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“Eleven-fifteen,” he says as I come down the steps. “That was a long dinner.”

“There was dessert.”

“I’ll bet.” He grins. “Billy Bob ate his dinner, took a walk, and is asleep on my couch. He snores like a chainsaw.”

“I know. I’ve been sleeping next to it for years.”

I climb up into the passenger seat. The cab is warm, the way his truck is always warm, and I let my head fall back against the seat and close my eyes and smile at nothing.

Merek leans across to check that my door’s shut.

He inhales once.

And stops.

I open my eyes. He’s very close, one arm braced on the back of my seat, and he isn’t grinning anymore. His face has gone completely still. The lines on his forearm, right by my shoulder, flare slowly from orange to gold. His eyes go to my throat, to the two small marks under my jaw, and stay there.

I don’t say anything. I’m not sorry, and I’m not going to pretend I am.

But he’s close enough that I can feel the heat coming off him, and I can see his hand tighten on the back of my seat, and I realize, sitting there, that none of this is going to stay in separate rooms.

“You smell like him,” Merek says.

And I just smile.

Chapter nine

Tara

Merek doesn’t say much on the drive home.

After his comment about smelling Lenart on me, I’d expected a joke. Maybe a little teasing. Instead, he grips the steering wheel hard enough that the leather creaks.

“You okay?” I ask.

“Yeah.” He glances at me. “Just figuring out how patient I can be.”

“Not very, judging by that steering wheel.”

He laughs and relaxes his grip.

“Lenart is the last thing on my mind right now, Trouble.”

Well, shit.

He turns onto his street, the gold in his forearms glowing softly in the dark.

“And for the record,” he adds, “when it’s my turn, I don’t plan on letting you forget it.”

I believe him.

Wednesday afternoon, at a quarter to six, I’m standing in the lower level of the Monster Club with a harpy screaming in my face.

Not at me. Near me. It’s still loud enough to make the crystal drops on the chandelier above us chime together like somebody shook a tree full of wind chimes.

The doors upstairs don’t open until nine, but private events downstairs start whenever the booking says. Both of these bookings said six.

“That,” says the harpy, who is about five feet tall with gray-and-white wings folded behind her like a cape, “is our room.”