Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
“Are you sure this is a good idea, Sue?” Bart lumbered along beside me in his bear-like ramble, looking fabulous in his paisley purple three-piece business suit. “I know you can hold your own against Juliette, but for some reason, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
I walked alongside him, moving through the lunchtime foot traffic with a spring in my step.
I felt amazing; Cecil had outdone himself with my outfit today.
When he heard that I was going to be having lunch with Juliette, he insisted on a sleek, scarlet power suit, the jacket cinched in at the waist, with enough buttons undone on the crisp shirt to show a hint of shimmering collarbones and sexy decolletage.
The hem of my skirt came down to my knee, and it would have been frumpy if it wasn’t so perfectly tailored, hugging my thighs and giving me a sexy, powerful silhouette.
As a final touch, he slicked my hair back off my face and added subtle but stunning makeup and a soft rosy tint to my lips.
I looked both professional and sexy as hell.
After declaring himself a genius, Cecil explained that my corporate-luxe outfit was designed specifically to highlight the fact that Juliette didn’t have a job—she was just a trophy wife. It would throw the balance of power in my favor, and I couldn’t fault his logic.
Cecil insisted on stilettos. They were hideously expensive, so they were as comfortable as they could be…
but still. They were high heels. My feet already hurt.
I would have insisted on kitten or mule heels, because I’m normally quite sensible, but Cecil was right—the stilettos elevated my outfit from mere corporate hottie to boardroom queen.
The tools of feminine oppression were hard to shake off when they made you feel like a bad bitch.
After walking less than a block from the office, I noticed an odd feeling. My shoulder blades were tingling—that weird, non-sensation of being watched.
I walked a little faster. The feeling continued. It was unsettling, like a tiny pin pricking at the base of my neck.
“Bart… do you have any special shifter powers? Enhanced sense of smell, or vision, or anything like that?”
“No. Not while I’m in my man form, anyway. To be honest, Sue, from what I remember, I don’t really have any enhanced senses when I shift into a bear, either.”
“None? No… I don’t know… heightened sense of danger?”
“Nope. All I have is a raging impulse to eat as much as possible, then a wild urge to plug up my butthole and crawl into a hole to sleep for three months out of the year.” He wrinkled his nose and frowned.
“Last time I spent any time in the Woods, I had to do six months on a keto diet to lose all the weight I gained. I can’t keep yo-yoing like that; it’s bad for my skin elasticity. Why do you ask?”
“I feel like someone is watching us.”
“Really?” He glanced over his shoulder. “I can’t tell. There are too many people around.”
I walked on for another minute, but I couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling someone was watching me.
It wasn’t a magical extra-sensory perception, just a mundane one.
And it was a feeling I knew well. To be a great manager, you had to be good at reading the room.
I’d sharpened my teeth in the most cut-throat of boardrooms, so I could tell when someone was glaring daggers at me.
“I can still feel it,” I muttered. “It’s unnerving.”
Bart, moving over-casually, turned around again to look behind us.
“The lunch rush is in full swing. There are hundreds of people out and about. I suppose any one of them could be hunting you right now, Sue. According to the prophecy, you’re the only person standing between the Devourer and what he thinks is his rightful place on the throne of all the Worlds.
” He swung back around and nudged me. “I’m actually surprised that you’ve only had one assassin come at you so far this morning. ”
“I love how reassuring you are, Bart.” I tossed my hair, trying to rid myself of the unease that had started to crawl its way into me.
“It’s lunchtime on a Wednesday. We’re in broad daylight, in the middle of a city, in a realm where magic is hidden by law and by, uh, magic. ” I side-eyed him. “Is that right?”
“Oh, yes.” Bart nodded. “The physics of the human world are bent to follow magical laws. Nobody can perform magic within range of any non-magical human adult. Right now, I couldn’t shift even if I wanted to.”
“Hmm. Is that why Audrina was able to see the berserkers, and the centaurs? Because she’s a kid?”
“Well… no. It’s usually only little kids who can sometimes see supernatural creatures, not gangly seventeen-year-olds. No offense to her, but Audrina was already a little weird to start with.”
I walked in silence for a minute, feeling even worse. I hadn’t seen Audrina since the police took her home. We had a plan—Martina was working on the documents to get her emancipated from her horrible parents so she could be free to come and live with me.
Audrina agreed to pretend to get along with her mom until she could be served with the papers, but I hadn’t heard or seen her in over forty-eight hours, and I was starting to get a little nervous.
She hadn’t appeared on her balcony. Since her mom had already accused me of kidnapping her once, and I didn’t want to mess up the emancipation process, I was a little reluctant to march over there and demand to speak with her.
Besides, Martina had ordered me to stay away, and she was far more intimidating when she was in lawyer-mode.
My shoulder blades still itched. We only had two more blocks to walk before we arrived at the glittering silver skyscraper where Cloud occupied pride of place, right at the very top of the building.
The streets were packed with humans, so no one should be able to hunt me right now. Still. Someone was at least following me. I could feel it.
“What would a secret agent do?” I wondered out loud. “Should we pull into a drugstore, try on some sunglasses, and wait for the threat to pass?”
“We could,” Bart replied. “But then you’d be late for lunch. The ma?tre d’ at Cloud will put out a hit on you. Then someone really will be hunting you.”
I blew out a frustrated breath. “This is stupid.” I stopped in my tracks, scooted to the side to get out of the flow of traffic, and turned around to look back.
I spotted him almost instantly.
He dropped his gaze, but not fast enough. In fact, he might as well have waved a flag and shouted I’m watching you.
“There,” I said grimly. “That’s who’s following us.” A prickle of anxiety tightened my chest.
Bart shifted on his feet next to me, equally nervous. “That older man in the trench coat?”
“Uh huh.”
“Rumpled shirt? Very square-shaped head? Stubble on his chin? Thick salt-and-pepper hair? Trench coat and well-worn shoes?”
“That’s the one.”
Bart snorted. “He might as well be wearing a t-shirt that says, ‘I’m a PI!’”
“Exactly,” I sighed. “Except he’s not a PI.”
“No?”
“He’s a police detective.”
My stalker was still looking away from me, and he’d slowed down considerably to avoid catching up to us.
In fact, he’d slowed down from a confident stride to an amble that was looking increasingly awkward the closer he got.
As I watched, an older woman loaded down with shopping bags snapped at him to speed the hell up or get out of her way.
If the woman had paused to look at the expression on his face, she would be running away right about now.
“A detective?” Bart’s voice went up several octaves. “Ooh.”
“His name is Detective Striker. He showed up to my house with his partner to look for Audrina the other day.”
“And he’s still investigating you?”
“He must be.” I frowned. Or was he? Was this just something else I was wrong about?
Well, even if I was wrong, there was one way to find out for sure. I raised my voice and called out, “Detective Striker!”
His gaze shot up to meet mine again, his eyes narrowing.
“Hello!” I waved. “Detective Striker, over here!”
“Er, Sue…” Bart edged backwards into the shade of the drug store entrance. “I think I’m going to do the thing you mentioned where we try on sunglasses until the danger passes.”
“No problem.” I gave him a reassuring smile. “It’s okay. I got this.”
Bart wasn’t fond of the police. I knew why.
About ten years ago, a boyfriend had gotten rough with him when he tried to end things.
When Bart—with an obvious black eye and a split lip—went to the police to report it, he was laughed out of the station by not one, not two, but a whole squad of officers.
It made my blood boil. Understandably, now all cops made Bart very nervous.
I squeezed his hand. “Just give me a couple of minutes, I won’t be long.” I turned away, waved down the street, and called out brightly, “Hello, Detective!”
Striker was only ten feet away now, glaring daggers at me. “I can hear you, Ms. Moore. I would caution you to be a little more discreet. Lower your voice.”
“Why?” I gave him a serene smile. “I have no secrets, Detective. Why do I need to be discreet?”
His eyes narrowed into a glare. He squared his shoulders and swaggered closer, looking down his nose and trying to intimidate me with his size. He had a good six inches on me, and he was twice as wide.
It would take more than that to intimidate me. “Were you following me, Detective?”
He thrust out his square chin. “No.”
Buzz. I didn’t need my gift to tell me he was lying, though; I’d felt daggers in my back the whole way. And now that I was facing him, I knew without a doubt the visual vitriol was coming from him.
He had nothing on me, though. Since Audrina had gone home, I was no longer a person of interest in her case. My smile grew wider. “Come now, Detective, there’s no reason to play games with me. Tell me the truth. Why are you following me?”
He glared at me for a whole minute; I could feel the waves of loathing coming off him. But he kept silent.