I crawled from car to car, keeping an eye out for the dryad monster. Damn sorcerer still hadn’t shown up. What was the point of a charm to summon him if he didn’t come when called?
Wait. The creature hadn’t targeted me until after I accepted this job. Why hadn’t the charm worked when the sorcerer had promised it would? And, how had the dryad known where to find me? Even the werewolves and vampires hadn’t been able to track me down this fast.
I crept along the cars, working my way to where the smart cars were parked.
Unless someone had tagged me like a wild animal. I looked down at the charm still hanging around my neck. Maybe a tracker placed in a summoning charm?
It would explain how it had keyed into me twice now.
No, something didn’t add up. The sorcerer needed my help and had the power to kill me outright. Why would he need to send a magical creature when he could just do it himself?
The questions were turning me in circles. All the answers I came up with didn’t address the whole picture. None of it made sense.
I needed answers. Making it out alive from those last two encounters with that monster had been luck. I didn’t think I would survive a third.
I found a rental car and opened the door, sliding into the seat. I fished the stolen wallet out of my pocket and used a credit card to turn on the ignition. I didn’t have long. The engine starting would tell the monster exactly where I was.
I backed the car out of its spot and floored it.
“Come on,” I snapped as it scooted forward, making the whir, whir sound of a wind-up toy car.
A roar sounded from three aisles away. Even with the pedal pressed all the way to the floor, the little car took forever to get up to speed. Metal sparked when I scraped the bottom of the carriage against concrete as I flew out of the parking lot.
Yanking the sorcerer’s charm from my neck, I rolled down the window and tossed it out of the car. It was time to go off book. I’d been playing by everyone else’s rules for too long. Time for people to find out exactly who they were messing with.
CHAPTER NINE
THE RECPTIONIST WAS still at her post despite the late hour. I pulled my phone back. Turning the camera on and angling it around the corner wasn’t the best method of surveillance, but it would do in a pinch.
I stuffed the cell phone into my messenger bag. I had picked up the bag along with a few other supplies at one of my caches a few miles from here. I had similar stashes all over the city in case of an emergency. This life was dangerous, as my current circumstance attested to. The go-bags were a last-ditch plan in case things went to shit or if the vampires ever descended on my life.
The worst of my scenarios had already happened, but I refused to abandon the life I’d created here without a fight.
First step, I needed to get past the receptionist without announcing my presence. In the past half hour of my stakeout, she hadn’t moved an inch. A coffee or bathroom break would have made my life infinitely easier. But that didn’t look like it was going to happen anytime soon.
How to do this without tripping any wards this guy had? We were on the second floor so I couldn’t exactly break a window. Pulling the fire alarm also wouldn’t work. Nobody was here to evacuate, and the sorcerer could probably extinguish any flames, making an evacuation unnecessary for the two of them.
What to do? I dug through the bag and pulled out a cuff made of beaten copper. It had faded geometric designs etched into the dull metal and had been a gift from a satisfied client. She told me the thing could suppress the wearer’s magic if it was locked around the wrist. Why she thought I’d have any need for the thing as a vampire, I had no clue. Vampires didn’t usually have power that needed to be suppressed. Whatever the reason, it was going to come in handy today.
“What are you doing here?” a teenager asked from behind me.
I froze. Almost in slow motion, I turned, taking in the sorcerer standing there sipping on a jumbo-sized gas station fountain drink and holding a food container from the best late-night pizza place in the city.
I just might have been the worst thief in the history of bad thieves. My intended target was standing right in front of me and had managed to sneak up on me despite my superior vampire senses.
That was just great. Maybe next time I could send out invitations to my stake out. It’d probably achieve the same result.
He gave me a look patented by teenagers everywhere, infusing it with a skeptical scorn that drove anybody over the age of twenty-five close to homicidal.
I needed a plausible lie.
My mind was blank.
The cuff in my hand clinked against the metal in my jacket. Right. New plan. Sneaking up on him and ambushing him wasn’t going to work. I’d have to improvise.
“What’s that?” the sorcerer asked, his eyes focusing on the cuff.
I lurched forward, swinging my bag at his face. He flinched back, raising his occupied hands to protect his face. I snapped the cuff around one of those hands and danced back out of his reach.
