could only think about hissing blondes with sharp claws and greasy fur.
“Which room is yours?” Paige asked.
Cole pulled in a breath and dug the key card from his pocket. Walking to his door, he paused and asked, “What if it’s in there?”
“You think that thing attacked you so it could use your room?”
“No…but…what if another one came back? I don’t have a weapon.”
“Wait right here,” Paige said. “I think I saw a luggage rack by the elevator.”
Plugging his key card into the reader on the door, Cole grumbled, “Smartass.”
When the light on the card reader turned green, he turned the knob and opened the door. Before he could take a step inside, however, Paige walked past him and surveyed the room.
“You made a real mess in here,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“That thing came in through the window?”
Cole walked into the bathroom, flicked on the light and gathered up some of the things he’d left in there. “Yep. In through the window, onto the bed, and back to the window.”
“I’ve heard of worse ways to spend a night,” Paige said as she ran her hand along the carpet in front of the TV. She rubbed her fingers together and shook her head. The expression on her face brightened considerably when she saw the window, mostly shut against its splintered frame. “You said it came and left through here?”
“I said it twice. Jesus, my credit card’s gonna take a hit for this damage.”
Running her hand along the window, Paige grinned as if she’d just looked under the bed to find a wad of cash the previous guests had left behind. “Bring me a towel, Cole. There’s some good stuff here.”
He grabbed a handful of towels from the segmented steel rack above the toilet and brought them out to her. “What sort of good stuff are you talking about?”
“How about this?” Paige asked as she brought her hand around for him to see. At first glance it seemed there was nothing but waves of heat coming up from her sleeve. With a flip of her wrist, the back of her hand became visible. She repeated the trick by flipping her hand around a few more times. Now you see it, now you don’t.
“Wow,” he whispered. “That’s cool.” After squinting and adjusting his eyes a bit, he could make out the vague shape of Paige’s hand when she twisted it around again.
Grabbing one of the smaller towels Cole had brought her, she wiped off her hand and examined it to make sure all her fingers were visible and accounted for. “Now I know why Gerald was willing to go all the way to Canada to meet this Mongrel. I bet he intended on getting some of this invisible stuff after Brad was done talking to her.”
“He never told you for certain?”
“He mentioned her a few times when he was arranging for me to come to Chicago,” she said while holding up her hand to display a finger that had a hazy, mostly invisible tip, “but he hadn’t been able to track her too well. Gerald said she could secrete some sort of oil to coat her fur so she could…I don’t know how to explain it…”
“Bend light?”
Paige nodded as if Cole had guessed the number she’d been thinking of. “More or less. You got that from a movie, right?”
“About a hundred of them, and a dozen or so video games,” Cole added. “I was going to steal that one for one of my own.”
“Real original.”
“Thanks.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “Gerald told me this Mongrel was a hell of a spy thanks to this trick with disappearing or bending light or whatever. She claimed to have some information, but Gerald didn’t trust her.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s a hell of a spy and he couldn’t track her. Let’s just say she was lucky Brad was so new at all this or she wouldn’t have made it out of Chicago. Gerald was traditional and it’s not Skinner tradition to sit down and chat with shapeshifters. The only reason Gerald agreed to the meeting at all was because the Mongrel had escaped and it was the only way to pick up her trail again. This stuff goes a long way to recoup some of our losses. We’ll have to do a little fiddling, but there’s going to be plenty of uses for this.”
“Fiddling. Real technical term, there. Do you think…she might have had anything to do with killing Gerald and Brad? If she can change shape, maybe she could’ve changed into that other thing.”
Paige shook her head at that. “That’s not how it works. I don’t know any breed of shapeshifters that can change into totally different animals. Full Bloods can change a few different ways, but even their fur stays roughly the same color and you’d never mistake one for a cat. Besides, her story about almost getting killed along with you holds up. Full Bloods and Mongrels hate each other, and that’s not just colorful language. We’re talking
“A lot of what she said fits with what Ace and Steph told us,” Cole pointed out.
“Yep, and since there’s no way in hell a Mongrel would work with Nymar like them just to put together a good story, it seems both sources hold up pretty well. Give me some more towels.” Once Cole handed them to her, she carefully wiped up the greasy residue Jackie had left on the walls and bedside tables.
“So Full Bloods hate Mongrels,” he said. “That’s good to know, I guess. Now, these things are full-blooded… what?”
Going over another patch of residue that was on the dresser, Paige said, “They’re werewolves, Cole. Nothing much can harm them, but whatever wounds they do get tend to heal up real quick unless they were put there by charmed weapons like that Blood Blade. Those things are hard to make, and only a few Gypsy families know how to make them. That’s why we’ve got to protect whatever blades we get our hands on.”
“A werewolf?” Cole asked. “A real werewolf?” He let out a breath and ran his fingers over his head. “Does it howl at the moon?” he asked, and chuckled.
Paige nodded. “Yep. They do like to howl. They can change whenever they like, and as far as we know, they can live for over a hundred years.”
“Yowza.”
“Sorry, Cole. Usually we don’t just spool it all out like this, but you’re kind of getting the crash course since you’ve already seen some of these things firsthand. To be honest, most of us don’t get to see a Full Blood for years. Living through it is even more rare.”
“What was the first you ever saw?” he asked.
Reluctantly, she said, “A Half Breed. It was a bad situation, so just leave it at that.”
“And they’re not as bad as Full Bloods?”
She winced, and after a moment replied, “They’re different. They can’t change whenever they want and they’re wilder. They also…well…it’s kind of hard to explain.”
“Do they live a hundred years?”
“Oh, no,” she quickly said. “They’re mean, strong, and very fast, but they can be put down like any other big, ugly animal. When they change all the way, it takes a lot more. Big enough guns can do the trick, but there are other methods that work a whole lot better.”
“I wouldn’t mind putting a few of those things out of their misery,” Cole said. “After seeing what happened in that cabin, it would do me some good to stand up to them.”
Paige bundled up a towel soaked with the residue. Slipping back into her kung fu voice, she said, “Now is the time for my disciple to settle a score of another sort.” Seeing the eager look on Cole’s face, she added, “The hotel bill. Take this.” She slapped a wad of money into his hand. “Pay the bill, pay for the damages, make sure nothing’s charged to your card, and then leave.”
After picking up his few remaining personal things, Cole headed for the door, but stopped short before opening it. “I just realized I’ve been wearing the same clothes so long that they’re sticking to me.”
Unable to keep a straight face, Paige said, “That’s probably how that Mongrel tracked you all the way from Canada. If you need new clothes, we can get some on the way out of town.”
At the desk, Cole spoke to a perky little man with bad skin, a worse toupee, and a surprisingly genuine smile. When he told him he was checking out, the clerk asked if everything was okay and then offered him a complimentary muffin. The clerk threw a mild fit when he got the phone call from the maid he’d sent to check on
