Kissed by Darkness(27)

People like Kabita who killed the monsters for a living. In practice they pretended we didn’t exist, but in reality they pretty much paid our livelihoods with the understanding that once in a while they got to call on us for special jobs.

“Are you telling me the government wants Jack dead?” Not the Sunwalker. Jack. He was becoming real to me now, a person like Inigo or Kabita or Cordelia. So not good.

“No,” she snapped, “I’m telling you that Brent Darroch has friends in high places. Very high places. He called in a favor.”

Great. That meant we were that favor. It also meant Kabita hadn’t asked any questions. When the government was involved, asking questions wasn’t particularly good for the health. It also meant that Darroch was a lot better connected than I thought. This could get a bit hairy.

“Listen, Morgan. Just do your job, OK? Dust this Sunwalker, get the amulet, and everybody goes home happy.”

Except for the Sunwalker. I doubt he’d be thrilled with the plan. And me. I wasn’t happy with the whole thing anymore, either. Something felt so off about it all, but Kabita wasn’t in a listening mood. This government contact obviously had her between the proverbial rock and hard place. Just what that rock and hard place involved was a question for another time, but you’d better believe I planned to find out.

“I don’t think it’s going to be as easy to dust this guy as we thought.” Maybe I could throw her off for a while. Give me some time to figure things out.

Her voice was diamond hard. “Are you telling me you can’t do your job?”

“No, not at all. I’m just saying it’s not going to be your routine hunt. This isn’t like killing a vampire. It may take some time to figure out his … vulnerabilities. Not to mention figuring out where he’s stashed the amulet.”

“Just get it done,” she said and slammed down the phone. This was so not like Kabita at all. I was the short tempered, emotional one. Kabita was the calm, cool-headed one. The sane one. Whoever was pulling her strings must really have something over her. That’s all I could figure.

But I’d worry about that later. For now I had bigger fish to fry. I needed to hunt down Kaldan’s flunky and dust him before he attacked me again. It might also be a good idea to find out why Darroch wanted me followed, which probably meant trying to track down Kaldan. Then there was the little matter of the amulet.

I rubbed my forehead. I had an almighty headache coming on. I didn’t do well on lack of sleep, and the crazy dreams I’d been having were wreaking havoc with my sleep patterns.

Sleep wasn’t an option. I doubted I’d be able to relax anyway. I decided a very large cup of coffee was in order. When all else failed, drink coffee, preferably by the gallon.

I staggered into the kitchen only to find Inigo sitting at my table. I frowned at him, then at my back door. It was one of those sliding glass patio doors with the little screws at the bottom, the kind that couldn’t be opened from the outside short of breaking the glass. The door was still firmly closed, the screws still tightly in place.

I turned and walked down the hall to my front door. Still locked with the safety latch in place. Not impervious to breaking and entering, but certainly unlikely, what with the safety latch and all.

I did a complete circuit of the house, checking every window in the place. All of them were closed and locked up tight. I walked back into the kitchen, still frowning.

“I give up. How’d you do it?”

He gave me an impish grin, his blue eyes sparkling merrily. “I’ll never tell.” He leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest which drew my attention to his very well formed pectoral region. Maybe I needed a cold shower instead of coffee.

“Honestly, Inigo, you’ve really got to stop breaking into my house.”

“And spoil all the fun?”

I rolled my eyes and got to work on the coffee. I dumped some of my favorite Italian roast beans into the coffee grinder and whizzed them before adding them to the French press. It was my humble opinion that coffee from a French press just tasted nicer than drip coffee. Plus there was that whole Zen thing that came from the ceremony of making coffee. I dumped sugar and creamer into my mug (Yum!) and left Inigo’s pure.

I sat the mug in front of him and tried really hard not to drool over the muscles his T-shirt didn’t quite hide. I should probably write Congress about the indecency of Hanes T-shirts or something. I cleared my throat. “So, to what do I owe this, uh, pleasure?”

He flashed a devilish grin. Cheeky. “I heard you broke into Darroch’s house last night.”