In the morning, Oriel left when I went for my run.
“Are you going to come around only when you want to get laid?” I asked him when he kissed me goodbye.
A sly smile crossed his face. “Perhaps. Why else would I want to see you?”
I went slightly numb inside. “The pleasure of my company?”
“I’m quite pleased with the pleasure you provide.”
“I’m more than that.”
He squeezed my ass. “Really?” Then he got in his car and drove away. I wasn’t sure what I thought. A little hurt maybe? Or maybe that was just his way of playing with me. How did he really feel about me? Was I just a play thing? I had no idea.
I stopped by the office to see my landlady. I wasn’t sure what to make of McGregor, but the vibe I got from him wasn’t threatening. Besides, knowing where he was would make it easier to keep track of him and seemed to make sense.
The office was in a separate building from the four apartment blocks. Eleanor had an apartment above the office, and behind the office were her laboratory, workshop, and a supply room. I found her in her lab, cooking up some kind of potion.
I waited about fifteen minutes until she was finished, then helped her pour the contents of the kettle into large bottles.
“What is this stuff?” I asked. It smelled like a flower garden with an undercurrent of ammonia.
She chuckled. “Carpet cleaner. I use it when rude people leave vampire heads in the hallway. Normal cleaning solutions don’t do squat to clean up vamp blood and some of the other things that happen around here.”
I blushed. It wasn’t my fault that a Hunter left that head in front of my door.
“So, what brings you over to visit?” she asked.
“Eleanor, do you have any vacant apartments?”
“As a matter of fact, one of the tenants in building four is moving out. I’ll have the apartment ready to rent on Monday.”
“Someone at the bar asked me last night. He’s just come to town.”
“Have him come by,” she said. To my knowledge, all of her tenants were either magic users or shifters. If I had met McGregor at the bar, she knew he was either a paranormal or a supernatural.
I set out on my run along the creek. The day was windy and cold, threatening to rain, so I cast a shield around myself to ward off the cold. When I got to the bridge over the river, I turned around and headed home.
The path mostly followed the creek, and at one place it snaked through a small copse of trees. Two Knights were waiting for me as I rounded a bend. What the hell? I shielded as I slowed to a stop.
“Come with us, and don’t try anything,” one said, drawing his sword. The other pulled out a pistol.
“That’s not very romantic. You guys really need to work on your pickup lines. Where are we going?”
“You’ll find out.”
The one with the gun cautiously approached me. He had a set of handcuffs in his other hand. “Hold your hands away from your body.”
Instead of complying, I drew my dagger. “I don’t think so.”
The scuff of a shoe on the path behind me alerted me that they weren’t alone. I waited for my would-be captor to come closer and heard another sound behind me, also closer. I whirled away from the guy with the gun and heard it go off. Shifting my knife from my right hand to my left, I swung in the direction where I thought the man behind me might be and encountered a shield.
I had stepped off the path onto the grassy slope leading to the creek. Four Knights stood on the path above me. Behind me were trees and thick bushes. It wasn’t the most strategic position to be in.
The Knight farthest to my right screamed, arching his back and then falling down the slope toward me. The man next to him spun about, then doubled over with a grunt.
Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, I took advantage of the interruption and hurled a ley missile at the man farthest to my left. It hit his shield, and he staggered backward.
The remaining Knight leaped at me, swinging his sword. I deflected it with my knife, but lost my footing and slid down the embankment. He followed up his advantage by leaping toward me, but as he landed, he suddenly lurched forward as though someone had hit him from behind. Off-balance, he flung out his arms. I slipped inside his guard and buried my long knife under his breast bone. His eyes bulged, and his mouth opened in startled surprise, then he dropped his sword and slumped.
The man I had hit with the ley missile found his feet and hurled a bolt of lightning at me. My shield absorbed it. Then he stiffened, his face a mirror of his friend’s who hung on my blade. He dropped to his knees and fell forward on his face.
Above me, Oriel shimmered into visibility, holding the Hunter’s main gauche I had traded him. Blood dripped from the blade. He was in his Fae form, and he looked wildly wild. Primeval. Savage. Mouth-wateringly sexy. Or at least I thought so. But my attitude toward a man gutting one of my enemies probably didn’t fit with the normal sensibilities of polite society.
“You’re right,” he said, his face lit with a predatory grin. “You can be a lot of fun out of bed as well.”
“Are you stalking me?”
“I enjoy watching your body when you run. Very sensual.”
“Well, I must say that you’re the most welcome stalker I’ve ever had.”
“Happy to be of service, my lady.” He sketched a quick bow. “Now, if you would pry the ruby off the hilt of that sword, perhaps we can retire back to your place and you can thank me properly.”
“I want to keep the swords,” I said. “I’d like to gift one to a friend.”
“Let’s gather them up then, but hurry. We need to get out of here before someone comes along. This tryst has been even noisier than ours last night.”
I blushed as I pushed the Knight off my blade. After wiping it on his shirt, I began going through his pockets.
“What are you doing?” Oriel asked.
“Searching for information. Strip them of everything except their clothing and boots, and we’ll sort it out later. Actually, search the insides of their boots as well.”
I finished searching the Knight, including checking for anything he might be carrying inside his boots. Hunters often concealed things there, so I was interested to see if Knights did that also. I was rewarded with a credit card and identification in a different name than the ID he had in his coat pocket. Then I kicked his body down the hill into the trees and started on the next man.
We made our way through the trees up to the road where I discovered Oriel’s car parked a short distance away.
“Truly, how did you happen to come along just at the right moment?” I asked him as I fastened my seat belt.
“I was on my way back from running an errand in town,” he said. “I saw that car parked here and was curious.” The car he pointed to was a large black SUV. “The Knights appear to have a fondness for that model.”
I couldn’t help but grin. “You seem to know a lot about hunting Knights.”
“What can I say? I have a fetish for star rubies.”
I rummaged through the stuff we had collected and found a set of car keys. “Let’s see what else we can loot.”
Back at my place, we dumped everything we had collected onto my kitchen table, and I poured us each a glass of wine. Then we sat down and sorted through it all. The IDs they carried in their pockets were Oregon driver’s licenses. In their boots, they had passports and credit cards with different names from the driver’s licenses and the credit cards in their wallets. Two Italian passports, one Croatian, and one French.
“Quite an eclectic group,” Oriel said.
“What country is your passport from?” I asked.
“I have two, from Ireland and the U.S., but I don’t really need any. It’s quicker to travel through the mounds.”
“How does that work?”
“Magic.” He must have seen from my face that I wasn’t satisfied with that answer. “Look, it’s a different dimension. All the mounds are interconnected, like different rooms in a very large house. To go from here to New Mexico or to Ireland, I just walk from one place to the other. They’re all basically the same distance from each other. How many passports do you have?”
I hesitated, then decided to tell him the truth. “Five, all in different names.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. We continued looking at the Knights’ possessions, sorting things into piles. When we finished, we had eight credit cards, eight passports, over three thousand dollars in cash, four swords that Oriel pried the rubies from, four pistols, seven knives, four silver crosses that he said he would melt down, four room keys from a local hotel, and various photographs and personal items that weren’t of much interest. We had left the keys in the SUV, which was unlocked. I hoped someone would steal it.
“Now that you have all of this, what are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“Some I’m going to give to Frankie Jones, the assistant district attorney. I’m also going to give the credit card and identification information to a hacker friend of mine. I’ll pay him with some of the money.”
“And what are you going to do with the rest of the money?”
“Take you out for a night on the town. Dinner at the fanciest restaurant and tickets to a show. You wouldn’t happen to like ballet or opera, do you?”
Chapter 11
I had to go to work that evening, so I only had time to quickly thank Oriel for his help. We took a shower together, and then he drove me to Rosie’s. When he let me off, he promised to come back for dinner and give me a ride home.
I skipped into the bar, and although I tried to wipe the smile off my face, it kept coming back every time I thought about Oriel. I felt very different than when I dated Trevor or Lucas and wondered if I might be falling in love. If not, I did like whatever it was I was feeling.
Sam came out of his office and stood watching me clean glasses.
“New boyfriend treating you well?” he asked.