“How did you know?”
He rolled his eyes. “Women. They can complicate the shit out of everything.”
Just then, another camera flash through the bedroom window temporarily blinded them.
Jason glanced at what Nathan was wearing—jeans only—then at himself—pants and an open shirt. That, plus where they were standing—beside a queen-size bed—added up tobad news.
“Shit!”
Chapter 13
Merry didn’t quite know what to do. She loitered in the hallway outside her front door, knowing Jason was inside her neighbor’s apartment, but should she knock? What if he was hurt? Did Nathan know more about helping a shifter than she did?
She had already told Morgaine and Gwyneth that a reading was probably out of the question in the foreseeable future and to keep their pet in the apartment at all times—hidden—and on a tether.
Maybe the future wasn’t meant to be foreseen. Perhaps hers would never be easy to predict now that she had landed in the capital of the state of weirdness.
Mentally counting on her fingers, she ticked off each resident’s “special gift.” Morgaine and Gwyneth were witches. A ghost lived across the hall from them. She lived next door to a raven and her boyfriend and his uncle were falcons. Oh! And she mustn’t forget about her vampire dad in the basement.
She remembered Konrad’s seemingly superhuman strength and wondered whathisstory was. He was friends with Sly, so he must be something-or-other. Another vampire? Maybe one who shifts into a bat? Sly had laughed at her when she asked if he could do that.
So, how did she end up here, anyway? Oh yeah. The ad in her weekly small-town newspaper. Boston sounded so exciting, and the ad had been placed there for three weeks in a row—until she answered it. Sly had asked Morgaine to use some kind of spell to be sure she saw it and no one else did, but that was impossible, wasn’t it?
What the hell… In this weird place,anything seems possible.
As she waited patiently, contemplating her life turned upside down, Jason flew out of Nathan’s apartment, only this time inhuman form and half dressed.
“Stay here,” he shouted when he caught sight of her. Then he yanked open the front door and vaulted over the railing.
“What the…?”
Nathan appeared in his open doorway and leaned against it, appearing entirely too casual under the circumstances. “Nice night, isn’t it?”
“What wasthatabout?” she asked, pointing toward the front door.
“You mean Jason?”
“Yeah, he just ran out of here like he was being chased by a grizzly bear.”
Nathan laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
He shrugged. “He wasn’t being chased. He’s doing the chasing, and if a mere five-foot-five woman thinks she can outrun a peregrine falcon, she’s sorely mistaken.”
“Five-foot-five woman…?” Suddenly Merry remembered the flash she thought she had seen through the front door, and a horrible foreboding invaded her gut. “Oh, no!” Her eyes narrowed and she balled her hands into fists.
“You know her?” Nathan asked.
“I hope to God it’s not who I think it is.”
“Why? Who is she?”
“Lila Crum.” She practically spit the name. “Did you happen to see the newspaper a few weeks ago?”
“No, why?”
“This paparazzi reporter made up a rotten story about Jason and tried to ruin his career and our relationship.”
