“Daisy!”
“What?” I turned around to glare at Cody.
“Just . . . be careful, okay?” He gave me a wry smile, resting his hands on his utility belt. “Because I know when I get off duty, I’m going to go home and kill something.”
Sure, that’s healthy. And yet the thought of Cody hunting in wolf form gave me a shiver. Go figure. “Duly noted.”
Inside the nightclub, the staff were making a cursory effort to clean up. Now that the place was empty, you could see how trashed it was. There were spilled drinks, crushed cups, and broken glass everywhere, abandoned flip-flops, discarded boxers, briefs, and panties that no one had wanted to reclaim.
The manager, Terry Miller, was still in a state of shock. He nodded absently when I told him we were leaving. “I just don’t understand what happened,” he murmured. “What am I going to tell the owners?”
I patted his arm. “Tell them the truth. It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything you could do about it.”
He turned his stricken gaze to me. “But what was it?”
“A satyr in rut,” I said patiently. I’d already explained it to him twice, but apparently Lurine was right. Most mundane humans’ memories were sketchy about the events of the night. “Big naked guy?”
“Right.” He sounded uncertain. “What if there are lawsuits? Are we liable?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, but I doubt it. You can’t insure against eldritch influence, can you?”
“Nooo . . .”
See, that’s the problem with paranormal tourism. Tourists flock to Pemkowet expecting sparkly fairies and frolicking naiads, or maybe the covert thrill of glimpsing a vampire or a ghoul, but the fact is it can be downright dangerous here. And there’s no way to anticipate or control a wild card like a rutting satyr. Although I bet I was going to get an earful about it from Amanda Brooks at the Pemkowet Visitors Bureau anyway once the story—or at least the rumors about the story—got around.
I gave Terry the manager another pat on the arm. “Look, I’ve got to go. Good luck. Officer Fairfax and I will give Chief Bryant a full report. If the owners give you a hard time, have them call the chief.”
“Okay.” That seemed to make him feel a bit better.
I ducked into the ladies’ room to wash up before I left, scrubbing my hands and face and basically as much bare skin as I could reach with soap and cold water. I felt a lot cleaner when I was done, but the effects of the funk lingered. In the mirror, my eyes looked dilated and fever-bright.
Outside, the parking lot was mostly empty. I got into my Honda Civic, knowing I should go home.
Go home, and take a cold shower like Lurine had told me. Pour myself a drink, feed the cat, curl up on the couch, and listen to someone like Billie Holiday singing plaintive songs of heartbreak, not down-and-dirty blues.
My phone buzzed. Glancing at it, I saw it was a text from Sinclair. WHERE U AT GIRL? :)
It was the smiley face that got me. I really, really didn’t want to go home alone right now.
So I drove to Sinclair’s.
Five
Sinclair’s place was a ramshackle house in the countryside just north of town, where he was doing some fixer-upper work in return for reduced rent. You couldn’t miss it, since his renovated double-decker bus, painted bright yellow, red, and green with PEMKOWET SUPERNATURAL TOURS on the side, was parked in the driveway.
I pulled in beside the bus and sat for a moment, listening to the music spilling out of the house and wrestling with my conscience. That beribboned box of desire was straining at the seams, practically rattling. If I went in there, I wasn’t going to be able to keep it contained.
And if I didn’t?
I’d understood exactly what Cody meant when he said he was going to go home and kill something. It was that strong a drive, and it needed to be vented somehow. As far as the Seven Deadlies went, I was probably better off sticking with lust than letting it turn to envy or anger. So I went inside.
All four members of the Mamma Jammers were there, jamming, because apparently a three-hour-long jam session at Union Pier wasn’t quite long enough. They’d set up their gear in Sinclair’s living room.
Sinclair was messing around with them, banging on a cowbell with a pair of grill tongs. It was a warm night and he was shirtless and barefoot, wearing nothing but a pair of khaki cargo shorts that sat low on his hips.
Ka-pow. My mental image of the gift-wrapped box exploded. I felt the air pressure in the room change, lifting my hair with an electrostatic charge. Huh. That sort of thing usually only happened when I got angry. There was a long squall of feedback before a tube burst in one of the Mamma Jammers’ vintage amplifiers with a brief shower of sparks.
In the silence that followed, everyone stared at me. Sinclair took a long breath and blinked a few times. “Daisy? Are you okay? Is everything . . . okay?”
“Yeah.” Realizing I still wore dauda-dagr belted around my waist, I touched the hilt, taking strength from its bracing coolness. Okay. I could make myself walk away from this if I had to. “Is this a bad time? I can go.”
“What? No, of course not. I invited you here.”
I shifted restlessly from foot to foot. “Then can we talk alone for a minute?”
Sinclair gave the Mamma Jammers an uncertain look. “Are you crazy, man?” one of them said. “Go!”
Inside his bedroom, Sinclair closed the door behind us. I unbuckled my belt and let it fall to the floor with a heavy clunk. I didn’t want him to get frostbitten.
“Daisy.” He laid his hands on my shoulders. Unable to help myself, I traced a line on his bare torso with one finger, between his pecs down toward his navel. He caught my hand and removed it, although he laced his fingers through mine. “Whoa! Slow down, girl. Mind if I ask what happened out there to turn a night hanging with the boys into a booty call?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Rutting satyr-funk. It set off an orgy. But it’s okay. We defused it.”
“So this is about some funky satyr?” he asked slowly. “Not you and me?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“I’m not sure how I feel about that.” Sinclair’s face was unreadable in the dim light. “This isn’t how I wanted it to go down between us.”
“Yeah, me either,” I said. “This was a mistake. I should go.”
“Probably.” There was a certain lack of conviction in his voice. “I guess.”
Neither of us moved. “So . . . do you want me to go?” I asked him. “’Cause if you do, I think you’re going to have to tell me. Like, in no uncertain terms.”
“I’m thinking.”
“Okay, well, before you make up your mind, there’s one other little thing I haven’t told you.”
Sinclair raised his brows. “What?” I shifted his hand around to place it firmly on my butt, untucking my tail in the process and letting him feel it wriggle. His eyes widened and his body went rigid, but he didn’t pull away from me. “What the fuck?”
I watched his face, trying to gauge the degree of freak-out. “Look, as tails go, it’s pretty small. You should have seen the satyr’s.”
He gave me a blank look. “How is this something I never noticed?”
“I tuck.”
“You tuck.”
“Yeah.” I laid my palm flat against his chest, feeling it rise and fall. His dark brown skin was warm, as though it retained the heat of the sun on the docks. Afraid of seeing rejection in his eyes, I lowered my gaze and kept it there, centered on the groove between his pecs. “Look, I really do like you. I like you a lot, Sinclair. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. As strange as it might sound, I wouldn’t trust myself with someone I didn’t care about right now. And I wanted to try the whole normal boyfriend/girlfriend thing. But the truth is, my father’s an incubus, I’m a hell-spawn and Hel’s agent, and this is Pemkowet. Normal’s not really in my wheelhouse. There’s always going to be an element of weird. Maybe a lot of weird. So—”