by Terry Spear
“I left. I knew that the… Thorst would track me down. So I hid at the hotel.”
“With his help?” the detective asked, motioning to Hunter.
“No,” she said. “Samson dropped me off at the hotel.”
“Samson. The guy from your class.”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed there until?”
“I went out to get pizza.”
“With this Samson?”
“Samson had left earlier. Hunter came by and picked me up and we went out for pizza.”
“Where’s Samson?”
“I don’t know where he went to.”
“There were no pizza boxes in the hotel room.”
“We heard the explosion before we reached the pizza place and returned, worried about Celeste. Then we saw the patrol car on fire. We waited until we saw Celeste was on the stretcher and followed her to the hospital. We heard she was leaving today.”
“So, you came to see her. What do you know about Thorst?”
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“Why did you go to the zoo?”
“You asked me before. I said I went to see the lions.”
Detective Ryker cleared his throat. “Did you have something to do with the other man? The one Thorst murdered?”
“No. I didn’t know either of them.”
“What do you know about Celeste’s… visions?”
“Pretty cool, don’t you think?”
Detective Ryker looked hard at her. “Nothing adds up. How you got to the zoo. Why you were really there. How you got out of the police station without anyone seeing you. How you left the parking lot at the hospital, vanishing in thin air.” He paused. “Some kind of electronic device was stolen at the murdered man’s home. Do you know anything about it?”
“No. Why should I? I didn’t know him. Don’t know where he lives. Haven’t any clue what he was doing.”
“I believe that you know a lot more than you’re letting on, Alana.” He closed his notebook, rose, and shoved the book in his pocket. “If you remember anything further, let us know, won’t you?”
“Absolutely,” she said, getting to her feet.
Hunter stood beside her.
Detective Ryker said to Hunter, “Stay out of trouble.” Then he and his partner left the hospital.
Alana sighed with relief. “Hopefully since they got their man, they’ll leave us out of it.”
Hunter escorted her into the elevator. “I was afraid I’d have to open a portal and start the speculation all over again.”
When they reached Celeste’s floor and found her room, she was already dressed and ready to leave the hospital. She smiled brightly at them. “I’m being released today and going back to school tomorrow. Will you be there?” She looked hopeful.
Hunter didn’t want to allow Alana to go.
Alana took Celeste’s hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. What’s one more school year among friends?” Hunter opened his mouth to speak, but Alana said, “Jared told me you said he and you were enrolling in school with us.”
“That was before you were on the news,” Hunter said caustically.
“Yeah, well, you can take care of me.” Alana patted his chest, smiling up at him, looking purely demonic.
And he loved it.
“All right. But any more trouble like this, and we’re going somewhere that no one knows us.”
“All right,” she said and slipped her hand around his.
He pulled her tight against him and wrapped his arm around her waist, looking down at her. “I choose the classes we’ll be in. No calculus, for one.”
“No argument there, but Samson will probably not like it.”
“Samson doesn’t have to like it.”
Alana said, “How are your foster parents dealing with all this, Celeste?”
Celeste shrugged. “I’m bound for another foster home. They couldn’t handle all this bad publicity. They figure because of my visions, it’s not going to get any better.”
“Do you want to come home with us? My mother’s a witch, but in a good way.”
Celeste frowned. “She wouldn’t mind? Really?”
“Oh, no, you’ll fit in fine.”
Samson shifted from mist into his human form and said to Celeste, “I’ll stay with you in calculus class. Help you out if you need any.”
Celeste’s expression brightened. “I’d love that. Thanks.”
Jared made himself visible and scowled. “We graduated last year. I can’t believe you want to do this, Hunter.”
“Someone’s got to take my girl to the prom,” Hunter said. “And it’s going to be me.”
Both Samson and Jared looked at each other, then at Celeste and smiled.
Alana said, “Indigo offered to take you, Celeste. He said he’d never messed with a Camaran demon before, but because your blood can’t hurt him now, he’s game.”
“He’s a ghost,” Jared said, sounding annoyed.
“She’ll go with me,” Samson said.
Jared crossed his arms. “She’ll decide.” For the first time, Jared’s eyes glowed red over a girl.
Hunter couldn’t help but smirk at him. Time would tell what happened come the prom. For now, it was time to take Celeste home to Alana’s house.
“Ready to go home?” Alana asked.
“Not before I learned I could live with you, but now I’m loving the idea. Whatever happened to the warlock who got stuck in the demon world?”
“For a while, the Matusa will undoubtedly want him to open a portal. If he can’t, they’ll either kill him or let him flounder. Other demons might not like him though, knowing he might have intended to bring one of them through to Earth world to be his slave,” Alana said. “If he’s smart, he’ll act clueless, although I’m certain they’ll want to know how he ended up in their world. He’ll have fun explaining that.”
“Hipalon demons will know the truth,” Jared said.
Everyone looked at him. Hunter recalled what Jared had said about their type, though they’d never encountered one.
Jared explained, “They always know if someone’s telling the truth or not. They use them as investigators in crimes. So if they want to know the truth, they’ll call on one of the Hipalon.”
“Did the police talk to you, Alana?” Celeste asked.
“Yeah. Unless more portals open and someone catches sight of them or we’re linked to more dead bodies, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”
“Do you think you might want to go with me to the hall of records in the demon world sometime?” Jared asked Celeste.
Samson didn’t look pleased. Celeste smiled wistfully up at him as she sat down in a wheelchair, the only way the hospital staff would let her leave here.
“You know, maybe someday we could do that.”
Before Alana could say anything, Hunter said, “No, you’re not going with her.”
Trying to get Alana away from there the first time she went had been dangerous enough. Samson looked torn. He was supposed to protect Alana, never leaving her side. But he looked like he didn’t care for the suggestion that Jared would take Celeste by himself to the demon world.
Hunter grunted. He was not going to let them sway him to allow Alana to go with them, and he wasn’t leaving her behind to protect the others, either.
Alana took his hand as Samson wheeled Celeste out of the hospital room. “We’ll all go.”
“It’s too dangerous for you,” Hunter said, expecting his word to be obeyed.
Samson jumped in. “Yeah, we’ll all go.”
“I’m the Matusa here.”
As cold as he suddenly felt, Indigo must have tried to let him know he was here, too.
“What is Indigo saying?” Hunter asked Alana.
She smiled. “He’ll help you protect me. Which means come spring break, we’ll all go.”
Hunter let out his breath and wrapped his arm around Alana’s shoulder and kept her close. “You remember what happened last tim
e?”
“Yeah, you saved us.”
He shook his head, knowing he wasn’t winning this battle. When other kids were getting in trouble at sunny resorts all over the world, he was going to be trying to protect a bunch of demon friends in Seplichus. Not exactly what he’d had in mind when he had become a demon guardian for Earth world.
He sighed heavily. What the heck. He was a Matusa. If Alana wanted to help Celeste find her real parents, and Jared discover where his were, too, Hunter would be right there with them. Maybe he’d even learn more about his brother that his demon father didn’t want him to meet.
Hunter straightened. His father wouldn’t like it, but Hunter’s half-brother had every right knowing what he truly was. Maybe he could help him cope a bit.
He looked down at Alana as they waited in the lobby with Celeste and Samson while Jared went to get a taxi. “I don’t want you going, you know. I want to remind you in case you’ve forgotten, you are mine.”
She laughed. “You know, Hunter, you’re so arrogant.”
“Yeah, and you love me for it.”
She sighed and snuggled closer. “Will you be getting an apartment in the area?”
“Condo, if Jared’s parents will swing for it. If not right next door to your mother’s place because none are available, somewhere else in the complex nearby. You need watching because of this portal business. Until you can control your astral self—”
“I know, I know. I’m trouble.”
He smiled down at her, loving Alana just the way she was. “Yeah, my kind of trouble. We’ll try to find something out about my brother while we’re in the demon world this time.”
Alana looked up at him with wide eyes. “Oh, Hunter, yes.”
“And we’ll see your father if we can locate him.”
She nodded, smiling enthusiastically.
“And Indigo, maybe we can convince him to stay there.”
Alana glanced to her left, then said to Hunter, “He said he’s staying with us, so get used to the idea.”
“It was a long shot.”
A taxi drove up, and Jared came back inside as Samson began to wheel Celeste to the vehicle.
“Did I miss anything?” Jared asked no one in particular.
Celeste said, “Just that Hunter’s going to look for his half-brother while in Seplichus, too.”
Jared stared at Hunter, then shook his head. “Ha, I thought only Camaran demons had death wishes.”
Then they were off to Alana’s house, condo buying for Jared, school the next day, and a spring break venture that could lead them into all kinds of danger. The kind of peril only demons like the six of them could get into.
For now, Hunter wanted to take Alana on a real date.
Without everyone else tagging along.
“Wanna go eat, then see a movie later?” Hunter asked Alana.
That got a round of “yes” responses from everyone.
Alana laughed. “Yeah, I’d like to go, too.”
That would be their first official date. Surrounded by demons of all kinds and a ghostly Matusa, too. But it wouldn’t always be like that, Hunter vowed.
###
About the Author
Bestselling and award-winning author Terry Spear has written over fifty paranormal romance novels and four medieval Highland historical romances. Her first werewolf romance, Heart of the Wolf, was named a 2008 Publishers Weekly’s Best Book of the Year, and her subsequent titles have garnered high praise and hit the USA Today bestseller list. A retired officer of the U.S. Army Reserves, Terry lives in Crawford, Texas, where she is working on her next werewolf romance and continuing her new series about shapeshifting jaguars and also writes new YA books. For more information, please visit www.terryspear.com, or follow her on Twitter, @TerrySpear. She is also on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/terry.spear. And on Wordpress at:
Terry Spear's Shifters
http://terryspear.wordpress.com/
