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As she carried me over to the counter and held up the scissors, I quieted down. As long as she didn't try to clip my claws, she could pamper me all she wanted. When Camille or Menolly returned, they might be able to pick up a bead on whatever it was I'd been sensing and do something about it before the magical signature faded away.
By the time the moon went to bed, I was curled up by the fire, purring heavily as I drifted in and out of my nap. I'd tried to wait up for Camille and Menolly, but the pull from the flames was too strong. The minute I snuggled up in my cushioned slumber ball Camille had bought for my birthday, I slid right into the arms of Morpheus. Which is why I woke up with one paw still furry and the other rapidly shifting into a hand.
Nobody ever believed me when I told them it wasn't painful. Oh, it might be if you weren't a Were but had a shapeshifting spell cast on you, but for us, it was as simple as changing clothes. Speaking of clothes, my collar had disappeared and was just as quickly transforming back into my sweatpants and tank top. And Iris had been right. My butt hurt.
"Seems my Kitten is back from her journey." Menolly's voice echoed in my ears as I rolled off the slumber ball and thudded to the floor, fully transformed as the last whisker vanished.
I blinked, squinting at the window. First light was about an hour away. "Cutting it thin, aren't you?" I said, my throat a little raw. My stomach rumbled, and I discovered that I was a little queasy. What had I eaten during the night? Definitely not Miss House Mouse. A little less engaged in the feline mindset, I decided to drop off some cheese nips where I knew the mouse and her family lived. Poor thing. I must have given her a good scare, even if she had taken advantage of my situation.
"You don't look so hot," Menolly said. She was sitting on the sofa with Maggie in her lap. The baby Crypto was slurping away at the contents of the bowl of cream, cinnamon, sugar, and sage that Menolly held.
The pair had become inseparable since Camille had first rescued the calico gargoyle from a demon's lunch box, and they had bonded in one of the strangest friendships I'd ever seen. It would be years before we knew whether Maggie would develop past the stage of a smart cat or a slow dolphin, but that didn't matter to us. She was a rambunctious little sweetheart, and we all adored her.
"I've got a good excuse," I said, rubbing my backside. "I ended up with a butt full of thorns last night."
"Delightful. I didn't fare much better. No bellyful of blood here, and I'm hungry." I grimaced, but she waved away my protest. "At least I'm always beautiful," she said, looking over my bedraggled state. "Even after a hunt. But you look like something the cat dragged in."
I shot her a nasty glare.
"What's the matter? Your sense of humor vanish overnight?"
"Give me a break." My stomach rumbled. Yeah, I needed food, all right. "I'm hungry, I stink to high heaven, and Iris had to cut off a pile of fur when I came home." I was never a pretty sight the morning after the full moon, and usually I just wanted to head upstairs for a shower and spend the day in my Hello Kitty pajamas. "I'll bet you aren't all that pretty to your victims," I added, feeling snarky.
Giving me a wicked grin, Menolly said, "Most of my meals are so enthralled, they come on demand. Trust me, they love it." Even though Camille had convinced her to join Vampires Anonymous, Menolly's cutting sarcasm had remained intact. Sister or not, Menolly was one scary badass chick. Gorgeous, but she could be a real freak show when she wanted to.
"Yeah, they love it till they realize you sucked them dry." I shook my head, reaching for the doughnut box sitting on the coffee table. Chase, who fancied himself my boyfriend because we had sex once a week, had sent them to me. When the box of thirty-two gourmet doughnuts had been delivered along with a dozen red roses and a catnip toy, a little thrill ran through my heart. He really did understand me.
"So what happened? No pervs out last night?" I winced as I stretched. My muscles needed a good workout. I'd head down to the gym toward evening. They loved me there and had given me a free lifetime membership because men signed up just to watch me work out. Being half-Faerie in a world enchanted with our presence had its perks.
"Not that I could find. I drank a little, then wiped the guy's memory and sent him on his way. I only took enough to stave off the worst of my thirst, but I'm going to need a real hunt in a few nights." Her frost-blue eyes flashed against the copper of her Bo Derek braids. As she shook her head, the ivory beads she'd had woven into the braids clattered like the bones of a dancing skeleton. Menolly made no noise, except when she chose to. The beads reminded her that she had once been alive. That she hadn't always been a vampire.
"You mean a full kill," I said. The phone rang, but it stopped after one ring. Iris must have picked up.
"You nailed it." Menolly shrugged, but I could hear the craving in her voice. A young vampire, she still needed to drink deep and often.
Looking at her, it was hard to believe my sister was a vamp, except for that Butoh dancer complexion. Petite, she barely made five three, if that, but she could toss a dead demon over one shoulder and carry him like a child, and she could drain a person of blood without blinking. She was the youngest, but sometimes she felt old as the hills to me.
Camille, the oldest, was a buxom and curvy five foot seven witch. Long waves of curly black hair cascaded down her back, and her eyes were violet with silver flecks. She was the practical one, although you wouldn't know it by the way she dressed, which was one step shy of a fetish bar.
And me? I was the middle child, though both Camille and Menolly annoyed the hell out of me by treating me like the baby. At least I had them both beat in the height department. I topped six one, and my body was muscled and lean. No couch potato kitty for me, except during my late-night TV binges.
My hair would have been called flaxen by a poet, and until recently had fallen almost to my waist. Tired of the constant upkeep, I'd marched into a salon and asked for a layered shag that barely skimmed my shoulders.
The three of us looked about as much like sisters as we did like goblins. Our mother had been human, and our father was one of the Sidhe. We fell at odd points along the spectrum. Unfortunately, our half-breed status upset the status quo with Father's relatives. Worse, it upset our internal balance.
Camille's magic proved chaotic and was as erratic as her choice in men. Menolly could climb a hundred-foot tree, but she fell off a simple perch when spying on a rogue clan of vampires. They, in turn, tortured and turned her into one of them.
As for me… my shapeshifting was unpredictable, and I couldn't always control it. And even though I was a Were, no gorgeous lioness appeared when I transformed. Just a golden, long-haired tabby, whose tail occasionally got stuck in the briar bush and who ended up with fleas. Damn it. I smelled like Advantage and the beginning of a rash was climbing up my back. It seemed Iris had dosed me a good one. I needed to take a shower before I broke out in hives.
"Where's Camille? I have to talk to her about something I felt out in the woods last night." I glanced around, looking for signs that she might be home. No stilettos, no corsets lying around, no stench of sulfur from misfired magic.
"She said she was stopping off at Morio's before coming home," Menolly said.
Just then Iris appeared in the doorway. "Camille just called. She's on her way home. I'm going to take off for the store. She should rest for a while before coming in," the house sprite said. "Tell her I'll expect her in around one?"
I nodded, watching as Iris bustled off. Camille ostensibly owned the Indigo Crescent, a bookstore in downtown Belles-Faire, a grimy suburb of Seattle. In truth, it was a front for the OIA—the Otherworld Intelligence Agency—for which we worked. They'd sent us Earthside because, bluntly, they thought we were a bunch of bumbling bimbos. Klutzes we might be, but a pack of vacuous T & A? Never. We had brains! We had looks! We had… the worst record in the service. However, thanks to the bureaucracy, instead of getting us out of the way, the OIA had put us right on the fast track to Hell.
