Slowly, I lifted my knee and put my right foot onto the burgundy seat. Beast poured strength and hot speed into me. I pulled in a breath, swiveled around, rising, grabbing the high back of the booth seat. Time slowed, heavy as wet sand. Evangelina stopped midsentence, eyes wide, and still I kept rising, bending over her. Fastfastfast. She started, shocked, one hand lifting, slowly. I leaned in, gripped her scarf, twisting, pulling her to me. The heat from her spell slid over my hands and away. Her face lifted, her hair falling back. And everything I thought I knew about witches, and this witch in particular, went up in smoke. There were pinprick spots on her neck.

“Who bit you?” I demanded.

Her lips parted. And I smelled another scent on her, like the bottom note on a cheap perfume, overloaded by the fresher ones, dying fast. I bent over her, twisting my other hand into her red hair. It felt like silk, like something from a dream. Beast growled deep inside me and I heard it spill from my mouth. “Who? Bit? You?” I demanded, not expecting her to answer.

“Lincoln Shaddock,” she whispered.

“Blood-whore,” I whispered back.

Evangelina’s hands came together and up, separating as they passed through my arms. Slammed outward. Ripping her scarf over her head and her hair from my grip. Suddenly she was on the other side of the booth. I turned, following her, still holding the purple scarf and strands of silky hair. She hunched her shoulders, her hands like claws, her nails blunt and painted pink. “I am none of your business!” she shouted. “Leave me alone!” Her hands formed a bowl and pink sparkling energy flashed from them. It washed over me, a heated wave of scented light, smelling like funeral flowers and old blood. Trying to spell me. Trying to make me accept and forget.

When I spoke, it was an octave lower and full of threat. “Stop. Now,” I growled.

The light washed past, feeling oily and flat-sharp, faceted. I could have sworn I heard it hit the brick behind me and shatter. Realizing her spell hadn’t worked, Evangelina shouted, “What the hell are you?” She raised her hands high, screamed with rage, and stormed out the door.

The silence in the café was acute. Every person was staring at me. I was frozen in place, standing in the booth seat, Beast so close to the surface, I could feel her breath pant in my lungs. I felt a tug on my jeans. Harder. “Aun’ Jane. Aun’ Jane.” I looked down to see Little Evan holding on to a belt loop, his pudgy fingers yanking. I let him pull me to the seat. My arms went around him when he crawled into my lap. I was gasping, panting, desperate for air. The pinkish glow was fading, evaporating like the odor of strong perfume when the wearer is gone.

Liz muttered, “Big sis is her usual charming self.” The others laughed.

Pulling on Beast-sight, letting my heart rate slow and steady, I studied the witch sisters. Their eyes weren’t blank, but they also weren’t reacting with sufficient shock at seeing me pull Evil Evie’s hair, and their coven leader and elder sister storm off. Clinging to the sisters was the faintest tinge of shell-pink, the spell still active. And if I managed to figure out how to stop the spell—like punching Evangelina in the mouth—would that make things better or worse? Would it break the spell or make it unstable, dangerous? Disrupted spells sometimes caused a magical backlash that would physically or psychically harm the witches.

“Molly, did you know Evangelina was spelling you all?” I asked.

Molly’s lips lifted with unconcern. “Would you like more tea?”

I shook my head no, my neck muscles so tight they nearly squeaked with the motion. Little Evan pulled my arms around him. “Hug, Aun’ Jane.” I tightened my arm, cradling him and sipped my cooling tea. The girls’ chatter surrounded me. They had already forgotten Evil Evie’s outburst, all the sisters, the customers, everyone except Little Evan and me. What should I do?

Spelling herself to become younger and prettier was only against witch-etiquette. Letting a vamp drink from her was against witch-history but not illegal. She had been around another supernatural being, not something I recognized, not anzu, not grindylow, not the sick, infected werewolf taint. The creature smelled like woodland and rock and empty places. It screamed of danger. Demon? But that wasn’t illegal according to witch-law either, only stupid. The spell-over-her-sisters might be an infraction. If I handled the situation with Evangelina wrong, I would make things worse. I pulled the strands of rich red hair caught in my fingers, twisted them into a tight spiral, and folded them in the purple scarf. One-handed I tucked it into my shirt, not sure why, but it seemed important. I had some thinking to do.

The door opened. The morning air flooded into the room, tinged with exhaust and the scent of fresh hay. A voice said, “Morning ladies. Can anyone here feed a hungry man?” Rick? Here? Why would he be here, without me?

I lifted my head from the baby’s and met Rick’s startled gaze. “Hiya, Ricky Bo,” I said, letting a hint of threat into my voice. “I think we need to talk.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Tag Team Sex? That’s the Best You Could Come Up With?

Rick sat across from me looking caught and guilty and happy, which was a weird combo of emotions even from a were-cat who couldn’t shift yet. We had moved to a corner table for privacy, and the sisters who were off duty had broken up, going about their own business, including Mol.

“Talk,” I said, sounding a lot less mean than I intended. Maybe because he was just so pretty. Black hair fell over his forehead and ducked into his collar, waves catching the overhead lights. His eyes, Frenchy-black in New Orleans, looked Cherokee black here. And his cheeks were glowing with that “please touch me” look men had when freshly shaved. I curled my fingers under to keep them beneath the table and tried to look stern.

The two witch sisters brought Rick’s breakfast when it took only one, and I didn’t have to grow up with them to know they wanted to get close enough to touch, as well as hoping to overhear something juicy. Rick turned his hundred-watt smile up at them, the one he uses when he’s trying to woo his way into a girl’s pants. They both melted under the look, and I kicked him under the table. He laughed, slanting a teasing look at me. The girls giggled and departed with dual requests. “You need anything, you just holler.” And, “Any. Thing. At all.”

I shook my head. He grinned, sipped his coffee, took up knife and fork, and ate four bites before he complied with my request. Order. Whatever. And the pauses, gestures, and small torments were so familiar that they brought an ache to my throat.

“I miss you,” Rick said. My heart did a rollover-skip that I kept off my face with difficulty. “I miss human female company.” Of course he did. So much for the heart gymnastics. “I miss any company that’s sober, not grieving, and not vanishing some nights to hunt, coming back to the tent site smelling of blood. A scent that makes my stomach rumble. But mostly, I miss you.”

My heart went back to happy Pilates. “And?”

He sipped and ate some more, keeping me waiting. After he swallowed he sat back and gestured with his knife. “And I’ve had some very interesting phone calls in the last twenty-four hours, all of which I can respond to by spending time with you and the witches.”

“What calls? Who?”

“First, no one had my new cell number. Except you.”

I went still. “Crap.” Leo gave me the new cell a few weeks ago. I knew he could track me with the cell’s GPS. I hadn’t thought about him being able to read my cell phone history. That was a rookie mistake. “Leo,” I said. I explained about the cell and Rick nodded. “I’ll get a new throwaway phone,” I promised.

“Yeah. Let me know the number. But that doesn’t explain how everyone else got my number. That has to be my host.” The way he said host was like smearing the syllable into a toilet. Rick and Kemnebi were a strange pairing, no matter how I looked at it, and the fact that it had been my idea didn’t help. “It started yesterday. Jodi—who did not have this number—called to check on me, and told me this guy would be contacting me. No name. Just ‘this guy.’ Which sounded like The Man.”

“You’re The Man,” I said, putting it into caps as he had done. Jodi was his up-line boss at the New Orleans Police Department. If she told him to do something, like watch me, or sleep with a witch, he would. He always had in the past.

“Not anymore,” he said. I started before I realized he was responding to The Man comment, not my thoughts. “Even if I don’t shift at the full moon, I’ll never be human again. I’ll be a supe in hiding. Like you. Law enforcement work is going to be nearly impossible.” He stuffed a forkful of egg into his mouth and I went still, thinking back over his words, listening for anger or grief. I picked up only resigned acceptance and a kind of wry self-condemnation. But then, cats don’t grieve like humans or dogs do. It’s different with cats. Beast called it blood-grief, or hunt-grief, and it was violence incarnate. Or they get drunk for a month, like Kem. I nodded for him to continue and picked up my tea, sipping, keeping the cup in front of my mouth, my fingers wrapped around it for warmth. Rick went on, “Today, I get this call from a Mr. Smith Jones, who offered me a permanent job, of sorts, with an agency yet to be named.”

I sat back, thinking. It wasn’t NOPD—totally out of their jurisdiction. That left FBI and The Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security. The agency had fingers in every paranormal pie in the country except for the witches, most of whom grew up together, related by blood and heritage. Witches were a hard nut to crack even for PsyLed.

“I accused him of being PsyLed,” Rick said, letting me know that we were thinking alike. “When he said no, I could hear the lie. Seems I have cat ears now, to go along with the improved sense of smell and vision.” Rick sipped his coffee and bit into a homemade biscuit.

“Even if I don’t shift at the next full moon my life is going to suck three days a month for the rest of my unnatural life. It won’t be like I can hide it. No agency or department would have me except undercover with African black were-cats, none of which will exist in the U.S. when Kem sobers up enough to go home. Even if there were were-cats here, I’d have a hard time infiltrating. Their sense of smell is too acute. They’d pick up on any hidden agenda and tear me apart. So my life as a cop is gone unless I admit I’ve got the were-taint and join PsyLed as an outted supe. Half supe. Like that.” Rick shrugged, eyes on the coffee in his cup. “Anyway, that’s a decision for another day. Smith Jones had a job for me. He asked me to make contact with you, see if you could get me close to the vamps. He wants me to join your security team.”