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She looked up. “Is that what happened?”
The waitress, who hadn’t been gone more than five minutes, came back with drinks and food. Like Lulu’s, my drink was ombré from top to bottom, from brilliant orange to deep crimson. I sipped and pursed my lips from the puckering sourness.
“Tart, right?” Lulu asked with a grin.
“I think my skeleton contracted.” But I sipped again. There was sweetness, too, and they were fighting a powerful war. “What happened,” I continued, “was a trio of muscular shifters shouting about how the Pack’s gone wrong.”
“So it’s a day that ends in ‘y,’ ” she said blandly. “That shit happens all the time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But this feels different.” I glanced back at the door, ensuring our shifters weren’t on their way into the bar. “And I think they know it, too. They’re... rallying.”
Lulu snorted. “They’ve always rallied. That’s why Connor got away with everything when we were younger despite being a little punk. Hot, but a little punk. And it always seems like the food was bigger when we were kids.” She held up a tortilla chip. “Don’t they seem smaller now?”
I looked down at my own chip. “Right? Sometimes I wonder if portions have shrunk or my hands have gotten huge.”
“Both. You have those big-ass, sword-holding vampire hands.”
I held them up, thrilled at her smile, even if sardonic. Or mostly sardonic. “I do not. They look like perfectly normal hands.”
“For a vampire.”
If she was joking, she was okay. So I could lay the rest of it on her.
“The séance,” I began.
“Shit,” she said. “I totally forgot to ask. You learned there was a demon?”
“Ariel was mostly pleasant, and we talked to a Victorian ghost named Patience, who told us the misery after the Great Fire lured a demon to Chicago. Said the demon did some damage, and because there were no more sorcerers in town, a band of Sups gathered together to kick the demon out and create defenses so she couldn’t get back in.”
Lulu had gone still, including the hand holding the chip. Then she put the chip down again. “So, the gate was some kind of defense?”
“That’s what we think. And maybe the demon was chasing Rose.” Or maybe it wasn’t.
***
I gave her the usual warnings about being careful and the apology for dropping supernatural drama at her door. That was the unfortunate risk of being a supernatural in Chicago—the drama tended to find us. But news of a potential demon in Chicago didn’t seem to scare her. She looked thoughtful and mildly curious, and I decided not to overthink what that might portend.
I was on my second drink—and loving every minute of it—when Connor and Alexei arrived. The waitress brought them beers immediately, and nods from both were apparently sufficient detail for their orders.
“Anything new?” I wondered. “River nymphs attempting to take over the Pack? Or river trolls?”
“Surprisingly not,” Connor said, rolling his neck as he sat, then taking a long pull from the beer. Then he blew out a breath, turned to me, smiled. “Thanks for the assist.”
“I only had to stand there and smile, mostly. I assume they left in peace?”
“They’ll be back,” Alexei said. “They had the look.”
“Yeah,” Connor said, grimly. “They will. That type usually doesn’t know when to quit.”
“Do they worry you?” I asked.
“The Pack worries me because it’s my job to worry for the Pack. Or will be,” he added with a grin of unerring confidence.
Will be in the future, I thought, and that set my brain spinning again. As Miranda loved to remind me, and as Gabriel had noted earlier, I was immortal. He was not. Shifters lived longer than humans, sure; the same was true of most Sups. But he wouldn’t live forever, which made for a very bleak outlook for a happily ever after between vamp and shifter.
“What?” he asked.
“Just—a lot,” I decided on. We both had enough to worry about; there was no point in jumping to the end. Life should be savorednow.
