Chapter 15
SEXY, SEXY, SEXY. HALLELUJAH.
MORGAN
“I don’t see him,” the guy said. “Can’t you sniff him out?”
“Management doesn’t want us shifting at the hotel. And I can’t smell very well in my human form with all this snow blowing around.”
“Fuck the rules. Get your ass over here and shift so we can get him and go back inside. Besides, we’re in the parking lot, not the hotel. And if we were listening to management, we wouldn’t be going after him anyway.”
“If I get caught shifting, Keenan will fire me. I don’t want to lose my job,” the woman said. Her voice was coming through the radio, but I could also hear it echoing in real life too, as she approached my hiding spot.
“If we get caught with him, we’ll be vampire food anyway. Particularly if he finds out we’re working with the hunters,” the man retorted. “But fine, Judy. You stay out here in the fucking cold and poke around in the blizzard. I’m going inside.”
They were working for the hunters to… to abduct me? Me? I scowled and wished them a lifetime of sprained ankles. Now, if only I could figure out how to make that happen.
The wolf huffed. “Are all fire mages so whiny?”
“My magic is the only thing stopping my balls from freezing off, so fuck you. You’re going to owe me a plate of phaal curry so I can replenish my magic after this.”
“What’s going on?” a voice whispered in my ear.
I jumped.
“What was that?” the wolf said. She and her buddy stalked toward the trees, straight toward where I was standing. “Rudy Tada? Are you over there?”
I turned to glare at the person who’d scared me, except no one was there. Nelson was in his shadow form again.
“Stay still. No matter what happens, don’t move,” Nelson instructed so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.
I closed my eyes and tried to stay as still as possible. We’d played this game already once today. And now that I knew what was going on, it was even easier to obey this time.
The wolf lifted her snout to the air and inhaled. She sneezed. “Stupid fucking snow.”
“Can you see any footprints?” the mage asked.
“The wind is blowing everything around too fast,” the wolf said with a growl. “Even our prints are already covered in.”
“He can’t have gotten far.”
I squeezed my eyes closed as tightly as I could and wished I could close my ears too, as the two supes crashed through the shrubs beside me. Any minute now they would shout, “Gotcha”, or whatever it was that people shouted when they found someone in hide and seek.
But they didn’t.
After several long minutes, which honestly felt closer to an hour, they exited the trees and circled back to my rental car.
I pried my eyes open, surprised to find Nelson had dropped his shadow enough so I could see.
I thought about looking around the tree to watch my pursuers, but what if they saw me move?
“Where the fuck could he have gone?” the mage muttered.
“I don’t know, Godwin,” the wolf said, sounding irritated. “The hunters won’t be happy.”
And didn’t that just sound awful and ominous? I didn’t like these two. Not at all.
“He might have returned to the hotel to warm up or take a piss or something.”
“Maybe.” The wolf sounded skeptical. “Put the tracker on the car, and we’ll get him when he finally leaves.”
“Already done. He’ll never find it.”
I frowned as they trudged across the parking lot toward the hotel.
Mechanical things and I weren’t friends, so the guy was right. I would never find a tracker on my rental because I wouldn’t even know the difference between something that belonged and something that didn’t. Luckily for me, I didn’t have to worry about that. Nelson’s friend was coming.
“We need to get out of here,” Nelson’s bodiless voice said from the shadows still wrapped around me.
“Did the eagle land?”
There was a noticeable silence.
“You know,” I said, “did you do what you needed to do?”
“Are you asking about the tracker? Yes. It’s done. But I couldn’t find Tammy, so I had to put it on one of her associates. Can we go now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do that. Is your friend here yet?”
“Hold on a minute,” Nelson whispered.
Then the air shimmered, and Nelson appeared in his human form in front of me. It was beautiful and magical and defied everything I thought I understood about magic. I mean he literally didn’t have a body a second ago. And now, he was there, as if born out of a whirl of mist and smoke.
He was miraculous, and I wondered if he understood just how amazing he was. Few people could see themselves accurately, and I suspected Nelson might be one of them. But he really was spectacular. He was smart and magical and wonderfully sneaky—which was an excellent trait for a sidekick to have.
Which reminded me, he had been doing a very important job. I opened my mouth to ask him how it’d gone.
He held up his finger to silence me. “Hold on.”
Well. That was rude.
He pulled out his phone. Oh, he was making a call. Okay. I’d forgive him.
As soon as the person answered, he said, “What’s the holdup?”
Even though he was standing right beside me, I couldn’t hear the response. The wind was too loud as it whipped through the trees.
“Fuck.” He rubbed his forehead. “Okay. Plan B. We’ll meet you back at Willow Lake.”
He ended the call and stuffed his phone into his pocket.
“What’s happened?”
“Someone slashed the tires on the limo.”
“Uh oh.”
“That might mean someone’s been watching me.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “If my cover is blown…”
“Because of me?”
“I didn’t know you when I arrived, so I don’t see how it could be.”
“Are we taking my SUV?”
Nelson shook his head. “No. It’s compromised too.”
“So we’re walking to Willow Lake? For the record, that sounds dreadful.”
I might be a shifter, but my unicorn was a pampered bitch.
Wilderness excursions, survival camps, and snowy hikes were not for me.
Okay, sure, sometimes I envisioned what it might be like when I reunited with my unicorn herd.
In those daydreams, I saw myself galloping across flower-covered meadows as part of a beautiful rainbow-colored family.
But I’d always thought that’d be more like a family picnic, not a lifestyle choice.
I liked television, fluffy pillows, and well-stocked refrigerators.
Oh, and showers with steaming hot water.
Those definitely needed to be added to the list too.
“No, we aren’t walking.” He held his hand out to me, and I slid my hand in his. His strong fingers flexed around mine. This was a nice development, although it’d be even better if my fingers weren’t freezing cold. Then he pulled me deeper into the trees.
Honestly, I’d expected him to head back to the parking lot and hotwire a car.
Trudging through the trees was contradicting his “no, we aren’t walking” promise.
But returning to the warm hotel wasn’t an option, so I followed.
To distract myself from, well, everything, my thoughts strayed to more interesting things than hunters and walking in the snow and what not.
“Your shift is wild. I didn’t really see it when you shifted before.” I waggled my eyebrows at him. “It was super hot.”
He lifted one dark eyebrow. Snow was catching in his dark hair.
I combed my fingers through the short strands to brush the snowflakes away.
He moved away from my touch. Oops. Were we not at the touching stage yet?
He’d wrapped me in his shadow form a few times now, but body to body touching was apparently a no-go for him.
“I am sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I said. But then, just in case he thought I was talking about his temperature with my “super hot” comment and not his fuckability quotient, as Violet called it, I reiterated, “but you are like super attractive.”
His lips twitched.
I’d been admiring him since we first stumbled out of the supply closet, but when he’d wrapped his shadow around me again just now, he’d really made my horn sparkle. Magic was sexy. That whole protective thing he had going on was sexy. Everything about Nelson was sexy.
But seeing his lips flirt with smiling, that just made me want to kiss them.
They were plump and pink like candy. They were the one part of his face that seemed soft; everything else was so angular and sharp.
In a good way. A very, very good way. It matched his whole badass vibe, with all his black clothing and stuff.
Sexy, sexy, sexy. Hallelujah. Give me a fan, I need to cool down—
Or, well, maybe not. The snow was doing an excellent job of that already.
I bet those lips would be super soft against mine though. And someone with lips like those had to be spectacular at kissing. Anything else would be a travesty.
Not that I’d be able to tell if he was a good kisser or not. I’d never done that.
I smiled at him, making it big and wide, so he knew I was happy. People liked it when they made other people happy. It made them feel good. And since I could just look at Nelson and be happy, I was fully prepared to share the joy.
“Okay, handsome,” I said. Huh. My hand was back on him again. How did it end up on his chest? I patted him so he wouldn’t think I was trying to grope him. “How about we make like the rodeo and buck off?”
He wrinkled his forehead. “I’ve never heard that saying before.”
“Make like a banana and split?” I offered instead. “Make like an egg and get cracking?”
Nelson shook his head and led me away from the entrance of the parking lot. I noticed he stayed in the shelter of the trees still, which worked out well because the snow wasn’t as deep in here yet.
“I’ve got more. Do you want to hear them?” I asked, trotting along behind him.
“I think I’m okay,” he said.
“So, what’s your Plan B?”
He didn’t answer.
Okay. That was cool. I could wait.
“Shit. I need to do one more thing,” he said as he pulled out a phone. He tapped out a short text, then he tucked his phone back in his pocket. “Okay. Let’s get out of here.”
I shook my head. “You can do better than that. How about, let’s make like a tree and leaf?”
He rolled his eyes, but there was a little quirk around his lips again. Ha! He was totally falling for my charms.