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He dropped his arm from my waist and got off the motorcycle, joining me on the sidewalk. In any other part of town the cops would have been called in for a noise complaint by now. But since the Delta Phi neighbors were all part of the Greek system, I was guessing none of them minded enough to call it in. They probably took the loud music as an open invitation, if the number of bodies inside was any indication.
Great, so there were fifty or more people crammed inside a demon-infested house, possibly with someone who had helped kill a man and framed my werewolves for it.
Was this what responsibility felt like? I didn’t enjoy it.
“What a goddamned mess,” I sighed. “Hold still for a second.” I pivoted towards him and placed both hands against his chest. The soft material of his sweater was glorious under my fingers, and I had to fight the urge to ball it up in my fists and kiss him.
There’d be time for that later.
Instead I pressed my fingers into the firm muscle of his pecs, hard enough for my nails to scrape flesh. His lip twitched, but he didn’t pull away.
“Who has felt my touch will feel no pain,
Who has seen my face and knows my name,
Whose eyes see my true form
Shall belong to me and meet no harm.”
Wilder’s gaze never moved from my face, his eyes locked on mine the entire time I spoke the incantation. While I could have done the spell just by thinking a protection charm in his general direction, I was tired and weak, and saying the words aloud would give me more control over the outcome.
Wilder covered my hands with his, stroking his thumbs across my knuckles. “Form and harm don’t rhyme,” he whispered.
“Shut up.”
“Thank you.” He kissed my forehead, my nose, and finally brushed a whisper-soft kiss over my lips before pulling back.
What a tease.
“You ready for this?” I glanced over my shoulder to the out-of-control party, already regretting this life choice.
“Am I ready to go into a college party filled with drunk sorority girls? Princess, I was born ready.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Inside the house the volume was almost crushing.
A normal human would have left this party with their ears ringing. For my heightened senses, it was nigh on unbearable to be surrounded by this much noise. Someone was singing a song about bitches and money, and dozens of Tulane co-eds dressed like witches and superheroes were writhing against each other in every room in the Delta Phi house.
Wilder was feeling the intensity of the volume too, I could tell by the way he winced every time the beat would drop and the crowd began to scream.
When your hearing is designed to help you track a deer through the woods at night, it’s torturous to turn the volume up to eleven.
I wanted to cover my ears, but then I’d surely miss any sign of Tansy if she was somewhere in this din.
Everything was working against me in here. The lights were dim, and a series of brightly colored
strobes kept throwing the room into strange shadows. With all these bodies, the dance floor was a mix of confusing smells: perfume, beer, sweat, pheromones. I wouldn’t have been able to pick out a single person’s scent if someone offered me a thousand dollars. Plus I’d barely spent twenty minutes with Tansy, and her scent at the time had been muddled with Cash’s. Finding her with my nose was out.
I’d have to locate her the old-fashioned way, going room by room until I figured out where she was.
Taking up all sorts of time we didn’t have.
We might be wiser to split up and go looking for her, but that would mean we’d each be alone in a house with a demon in it. It was hard to think about the very real threat of Gamigan with all this absurd, youthful jubilance going on around us.
How could these idiots be having a party when there was literally a spider-faced, demonic hell spawn six feet above their heads?
Kids these days.
