“We got filthy earlier.” I made a confession. “We were down in the basement.”
“We figured.” Benny chuckled. “We didn’t want to say anything, but the smell…”
All that lovely shadow-cat feces. “Don’t show him all the good stuff while I’m gone.”
Getting to my feet, I turned to face Linus, and every train of thought in my brain station derailed.
He had come downstairs wearing a crisp white shirt undone with no undershirt to be found. His fingers moved over the buttons, but no progress appeared to be made. The result was I got an eyeful of tattooed skin damp from the shower.
I was not amused.
Crossing to my husband, I narrowed my eyes to slits. “This was cruel.”
He knew how much I loved his body, what an eyeful of the gorgeous ink curving over the planes of his chest and abs did to me.
Leaning down, he brushed my ear with his lips. “This was payback.”
“I’m a terrible influence on you.”
“Yes,” he agreed, his teeth catching my earlobe. “You are.”
The Linus who first kissed me would have died from embarrassment before pulling shenanigans of this magnitude in front of an audience. Scratch that. The thought never would have entered his head. I would have done the instigating, and he would have flushed every Pantone shade of red. Years of PDA exposure therapy had worked wonders on him.
Though, seeing as how I was in desperate need of my own cold shower, I wasn’t sure that was a good thing.
Working to keep my glower on, I sashayed past him into the hall. I made it halfway up the stairs before a goofy smile overtook me. I could get used to this. Being teased by Linus was almost as much fun as teasing him.
About to step onto the landing, I startled when a black smudge coalesced on the runner in front of me.
“Hi there.” I kept my tone light. “Are you the little guy who likes to scratch people?”
The creature blinked yellow eyes then charged at full speed.
The twerp was trying to knock me down the stairs. “Not today.”
Just before its paws hit my chest, I stepped down and over, giving it room to sail past.
Too bad a second one had been waiting behind me.
I stepped on it, yelped when it swatted my calf, then stepped up on instinct to escape. That might have worked if a third hadn’t come to roost on the topmost step. It waited until all my weight balanced on the leg its shadowy friend was busy slicing and dicing then hit me square in the chest.
Arms windmilling, I couldn’t regain my footing. There were too many of them, darting under my feet and throwing their weight against me in vicious pounces that left bloody pinpricks where they landed.
I couldn’t help my scream as I fell, and I yanked on my bond with Cletus on instinct. He might not be corporeal enough to catch me, but he could slow me down, maybe keep me from breaking my neck. That would be nice. I would hate to go out on such a lame note. The obituary would be humiliating. After all I had survived, I would roll over in my grave if the Society papers reported this as my exit strategy.
Grier Woolworth, Potentate of Savannah, tripped over a shadow cat on the stairs and fell to her death.
As my life flashed before my eyes, I tumbled through a pocket of cold air with bony fingers that clawed at my shirt, my pants, my hair.
Cletus.
But I had built up too much momentum. He couldn’t catch me. He didn’t have that kind of strength.
Stick a fork in me, I was done.
A wall of cold muscle hit me from behind, and the air whooshed from my lungs. Tendrils of night spilled over my shoulder, and when I tipped my head back, I brushed the edge of Linus’s tattered cowl with the top of my head.
“Hi,” I gasped. “Fancy meeting you here.”
Not one of my wittier one-liners, but Linus didn’t smile. Neither did Cletus, who somehow ended up clutching my ankles.
“This was a bad idea.” Linus hugged me close. “I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“Oh, come on.” I wriggled out of Cletus’s grasp and got my feet back under me. “You can’t call it quits after one itsy-bitsy attempted murder.”
“This makes two.”
“Ah.” I lifted a finger. “But from two different sources.”
Hrm. Yeah. In hindsight, I hadn’t helped the situation by reminding him of that. This was supposed to be a low-key haunting, but someone had cranked the dial as high as it would go.
“I wanted to indulge your interest in haunted history,” he said, “not allow you to become a part of it.”
“Oh dear.” Barb rushed up the stairs to help, but Linus growled at her from the depths of his cloak. “Are you all right?”
“I’m good.” I stood under my own steam, which didn’t impress Linus much. “Those shadow cats are tiny bastards.”
“That’s what did this?” She slapped a hand over her heart. “Oh, dear. They’re escalating then.”
The vampires had the inside track on this haunting, so I took their word for it.
“Question.” I leaned against the railing. “Has anyone or anything else ever attacked you here?”
“Goodness, no.” She tugged on her necklace. “Just the cats.” She eased closer. “What about you?”
With the library in smoky ruin and the wannabe arsonist at large, I didn’t feel great about admitting our B&E had precipitated an explosion or that someone—possibly them—wanted us dead.
“No,” I lied. “Just curious if there are any other surprises in store.”
Barb’s expression smoothed, but a stubborn line between her brows hinted she might not believe me. That suited me fine. It’s not like I bought the yarn she was spinning either. Not all of it. There were too many frayed ends for me to pick at to trust their aw-shucks routine.
“I’m going to help Grier to our room,” Linus clipped out in a firm tone. “We would prefer to remain undisturbed the rest of the evening.”
“We’re happy to trade if you decide you’d rather have ground-floor accommodations.”
Aching from the knees down, I shot her a thumbs-up, but Linus didn’t so much as blink in her direction.
Wisps of cold air licked my skin as he scooped me up into a bridal carry. Cletus circled us the whole climb, but the shadow cats had scattered after attacking me.
Linus didn’t set me down until we entered our room, and he shut the door behind us, Cletus on guard detail in the hall.
“Can you stand?” He set me on my feet. “Did you hurt anything?”
“Ouch.” I twisted my leg with effort to show him my calf. “They got me pretty good.”
The blue in his eyes had long since darkened until black pools stared back at me. “Grier…”
“I’m not chickening out yet.” I touched his cheek, his skin like ice. “Things are just starting to get good.”
“Near-death experiences aren’t what I would call good.” He went for the button on my jeans, his fingers raising chills, but he kept his movements clinical. “We need to treat your wounds.”
I helped as best I could, but the jeans were ruined, torn to ribbons and saturated with so much blood that it wouldn’t be worth scrubbing out the stains. I almost told him to toss them, but I could turn them into cutoffs. Maybe. And bleach them.
Gah.
The curse of being cheap—I mean, frugal.
“How do you want me?” I eyed the bed, but I was still gross. “Do we have another comforter?”
“No.” He did the same math as me, paused to draw a sigil on the doorframe, then entered the bathroom and started the hot water for a shower. “Do you think you can stand long enough to get clean?”
A tub would have been more welcome, but I didn’t want to soak in shadow cat-poop stew.
“I’ll make it happen.” I limped to him. “I don’t want to risk contamination on top of the toxin.”
A sigil could seal the wounds, sure, but that didn’t mean it purged them. Magic acted weird on me on a good day. Already I was experiencing pain where Linus hadn’t felt a thing. Better safe than sorry when mixing magic with a goddess-touched necromancer had become our golden rule.
Linus, ever the gentleman, stripped down to his boxers and stepped into the shower with me.
“You could have taken those off.” I was all too happy to slump against him. “We are married now.”
“You’re hurt, and I’m not allowing distractions.”
Hooking his arm around my waist, he held me upright to keep pressure off my calves while I washed my hair and upper body. Then came the fun part. I wasn’t sure how I would manage until he scooped me up—again—and sat me on the floor of the stall. He knelt in front of me, water tugging his hair into his eyes, and began to slowly clean and examine every mark.
“You’re staring,” he murmured, his fingers light and careful.
“I can do that.” I tapped the ring on his finger. “You’re all mine.” I flicked bubbles at him. “Mine, mine, mine.”
“You sound like Lethe when she sings her donut song.” Scraping the dark auburn curtain away from his face, he smiled at me with so much love and surprise and hope it physically hurt. “Am I your donut?”
“Don’t put ideas in my head.” I pouted. “You’ve already said no funny business.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Not much.”
“Enough.”
“I’ve got plenty more where that came from.”
Linus shook his head. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“Nah.” I touched his cool cheek. “I like you too much.”
“Come on.” He lifted me, carried me out, and bundled me in towels until I was the envy of every well-dressed mummy. He forgot to turn off the water, which made me smile. He had grown used to Woolly helping us out too. “Don’t move.”
“I wouldn’t…” I wet my lips when he dropped his soggy underwear. “Oh.”