Chapter 8
MOUTHWATERING CRAVINGS FOR… COFFEE. REALLY.
LEVI
Shortly after nine in the morning, movement in one of the hunters’ rooms caught my attention. My eyes were gritty from staring across the parking lot from my office all night, but I stared at the flutter of the curtain anyway.
Teague was hiding out there somewhere, and no one had asked me to offer backup, but I couldn’t stop myself.
The death mage had been up all night and had lost the hunters at least once already.
An extra pair of eyes couldn’t hurt. Besides, it gave me something else to do besides fret over how to infiltrate a group of hunters.
Unsurprisingly, I had come up with exactly zero ideas.
Van had texted an hour or so ago to say Nelson would be coming soon to assist Teague, but the shadow jumper hadn’t shown up yet. Once he arrived, I’d be able to stop my vigil.
Nelson wasn’t the most approachable guy in the world.
His personal aesthetic was more like a villain in an action-adventure movie than heroic.
His perpetually dark mood matched his clothing, but his magic was perfect for surveillance.
When he took on his alternate form, he became a shadow. A literal shadow.
That kind of magic was scary as fuck—the guy could literally go anywhere and who would know? But I found myself trusting Nelson. My gut said he was one of the good guys.
I’d heard he’d been on a mission of some kind since the summer and that it wasn’t going well.
Something about a unicorn? I didn’t know.
That might have been a code name because, as far as I knew, unicorns had disappeared centuries ago.
But problems with his mission might explain the darker than normal scowl the guy wore lately.
When the door to room eight opened, Tammy peeked out. She glanced left, then right.
“Now, what are you up to?” I muttered, as I noted the time on a scrap of paper.
I sat up a little straighter when she slipped out of her room and gently closed the door.
She darted down the sidewalk to room seven.
Of course she was all decked out in camo again.
The door to seven, which was Kyle’s room, swung open without her having to knock.
She ducked inside quickly. A heartbeat later, the door to room nine opened and Fin appeared.
“This is like watching a shell game.”
Fin walked down the sidewalk like he didn’t have a care in the world and rapped his knuckles on Tammy’s door. When no one answered, he continued down to Kyle’s. He knocked. Again, no one answered.
“Huh. What’s that all about? Why would they hide from him?” I marked that down on the paper too. Would anyone want my notes? Probably not. But I liked jotting them down anyway. It made me feel productive.
Finley pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen quickly. A moment later, he tucked it into his pocket as he meandered across the parking lot.
“Now where are you going?” I murmured.
I tracked his route all the way to Parker’s café. At the mere thought of Parker—or, rather, his café—my mouth watered.
“Lucky sod,” I grumbled.
I’d normally have grabbed coffee from him by now. I could definitely use coffee about now. I hated feeling groggy.
My kind didn’t require much sleep, four or five hours at most, which was usually easy to get each night.
And that left me with a lot of time to do other things while the rest of the world slept.
Sometimes, I read. Romance novels were my favorite.
Not that anyone else knew, but the books I’d fallen in love with while I renovated the motel inspired some of the décor.
Amethyst dragons led to purple rooms. A tattooed magical mechanic led to a room with roses and ravens. And so on.
My reading always outpaced how quickly my favorite authors could write, but there were always new authors to discover.
Years ago, when e-books blasted onto the market, I’d been skeptical, but now I figured they were their own kind of magic, particularly when I could buy whatever book I wanted from the comfort of home whenever the desire struck.
But there were times when I didn’t feel like reading.
So, over the years, I’d taken up other crafts and hobbies.
My most recent obsession—well, if you could call seventy-five years recent—was making miniature dioramas.
I didn’t buy kits or print things on a 3-D printer like some people in the online chats I frequented.
I had started well before things like that were available.
Everything I built was from scratch. My thick fingers made assembling all those little pieces difficult, but that was part of the challenge.
I was determined to make something I would be proud to display.
Of course, I didn’t actually display anything—not where other people could see them, anyway. I tucked them away on one of my many shelves and moved on to the next scene. I never showed my creations to anyone.
Yesterday, I’d been looking forward to going home and working on the tiny set of glasses I’d started the night before.
Someone in one of my online groups had created a set of tumblers with some transparent beads, a Dremel, and a bit of hot glue.
I’d been itching to try it for myself, but now I just wanted to go home and sleep.
“But maybe I’ll grab a coffee first…”
And it wouldn’t hurt to check on Parker too. As a friend. Really.
As soon as Finley entered the café, his hunter friends scurried out of Kyle’s room. I didn’t see any other movement. Was Teague out there still? Shit. I was going to have to follow them. I rubbed at my tired eyes and wished again I had one of Parker’s coffees to bolster me .
Before I could move, a shadow rose in front of my office window, startling me. It flowed through the cat flap into my office.
The cat flap was a security risk, but so was making Simon shift outside when he patrolled at the motel. Anyone could see him out there.
When I’d added the cat-sized door over the summer, I’d also changed my windows to make them like one-way mirrors, providing a safe place for Simon, or any of my other employees, to shift. But I hadn’t expected everyone and their shadow to use the door.
I stepped back to give Nelson space to change into his human form if he wanted.
“Uh… Hello?”
“I’ll follow them,” he said without shifting.
“Okay,” I said evenly, trying not to show how disconcerting it was to talk to him like this. I’d been around a lot of shifters in my very long life, but he was the only one I’d ever met who didn’t have a body in his alternate form.
“Go home and get some rest,” he said. “You look like shit.”
I frowned but couldn’t think of a suitable retort before he slipped through the cat door again. I watched as his misty form hopped from shadow to shadow, following the hunters down the road.
As soon as they disappeared, I dropped into my chair and pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes. Thank Magic Nelson had shown up when he did. I wasn’t too proud to admit how relieved I was that someone else was responsible for backup now. I wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing.
And who was watching Finley? Or Edith, for that matter. I didn’t buy that she wasn’t as dangerous as the others, perhaps more so.
I heaved out another sigh.
Well, I needed a coffee. I guessed I could check on Finley when I was there.
And if I reassured myself that Parker was okay too, well, no one needed to know about that but me.