“No,” she said, raising a hand from her hip and wrapping her fingers around the back of my neck, caressing my skin. Chills screamed down my spine from the warmth of her touch. “Unless,” she bit her lip and stared at me with cartoonish eyes. “Unless you agree to owe me.”
I felt hot and cold at the same time. My tongue cemented to the roof of my mouth. “Okay,” I said. “Fine.”
Dakota released me from her charm, then spun on her heel and sauntered to the side door. “First thing’s first,” she said. “Since you stole my credit card, I don’t have any cash.” She gripped the door handle and twisted, pulling it open. An alarm barked into the night. Dakota looked up and around. “Oops. Might want to hurry. Cops love hanging out in this area.”
Her phone vibrated in my hand. I typed in the passcode she had given me a few minutes earlier and unlocked the screen. Xander had sent the address to Elizabeth’s house.
“Were you guys talking about magic?” she asked, shouting over the lounge’s blaring alarms.
I plugged the address into the phone’s navigation. The directions loaded. It would take nearly twenty minutes to get to Elizabeth’s house. That was driving. I didn’t even bother to tap over to the walking estimate. I knew it would take nearly an hour. Did I have an hour to waste walking somewhere I could have driven? Besides, what if a curious cop decided to ask me why I was running at three in the morning in dress shoes, baggy-ass jeans, and a button-down shirt? I had to avoid any contact with law enforcement until I found Mel.
“Were you?” she asked.
“What?” I asked, glancing up from the screen.
“Talking about magic? You can use it?”
I scratched my head, then glanced back at the phone’s estimated driving time. It didn’t matter how I justified it, I needed a car. And Dakota was my only chance at acquiring one at this time of night and on short notice. “Fuck it,” I said, stumbling back up the ramp to her. “You’re something else, you know that?”
She smirked, all lips and no teeth. “It’s either this… or you take me out to dinner,” she said, grabbing my arm, preventing me from entering the club.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, I was mostly joking about having you rob the place. Honestly, I didn’t think you’d go through with it. So, on second thought, maybe I don’t want that dinner. Maybe I will take the cash.”
“You were joking?” I asked. The alarm continued to wail, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t wrap my head around what she had said.
“Well, before you stammer yourself to death,” she said, sliding her fingers down my forearm and grabbing my hand, interlacing her fingers with mine, “we need to go. We can’t just stand beside this open door all night. Someone is bound to respond sooner or later.” She stepped away from the door, down one of the stairs, and pulled me forward, leading me to follow.
I had almost robbed the lounge, risking another encounter with law enforcement, to steal some cash for Dakota. What was I doing? I needed to get my shit together if I planned to save Mel. I had to stop making excuses. I had to start leading this charge to find my daughter. I didn’t care how attractive or charming…
Charming, I thought, my heart sinking. Was Dakota an Empousa? Had she enthralled me to keep me off Mel’s tracks? Is that why she had spoken to me in the lounge earlier?
I ripped my hand free from her grip. We had moved about seven feet. The screeching continued from within the building. The cops would arrive any second, now. I couldn’t press her for information right then. We needed to get somewhere safer.
“What’re you doing?” she asked.
“You’re taking me to your car,” I said. “No tricks. Nothing weird. Straight to your car, then you’re driving me to where I need to go. Understood?”
She used her hand to fan her face. “Wow,” she said, panting. “You’re making me hot with that tone.”
I knew she meant to fluster me, and I hated that it worked. My innards spiraled and tightened.
“Well,” she said, “we going to stand her all night and stare at each other? Or you ready to go?”
In Dakota’s car, driving away from the tripped lounge, I sat in the passenger seat and told her to turn left at the next light. The phone stated we were nine minutes from our destination.
“Dinner?” I asked, as we waited at the crosswalk. A sign beside the signal read, No right turn on red. There was no traffic either, so stopping and waiting for no reason at all ate me alive. Had I sat behind the wheel, I probably would have risked the ticket. But Dakota had insisted on driving, said we couldn’t use her car if she didn’t. So, I had relented.
“Dinner,” she answered, gripping the wheel with both hands. As we drove, they seemed to drift anywhere but the steering wheel, and at one time, she even drove with her kneecap. But, as we sat and waited, she gripped the leather like we might careen off a cliff.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to go dinner with me? You don’t even know me. Maybe I’m some monster… or someone who kills monsters. Maybe I’m a bad person.”
The light turned green, and Dakota turned right, only to slam on her brakes. “Sorry,” she said, waving through the window and cringing a little. A college-aged couple glared at us as they passed through the crosswalk. When it was clear, Dakota slowly moved through it, then picked up speed. Taking her hands off the wheel and messing with her split ends, she glanced at me. “You?” she chuckled. “A bad person?”
For some strange reason, that offended me. Why couldn’t I be a bad person? “I was detained earlier,” I said, “after a pretty brutal fight. I
