be all right. Just so you know, Nymar can produce venom like a snake. They’ll spit it at you, and if it gets in your eyes, well, that’s really bad.”
“It is, huh?”
She nodded slowly and kept her eyes locked upon his. “You did really well tonight,” she said as she patted his wrist and allowed his hand to slip free. “You didn’t panic and you kept me covered.”
“I didn’t panic? You must not have been watching me very closely.”
Paige laughed, but then pulled away and turned her head. He might have been overly tired or overly optimistic, but he thought there was some color flushing into her cheeks. Before she pulled even farther away, he reached out and closed his hand around her wrist. Before he could unleash the smooth talking he’d planned in his mind, Paige lifted his wrist straight up, to effectively and painfully lock the joint.
“Sorry,” she whispered as she loosened the hold. “Reflex.”
Now he was the one to back off. “It’s all right. My fault.”
The way she looked at him now, Paige might as well have been staring at him through a microscope. Slowly, her eyes wandered down along his body and then worked their way up again. “It may get rough around here, but I’d really like it if you stayed. I can keep an eye on you better that way.”
“Well,” Cole replied in the coolest tone he could manage, “maybe I should come along to keep you covered.”
Paige smiled and patted his cheek with her free hand. As she turned around, she put just enough muscle into her final pat to make it something close to a smack. “You’re cute,” she said. She picked up the shotgun and angled the barrel to keep it from scraping against the floor as she walked away.
Even after some distance had been put between them, Cole could still smell the scent of her hair and feel the bit of sweat that had been on her scarred, yet soft hands.
“I’m going to jump in the shower,” she said. “You’re welcome to stay here tonight if you want. There’s a cot in the freezer. It’s a walk-in and the refrigeration unit doesn’t work, so I was going to use it for a safe room since it’s got the thickest door in the place.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Cole groaned. “By the way, what are the odds of that thing really tracking me all the way from Canada to Chicago? I mean, aren’t there enough smells in this city to cover mine up?”
Paige stopped and cocked her head to one side while keeping her back to him. Her hips shifted, drawing his eyes and holding them for the duration. “I once had a shapeshifter follow me for three months and across twelve states, but that was different. I wanted it to follow me. I’d say there’s about a ten to fifteen percent chance of that Full Blood losing interest in you. If you wanted to be safe, I could always teach you how to handle one of those things if they did find you.”
“You mean like train me in the ways of the Skinner?” Cole asked in a voice ripped from every cheesy movie trailer he’d ever heard.
Paige walked toward a door at the back of the kitchen that led farther into the restaurant. Since she still wasn’t looking back, he allowed himself to fully savor the way the sweatpants hugged her tight, rounded backside.
“I don’t need a partner,” she told him as she came to a stop near one of the back rooms, “but having one would make things a whole lot easier.”
“I think you’re forgetting something. I program video games for a living.”
“That was before, Cole. There’s too much out there for a man like you to just turn his back on it. If you’re waiting for a sign or a prophecy or any of that sort of crap to let you know what to do, you’ll be waiting a long time. I think you’ve already seen enough to know what you want to do.”
“You got any advice?”
“Sure,” she said as she sauntered from the kitchen. “Don’t gawk at a woman’s ass when she’s carrying a shotgun.”
Chapter 11
Cole still couldn’t shake Paige’s scent even after she’d left the room. He could still feel her fingers roaming over his wrists and could imagine every strand of hair as it curled around her face. Her movements ran beneath everything in his head like a current of energy. He could feel the heat from her body no matter how many rooms separated them within that old restaurant.
Not that the cot in Paige’s freezer didn’t sound appealing. In fact, he looked inside the metallic room to find a surprisingly comfortable living space. There was a television and, for a bit of irony, a mini fridge. When he had just about convinced himself that he might be able to make it through the night without ripping through his jeans, he’d seen Paige walk by with her hair dripping wet and a thick, navy blue terry-cloth robe wrapped around her. She’d been showing more skin when she was in her sweats, but the thought that she was wet and naked beneath that single garment was enough to drive him out of his skull.
Since he still had his doubts about making the leap from video-game designer to monster killer, he put temptation behind him and called for a cab. Paige had asked him to stay, but didn’t take any drastic steps to keep him there. He needed some time to consider her proposition, and he couldn’t do that when his mind was preoccupied. At least, that was the most polite term for what he was feeling.
The Afton Inn was just off I–55 and could have easily been mistaken for a thousand other hotels across this and probably many other countries. Cole wasn’t interested in ambience or uniqueness. All he wanted was a clean bed, a place to shower, and a free breakfast in the morning. No matter how many monsters were out there, it just didn’t make sense to stay in a hotel that didn’t at least serve breakfast.
The hotel’s shower was great. Water trickled out like it was being spit from the nozzle, and it took half an hour to warm up, but he was able to stand under it for as long as he wanted without anyone else vying for his attention. For the first time since he’d left Seattle, he wasn’t packed into a cab, plane, car, or room with anyone else. As he stepped out of the bathroom with a thin, overly bleached towel wrapped around his waist, he didn’t care about the fact that he didn’t have any clean clothes to replace the ones in a heap on the bathroom floor. He didn’t bother sucking in the gut that had showed up in the days following his thirtieth birthday. He just turned on the television and nodded as the screen glowed with an infomercial about college girls and all the glorious ways they could disgrace themselves for a free T-shirt.
“Oh yeah,” Cole sighed. “That’s the good stuff.”
After he’d sat through the first run of the infomercial, he heard a breeze rustling outside. He got up, walked over to the window and pulled back the cheap curtain just enough to take in a scenic view of the parking lot. He could even count the dents on the roof of a dirty RV parked there. Shaking his head, he wondered why the hell people bought RVs, only to park them at hotels. Then again, he’d never understood the whole camping mentality anyway.
When Cole looked down a bit more, he caught sight of a latch at the bottom of the window. It was rare that hotels even allowed their windows to be opened, but he tried this one anyway. The latch popped free of the window frame, allowing the window to swing open a good one or two inches before it was stopped by a bracket. There was more than enough breeze to get through the narrow opening, so he pulled in a deep breath. The air wasn’t as crisp and clean as the stuff he’d sampled in Canada, but it was cool and it put a smile on his face. As far as he was concerned, savoring cheap thrills was the key to a truly happy life. All he needed now was some of that leftover pizza. Unfortunately, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead to take the DiGuido’s box along with him.
Cole gazed out to the nearby street on the off chance that he might catch sight of a twenty-four-hour coffee shop. Just as he was about to give up and pull the curtain shut, he noticed a large cat peeking from the shadows at the edge of the parking lot. It might have been a dog, but its eyes reflected the hotel’s security light with a feline glimmer. Then the thing darted out of sight.
Someone slammed a door in the hall, and he looked reflexively in that direction. A few heavy footsteps stomped outside his room, making it seem very possible that he would be getting inconsiderate yetis as his neighbors. All he needed now was a screaming baby added to the mix, and the Afton Inn truly would be just like any other hotel in the known universe.
Cole sighed and looked out the window as if he could actually watch his peace and quiet drift away. A window
