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Chapter Fourteen
The first thing I noticed as we burst through The Dungeon’s front door was Wilder, sitting next to Jimmy, pointing to something on the bigger man’s Game Boy.
“Use the Shellder,” Wilder suggested.
“Are you out of your mind?”
They looked up as Cain and I exited the building, and both appeared equally guilty. Jimmy was on his feet first, but Wilder wasn’t far behind.
“Ah,” Cain said loudly. “Your mate.”
I blanched and tried to come up with something to say, but Cain was already striding towards the alley, apparently not concerned in the least about one of his guys sitting down on the job.
Wilder was no help either, because he grinned broadly at me, a smile that was the very definition of wolfish, and said, “Your mate, huh?”
I weakly countered with, “What are you doing here?”
He pointed to himself, then at me. “Bodyguard. I’d be pretty fucking terrible at my job if I wasn’t here.” This managed to gloss over the fact I hadn’t asked him to come and had actually left the house alone so I could speak to Cain in private.
I guess I should have been grateful he didn’t charge in and come upstairs.
Instead I was mildly annoyed with him for thinking I needed a bodyguard so badly I couldn’t be by myself for an hour without his help.
Cain, who had reached the street by this point, shouted, “We haven’t got all day, Miss McQueen. They’re quite a bit more powerful at night.”
Wilder lifted an eyebrow as his version of a question.
“Well, come on, you heard the man. We haven’t got all day,” I said.
“But—”
“Just…come on.”
A sleek black limousine was waiting at the mouth of the alley when we caught up to Cain. He must have had someone at his beck and call, because there was no way a service could have gotten to us that fast. I chewed the inside of my cheek, wondering if this was a terrible idea. Wilder, for his part, was eyeing the limo like a dog being called into a stranger’s car.
“I don’t like this,” he said.
“What’s to like?” I climbed in through the open door and took a seat near the driver’s side so I was facing the back of the car.
Wilder sat close to me but not right at my side, and Cain sat next to the door. His open suit jacket and casually unbuttoned shirt made him look like a billionaire businessman who was about to leave for vacation. The excitement written all over his face was both amusing and concerning, since I’d never seen him anything less than perfectly poised and serious.
Why did happiness look so wrong on some people?
“A-are we just going to go get it?” I hated how shaky and uncertain my voice sounded, but after one encounter with the demon that day, I wasn’t particularly amped up for a second round right now.
Cain’s smile faltered, and he stared at me as if I were simple, which is sort of how I felt. “Go get it? Like waltz in there with a net and try to cram it in a box as if it was a sneaky bunny rabbit. Chère.” This last was scolding and kind of condescending, the way Callum’s housekeeper, Lina, said, Bless your heart when what she really meant was, You’re a fucking moron, aren’t you?
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a demon before, have you?”
His eyes glinted, and his expression became inscrutable. “I have.”
If there was more to the story beyond that, he wasn’t offering it up freely, and outright asking for details felt like it might add to my IOU tally.
As if he’d read my mind, he said, “Let’s discuss price, shall we?”
I knew this was coming but bristled all the same. “Isn’t keeping the demon reward enough?”
