AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“You shouldn’t be dealing with this at all.” Nick harrumphs from over Oliver’s shoulder.
I ignore him and hold out my hands to Oliver. “Help me out of here. I think I’m gonna hurl.”
Oliver jumps to action, helping me to my feet. Nick shuts the car door behind us, then steals me up into his arms. Damn, it’s like I’m weightless. If I didn’t feel so shitty, I’d enjoy the ride in the hot guy’s arms. I’d even enjoy the fact that Mr. Just Call Me Gorgeous is wearing an old school AC/DC shirt and a cowboy hat. But…like I said, I feel too awful to care. Without warning, my breakfast comes back up.
Cursing, Nick holds me out away from him as far as he can so that the splatter of my puke barely misses his nice, shiny cowboy boots. “Easy, woman. Watch the snakeskin!”
“Oh, I’msosorry. I’ll just defy the laws of na—” I’m cut off when my stomach heaves again, and I hurl round two. There’s a hiss behind me, and then Nick sets me down on the curb behind Terrance’s nice loaner. “I’ll just defy the laws of nature,” I say again once I can breathe, “in order to spare your obnoxious shoes.”
“Obnoxious?”
“Yeah. I mean, look at them.” I’ll never admit how badass I think they are.
“Please. These are sexy.”
They totally are. “If you say so.”
“I do. Now what the hell are you doing here? And why are you throwing up everywhere?”
While I’m rolling my eyes at Nick, Oliver digs up a water bottle from the bottom of his backpack and hands it to me. I moan with pleasure as I take it from him. “Oh, Ollie, you are my new best friend.”
I rinse and spit several times while Oliver sits down on the curb next to me. “Are you okay now? Feeling better yet?”
I nod and wipe at the sheen of sweat on my forehead with the sleeve of my shirt. “I’m good now. I don’t normally puke, but that was a particularly strong vision. The stronger the vision, the worse the backlash.”
“You just had avision?” Nick asks.
Oliver smirks when I sigh, as if Nick is hopeless. “I’m not here looking to buy a car,” I say.
Nick glances back down the street at the yellow monstrosity he found me sitting in and shudders. “Wise decision.”
I snort. It really is a hideous car. “I’m here trying to find Shandra, like I promised Terrance I would do. And, hey!” I wave my hand at the pale yellow cult house. “I found our guys!”
Nick glances warily at the house. “The missing underworlders are in there?”
I wish it were that easy. I shake my head. “No. They’re keeping them somewhere else. A place they call the sanctuary. I think it’s where they perform their rituals. This is just where they sleep and party. But these are definitely our guys, and I think I know how to find our missing underworlders.”
“I could just go in there and make them tell me,” Nick suggests, pulling a gigantic knife from inside his boot. Awesome. The boots are both sexy and functional. Man, Nick is such a badass.
Badass or not, I shake my head at him. “You don’t know who and how many of them are involved. You couldn’t possibly grab them all. It would only take one to get away or make a call to whoever’s guarding the sanctuary, and then Shandra and all the others are either gone or dead to hide evidence. We need to find the sanctuary before we go busting in anywhere like a couple of cowboys in the Old West.”
The cowboy reference was totally for Nick’s sake, and he knows it. He can’t hold his frown and starts to chuckle. “Ruin all my fun, Spitfire,” he jokes. His smile turns proud. “Still. Way to think like a detective. You’re not so bad, for a human.”
I roll my eyes at the backhanded compliment.
“So what’s this plan you have, and what makes you think there are others besides Shandra?” Nick asks.
“And Nadine,” Oliver adds. “Henry’s missing vampire.”
I can’t help wrinkling my nose at the mention of vampires—especially Henry. First impressions are a bitch to overcome, and, well, Henry screwed the pooch with that one.
A car drives slowly down the street with a couple of frat looking guys in it. They shoot us suspicious frowns as they pass us by, but luckily they park at the real frat house instead of the evil cult one. “Let’s go somewhere else to hash out the details,” I say.
“Let’s get you back to Terrance’s place,” Oliver says. When I question his choice, he points at my shirt and the small dots of puke that ended up there. “Figured you’d want to change and brush your teeth.”
“You are a wise and thoughtful man, my dear badass sorcerer BFF.”
Oliver shakes his head and laughs. He climbs into the passenger seat of T-Man’s awesome loaner without word, and as I open the driver’s side door, I glance back at Nick. “Come on, cowboy. Follow us to the troll’s den.” I start to climb in the car and then pause, glancing quickly at Oliver and then back at Nick. “Wait. Terrance isn’t going to, like, eat you guys if I bring you inside or anything, is he?”
I expect both of them to laugh; however, they both do the opposite. Oliver’s face pales and Nick freezes, whatever quip he’d been forming dying on his tongue. He thinks about it for much too long and then says, “Maybe you should call him first and ask if it’s okay.”
