ChapterFifteen
The room buzzed.I looked at the bedroom door with longing, wishing I could be in there, in bed, all by myself.
But then I remembered that I would be sleeping with Dominic again, and I suddenly didn’t want to be in there at all. Or in this hotel. In this country. On this continent.
“Five men, one woman,” one of the agents said—Tailsburry was his name, and he was leading the crew appointed to this mission.
“Yep,” I confirmed with a nod. They’d all been here when we got back, all seven of them wanting to know every single detail about what we’d seen. At least they’d let me change out of the dress first and put on my jeans and a plain shirt. Now, I sat in the middle of the living room with a chamomile tea in my hands that I didn’t even like the taste of. But my mom always said that it calms your nerves, especially before bed, so here I was.
“One of them was a woman I saw today at the car show. She said she worked for Ford. You probably heard my conversation with her,” I told the agents, still looking down at the cup. Dominic was back to looking like himself, and he’d changed into his sweatpants and baggy shirt, too. Best to just keep my eyes off him completely. Happy to realize that my self-preservation instincts were still fully functional, at least.
One of the agents began to type away on his laptop as I continued to speak.
“She had braces earlier today, which were fake, or she had illusion magic done on her, too. She wore a leather dress and there was a tattoo on her right shoulder—the face of a panther, I think, with the jaws wide open, but it could have been a lion, too. It was all black.” I sipped the steaming tea and did not enjoy the way it burned my throat at all. But the secret, Mom said, was to drink it while it was still hot enough to make your throat tingle on the way down, so I took another sip. “She had two cellphones near her glass on the countertop, too.”
I searched my mind for anything else I’d seen around her.
“The man who was sitting in front of her could have been one of them—or not. He never turned to look at us that I could see, but he was big, about Dominic’s size, with longish light blond hair tied behind his head. He had two cell phones with him, too.”
But that was it. That was all I was able to see around Lindsay.
“Got it,” Tailsburry said. “We’re pulling up the conversation you had with her right now. We’re going to run her voice through some voice-recognition software—see if we get lucky. What about the others?”
“The one who was across from us, leaning against the wall, was the most focused on us, I think. Almost like he was angry. He had guns on him—a brown holster was around his hips, but I only saw a little bit of it when he moved his arm up to drink. There could have been knives on him, too. His hair was cropped short to the sides, and much longer on the top of his head, and I couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but something glistened over his left one when the light hit him right. I think he had brow piercings.”
Tailsburry nodded, tapping away at his laptop. Maybe he was taking note of everything I said?
“And the other?”
I kept on talking, giving them every single detail I’d seen about the men who’d watched us, while Dominic only listened. I figured he was going to just let me finish, then take over and share what he saw.
But when I was done, having spoken so much my jaw was seriously starting to hurt, he had very little to say.
“I didn’t see the one across from us or catch the one looking up only when he was drinking,” he said, almost reluctantly. “But none of them came close to us. None of them were even upstairs in the same room—they only watched from a distance, and when we left, they didn’t follow. That means they already know where we’re staying, and it’s safe to assume they’ve believed the rumors.”
“I’m going to find her tomorrow, at the car show. She liked the sandals I wore, and I’m going to pretend to gift them to her. There’s a good chance that she’ll keep them to herself, so if we can put a tracker somewhere on them, it would be great.”
“Maybe a magic tracker,” Dominic said with a nod. “Something they won’t be able to detect or smell.”
“It can be arranged easily,” Tailsburry said and kept on pressing on his keyboard.
“Do you have any clue what they were?” Carter asked Dominic. She was one of the only two female agents in the crew. Except for me, of course.
But Dominic shook his head. “Too many people. Too many scents.”
“The two standing back-to-back were werewolves. I’m not a hundred percent sure, but every time the lights fell on them, their eyes glowed golden.” Golden eyes were very common for werewolves. “And the one standing by the railing of the stairway—I couldn’t see his legs at all. It was too dark all around him, even though I could see the other people close by. I think he might be a wraith.” Wraiths commanded darkness better than any other magic out there. They became darkness in their true form, so it was a good guess, I thought. “And Lindsay…she’s fae, too. I don’t know what kind, but she gave me the same vibe all fae do. A nymph, or maybe even a banshee.” Just the way her eyes were so small and so black—beady, like an animal’s. “I have no clue about the other guys, though.”
I took another sip of my tea. It had already gone cold, but I’d gotten half the cup inside me while it was still way too hot for drinking, so I was calling it a success.
“We got it,” one of the agents sitting near Tailsburry said, and suddenly, the conversation I’d had with Lindsay at the car show came through the speakers of his laptop. We all listened to the words intently—everything she’d said, everything I’d said.
My boyfriend bought them for me.
Ugh, it sounded so real. Like I really had a boyfriend, and he’d really gone to the trouble of buying me a pair of sandals.
I wished I could throw that stupid cup at Dominic’s face right now, but just as the thought occurred to me, I stopped myself.
What was I even doing? Why was I so mad?