The Heart of a Monster: The Complete Series

Chapter 30

Quinn

Getting home wasn’t quite that easy, of course. After Lance hustled me back to the car, I spent the last hour of the night and a bunch more of the day snoozing in the back seat while my shadowkind men found a sheltered spot to conceal the car and then took turns monitoring the streets for any sign that Rollick hadn’t been convinced after all. They watched my house and the roads around it, and Torrent even returned to the boat in Daytona Beach.

When I woke up, a little groggy from the awkward position and my messed-up sleep schedule, he’d set the backpack that held my laptop on the floor of the car next to me. I’d left it behind in the boat.

“We haven’t seen any sign that Rollick has stuck around,” he told me. “I think we should wait until tomorrow morning just to be careful, but chances are he’s already headed back to California.”

“Very pissed off,” Lance put in, and the corners of Torrent’s mouth twitched.

“Yes.”

I listened as he called up Goldie and made it sound as if he’d heard about the corpse in the park second-hand: “Some crazy shadowkind attack—they tore up the woman, her heart was missing and everything. Any idea what that could have been about?” He figured the leprechaun would start the rumor mill churning so that any higher shadowkind in the area who’d been keeping a lookout for me would ease off on their search.

Now that they couldn’t sense my weird sorcerer energy, it shouldn’t be hard to convince them there was nothing left to find.

We drove around a little more, locating a restaurant with a bathroom where I could quickly relieve myself and grabbing some food for good measure. After we ate in the car, I found I was exhausted enough after the very long night previous that right after I’d popped my nightly pills, I zonked out with my head on Lance’s knee.

When I woke up, it was still dark out. All three of the men seemed to have vanished, but I assumed at least one of them had remained in the shadows of the car. I sat up and checked my watch. There were still a few more hours to go before dawn.

Both Torrent and Lance reappeared a moment later. Torrent twisted in the driver’s seat to look at me. “I was able to confirm that Rollick has returned home. He was in a photo from his club posted on the internet last night.” He shook his head as if in bemusement at human social media habits, as much as they worked in our favor.

I sagged in relief and winced at the pinching of the vest against my skin. After sleeping with the thing over my tank top for two nights, the beads were starting to dig little dents into my chest and back, thin as they were. I tugged at it.

“I’m going to have to figure out some strategies for wearing this constantly without ending up covered in welts,” I said. “And without my parents noticing anything weird.” But that was a small price to pay for actually being able to see my parents again. A smile sprang to my face despite the minor discomfort.

Torrent nodded. “We’ll drive over to your house once it gets light out. You can have breakfast with them.”

Imagining how happy—and relieved—Mom and Dad would be to see me made my smile stretch wider. But as I looked from Torrent to Lance, I hesitated.

“How are things going to work between us now?” I asked tentatively. “I mean, you can’t exactly drop by the house like normal guests, but I can obviously meet up with you outside it. Assuming you want to keep spending time with me and not just lurk around warding off beasties.”

Lance snorted. “Oh, we’re not done with you! There are so many more things we haven’t explored.”

My cheeks heated. I rustled my vest again. “That’s going to be kind of difficult while I’ve got to wear this thing all the time.”

The dragon shifter smirked at me and scooped up my foot to start massaging my calf. His claws grazed my skin with tingling strokes between each press of his fingers. “I’m sure we can find ways to work around that. The most important parts of you—for exploring purposes—aren’t covered.”

Torrent coughed, and my cheeks flared hotter. “I’m sure there are other ways we’d enjoy your company that don’t require quite so much physical contact too,” he put in, shooting Lance a pointed look.

Lance opened his mouth, probably to make some remark that would scorch my cheeks right off, and Crag blinked into being in the front passenger seat with a creak of the car’s frame at his haste.

“We have to go!” he said. “There’s?—”

Torrent was already jerking around to twist the key in the ignition, but the warning had come too late. A massive form crashed down on the hood of the car, the engine crunching and sputtering. The image of the collapsed garage at the sorcerers’ house flashed through my mind.

I cringed against Lance, who snarled at the intruder. The thing on the hood peered through the windshield with eerie yellow eyes, but it wasn’t the only sudden arrival. Shadowy figures with spines or talons, wings or extra limbs, stood all around us in the otherwise empty parking lot. And in their midst?—

“Goldie?” Torrent sputtered, his gaze latching onto the leprechaun at the same moment mine did.

The small man gave an apologetic grimace and winced as the figure behind him, a monster nearly twice his size, squeezed his shoulder with a barbed hand.

“I had a debt to pay,” he said thinly. “And you’ve been gone a long time.” He glanced at the creatures around him. “Here they are, just like I promised. That’s the woman you wanted, isn’t it? She’s all yours.”