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She shook her head. “Not so far. I’ve made the rounds several times. Oh, there have been plenty of gawkers wandering by, but nothing out of the ordinary. Most of them were human, though a few Supes came by this morning who hadn’t heard of the fire. They were here to prep for the dance. I had to give them the bad news.” Her face fell, and I could tell it hadn’t gone over well.
Supes—especially Weres—weren’t the most gracious when startled or hit with upsetting news. They could turn surly really fast, and a surly Were was five seconds away from a dangerous Were. Even those of the avian variety—they were just as wild as the four-footed and finned ones.
“You okay?” I glanced her over, looking for possible damage, but she just smiled and waved her hand.
“Nobody threatened me. Don’t worry about that. But, Delilah, if you want my opinion, you need to hold a community meeting as soon as possible to discuss this and to calm everybody down. I smelled a lot of fear rising off the group.” She opened the tape to let us through. “You can go in, but be cautious. The building’s not safe, and you really shouldn’t stay long.”
“Thanks. We need to examine the area, but we’ll be careful. I promise.” Leading the way, I motioned for Camille to follow me as we gingerly skirted a pile of charred rubble. “Camille, why don’t you look around out here—you’re not exactly dressed for climbing over broken lumber.”
“Okay, but be careful in there,” she said, starting to edge around the outside of the building, opening an umbrella she’d brought with her. Her spidersilk jacket would keep the chill away, but not the rain.
I cinched my denim jacket tighter and blew on my hands. It was cold, still bitterly cold even though the snow had, for the most part, vanished with the torrential downpour. As I picked my way toward the building, the scope of the destruction began to hit home. It looked like some giant fiery mouth had come down and taken a huge bite out of the hall, leveling it to the ground. Shattered pieces of wood and glass lay everywhere, most of it scorched. Where the doors had been, a gaping wound yawned, painful to look at.
To the right of the gap, the building was a pile of ashes and timbers, and most of the roof had crumbled. To the left, walls still stood—leaning precariously, but still upright. The timbers had been blasted, though, and at any moment, the rest of the building could come tumbling down. I caught my breath as a sharp twinge stabbed me in the ribs. They’d healed up fine from Stacia Bonecrusher’s attack back in October, but now, when it was too cold and I was too tense, I’d catch a stitch in my side every so often, deep in the bones. I wasn’t sure if it was stress or something physical. I’d been meaning to ask Sharah but kept forgetting.
As I cautiously placed one hand against a still-standing beam and breathed through the spasm, I glanced around. Rubble was scattered everywhere. The fire had been bad enough, but the explosion was worse. The hall had been demolished. Everything would have to bulldozed. No amount of shoring up or renovation could make the hall safe again.
The spasm eased and I moved forward, setting my foot in a clear space between the scattered piles of broken wood and shattered glass. A shard of window pane I hadn’t noticed crunched under my boot, and I shook my head. So much destruction.
“Looking for something?” A familiar, unwelcome voice echoed from behind me, and I whirled around.
Andy Gambit stood there, leaning against the perilous beam I’d just passed, a smirk on his weasel-like face. Star reporter for the Seattle Tattler—a rag as yellow as a daffodil—Andy had made it his mission to harass every Supe in town and to stir up antipathy toward the Fae and vampires. He was xenophobic to the extreme, and yet we knew he had a fetish for Supe women and would probably cream his pants if he had the chance to actually fuck one. If he hadn’t already forced his way…surely no sane woman would touch him.
“What the crap are you doing here?” I glared at him, setting my hand to the hilt of my dagger. My blade was strapped to my leg. I didn’t trust the little perv, especially since I’d decked him for harassing Nerissa at our house, uninvited and unwelcome. “Gambit, why don’t you just slither back out that door and leave me alone?”
“Are you kidding? This is the story of the month—and a welcome event, if you want to know what I think.” He curled the corner of one lip in a heckling smile and winked at me.
“I don’t give a damn what you think.” I stopped, then gave him another long, measured look. “So tell me, where were you last night?”
“First, you aren’t a cop so I don’t need to answer you. But to put your mind to rest, Blondie, I was at a meeting of the Fellowship of the Earthborn Brethren. We were discussing the evils of allowing demons like you loose in our society.” His lips might have said “demons,” but I could see the lust in his eyes. My fist still hadn’t put out his fires.
I took a step toward him. “You sneaked in here, you little pervert. You managed to get past the guard because if she’d seen you, she would have whipped your butt all the way home. If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to haul your ass outside and hand you over to her for trespassing. Yet another charge on your rap sheet.”
He straightened his shoulders, looking at me warily. “I warn you—you touch me again and I’m getting a restraining order. My nose still hurts from the beating you gave me.”
“Get out of here or I’ll knee you so hard you’ll wish you were dead. And I guarantee, if I go after that part of your body, your right hand will have one less job to do.” I’d had enough. I didn’t care if I got in trouble for assault. Andy Gambit had outworn his welcome, and the only thing I could think of to do was to smash his face repeatedly against the trunk of a tree or break his balls. Or both.
Tripping over the debris, he began to back up. “You’re a menace and a freak! I swear, one of these days I’m going to take you down a peg. You and your sisters have played queens of Seattle for long enough, and I’ll make you sorry—don’t doubt it! I’m going to make you so unwelcome here you’ll beg to leave.”
Letting out a low growl, I began to transform into Panther, and the minute he saw the air shimmer around me, he turned tail and ran. Luckily I was in midtransition, because if I’d managed to shift into full panther form before he left, his running away would have just triggered my instincts to follow and destroy. As it was, in the time it took me to shift, he vanished out of my sight.
Once I was Panther, I decided I might as well sniff around. Sometimes things were clearer to me in this form, and my sense of smell was heightened. I began scouting around, hunting for anything that might give me a clue that we could use. My rhinestone collar—both a sign of my bond with the Autumn Lord and also my clothes for when I transformed back—tingled, and suddenly I sensed a presence. It was him. Hi’ran, the Autumn Lord. I transformed back into my two-legged form.
I hadn’t seen him since Shade and I had gotten together, and now a tingle raced through my body as he came in on the north wind, a whirl of flame and fire and burning leaves and chill autumn nights. His long black cape fluttered, and his hair—as jet as his cape and past his shoulders—glimmered with sparkles of frost that had landed and stayed frozen to the strands.
A wreath of burning maple encircled his head, and around his neck, he wore a golden cord from which hung a skull, small and human-looking. His boots—dark leather with stacked heels—left a trail of frost in their wake with every step he took. Hi’ran was seven feet tall, and the Elemental Lord’s eyes glimmered, a whirl of stars against the blackness.>Shamas also pitched in, helping out from his salary, and Menolly from the Wayfarer. I wasn’t sure where they got the funds, but Trillian and Morio also contributed. Since everybody lived on our land except Nerissa, there wasn’t extra rent for them to think about. But still, we had to be spending a good fifteen hundred to two thousand a month on food.
Shade touched my hand, lightly brushing his fingers over my knuckles. “What are you thinking about?”
Startled, I glanced up, shaking away the thoughts. “The food bill, actually.”
Camille let out a strangled sound. “Yeah, it’s time for shopping again. Iris will be away on her honeymoon, so someone will have to go with Hanna to help out. I’m volunteering myself, you—Delilah, Morio, and Shade. This coming weekend.”
“Oh, on that matter, I have something for you.” Shade reached in his pocket and pulled out an envelope, handing it to her.
She set down her fork and opened it, her eyes widening, the violet hue glimmering in the sudden wash of sunlight that came streaming through the kitchen window.
“Oh! Are you sure? This is…very generous.” Camille pulled out a stack of bills, and I saw they were fifties.
