“You want another drink?” he asked, as a vamp came in carrying a tray with a decanter on it.
“I want you to stop gouging me with that thing!”
He held something in front of my eyes. “See these? These are tweezers. They don’t gouge.”
“Tell that to my ass!”
“You want a drink or not?”
“I want some coffee,” I said resentfully, since I obviously wasn’t getting any answers. I clutched the sheet to my chest and tried to peer over my shoulder at my abused butt. And then I noticed the vamp looking, too. “Hey!”
“He don’t mean anything,” Marco said, as the man hurried out. “It’s just there, you know?”
“And?”
“And we’re guys. We look at women’s butts.”
“Are you looking at my butt?” I asked suspiciously.
“I gotta look or I can’t dig all the pieces out.”
“Then maybe we should call for a doctor.”
Marco patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. You aren’t my type.”
“What is your type?”
“Someone who gets in less trouble,” he said, as a sliver of glass rang in the ashtray he was using as a receptacle. “I decided I was wrong. I don’t like the wild side. I ain’t got the master’s stamina.”
“I don’t require stamina.”
“Babe, you require a freaking tank.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it didn’t sound complimentary. But before I could ask, Pritkin came in with a mug that smelled like heaven. He handed it to me, and I braced myself for his usual caffeine hammer to the brain. This batch didn’t disappoint; after two sips I could already feel my heart racing.
“It wasn’t demon,” he told me, without preamble.
“The hell it wasn’t.” Marco tossed another little sliver into the ashtray, more forcefully than necessary. “The guys said it was like The Exorcist in here.”
“Amityville,” I muttered, but no one was listening.
“They were wrong,” Pritkin said shortly. He looked at me and frowned, then reached over and brushed my curls out of my eyes. I smiled at him blearily, which got a bigger frown for some reason. “You are certain it wasn’t a ghost?”
I nodded. It was about the only thing I was sure about.
“Can you describe it?”
“Didn’t you see it?”
He shook his head. “A dark cloud, nothing more.”
“I didn’t see much more than that.”
“Tell me what you can. Anything would help at this point.”
I tried to think back, but my head really hurt and the room was still swimmy and there just wasn’t that much to remember. “It was dark colored,” I said slowly. “Black or gray. Or really dark blue. And it had feathers—I think.” I racked my brain, but
I wasn’t getting anything else. “It was big?”