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I lowered the garage door and stepped into my kitchen. A scent floated past me on the draft. I inhaled it and froze. It smelled of sandalwood and amber, spiced with a hint of tangy sweat and male musk. A shiver dashed down my spine, setting every nerve on high alert.
Jim.
The masculine fragrance filled my house, screaming, “Mate!” at me so loudly that I held my breath for a second to get a grip.
Jim was here, waiting for me. In my wildest dreams, I would walk into the room and he would kiss me. The picture was so vivid in my head, I shivered. It would never happen. Come on, ugly blind girl, snap out of it. Let’s try to be less pathetic. Jim was here because Kasen snitched on me, or because he needed some obscure scroll identified. He wasn’t here to make my sad little dreams come true.
I marched into my living room. “Jim?”
No answer.
The scent was hot and alive. He was still here, or he had been here just a second ago.
“Jim? It’s not funny. ”
Nothing.
Fine. I followed the scent, moving softly on my toes. Living room, hallway, bathroom, bedroom. The scent sparked here. He was in my bedroom.
Oh my gods. What if I walked in and he was naked on my bed?
I would lose it. I would lose it right there and never get it back, whatever “it” was.
Get a grip, get a grip, get a grip. I padded into the bedroom.
Jim slumped against the wall on the floor. His eyes were closed. He wore black jeans and a black turtleneck, a couple of shades darker than his skin. His black hair was cut short. His leather jacket lay on the floor in a heap. Asleep.
I tiptoed into the room and crouched by him.
He looked so peaceful here. Usually Jim scowled, just to remind people that he was Serious and Important and would Kick Your Ass if Necessary. But right now, with his head tilted back and his face relaxed, he was beautiful. I wanted to sit on the floor next to him and snuggle up into the crook of his arm. It looked like the perfect spot for me. Instead, I sighed and touched his forehead with my finger. “Hey, you. Wake up. ”
He didn’t move.
Odd. Usually Jim woke up if a pin dropped half a mile away. Most shapeshifters did, but Jim especially. He oversaw security for the Pack and he exhibited paranoid tendencies. The only time he would pass out like this was when he was injured or exhausted from changing too many times and Lyc-V shut his brain down to conserve resources and make repairs. I smelled no blood and Jim’s clothes were still on. But if he had passed out after shifting, he’d be on my floor … naked. I closed my eyes and gave myself a mental shake.
Something was wrong.
I grabbed his shoulder and shook him. “Jim! Wake up. Wake. Up. ”
His eyes snapped open. His dark hand grabbed my wrist. “Was I asleep?”
“Yes. ”
“Fuck. ”
He surged off the floor, dark eyes pissed off. “You were gone. Dali Harimau, where were you?”
I stood up and crossed my arms over my chest. It wasn’t much of a chest, so crossing my arms was easy. “I was out. You’re not my daddy, Jim. I don’t have to check in with you before I leave my house. ”
A green sheen rolled over Jim’s eyes. “Dali, where were you?”
He had pulled the alpha card. You didn’t argue when his eyes lit up. “I was racing on Buzzard. There. Happy now?”
He exhaled. “Good. ”
Good? Since when was my racing good? “You’re not making any sense. ”
“You didn’t check your messages?”
“No, I just got home. ”
“So you didn’t go to the house?”
“What house? I told you I just got home. ”
Jim’s eyes dimmed. He rubbed his face with his hand, as if trying to wipe something off. “I need your help. ”
*
JIM SAT IN my kitchen, staring at a cup of hot ginseng tea like a demon was hiding inside.
“Drink it. It’s good for you. ”
Jim gulped it down. “It tastes awful. ”
If I were a guest and turned up my nose like that at the tea my hostess served me, my mother would tell me I had shamed the family. “It’s as though you have no manners. I offer you a gift of tea and you make funny faces at it. ”
“Do you want me to lie and tell you it tastes great?”
“No, I want you to say ‘thank you’ and tell me what’s going on. ”
“I’m not sure. ” Jim’s face was grim. “The northeastern office on Dunwoody Road didn’t report in on Tuesday. I was out doing other things, so Johanna waited twenty-four hours and sent a scout in to check on them. He came back disturbed. I talked to him this morning. He claimed ‘something bad’ was in the building and he wasn’t going near it. ”
“Who was it?”
“Garrett. ”
Garrett was lazy, but he wasn’t a coward. Maybe there was something bad in the house. “You went there yourself, didn’t you?”
Jim shrugged. “I had to go that way for an errand anyway. ”
I rolled my eyes. “You didn’t take anybody with you?”
He looked at me like I had insulted him. Mr. Badass didn’t need anybody to go with him, oh no.
“What happened?”
“I went to the office. The place looked empty. The windows were covered with dirt, like nobody had been there for years. ”
Jim and I looked at each other. The Pack had seven offices in Atlanta and the surrounding area and every single one of those would have clean windows. Normal people looked at us like we were filthy animals. The animal part was true, but most of us were sensitive about the filthy part. If you wanted to insult a shapeshifter, you told him he stank. We kept ourselves and our offices clean. Besides, you can’t see angry mobs with pitchforks and torches coming at you through a dirty window.
“I went up to the door. ” Jim looked at his cup. “The place smelled wrong. A weird scent, dusty, pungent, and bitter, not something I’ve ever come across before. ”
“Like herb dust?”
“No, that wasn’t it. Not anything I recognized. And it was too quiet. There should’ve been four people at the office. Not a damn whisper, no sigh, no sound, nothing. ”
Roger worked at that office. And Michelle. I liked Michelle; she was nice.
“I opened the door and smelled blood. The place was empty. There was a symbol on the floor in magic marker. ”
“What kind of a symbol?”
He shook his head. His eyes turned distant. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was confused, except Jim didn’t get confused.
“A Chinese symbol,” he said slowly.
“Like a sinograph? Hanzi?”
Jim gave me a blank look.
“Did it look like Chinese writing, Jim?”
“Yes. ”
I got up and brought him a piece of paper and a pen. “Draw it for me. ”
He picked up the pen and looked at it.
“Jim?”
He growled under his breath. “I can’t remember. ”
The hair on the back of my neck rose. Jim didn’t have perfect recall, but he was very close. He practiced, because remembering details was a useful skill for the chief of security. I once watched him draw a complicated tribal tattoo he saw for two seconds completely from memory. He got it nearly perfect. A hanzi character on the floor in the middle of an office smelling of blood—he should’ve remembered it. The symbols weren’t that complicated. Something had fried his memory.
“What was next?”
“I called you. ”
We both looked at my answering machine. The screen was dead—the magic had taken down the electricity. No way to tell if Jim had called me.
A green glow sparked in his irises and vanished. Frustration rolled off Jim in a hot wave. He was acting like a person with a concussion, but Lyc-V cracked concussions like nuts. I oug
ht to know, I had gotten enough of them. Thirty seconds, and your brain was like new. Still …
“Do you think someone might have whacked you on the back of the head?”
Jim looked at me for a long moment.
“Sometimes trauma to the head results in short-term memory loss. ”
“Nobody traumatized my head. Nobody quiet enough to sneak up on me would be strong enough to knock me out. I wasn’t knocked out, I passed out. ”
Huh. “Passed out?”
“Yes. ”
“What do you remember before passing out?”
“The magic wave hit. I saw a woman. ”
“A woman?” Great, now I’ve turned into a manga character who repeated everything everyone said.
“I saw her in the house. ”
“What did she look like?”
“She was very beautiful. ”
It stung like a slap. “Jim!”
“What?”
Yes, what, Dali? What exactly? “When did you see her? What was she wearing? Concentrate. ”
He shook his head. “I was in the doorway. I looked up and she was standing at the back of the room. She was wearing some sort of a long robe or gown. The fabric was almost transparent, like a negligee. ”
And he probably took a second to look at her boobies. Awesome.
“She had long dark hair. I told her to come outside. She said, ‘Help me. ’”
“In English?”
He nodded. “She started backing up into the house and I went after her. ”
“Four shapeshifters are missing, the office smells like blood, you see some weird woman in a transparent gown who clearly shouldn’t be in the building, and you run after her?”
“It’s my job to run after her. ”
“Without backup?”
“I am the backup. ”
I waved my arms. “Fine, what happened next?”
“I remember my legs getting heavy and thinking that something was wrong. Then I woke up in the middle of the floor. ”
“How long did you sleep?”
“Eighteen minutes. I woke up tired as hell. I knew I’d pass out again if I didn’t leave, so I got up, locked the door, and got the hell out of there. I knew I’d called you and I thought you might go to the house. The magic was up, so I ran over here, got inside with my key, but you were gone. I went to the bedroom to see if your calligraphy kit was still here, because I knew you would’ve taken it, and then I don’t remember. ”