Shifty Magic (18 page)

We pushed our way through the small crowd
and found the door blocked by a burly, fierce looking guy. He wore
black sweatpants and an open leather vest. His massive bare chest
sported the long, angular slash of an old scar and his eyes looked
mean. He frowned at Cooper for a moment and then his eyes flared
with surprise.

"I'm not here," Cooper said quietly.

The guard's gaze darted to me and widened
even more. "Yes, sir," he growled as he stepped aside. The big man
pushed the door open and pounding music swept out in a wave of
sound.

"What was that about?" I asked as quietly as
I could considering how loud the music was.

"Pack business."

Cooper's hand tightened on mine, and we
plunged through a curtain of hanging beads and into a world of dark
chaos. Rhythmic flashes of neon red and blue swept over gyrating
bodies crowded into the middle of the open room while the earthy
beat of the music vibrated through my body in a primitive rhythm of
sex and recklessness.

A long bar ran along the right wall, tables
with couples huddled together or groups of friends laughing were
scattered along the left. At the front, a DJ, highlighted in the
splash of a neon purple spotlight, danced inside his glass tower
with confident ease to the beat of the song playing.

"When the old lady said 'mixed', she didn't
mean gender preference, did she?" I said, barely restraining myself
from yelling in his ear. Remembering that his hearing was
significantly better than mine was tough when it meant I could
barely hear myself.

"The Sagittarius supports that, too," he
said, flashing a grin at me.

"There are Weres here with humans. Even a
few vamps. This is borderline illegal."

"That's never stopped you before. Come on."
Leading me into the writhing mass of dancers, he pulled me snuggly
against him.

He moved his body against mine to the rhythm
of the music with intimate memory and my heart started racing. I
pressed my hands to his chest to push him back, but caught myself
at the last minute. We had a part to play and needed to blend in if
we hoped to find Marla without spooking her into running.

A disconcerting excitement sparked low in my
stomach as I slid my palms over the hard contours of his chest and
loosely laced my fingers behind his neck. He gazed down at me, his
silver-green eyes shining like metallic jade in the ambient light.
Desire flickered through their depths, shamelessly thrilling me
even while it scared the hell out of me.

He bent his head, and his lips grazed the
top of my left ear sending a chill skating across my neck. "Keep an
eye out for Marla," he murmured.

I swallowed against my suddenly dry throat
and gratefully moved my attention to a spot just past his shoulder.
Some small, stupid part of me had hoped that focusing on working
with Cooper professionally, would inspire my crazy feelings for him
to take a hike. Love and the grim specter of murder didn't seem
like concepts that would enjoy spending time together in a person's
psyche.

I couldn't have been more wrong.
Experiencing his intelligence and sense of humor, his kindness and
the near-constant exposure to a face and body that made a girl's
knees go weak was making me feel things I didn't want in my life.
The fact that our attraction to each other had been there all along
only made the realization harder to swallow.

Cooper was right. Cupid Spells only worked
if the involved parties already had feelings for each other. I
found myself laying my cheek against his shoulder while I scanned
the room. Inhaling slowly, I savored his fresh, woodsy scent and
wished I was brave enough to risk a broken heart.

"I don't see her," I said, keeping my voice
pitched low and trusting that his Were hearing would pick it
up.

Cooper kissed my temple leaving a tingling
imprint behind and maneuvered us closer to the DJ. "I don't think
she's here."

I glanced toward the bar just as a woman
turned after getting a beer, and surprise misted through me. "I
think you have to go to the bathroom," I said, smiling up at him in
as infatuated a way as I could manage.

A frown pulled down his dark brows. "Is that
a come on?"

"Don't be gross. There's a woman at the bar
I need to speak with. You'll only inspire her to shut up."

I cupped my hands around his jaw when he
started to look over his shoulder. "See you soon, baby." I gave him
a quick kiss that shot his dark brows sky high and darted away
before he could comment.

The brief contact sent a flock of jacked up
butterflies beating against my stomach. I told them to take a hike
too and walked over to Kathy, who looked none the worse after her
encounter a few days ago with the three vamps.

"Off duty?" I asked as I slid onto the stool
beside her.

She jumped, then relaxed when she saw it was
me. "Dinner hour."

"Liquid diet?" I eyed the bottle of ale in
her hand.

"They have great french fries, too." She
took a drink and her gaze slid over and around me like I'd seen the
more powerful practitioners do. "Taking a walk on the wild
side?"

"Just here for the fries." I signaled the
bartender and gave him my order.

"No connection to the wolf you were dancing
with, huh?"

I winced. "You saw that?"

"He's hot."

"I was bored."

The bartender slid a tiny napkin in front of
me, and then set my glass of Dr. Pepper down on top of it. "I was
actually supposed to meet a client here, but I think she stood me
up."

"What's she look like? Maybe I saw her."

Kathy might not be the sharpest tool in the
shed, but like most women in her often dangerous profession, she
had a talent for noticing everyone in a room. "Early-twenties,
female, dark skin, wavy hair cut to her jaw. Kind of exotic
looking. Seen anyone like that?"

Her blue eyes widened. "Sounds like Marla.
You just missed her."

I gave her a puzzled look while alarm and
disappointment tightened through me. How did Kathy know our
suspect?

"Marla?" I asked, using the arrival of the
fries to cover my agitation.

She pursed her lips. "Now that I think about
it, she told me that she was thinking of hiring someone. She's
convinced her boyfriend's cheating on her. I told her that was
crazy. He's totally devoted."

Giving up on the pretense, I pushed the
fries over so the basket was between us. "How do you know
Marla?"

Kathy grabbed one and popped it into her
mouth. "We worked the same zone in New York last year before she
left with that loser vamp." She made a face like she'd just eaten a
lemon instead of seasoned fried potato.

"'Course, I'm not talking
about him. She hasn't loved that one since for at least six months
after he started slapping her around. I'm talking about her
real
boyfriend. The
regular bartender here. The cute Were. He asked her to marry him
last week," she added, smiling with the usual girlish delight that
such news seemed to mysteriously inspire.

"Ah." I took a fry. "Maybe he knows where
she is."

"He should. They left together." She drank
some of her beer and helped herself to more fries as she gave me a
sly look. "Just before you got here, he got a message and they took
off. Told the other bartender that he didn't feel well."

"And now I don't get paid." I tightened my
mouth, playing up my role of stood-up PI. "Any idea where they
snuck off to?"

A worried frown flickered over her face. She
studied me for a moment and then scooted closer, hanging on the
edge of her bar stool by a short-skirt thread. "There's a rumor of
a practitioner who can work miracles," she said in a low voice, and
I strained to hear her over the music. "I think they're secretly
meeting her tonight."

My hackles went up at that news, so I
slugged down half my Dr. Pepper, gave a not-so-delicate burp and
pretended I didn't give a rat's tail about Marla's personal life.
"So?"

"I think it's a con."

"Since I'm not getting paid, not my
problem."

Kathy frowned at me. "They say she helps
mixed couples get pregnant. All very under the radar. I told Marla
that was impossible and probably dangerous, but she said Sean
wanted to check it out."

She pulled my fries in front of her and
started munching them down. "I hope I'm wrong. I've never seen her
so happy."

"Yeah well, she's a grown woman. Her choice,
her consequence." I finished my soda and contemplated the dancers
for a moment, my mind churning over what Kathy had innocently
revealed.

I imagined how it might have played out.
Marla gets fed up with being abused and seeks comfort elsewhere.
New boyfriend wants to make it legal, but wants the whole picture,
including kids. In order to have their dream life, the young lovers
have to get rid of Marla's nasty vamp protector. Maybe they find a
way to get hold of an illegal potion that can immobilize Danny. Not
hard to do as I had reason to know. Gruesome murder in the alley,
vamp out of the picture, grieving girlfriend off the hook and
everyone prepares to live happily ever after.

Except then Marla finds out that Laiyla
plans to out the fertility spell dealer and spoil her last chance
at happiness. What's another murder for the sake of love?

But how had she managed to overwhelm Laiyla?
Had the mysterious black market practitioner helped her?

I suppressed a sigh of frustration.
Something nagged at the back of my mind, but I couldn't quite get
hold of it. After a moment, I gave up. My subconscious never
spilled its guts before it was good and ready. What we needed was
to find Marla and the Were and get some answers out of them.

When Kathy left, I felt Cooper's eyes on me
from somewhere in the crowd. As I handed my credit unit to the
bartender, I nodded toward the employee's exit behind the bar and
hoped Cooper got the message.

Slipping off the stool, I wove through the
crowd at the edge of the dance floor, the noise and smell of a
hundred different deodorants, perfumes, colognes and sweat churning
around me with the music. When I reached the end of the bar, I
loitered until the current bartender was at the other end flirting
with a group of thirty-something business women. Kathy was gone and
no one else was paying me a lick of attention, so I pretended to
check my iC while I casually headed for the employee's exit.

The door closed behind me and the deserted
hall stretched out toward the back exit. The relentless pumping of
the music from the club faded into muffled quiet, leaving behind an
annoying buzzing in my ears; one of the many reasons I generally
avoided places like The Sagittarius.

I was almost to the back door when Cooper
appeared beside me. An instant before, I'd felt him coming when a
sudden awareness prickled between my shoulder blades. I didn't like
that I was becoming so aware of him, but it saved me from thinking
I was being attacked and going to all the trouble of shoving a
knife up his nose.

"I saw you talking to the seducer," he said,
slowing his pace to match mine.

In case we were discovered, Cooper and I
moved toward the exit like we knew where we were going. If anyone
caught us, we'd pretend we were looking for the bathroom or some
privacy. Worst case scenario, I could always act drunk.

"She knows Marla," I told him. "Said she and
her new boyfriend left in a hurry."

"Sean." His voice held a tone of angry
sorrow that I'd never heard before.

I raised my eyebrows and glanced at him. His
face was set into grim lines and a muscle ticked along his jaw.
"The Were bartender?"

His mouth tightened.

"By your long-suffering and upset
expression, I'm guessing he's a relative." From what I'd seen in my
short life, only family could make people sad, angry and annoyed
all at the same time.

"Similar to a distant cousin by human
standards," he reluctantly admitted. "A level four gamma in my
brother's clan. I caught his scent in the hall as I came up behind
you."

I blinked, surprised by this sudden level of
sharing. We'd brought down bad guys, spent the night together and
done stake-outs but this was the first I'd ever heard about a
brother. Or any other kind of personal information, for that
matter.

"His scent's faint, but still clear. He was
here at least an hour ago. Also a human female in a highly excited
state."

"Probably Marla," I speculated.

"Not necessarily. He's
still young and this
is
a bar."

"But Kathy said they just left. Could the
smoke of the club be messing up your reading?"

Cooper stopped and pulled in a deep breath,
a puzzled frown on his face. "The scent just changed."

"Ew," I said stepping away from him. "They
did it right here?"

He turned and studied the wall next to me,
his expression troubled. "Yes. But there's something else." Moving
closer, he inhaled again. "Something isn't right. He was
afraid."

Before I could blink, he was at the end of
the hall with his ear pressed to the beat-up metal of the heavy
exterior door. He listened for a moment, and then with quick
efficient motions, disengaged the locks and pushed it open.

Moonlight filtered into the dim hall and a
gust of wind brought the damp, charged smell of impending rain.
Beyond the door was a narrow, paved alley and the brick wall of the
building next to the club. Cooper looked back at me, and his eyes
flashed like polished green stones against his shadowed face.

A cold chill ran down my back. I felt a
moment of unexpected anxiety and wished I hadn't left my Browning
at home. "What is it?" I whispered.

"There's a storm coming. I need to track
them before it hits." His eyes gleamed at me. "I have to
shift."