Well, it’s how I feel, she thought. I can’t help how I feel.
Fiona gathered herself and spoke quietly. “We need to meet with this bounty hunter. As soon as possible, I think. Jagger has had some experience with him. He’s—well, Jagger says he’s a shifter, with all the attendant…shifting, but he’s been on the job for a long time, and the suspicious deaths are real, so we need to take what he says seriously.”
“Bring it on,” said Shauna, and reached for another pastry.
What that girl can eat, Caitlin thought resentfully. She burns it off just breathing.
She was about to tell Fiona she would rather swallow ground glass than talk to Ryder or see him ever again, and then she stopped, realizing.
If the others have a meeting, that gets Ryder and Jagger out of the way. Which means I can go talk to Case—and possibly Danny—alone.
A chill of excitement ran up her spine. This is my chance.
Fiona was looking at her, frowning—that infuriating intuition. As best she could, Caitlin suppressed her thoughts, envisioning a solid brick wall right be hind her eyes, and a moment later Fiona looked away.
Caitlin breathed out invisibly. Aloud she said, “You’re right. We need a meeting. What time is good?”
They decided on eight, Caitlin maneuvering for a time after dark, to ensure Case and Danny would actually be conscious and moving.
Fiona added, “Jagger will call if there are any incidents in the city. We should all keep all our senses open.”
Caitlin was nodding and already easing for the door, when Fiona said, “And Cait…”
Caitlin stopped in her tracks. Here it comes, she thought wearily.
But typical Fiona—despite Caitlin’s jab at Jagger, she was nothing but gracious and loving—she said “We both owe you an apology.”
Shauna looked up, with a “Who, me?” look. Caitlin was also confused—she was the one who should be apologizing.
Fiona continued. “You were right from the be ginning—you caught the danger before anyone did, and you did what you needed to do to figure it out.”
“Oh…” Caitlin mumbled uncomfortably. “Well, that’s our job, isn’t it?” And then she was backing to ward the door. “Look at the time. I need to get to the shop.”
Fiona took a step toward her. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked, searching Caitlin’s face.
“Of course,” Caitlin answered breezily. “Except for an imminent walk-in attack on the city, I’m just fine.”
“We’ll take care of the shop today. You need some sleep,” Fiona said firmly.
Caitlin was about to protest, but a second’s reflection made her realize she was dead on her feet, and she was going to need all her resources to deal with Case and Danny and whatever might unfold that night.
“That would be great,” she said honestly. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely positive,” Fiona said. “You sleep.”
Back in her bedroom, Caitlin pulled all the shades and curtains, and stripped to her panties and bra. At that point she could barely move her limbs, but even through the fog, as she settled back on fluffy down pillows, she was congratulating herself on her plan. Setting up a meeting was a positively brilliant way to ditch Ryder and Jagger so that she could talk to Case and Danny alone.
Thinking of Ryder was a mistake, though, especially thinking of him while she was in bed. Her body immediately started doing the same infuriating dance, betraying her with memories of his kiss bruising her mouth, his hands on her, stroking her between her legs, sucking her br**sts…the thick, hard length of him pressing insistently against her…opening her…poised to plunge….
She moaned in exasperation and pushed back the blankets, then threw her bare legs out of bed and stood. She stalked to a cabinet and shoved through various glass bottles of tinctures and potions until she found what she needed: a sleeping draught. She tossed back the whole thing, dropped the bottle in the sink and went back to bed.
Ryder woke to a straining erection, with the smell of Caitlin MacDonald’s perfume a teasing memory on his skin. He felt…well, besides hard, it was difficult to say what he felt. Annoyance that he’d walked out on her, when so plainly, if he’d stayed, she would have succumbed, and he could be rolling over on top of her right now to take care of his present condition. He also felt some residual guilt for having deceived her. It was a point of honor that he never seduced a woman in anything other than his true form; using his natural talents later in bed was a different story….
And there was something else, something less tangible…not just a desire to be satisfied, but a longing…a longing that seemed to be specifically for her.
His erection stirred with the thought of her, and for a moment he luxuriated in the fantasy of plunging deep inside her, feeling her nails digging into his back, hearing her helpless sighs in his ear as he brought her to the brink….
So why was he the one who felt helpless?
He lay against the pillows of his hotel bed, frowning…and then threw back the sheet and stalked to the bathroom. There was, after all, work to be done, and he didn’t need the distraction of Caitlin MacDonald. Or anyone else, for that matter.
There was a message on his voice mail from the vampire detective, informing him that the Keepers had requested a meeting with him at eight that evening. That worked perfectly for Ryder, as he wanted to do some investigating on his own. So, dressed and showered, he headed down to Canal Street to rent a car for the day, a much more practical option than renting a car that would only gather dust in the $30 a day lot of his hotel, while he spent day after day doing what every other resident of the Quarter did to get around: walk.
Ever since he’d arrived back in town, Ryder had been thrilled to see that though rebuilding was ongoing, the French Quarter and the Garden District were as colorful, lively, eccentric and thriving as ever. But he was well aware that there were areas of the city that would never be the same.
When Hurricane Katrina and the breaking of the levees had flooded and devastated the city, Ryder had been engaged in an exorcism in West Africa, but despite that distraction, he’d felt the pain of New Orleans in his own soul, a pain that surprised him, since he didn’t think of himself as attached to any one place above another.
But the images of this beautiful, unique city underwater had tormented and enraged him.
He had not yet been to the outer reaches of the city, the condemned areas, but on this day he felt compelled. He knew that in the Ninth Ward and other storm-ravaged districts there were miles and miles of abandoned houses, damaged beyond repair, block after block of silent, deserted streets, and in his experience, those kinds of neighborhoods were magnets for the most ravenous and degraded drug users, just the kind of human prey the walk-ins would be seeking. He wanted a good long look around.
It was an eerie experience, driving his rental car into the post-apocalyptic landscape that was the lower Ninth Ward. New Orleans was so flat that he could see for miles down certain streets, but all he saw were derelict houses and scorched, weed-choked lawns. Every other block or so there was a FEMA trailer or two with signs of life, but there was an overall sense of devastation. The still-present code on the houses, the X’s with dates and numbers of survivors and numbers of dead, were cryptic as the voodoo symbols called vévés, and somehow called to mind the emptiness that must have spread through city streets during the Black Plague. On most of the houses there was a distinct water line imprinted on the walls, higher than a man’s head. If he had been on this street in the midst of the storm and subsequent flooding, he would have been driving completely underwater.
Ryder abruptly pulled over to the curb, shut off the engine and got out, shutting the door on silence.
This is High Noon, he thought, staring down the empty block. Where’s the bad guy?
He looked both ways, debating, then started to walk, feeling the hot sun on his skin. A slight wind stirred the tall dead grass in the yards, rippling an unseen left-behind wind chime. The stillness was unnerving. Ryder’s own boot steps sounded hollow on the worn asphalt.
He didn’t know what he was looking for, didn’t know exactly why he had stopped, only that he had to be outside, to sense whatever was around him.
Yet there was a quality in the stillness of the air that made him think that something…
He paused in the street and shifted slightly. Not into any shape in particular, but into his subtle body, the energetic, nonmaterial life force that was part of every human being, but ten times stronger than the physical body in shapeshifters, subject to change by a simple act of the mind’s will. It was the subtle body that talented shapeshifters could alter to make those around them see a different form or a different person entirely. But the subtle body also registered heightened perceptions that the purely physical body could miss.
In his subtle body Ryder could see the street he was on in a whole new way. He could read each house where inhabitants had died more clearly than if he had been reading the spray-painted codes; the black and wavering energy emanating from those houses was a, well, dead giveaway, a residual trace of the deaths that had occurred there.
And up ahead, at a house two down from the corner, he saw something else entirely. Something not merely black and emanating, but red and angry and hostile, like a scream through the astral.
In his subtle body, Ryder froze, bracing himself against the assault of angry energy. And then he felt the unmistakable agony—and release—of the death of some sentient creature.
He shifted back into his physical form and broke into a run toward the house.
He slammed through a rickety front gate that literally flew off the hinges when he shoved it, landing on the brown, overgrown grass of the postage-stamp yard. Ryder strode up the cracked walkway to the door.
He paused outside just for a fraction of a second, allowing his senses to strain toward whatever was inside.
There was only a hollow stillness.
He kicked open the door.
Chapter 10
The contrast between the dark, dank interior of the house and the glare of the midday sun outside was momentarily blinding. Realizing his vision was useless, Ryder shifted into his subtle body again and scanned the energy of the house.