custom-made for me by Burt’s Liquor, where I’d made a strategic stop before arriving at the office. Outside the barred window, evening had dimmed the sky to a deep purple. Ascanio was in the back, trying to scrub himself clean in the office shower. He’d caught a nap on the way back to the office, so I expected him to emerge in his human shape and at least semi-conscious.
I sipped my drink. All in all, a productive day. A hell of a lot of excitement.
Footsteps. I twitched my furry round ear, listening. Light stride, sure steps…Kate.
The door swung open and Kate walked in. Her jeans and T-shirt were splattered with blood and she was carrying a severed vampire head. The T-shirt had a smiley face on it.
In my natural untanned state I was pale. If you put me into a pitch-black room, my face would probably light up like the moon. That’s why I cultivated a sun habit that resulted in a mild pigment formation in my skin. I liked to call this tan golden brown. My favorite cosmetics company, Sorcière, which had a slightly cannibalistic tendency to name all their foundation skin tones after food, liked to call my tan “cream.” Cream was only a couple of shades darker than the palest “milk.” If I really baked myself, I could get all the way to “vanilla blush,” which meant pale beige.
Kate would need “dusky honey” at the very least. I knew this because a few weeks ago I had to explain to her what concealer was and why she couldn’t use it by itself on the strange rash we got after clearing some odd rat-critters from an old warehouse. Putting concealer and foundation on Kate turned out to be a losing proposition, because after the first five minutes it bugged her and she kept rubbing her face until she looked like a clown who got painted up in the dark.
Her hair, put away into a long braid, was chocolate brown and her eyes were dark too, framed in dense black eyelashes, and oddly cut, large, but slightly elongated with curvy corners. The first time I saw her, I had stared, trying to figure out what the heck she was. There were shades of India there, or maybe Arabia, or possibly a touch of Asia. She could twist it any way she wanted, depending on makeup, which she rarely wore.
At first glance you looked at Kate and thought “fighter,” maybe merc. Five inches taller than me, she was all muscle—well, and some boobs—but mostly muscle. She moved like a predator and when she got pissed off, she exhaled aggression, like hot breath on a winter evening. Still, men looked, until they saw her eyes. Kate’s eyes were crazy. It was that hidden-deep crazy that told you that you had no idea what the hell she would do next but whatever it was, the bad guys wouldn’t like it.
Kate looked at me for a long second. “Hey.”
I saluted her with my bottle. “Hey.”
Kate went into the kitchen, pulled a ceramic dish from under the sink, sat the vamp’s head into it, put it in the fridge, and washed her hands. She came back, slipped the sheath off her back with her sword still in it, hung it on my client chair, and plopped into it.
“What are you drinking?”
“Georgia Peach Iced Tea. Want some?” I offered it to her with my claws.
“Sure.” She took a sip, and coughed with a grimace. “What the hell is in this?”
Heh-heh. Lightweight. “Vodka, gin, rum, sweet and sour, and peach schnapps. Lots of peach schnapps.”
“Do you actually get a buzz from this?”
“Sort of.” Lyc-V made it very difficult to get drunk. “It lasts for about thirty seconds or so and then I need another gulp.”
Kate leaned back against her chair. “Where is the bane of my existence?”
“In the shower, freshening up.”
“Oh God, who did Ascanio screw now?”
“No, no, he’s covered in blood.”
“Oh good.” She sighed and stopped. “The kid is covered in blood and we’re relieved. There is something wrong with us.”
“Tell me about it.” I took another swig. “Not going to mention my beastkin appearance?”
“I like it,” she said. “The torn pants and gore-stained T-shirt is a nice touch.”
I wiggled my toes. “I was thinking of painting my claws a nice shade of pink.”
Kate glanced at my feet. “That would take a lot of nail polish. What about some golden hoops in your ears instead?”
I grinned. “It’s a definite possibility.”
“What happened?” Kate asked.
“I saw Raphael this morning. I’d called him last night, because Jim put me on some shapeshifter murders and I needed to interview him. I wanted a chance to apologize.”
Kate took my bottle and drank from it. “How did it go?”
“He replaced me.”
The bottle stopped in Kate’s hand, three inches above the table. “He what?”
“He found another girl. She is seven feet tall, with breasts the size of honeydew melons, legs that start at her neck, bleached blond hair down to her ass, and her waist is this big around.” I touched my index and thumb claws. “They are engaged to be engaged.”
“He brought her
“She sat in that chair right there.” I pointed at the other client chair. “I’m thinking of burning it.”
Kate put the bottle down. “Did you punch him?”
“Nope.” I took a long swig. The alcohol burned my tongue. “After he told me that his new sweetheart’s best quality is that she isn’t me, it didn’t seem like it would make any difference.”
“Is she a shapeshifter?”
I shook my head. “A human. Not a fighter. Not that bright either. I know what you’ll say—it’s my own fault.”
“Well, you did check out of his life,” Kate said. “You checked out of my life for a while.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I took a deep breath. There was no action to displace the pain now. No escape. The ache settled in my chest and scraped at me with sharp little claws.
“Are you going to fight for him?” Kate asked.
I looked at her. “What?”
“Are you going to fight for him, or are you going to roll over on your back and take it?”
“Look who’s talking. How long did it take you and Curran to have a conversation after that whole dinner mess? Was it three weeks or more like a month?”
Kate arched her left eyebrow. “That’s different. That was a misunderstanding.”
“Aha.”
“He brought his new main squeeze here after you called him with a peace offering. That’s a slap in the face.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I know.” I growled, deep in my throat.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“Nothing is free,” Kate said. “If you want it, you have to fight for it.”
Coming from a woman who had fought off twenty-two shapeshifters to stay by Curran’s side, that was a statement based on experience.
“I’m thinking about it.” Thinking if I wanted to fight for Raphael. What he did to me was cruel. I hurt and I wanted revenge more than anything else. But at the same time, who was I to stand in the way of his new happiness? Whatever Rebecca was giving him, he clearly needed it, otherwise he wouldn’t have made plans for their engagement. “How did your day go?”
“I got some head. It was vamp, but still.”
I stared at her. Kate was the last person I would have expected to make that joke. Well, someone had loosened up since mating. “That good, huh.”
“Yup.”
“I have a glass monster corpse for you. It’s in the freezer.”
Kate grinned a deranged smile. “You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s a bribe for putting up with my psychotic break.”
