. What if something was wrong with Mira? What if it was something really bad?

“She knows. We’ve talked about it. If it goes on much longer, we’ll do something. Right now, it still falls into the realm of stress or just plain getting older.”

“You’re not getting older. You’re what, like twenty-two?” That at least earned me a chuckle from my thirty- something wife. “Hey, you know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, Jess. I know. I love you too.”

We spent a few minutes catching up on Annabelle’s antics and Esteban’s high school drama. I hadn’t realized until that moment how homesick I was. God, I wanted to see my family, smell my little girl’s hair, kiss my wife. I didn’t want to be out here in La La Land anymore.

My phone started giving me the sad little chirp to remind me that I hadn’t charged it in forever. “Baby, I gotta go, my phone’s dying.”

“Okay. Jess, please be careful out there. It’s making me nervous.”

“Hey, you know me. I’m always careful.” I’m not sure she heard me, though, as that was the moment my phone gave up the ghost. Dammit. I didn’t get to tell her good-bye. At least I’d snuck an “I love you” in there before it croaked.

Not saying good-bye felt like bad juju, and I couldn’t shake the feeling as I returned to the living room.

“So what do we do now?” Gretchen looked at me expectantly.

“We do nothing. I am going to go wander through the hotel and stab more people with pins.”

Tai raised a brow. “Seriously? You think they’ll let you do that?”

“It’s Hollywood, right? And I’m with Gretchen Keene, right?” I nodded toward the movie star in question. “According to her, that means I can do anything I want and no one will say anything.”

And apparently, I could. You’d think someone would object to a random guy strolling through the hotel kitchens, poking people with safety pins, but I got surprisingly little resistance. Well, until I got to the head of hotel security. I guess poking him with a pin was probably not high on my list of smart acts.

The nice security men delivered me back to the suite, and Tai, who answered the door, promised them I would be on my very best behavior from then on. Before I could come in and take my lumps like a good boy, Gretchen came out the door, obviously dressed for a trip out.

“Um…where are you going?”

“Your friend Ivan gave you the address, right? For the translator?”

Tai gave me a look that said he’d been trying to talk her out of it for some time now, obviously with zero success.

“You realize that there is a big mud man out there who seems to know your every move, right? You’re safer here.”

Her jaw firmed obstinately. “Look, whoever sent this golem thing, it’s because of my contract. If I’m going to