Asil’s Fourth Date Dating Terrors #7
His eyes were very luminous, and they seemed to hold safety in their depths.
And she wasn’t supposed to stare into his eyes—he was a dominant werewolf. They viewed such things as a challenge.
She dropped his gaze and swallowed. “Um. The team. Right.”
The grand staircase was less elaborate as it rose from the second to the third floor, where servant bedrooms had been remodeled into a kitchenette and two bathrooms marked with Ladies and Gentlemen signs.
Most of this level was a grand ballroom that the owners had been renting out for events for years.
Her team was gathered there.
Alan looked up and waved from where he sat on the polished hardwood flooring before turning his attention back to untangling The Beast, a carrying bag with eight different one-hundred-foot electrical cords that liked to turn into one large Cthulhu-like monster.
That they hadn’t even managed to get the cords untangled meant they were experiencing greater than usual technical difficulties.
The others were huddled around the newest of their cameras, its innards spread out across one of the folding tables.
They’d bought it used, and when it decided to run, it took really terrific video.
But it was huge and cranky. Miranda was the only one who didn’t have trouble with it, but she was working today.
“Hey,” Ruby called, and they all looked up, their faces reflecting various states of frustration. “Everyone, this is Asil, my date today. Asil, the grumpy old guy in the Seahawks shirt is Terry.”
Terry glanced down at his shirt and frowned at it as if he’d forgotten he was wearing it.
He was a retired engineer, and the frustration of not being able to coax the twenty-year-old camera to life did not leave his craggy face, reducing the welcome expressed when he held out his long-fingered hand.
Asil shook it. “Good to meet you. Sorry to interrupt.”
Terry grunted. “Glad to meet you, too. Pretty. ’Bout time Ruby caught some luck. Probably good to have an interruption before someone tossed that old thing into the nearest wall.”
Ruby didn’t roll her eyes in despair. Terry said whatever Terry thought. Beside him, looking like a too-young, short, merry Santa Claus, complete with white beard, Max laughed.
“And Max,” said Ruby.
Max grinned. “Hey, welcome to the dark side.”
Asil shook his hand, too.
Ruby watched Max’s face—sometimes Max caught things when he touched people.
But nothing except casual pleasure showed on his face.
At least he hadn’t run screaming, which he’d done on one memorable occasion.
They never did figure out what was wrong with that guy, but they hadn’t let him join their team, either.
“And last but not least, our computer guru, Peg.”
Small and gray, Peg did not reach out to shake hands. She didn’t touch people unless she had to. In her case, it wasn’t any psychic sensitivities but shyness. Asil won points by giving her a simple bow that smoothed over any awkwardness caused by her mumbled welcome.
“It is my pleasure,” he assured her, and it felt as if it might be the truth.
Ruby took a step toward the camera—not that she knew as much as Peg or Terry, but the compulsion to try to fix something other people were struggling with was an inborn condition she was afflicted with as much as anyone else.
“Aren’t you going to introduce him?” Asil asked in tones of mild puzzlement, his eyes focused just beyond Peg.
Peg said with sudden animation, “That’s my twin brother, Dusty. Most people can’t see him.”
Ruby was the only one of the team besides Peg who caught more than occasional glimpses of Dusty, who’d died in a car accident when he and Peg had been thirteen.
In fact, just now, Ruby couldn’t see him herself.
When she and a couple of witches had first started ghost hunting, Peg had been their first client.
Asil gave Dusty the same shallow bow he’d given Peg. “Pleased to meet you, too, Dusty,” he said.
A notebook fell off the table where it had been sitting next to the dissected camera. Peg giggled as though she were still thirteen instead of fifty-something. Sometimes Ruby’s teammates were the creepiest thing they ran into during ghost hunting.
Terry cleared his throat. “So?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
Ruby shook her head. “He hasn’t asked.”
Alan gave a soft laugh. “Pay up.”
Max collected from everyone—Ruby included—and Alan was four bucks richer.
“Dare I ask?”
Ruby looked at Asil. “Everyone asks why we’re here hunting ghosts in the daylight.”
“Daylight doesn’t affect ghosts,” said Asil, sounding taken aback. “The dark just makes it easier to scare people.”
“And trip down stairs,” agreed Max heartily as Alan folded the bills he’d collected with great ceremony and put them in his wallet.
“Ah,” said Asil. “That sounds painful indeed.”
And over the next half hour Ruby watched from the sidelines as her online date charmed his way effortlessly into her team’s good graces. Even Peg—who generally had no liking for any man—opened up to him shyly as they bonded over a dislike of Max’s favorite coffee brand.
He was gentle with her friends—and she finally admitted she was glad Miranda had talked her into this date. But there was no way she would ever let this sweet and beautiful man meet her nemesis.
She shivered and rubbed the steady burn of her wrist.
Asil could have been of help fixing the camera—modern gadgetry was one of his many talents—but his prey was not the ghosts who lived in this house.
He gave half a thought to his rain-dampened pants, which would doubtless pick up every speck of dirt on the ballroom floor.
Ah well. He sat down beside Alan and started with a plug and began to work backward in the tangle, moving as quickly and efficiently as he could without tearing the cord in half.
Apparently, they all needed to be separated and then strung throughout the house—and Asil had decided that was how he was going to get Alan alone.
“There are better ways to store extension cords,” Asil observed to Alan in the nonthreatening voice he’d been using since he’d entered the ballroom.
“Dusty likes to tangle them,” Alan explained. “Or so I’m told. I’ve never actually seen him—only caught a whiff now and then. But my wife says he tangles the cords, so I believe he tangles the cords.”
“And thus you stay married,” murmured Asil.
He knew his voice was light and his body language was neutral, but Alan angled his head to expose his throat without even being aware he was doing it.
He had been unhappy watching how the geas worked on Ruby.
He’d gained an inkling of the way she’d been living since she’d…
escaped? The situation had that feel—of an interrupted hunt with wounded prey.
Meeting Ruby’s team—her collection of broken people—had just about been the cherry on top of his emerging rage.
Alan had sensed the edge of Asil’s anger.
It was a good thing Asil’s wolf had decided to revert to the partner he’d not been for the last few hundred years. If Asil were still dealing with a rabid fiend, even his amazing control might be strained. But it wasn’t just anger he felt.
Ruby had gathered together a band of misfits and given them a mission, an odd mission of rescuing miserable spirits.
No one who spoke to any of them for longer than half a minute could doubt their dedication.
Caring for others, even if those others were dead, when they could hardly care for themselves—it touched Asil’s heart.
Peg was a white witch who used up all her meager power feeding the shadow of her brother.
Terry was a white witch, too, and he had less power than Peg.
Normally Asil did not like witches, but not even his wolf could find anything threatening about those two.
Max had some sort of lesser fae a fair distance down his family tree.
With Ruby’s power straightjacketed, the lot of them had about enough magic to light a witch lantern.
Allah in his infinite wisdom knew that a little magic was so much worse than no magic. There were dozens of types of creatures out hunting for victims with just a little magic.
He no longer wondered why Alan had been the one waiting for him on the porch with Ruby.
In this group, the submissive werewolf had been the most powerful guardian they owned.
Submissive or not, at least a werewolf was a werewolf.
Without Alan, this lot were bait looking for a big bad shark to eat them.
Asil and his wolf were going to keep all of them, every single one of them, safe.
“You are going to help,” said Alan, very softly. If Asil had not been sitting next to him, he would not have heard him.
“I am,” Asil said. He’d gotten two of the cords untangled—and reached for the next to see that the rest of them lay in neat bundles. He stilled for a moment, unhappy to have had such a thing happen without his notice.
He looked into the face of the shadowy boy and said, “Thank you.”
You are going to help, the boy said, though his still mouth never moved.
To that spirit, Asil said, “Inshallah.”
“And that’s not weird,” muttered Alan, staring at the tidy cords.
Asil stood up and gathered cords. “Come, my friend. You and I can lay these while the others work on that poor camera, no?”
For all that it was gently said, Alan heard the demand in it. He nodded, grabbed the two cords Asil had not, and followed him out the door and down the stairs.
“I don’t actually know where these go,” Alan said.
“It does not matter,” Asil said. They were far enough away from the ballroom that their voices would not carry if they were quiet. “We need to talk, and this is an excuse. You need to tell me what Ruby’s troubles are.”