“Hunter liked him,” Blue added. “They played all morning. I don’t agree with owning pets, but he seems like a good companion animal.”
“Well, if Hunter wants a quiet place to nap, he can go upstairs. My dad won’t mind, and the dog will keep him company.”
“I’m not letting him out of my sight,” Shepherd muttered, yawning right afterward.
Wyatt snorted. “Kind of hard to do with your eyes closed. If you don’t go to sleep, you’ll be useless on the next mission.”
“He’s right,” Blue chimed in. “You haven’t slept very much since yesterday.”
“That dog will guard him,” I promised Shepherd. “I’ve seen him strip flesh off bone. Trust me, Hunter couldn’t be safer anywhere else.”
Blue rubbed her eyes and got up. “I’ll take him. I could use a nap myself. We really got the shaft with this dead thing. We don’t need food or water, but we still have to sleep.”
Wyatt licked his finger and turned the page. “I’d rather sleep than go mad staring at the walls. Ever seen one of those ancient Vampires? They have crazy eyes. I’m not talking about the ones who are six or seven hundred. I once met a man who was fourteen thousand years old, and you don’t know scary until you look one of them in the eyes. I kid you not. A person isn’t meant to go that long without sleep.”
Blue offered her hand to Hunter. He looked to Shepherd first, who nodded.
After they left the room, I asked, “Anything new?”
Shepherd turned the chair to face me and then propped his feet on the bed. “Nope.”
I noticed the light outside. “We need to be careful about coming and going. Sparrow might send one or two of his men out to find us. Maybe not, but I think we might have pissed him off.”
Wyatt flopped over to face me. “What exactly happened in that garage? And how’s my car?”
“I killed one, left another alive. Sparrow saw me. Not much to tell.”
“Not much, she says. But how’s my car?”
“It’s still there.” I shifted toward him and tugged my dress out from beneath my leg. “Did you guys notice the dead guy following Christian?”
Wyatt gave me an air-kiss. “You’ve been replaced.”
“Why is he in his underwear?”
“You think I want to ask a freshy what he’s doing in his undies? I’m all booked up on crazy.”
My gaze wandered. “Maybe youshouldtalk to him. He might have information about Sparrow. Ever thought of that?”
Shepherd put his feet down, and his eyes popped open.
“Good luck with that.” Wyatt rolled onto his back and held the magazine over his head. “The last thing you want to do is get involved in favor trading with a ghost. Too many things can go wrong. They can haunt you forever, hire another Gravewalker to have you or someone you love killed, get inside your head and make you do things—the dead can ruin your life.”
“Hey, it worked out for you that one time. Didn’t that spirit clear the house of all the other spooks?”
“Well, that was different, Miss Smarty-Pants. He wasn’t some rando. He knew Christian.”
We turned to look when the door opened. Christian waltzed in with a very large black appliance under one arm and a plastic sack in the other.
After setting the room key on the dresser, he tossed the sack in front of Kira, who was still quietly sitting on the floor. “Threads for the lass and wee one. I also found him a pair of gloves.”
“Hunter and Blue are upstairs sleeping,” I informed him. “What’s that?”
He tossed the large black object between his hands as if it were a ball. It must have weighed fifty pounds. “I bought your da a cooler for his drinks and food.”
“Are you living inside my head? I was just gonna ask you to get one of those. That’s pretty big.”
He set it on the dresser by the TV. “Three-point-three cubic feet with a built-in freezer.”
