Desmond stopped abruptly at the bottom of the steps, and his eyes widened slightly. He sniffed the air. Oh goddammit, of course he sniffed the air. Why was I constantly forgetting about the natural abilities of werewolves in their human form? I hadn’t been this close to him, hadn’t seen him in the three weeks since he’d taken a bullet meant for me.
I’d spoken to him, though.
Damn, I had spoken to him just the night before. I’d stayed on the line and listened to him breathe after he’d fallen asleep in the middle of our conversation. I had it bad.
Now he seemed to be looking right at me, but human-form werewolf vision was only good at night if the wolf had time to adjust. He’d just come out of a bright lobby, and there shouldn’t have been time for him to spot me in the shadows.
I tried to push myself farther under the lion without drawing more of his attention.
Go to him.
My brain had a one-track mind.
“Secret?” He was whispering, his tone uncertain like he wasn’t quite sure he could trust what he was smelling. Hearing my name from his lips was so painful I wanted to run across the street and put my arms around him.
I didn’t move.
He raked a hand through his short black hair and scratched the dark stubble on his jaw. After a final sniff and a small shake of his head, Desmond sighed and walked off down the street. When he vanished, I slipped out from my hiding place and watched the space where I’d last seen him. If I ran, I could catch him.
Instead I turned and walked the opposite way.
Chapter Six
The next night, shortly after moonrise, I slipped through the front door of a brownstone with Keats & McQueen—Private Pest Control etched on the glass. I’d lived with Keaty a mere three years, but that was all it had taken for this place to feel like home to me.
Though Keaty himself hadn’t quite felt like family.
I loved him dearly, but in the way you love a pet snake. He was important to me, and without him I’d have never learned to survive in this city, but Keaty didn’t love things. If pressed, I might admit Keaty was very likely a sociopath. Only he didn’t try to fake emotion, he was just a blank slate.
The blank slate in question called to me from the open door of his office.
“The prodigal daughter has returned,” he said, his tone unreadable.
As I often did in the office, I kicked my shoes off at the door and made myself comfortable. I padded barefoot into Keaty’s space and slid backwards over the arm of one of his high wingback chairs, letting my legs dangle off the side.
“Oh, yes, do make yourself at home. ” The man himself sat in a leather chair behind his big wooden desk. He was probably north of forty, but he didn’t look it. His dark blond hair hadn’t begun to show signs of gray, but he had firm frown lines permanently etched around his mouth. Still, though, he was in excellent physical condition for a man of any age.
For the first time in years something else sat on the desk in front of him, and be still my heart it was a laptop.
“You own a computer?”
“In spite of your opinion of me, I am perfectly aware it is not 1943 and I am also not Phillip Marlowe. ”
“Sam Spade,” I teased.
He grunted. “I always preferred Chandler to Hammett, myself. ”
“You read books?” I asked with mock surprise. In for a penny, in for a pound. If I was going to poke a sleeping bear, it might as well be a sociopath who killed monsters for fun.
Monsters like me.
“I used to have this marvelous thing known as spare time. Then I met a sassy, bothersome teenaged vampire hunter, and what do you know? My time disappeared. ”
“You love me. ” I picked up a paperweight on his desk, a crystal rose, and turned it over gently in my hands. Last time I’d taken something off his desk it had supposedly contained the soul of a big bad shaman or something. Ever since then I’d been careful not to handle things, but I was feeling fidgety and it was shiny.
“Unfortunately,” he replied. I set the flower down and stared at him. In seven years it was the closest thing I’d ever gotten from Keaty that resembled an admission of emotional attachment.
Given some of the training methods he’d had for me as a teenager were borderline torture—psychological and physical alike—I’d never thought I’d hear him say he was proud of me, let alone that he loved me. He was the ultimate hard-to-please parent figure, and I thought the best I’d ever do was Well, you’re still alive.