Well, that and the hookers.
“You look hungry, baby.” A dark-haired woman with fake tits and pointed red nails ran one of her talons down my chest, hooking a finger in my belt loop. “I can take care of that for you. Fill you up until you’remorethan satisfied.”
“I’m good, thanks.” I removed her hand from my pants and sidestepped her, stalking over to the office’s floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Vegas strip. Beyond the glittering lights of the city, the wind tore through the dark desert, but I didn’t feel it up here on the forty-second floor.
Not for the first time, I wondered how long it would take for nature to reclaim this place, bury it all under an ocean of sand and time.
I closed my eyes, pressing my forehead against the glass.
Sebastian loved making me wait. Making me sweat.
I’d been here twenty minutes already. Turned down three of his favorite women. Ignored the mahogany bar set up in his office.
I was about to throw a chair through the windows and fuck up his ten-million-dollar view when the bastard finally strolled in.
He was a scrawny fuck, with thinning gray hair he slicked back over a head shaped like a potato, a greasy gray goatee trying hard to cover his pockmarked skin. Dressed in a three-piece suit and dripping with more gold than the Federal Reserve, the man looked every bit the casino boss he fancied himself.
His accent, though? That shit was peak Colonel Sanders right there.
“Ronan Vacarro,” he drawled, shooing the woman out and shutting the door in her face. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Gray was attacked by hell hounds last night,” I said. After wasting my fucking time all night, the Prince of Hell wasn’t getting the pleasure of small talk. “I want to know why.”
Sebastian’s mustache twitched. “Attacked? Impossible. She—”
I slammed my fists against his desk, splintering the polished wood. “She woke up screaming and bloody. Her shirt was slashed across the middle. And she described your precious pets to a fucking T. So don’t stroll in here and tell me what’s possible.”
He raised an eyebrow, but showed no other reaction to my outburst.
I hated his mind games. He beat me every time.
“Would you like a drink?” he asked, heading for his bar.
“No.”
He grabbed a glass decanter and poured two drinks anyway, passing one to me. “Have a drink, boy. It’ll calm your nerves.”
I took the glass, set it on a filing cabinet behind me.
Sebastian ignored the slight.
Settling into the leather executive chair behind his now-demolished desk, he sipped the bourbon, nodding his appreciation. Shit probably cost more than this whole building was worth, knowing his flashy tastes.
“My hounds are trained to protect my investments,” he said, waving a hand in the air as if my fears were just minor annoyances fucking up his otherwise perfect night. “If she got hurt, she brought that on herself.”
I leaned back against the windows, arms folded over my chest to prevent myself from reaching over and choking the shit out of him. “Do you actually believe the bullshit you’re spewing?”
“Why wouldn’t I? Unlike the rest of you, hounds don’t go rogue. They don’t let their feelings cloud their judgement. They don’t evenhavejudgment. I say jump, and you know what they say?”
I rolled my eyes. “How high?”
“No. They don’t say a damn thing because they’re too busy following orders.”
“So you’re telling me there’s another threat?”
“The beasts wouldn’t be there otherwise.”
I considered this. The hound had attacked Gray—or protected her, depending on whose story you believed—in her magic place. I didn’t know the exact mechanics, but my understanding from other witches who’d accessed magic that way over the years was that a being could only manifest in another witch’s magical realm if that being shared a deeply personal or spiritual connection to the witch, and had the ability to perform a magical working to make the connection. They also needed something that contained the witch’s DNA, like blood or hair.
