A Perfect Blood (The Hollows #10)(28)

His teeth showing in a quick grin, he took a sip of coffee, clearly thinking he had the upper hand again. “I don’t blame you for fighting it at first, but you’re a demon and you need to accept that. All this about Kalamack giving you a choice that really isn’t one aside. It’s all you got, woman. Be the demon. The more you try to make the demon a witch, the more you hurt yourself. Why not try it the other way around? See what happens. If it doesn’t work, they’ll still be here. Waiting for you.”
His attention was on my charmed silver bracelet, and I covered it up. It sounded so simple. Maybe he was right.
Wayde let a hand hit the table, making me jump. “Never mind,” he said in a tired voice. “Don’t listen to me. I’m just pissed you snuck out. You belong here with Ivy and Jenks. Maybe all you need is some new friends. Some who you can just . . . hang with for a while with no strings attached.”My lips quirked. No strings attached wasn’t how I worked. “But not you, obviously,” I said, and Wayde took another sip of coffee.
“Obviously. Rachel, you are one crazy bitch. But I like you. Your loyalty impresses me. It makes putting up with the rest of your crap worth it.”
“Gee, thanks, Wayde.” I lifted my cup to him in a salute. “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.” Again the coffee slipped into me, and the tightness in my shoulders finally started to ease. “So, ah, how did you find me?”
Wayde snorted. “I have the bus schedules and routes memorized, and you left your coffee on the counter. There was only one place you’d be,” he said, and I sighed. When I read a person wrong, I really get it wrong. “Your phone is ringing.”
Yes, it was ringing, humming at the bottom of my bag. It had been for the last couple of minutes. It was probably Jenks, ticked that I’d gone out without him. For crying out loud, Ivy knew where I was.
“Yup,” I said, my expression bland as I tugged my bag closer and reached in to get the phone, the multiple flashes of green from the amulets catching my attention as my aura touched them. I glanced at the incoming number, then froze. It was the church, but what gave me pause were the amulets.
They were active—and pinging on something.
“Oh my God!” I said as I dropped the humming phone into my lap and snatched up an amulet, not believing it when the green held steady. “It’s my scatter-detection amulet,” I said, pulse racing as I pulled it out, thrilled. “Holy crap, it’s working! Wayde, it’s working! Here, hold it!”
“What, me?” he exclaimed as I shoved the amulet at him, almost knocking over his coffee. “I don’t know how to work this thing.”
“Just hold it,” I said as I fumbled for the phone and flipped it open. “If you have an aura, it works. Damn! I can’t believe it’s working! Somewhere within a mile or two is something linked to that poor man they strung up in Washington Park.”
From behind the counter, Mark slammed something shut, clearly having heard me.
Wayde was looking at the amulet as if it were a chunk of rotting flesh, gingerly cradling it in two hands as I flipped the phone open. “You said you weren’t going to go out to any sites unless they were secure.”
“The I.S. and the FIB will be there,” I said, excited. “Besides, HAPA is long gone. We’re going to find an empty room unless we’re really lucky.” The receiver clicked open. “Ivy?”
“No, it’s me,” Jenks said, his tone sounding tinny over the phone lines. “What the hell do you think you’re doing going out without Wayde? He’s more ticked than a shaved cat.” 
“I know,” I said, looking at the uncomfortable Were sitting across from me. “He’s with me. We’re cool. Ivy knew where I was, so what’s the big deal?”
“You ditched me!” he accused, and I winced.
“You didn’t have your winter clothes on, and I had to catch the bus!” I said, then lowered my voice. “Wake up Ivy, will you? And get your working blacks on. The scatter-detection charms went active. I’m at Junior’s with Wayde.”
“Tink’s little red panties, Rache! You ditching us?”
No more than everyone seems to be ditching me, I thought, then shoved my mini pity party away. “Did I not just say put your working clothes on? Get Ivy and get out here. I’m calling Glenn next, and then Nina.” I glanced at Wayde. “Could you bring out a pair of jeans and a shirt for Wayde while you’re at it?”
Jenks’s snort told me we were okay. “Yeah, I got it,” he said, his kids shrieking in the background. “I’ll ask Belle to watch my kids.”
“I’ll wait for you here as long as I can, but if the FIB or the I.S. gets here first, I’ll be with them,” I said, wondering if I should try Glenn at home. He might be off shift, but he’d come in for this, long night or not.
“Gotcha, Rache!” he said cheerfully, and hung up.
I cleared the phone and started scrolling for Glenn’s home number. I’d try there first. I looked up when Wayde chuckled. “What?” I said, blinking at him.
“You’re funny,” he said, draping the amulet over my neck and tweaking my nose. “I’m going to see if they have a disposable shaver in the bathroom. Think about what I said, okay?”
He stood, and I stared at him.
“About having casual friends?” he added, looking back at me. “They don’t make the pain any less when you move on, but they help cover it up.” He hesitated, but I didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t run off, okay?” he finally added, looking good as he made his confident, casual, and scruffy way to the men’s room, exchanging a masculine greeting with the barista as he went. And what did he mean by think “about having casual friends”? That hadn’t been an invitation . . .
Had it?
Chapter Nine
Even at a slow thirty mph on the back of Ivy’s bike, the wind was frigid, and I pressed my head into Wayde’s shoulder, shivering. He was still in his boxers and T-shirt, and if he could take it, I could, too. The feelings of dread and anticipation had tightened my gut until I felt ill. The sweet coffee wasn’t sitting right, and the rumble of Ivy’s bike under me, usually soothing, only wound my tension tighter.
We were down by the waterfront, the Cincy side of things, and when our momentum shifted, I looked up through the cloudy goggles that Ivy kept in her side bag for unexpected riders. We were at a stop sign, and whereas I knew Wayde would probably not have stopped under most circumstances, he did now.
I put down a foot to help keep us balanced. The smell of soap and Were drifted back, and I breathed it in as I pushed my goggles up and looked at the amulet in my hand. This was why he’d stopped, not the sleek black new-model Lexus following us.
“Keep going,” I said loudly, seeing no change in the amulet’s glow, and Wayde nodded.
The heat from the Lexus’s engine hit the back of my calves, and my foot rose to the rest as we accelerated. Nina was driving it. I suppose I could have done this from the comfort of her borrowed front seat instead of freezing my ass off out here behind Wayde with no real coat, no leather, and garden shoes instead of my boots, but I wasn’t willingly going to put myself alone in a car with her, even if she had been polite at the coffeehouse. It was obvious she still wasn’t happy about my forcing them to give primary jurisdiction to the FIB, even if I had agreed to see the run through. If I didn’t finish this quietly and to their satisfaction, they were going to frame me or wipe my memory, or both.Mental note. Call Trent about a possible elf-magic-based spell to block memory charms. There’d been nothing about one in my spell books, nothing from a quick Internet search. I was sure the demons had something, but that didn’t help me.
Nina had shown up almost immediately after my call from Junior’s, making me wonder if she’d been waiting for it. Ivy and Jenks would join us when they could, and Glenn was probably on his way. I longingly thought of my coffee, left behind when I said I’d ride with Wayde. He’d had time to shave, but he was still in his jammies. We must look quite the pair, creeping down the service road with a Lexus twenty yards behind and two I.S. vehicles after that.
God, he smells good, I thought as I hugged Wayde. I lied to myself that I was just trying to stay out of the wind, but the reality was, this was the closest I’d gotten to another human being in months, and I wasn’t above teasing myself. My thoughts strayed to our conversation at Junior’s, and my focus blurred. It sure had sounded like the hint of an offer to hang with him for a while. True, he was kind of straggly looking right now, but I’d seen him out of his shirt and had been duly impressed. Unfortunately, though I knew that it might start with no strings attached, it would turn into something more. I couldn’t do that, as pleasant as it sounded.
Why again was I on this bike? Oh yeah. Avoiding Nina.
I pulled my head up as Wayde went by the two empty stadiums. Squinting, I pushed back from him enough to look at the amulet. “Keep going!” I shouted, and he motored on.
The wind increased as we slipped from the lee, and I hunched into him again. I was more than a little relieved that whatever my amulet had pinged on wasn’t at the stadiums. There wasn’t a game today, but I’d been banned, and if Mrs. Sarong found me poking around, it would strain our delicate relationship. Finding a mutilated body or the magic to turn a witch into a monster would have been the icing that made the camel trip . . . or whatever.