by Alyssa Day
“Maw?” Lily couldn’t help it. Her mouth kept saying things in spite of her brain.
“I’m here,” said an older, higher-pitched, more nasal, version of Shawn. “Are you single? My Shawn is a very nice boy. He just needs some polish—
“Maw, you promised. I’m sure Missus Cargo Mall doesn’t want--"
It was a freak show. Or maybe she was on some kind of secret camera reality thing. She stood and glanced around for cameras. Tom Bergeron had to be involved in this, somehow.
Sadly, no.
“Can we get back to my moving van, please?” Lily tried to put a little bit of politeness in her voice.
“I wish we could. I really, really do,” he said mournfully.
“Where. Is. My. Van?”
“Looks like somebody stole it right out of the parking lot at the Naked Corral.”
“WHAT?”
She realized she’d shouted when Hugging piped up from the corner by the place the couch would be, if she ever got her furniture. “Don’t be a baby.”
“I’m not being a baby. I--"
“It’s not a tumor,” Mugging advised from his perch near the window, and Lily growled. Actually, literally growled.
“Oh, wow, Missus, sounds like you have a sore throat,” Louis’s mother said helpfully. “I always recommend a shot of whiskey with honey in it. Why, when Shawn was a baby, he was drunk all the time.”
“That explains a lot,” Lily told her. “If you--"
The doorbell rang, interrupting whatever the hell she’d been about to tell the Louis family, and Lily caught herself before she incinerated her own front door. She might need a teensy time out.
And a shot or six of Shawn’s mother’s baby whiskey.
“Okay, Louis. Here’s what you’re going to do.”
“I am? I mean, I am,” he said, sounding nervous.
“Do you have a pencil?”
“Yeah, but the lead’s broken. I have a pen, is that okay?”
“It’s FINE. ANY WRITING IMPLEMENT.”
“Sheesh. There ain’t no call to shout.”
“Shawn, you can do better that this city girl,” Ma Louis said, making a tut-tut kind of sound. “She’s kind of rude.”
Lily clutched her head. How the hell had she ever managed to hire this company? She’d picked a random website off the internet that had a lot of five-star reviews, but hadn’t looked all that closely since she’d been in a big hurry to get away from Harry. Maybe all the reviews had been written by people whose last name was also Louis.
“Okay. Write this down. One. File a police complaint. Two. Find the van. Three. Find the stuff that was IN the van. Four. Call me back.”
She heard paper rustling from his end of the line, so maybe he was listening at least.
“Um, what was two again?”
The doorbell rang again when she was still banging her cell phone on the lovely granite countertops of her new, empty kitchen.
She yelled in the general direction of the door. “Argh. What? I don’t have time right now, family, I’m too angry to be pleasant, okay? I’ll see you tomorrow. Go away.”
“Go away!” Mugging and Hugging screeched, in unison. “Go away!”
The door opened anyway. Lily added “buy deadbolts” to her own mental list and prepared to shove whichever well-meaning cousin was at her door right back through it. She had no spare energy for politeness.
“Look---“
“I’ll just call you back later,” Louis said, and then he hung up on her.
“Dammit,” Lily yelled.
“I’m not family, if that helps.”
Lily whirled around and stared at the man who’d just walked into her house. No kidding, he wasn't family. Not unless one of her cousins had gotten lucky enough to marry the hottest man Lily had ever seen. Well. There was Alejandro, lucky Rose, but this man—this man was sex on a stick.
A tall, well-muscled sex stick. Yummy.
Tawny, tousled hair that looked like he’d just rolled out of bed. Hazel eyes that flashed with a hint of gold as he checked out her crop top and cut-off shorts. Cheekbones that could cut glass. It all added up to a total that could have been model pretty, but wasn’t.
This was a predator, hidden in plain sight beneath a fancy suit and expensive tie. Every magical instinct she had sizzled with the warning:
Danger. Beware.
“Who are you and why are you in my house?”
"Sorry for the intrusion. The door was unlocked, and when you didn't hear me knock, I thought I'd take a chance and stick my head in."
"Seems like more than your head is in my house, and you still haven't told me who you are," she said, hands on hips. "Start talking now, or I’m calling the police."
“911! 911! 911!” Mugging said excitedly.
“Don’t be a baby,” Hugging responded.
The man raised an eyebrow and cast a long look at her babies, both of whom ducked their heads and refused to make eye contact. In fact, Hugging tried to hide her head behind Mugging.
Lily took a deep breath, but she didn’t smell warlock. She wasn’t sure what she smelled, but it wasn’t that. Something deliciously spicy and fresh and male…but not human.
Damn.
Shifter.
“My birds are not on the menu, Shifter,” she said flatly. “Cat, dog, or bear?”
“I don’t eat scarlet macaws,” he said, amusement flickering in those gorgeous eyes. “I’m more of a fried chicken guy. Hopefully that doesn’t offend them, distant cousins and all. They’re beautiful birds. Can’t miss them, with that red, blue, and yellow in the wings. Gorgeous.”
She gave him points for knowing they were macaws, but his charm rolled right off her. She’d had it up to her neck with charm.
“Hugging and Mugging don’t get offended very easily, but I do.”
“Thought and memory? Do they bring you information from all over Midgard, too?”
Huh. Extra points for knowing that her birds were (sort of) named after Odin’s ravens. But, still…no.
“Who the hell are you and what do you want? No, forget that. I’ve already asked you, and you didn’t answer. So now I’ll call the police and skip to the end of this particular story.”
“Wait. I actually am the police.” He reached into his suit jacket, and her senses screamed into fight or flight mode, which with her always came down on the side of fight. Maybe he was one of Harry's goons. Her ex had never hired anyone who looked this good or wore clothes this expensive before, but there was always a first time.
She drew on her magic and her hands began to glow. Within a couple of seconds, flames danced on her palms. "If that's a gun, you’re going to be very sorry. Harry should have told you that I'm never, ever unarmed."
He laughed; a rich, deep sound that resonated in her nerve endings. "No, I have nothing to do with anybody named Harry. I'm with the FBI paranormal operations division."
Lily calmed down enough to push the magic back before she blasted him or, worse, the walls of her new house. Then she took a deep breath and walked over to take a look at the badge he held, which read:
DAMON JONES
FBI, P-OPS
DIVISION HEAD
* * *
"Not that this means much. Any fool can get a badge like that off the internet these days." She shrugged. "Anyway, assuming you’re legit, what do you want, Damon Jones? And who is it you think we both know?"
She asked because it would look stupid if she didn't ask--even though she dreaded the answer.
She knew exactly who Damon Jones was after. The FBI had been after Harry for a long time, even if she’d only learned about it just before she’d escaped him.
"Is it true that you're in a relationship with Harrison Bannon the Third?"
“Warning! Danger! Danger!” Mugging spread his wings and raised his head, doing his best to look threatening, like he did every time somebody said Harry’s name.
But even the largest parrot in the world wasn’t quite three feet from beak to tai
l, and Harry had threatened her birds in ways she’d wanted to kill him for. She didn’t know what this unknown shifter might do, even though she felt no overt menace from him, so she crossed the room to stand between Damon and her birds.
"No it's not true. I left that son of a bitch behind after I managed to escape from his psychotic, grasping fingers. If you want to talk about Harry, I'm not interested."
With more nerve than it should have taken, she turned her back on him and walked over to her kitchen. "One thing I always travel with is my coffeemaker. If you want to tell me what this is about over a cup of coffee, I have five minutes I can spare for you. After that, as you can see, I'm very busy. And if my damn moving van ever shows up, I'll be even busier."
"I'd love a cup of coffee. It's been a long couple of days. I'm sorry, but I have to insist we talk about him. Rumor is that he's moved headquarters from La Jolla to Columbus. Possibly even chasing after a woman. You, to be exact." He gave her a long, level stare. "You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?"
She forced a laugh, in spite of the shudder working its way down her spine. If Harry had followed her here... But no. That was ridiculous. He would never move to Ohio. His was an international criminal enterprise. He needed a seaport and easy access to shipping.
But Harry always got what Harry wanted. And if he had been furious enough when he discovered her escape, it was impossible to tell what kind of insane scheme he would've cooked up to punish her.
Lilly handed him a mug and was proud to see that her hands were only shaking a little bit. “Even if that's true, even if he has moved to Ohio, I'm not sure why you're here. I never had anything to do with any of his crimes. In fact, the second I found out he was more than just the Hollywood money man he pretended to be, I tried to leave."
Damon nodded and took a sip of his coffee, looking around. "Nice house. Probably cost a bit of cash."
Her temper flared at the implication. "Is that your heavy-handed way of asking me if Harry gave me money from his illicit gains to buy my damn house?"
He grinned, which threw her off balance. He looked almost enticing when he smiled. Carefree and wickedly charming.
She reflexively started to return his smile, but then she reminded herself what she thought of wickedly charming men and scowled at him instead.
"Illicit gains? I need to put that in my next report. ‘The subject, using his illicit gains, may or may not have bought his girlfriend of a year and a half a new house.’"
"Listen. Ex-girlfriend. A year and a half? Definitely not. We'd only been dating—casually-- for four months when I figured out he was up to something sketchy, and broke it off with him. I've spent the past six weeks trying to get away from him. And when I left I didn't take a single thing he’d given me. Not clothes, not jewels, not even the convertible, which I really loved. I left two of his guards unconscious, thanks to an unfortunate case of smoke inhalation, headed to the storage company and loaded my stuff into a cut-rate moving van, and got the hell out with my birds in a rental car. So you and your investigation into Harrison Bastard the Third can just move right along and out of my house."
Damon finished his coffee and gently put the mug on the counter before leaning back against the wall and folding his arms across his broad chest. "Unfortunately, I can't do anything of the sort. All of our intelligence says he's obsessed with you, and we need to find a way to take him down. Years of investigation and wiretaps haven’t gotten us anywhere near where we need to be. We’ve got proof of petty things, sure. But the man's an international drug runner, and we also suspect him of exotic creature trafficking. We need a way to get to him.”
He took a step closer, and she almost forgot to breathe in the face of all that power and predatory gaze looming over her.
“You're the way," he said, his voice lowered to almost a whisper.
She froze, caught for a second in his hypnotic gold and green gaze, but then she remembered two things:
She wasn’t prey, and
She was sick and damn tired of powerful men trying to tell her what to do.
"Not a chance. You're out of your mind if you think I'll get anywhere near him after spending a month and a half trying to escape. I have rights. I also have a great lawyer. My family, whom you may have heard of, is the most powerful group of witches in the Midwest. Possibly in all of North America. So if you think I'm just going to roll over and do whatever you ask, you're sadly mistaken." She stepped past him and stalked across the floor, then yanked open her new front door. "Feel free to leave. Now."
She glared at him, and he stared right back at her. But instead of looking intimidated, he only seemed mildly amused, which pissed her off even more.
"Will you please hold the door open just a little bit wider? My electronics guy needs to get in with his gear."
Lily whirled around. A second man, shorter and stockier than Damon, and with a head full of carroty red curls, was walking up the small, flower-lined, paving stone path toward her door, carrying what looked like an entire store full of equipment.
"Ma'am,” he said, smiling a wide, open, boy-next-door smile. “Austin Parker. Where should I put all this?"
Lily caught herself spluttering and shut her mouth. When she opened it again, she’d found just barely enough calm to keep from blasting him and frying every bit of his equipment. "You should take it back to wherever you came from, because you're not bringing any of it in my house," she said sweetly.
"Now you're the one who is sadly mistaken," Damon said from behind her.
How had he gotten so close to her? The stupid man moved like a cat.
Damn. She hated cat shifters.
Right. So much for calm.
“One moment,” she told Austin.
"I will blast you to cinders,” she said, turning to face Damon and enunciating very carefully. “I will destroy your equipment, I will burn the fancy suit off your body, and the smell of burning FBI agent will fill the air for at least three blocks."
A slow, lethally wicked smile spread across his unfairly gorgeous face. "Burn the suit off my body, huh? Lily. If you wanted to get me naked, all you had to do was say so."
Lily narrowed her eyes, drew on her magic, and beamed a huge, innocent smile at him.
And then she set his shoes on fire.
3
Damon was known for maintaining his cool under the most challenging conditions, but he’d never had his damn shoes set on fire before. He yelped, and then he leapt over the top of the counter into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water, and poured it on his shoes.
His eight-hundred dollar, English leather, shoes.
Which were now, pardon the expression, toast.
“You. Ruined. My. Shoes,” he said, biting off the words, and blistering her with his most ferocious scowl.
The gorgeous little witch yawned—actually yawned—and then blinked a long, slow blink. “So. Cat. Don’t be a pussy.”
He could actually feel his mouth fall open, like he was a character in a particularly bad cartoon. “You—what—I—”
“Don’t be a pussy,” one of the parrots advised him.
“Don’t be a pussy,” the other one chimed in, after flying over to land on Lily’s shoulder for moral support.
He looked past Lily to Parker, but the tech guy just grinned and shrugged. “Don’t be a pussy, man.”
He’d never liked Parker.
Damon considered shifting, right there and then, and reversing the no-eating-scarlet-macaws rule that he’d made up only minutes before, but instead he took a deep breath, knelt down and untied his shoes, and tossed them in the garbage can sitting in the corner of the kitchen.
“Fine. Let’s try this again.” He walked out of the kitchen. “I have the power and right, under the Supernatural Species Protection Act of 2003, and the Quartering Act, to commandeer your home in the pursuit of one Harrison Bannon the Third, suspect in a series of international drug trafficking offenses. Concurrent regulations include 7 United States Co
de section 2155, kidnapping and transport of supernatural creatures.”
Lily stared at him but said nothing.
He tried again. “The Quartering Act—”
Lily rolled her eyes and looked at Parker. “Does he always talk like he has a two-by-four rammed so far up his ass he gets splinters in his throat?”
Parker had an unfortunate coughing fit at exactly that moment, rendering him unable to answer. In fact, he was turning purple, so Damon helpfully pounded him on the back.
Hard.
Parker stumbled three or four feet across the floor and almost dropped his equipment.
Lily sighed. “At least put all that gear down before you hurt yourself, Mr. Parker.”
“Mr. Parker,” the birds chimed in.
Damon sighed. “Delicate and fragile, my ass.”
Lily rounded on him, hands on hips and eyes flashing. “What did you say?”
Damn, but she was gorgeous. Skin like melted caramel. Lush, deep brown hair the color of the teak table that had been the centerpiece of his grandmother’s dining room, and all that beautiful wavy hair fell to the middle of her back. Not too tall, but not short. Curvy and athletic. Rounded hips that were made to fit in his hands.
Huge dark eyes that seemed to see right through him.
Suddenly, he was finding it hard to breathe.
Words. He needed to make words now. “Say? Nothing. Okay, here’s the deal. We need to catch this asshole. You don’t want him back in your life. Can’t we work together on this one?”
“Why does working together have to involve your presence in my house?”
“Because Bannon is a seriously bad dude, and he’s coming after you, Ms. Cardinal,” Parker said, all traces of humor gone from his amiable face. “We’ve tracked chatter six ways from Sunday, as my granddad likes to say, and all of it says Bannon is moving his base of ops from California to Ohio, because of you.”
Lily’s fingers began to glow a bright, hot, orange, and she started pacing. The parrot that had been perched on her shoulder hopped over to the kitchen counter and stalked back and forth like a miniature feathered general reviewing his troops.
