Where Demons Dare. Kim Harrison

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СКАЧАТЬ but everyone took the week off. Human bosses didn’t say, er, boo when their Inderland employees called in sick, and no one even mentioned the Turn. We did throw tomatoes instead of eggs, though, put peeled ones in bowls and called them eyeballs, stacked them up on our porches along with carved pumpkins, and generally tried to gross-out the human population that wouldn’t touch the no-longer-lethal red fruit.

      If I was stuck in my church for the night, I was going to be ticked.

      By the time I finished a quick morning prep and was headed for the kitchen, David was changed and at the table, with coffee brewing and two empty mugs waiting. The hat he had forgotten yesterday was beside him, and he looked good sitting there with a thick black stubble heavy on him and his long black hair loose and flowing. I’d never seen him so casual before, and it was nice.

      “’Morning,” I said around a yawn, and he turned to acknowledge me. “Did you and the ladies have a good run?”

      He was smiling, his brown eyes showing his pleasure. “Mmmm. They headed home from here on paws, confident enough without me. That’s why I’m here, actually.”

      I sat at my spot at the table, the bright sun and the scent of coffee making my head hurt. There was a stack of late-night newspapers opened to the obituaries that I’d gone through before bed. There had been nothing obvious, but Glenn, my FIB contact, was running the three young witches I’d found there through their database to see if they were known acquaintances. One had died of a heart attack at age thirty, another of a brain aneurism, and the third of sudden appendicitis—which had once been a common, pre-Turn expression for a magic misfire. Soon as I got this morning’s edition, I’d pass any more likely candidates on to Glenn. He was working Halloween since he was a human and didn’t celebrate it; he policed it.

      “I thought you’d locked yourself out of your car,” I said, and he chuckled.

      “No. I would have just run the rest of the way home if I had. I wanted to ask you about a pack tattoo.”

      My eyebrows rose. “Oh?” Most Were packs had a registered tattoo, but I hadn’t seen the need, and David was used to standing alone.

      Seeing my reluctance, David shrugged. “It’s time. Serena and Kally are confident enough to be on their own in fur, and if they don’t have a sign of pack recognition, someone might think they’re curs.” He hesitated. “Serena especially is getting cocky. And there’s nothing wrong with that. She has every right, but unless she has an obvious way to show her status and affiliation, someone will challenge her.”

      The coffeemaker finished with a hiss. I got up, eager for the distraction. I’d never given it much thought, but the tattoos that Weres decorated themselves with had a real and significant purpose. They probably prevented hundreds of skirmishes and potential injuries, allowing the multitude of packs that lived in Cincy to get along with minimal friction.

      “Okay,” I said slowly, pouring out the coffee into his mug first. “What were you thinking of?” I don’t want a tattoo. The damn things hurt!

      Clearly pleased, David took a mug when I came back and offered it. “They’ve put their heads together and came up with something with you in mind.”

      Images of broomsticks and crescent moons danced in my head, and I cringed.

      The Were leaned forward, the pleasant scent of musk giving away his eagerness. “A dandelion, but with black fluff instead of white.”

      Oh, cool, I thought, and seeing my reaction, David smiled with one side of his mouth. “I take it that’s okay, then?” he asked, blowing across his coffee.

      “I suppose I ought to get one, too?” I asked, worried.

      “Unless you want to be rude,” he admonished gently. “They put a lot of thought into it. It would mean a lot to them if you would.”

      A breath of guilt wafted through me, and I hid it behind a gulp of scalding coffee. I hadn’t done much with Serena and Kally. Maybe we could get our tattoos together. Oh, God, I’m going to be a hundred and sixty with a flower on my ass.

      “You, ah, said I don’t have a coffee date?” I said, changing the subject. “What do you know that I don’t?”

      David nodded to a scrap of paper in the middle of the table, and I pulled it closer. “Jenks let me in before he headed off for his nap,” he said. “Matalina …”

      His words drifted to nothing, and I looked up from Jenks’s note. “What about her?”

      “She’s fine,” he said, easing my worry. “But she was going to bed early, and there was no need for him to stay up to man the door if I was here, so I told him to go.”

      I nodded and turned my attention back to the note, uneasy about Matalina, but glad that Ivy and I had broken Jenks of answering the phone without taking a message. According to the note, Marshal’s interview had been moved from tonight to this morning, and he wanted to know if we could get together at about three instead. Plenty of time to do something before Al started gunning for me after sundown. There was a number, and I couldn’t help but smile. Below it was another number with the cryptic message JOB, and Jenks’s reminder that rent was due on Thursday the first, not Friday the second or Monday the fifth.

      “I should get home,” David said softly as he rose and took another gulp from his mug. Hat in hand, he said, “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll let Serena and Kally know you like their idea.”

      “Um, David,” I said, and I saw his brow crease at the sound of Ivy moving about. “Do you think they’d mind if I went with them when they got their tattoos?”

      His sun-darkened face broke into a smile, the faint wrinkles about his eyes deepening in pleasure. “I think they’d like that. I’ll ask them.”

      “Thanks,” I said, and he jumped at a bumping sound from Ivy’s room. “You’d better get going unless you want to be here when she gets up.”

      He was silent as his face reddened. “I’ll lope in to work later and check out the recent claims for possible demon damage. There won’t be anyone in two days before Halloween, so I won’t have to explain myself.”

      “This isn’t illegal, is it?” I asked suddenly. “I’ve gotten you in enough trouble as it is.”

      David’s smile was easy and a bit devilish. “No,” he said, shrugging with one shoulder. “But why draw attention to yourself? Don’t worry about it. If someone in Cincy is summoning demons, any claims will be odd enough to be flagged for investigation. At least you’ll know then if it’s a local threat. Help you narrow your suspects.”

      I drew my coffee closer and slumped into the hard chair. “Thanks, David. I appreciate it. If I can shut down the guy summoning Al, then I won’t have to take Minias up on his offer.” I didn’t want a demon’s summoning name, especially Al’s. Unusable or not.

      A sliver of worry slipped between my thought and reason, and I forced my smile to be light, but David saw it. Coming closer, he put a small but powerful hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get him. Don’t do anything with that demon. Promise?”

      I winced, and David sighed when I didn’t say anything. There was a soft creak of a door opening, and David started like a deer. “I’ll, uh, bring Jenks’s sweats back later, okay?” he muttered, then grabbed his СКАЧАТЬ