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I was still looking around me, but then I jumped about a million feet in the air when I realized that Rog’s shadow was going in the wrong direction. And while it looked like Rog, it wasn’t standing in mirror-image to him.
“FUUUUCK ME!” I said, suddenly climbing Rog like a tree, as if just getting my feet off the ground would help.
“Can you stop?” Rog asked, trying to rub me off him with his hands. “You’re embarrassing me.”
“Don’t care!” I assured, staring at the shadow, which I had a feeling was looking right at me.
Rog sighed. “So, this is Caelum and Ry’s female, Kaci. Kaci, Ombre.” He waved at the shadow.
Eventually I climbed down off the Lycan, but tenuously. “Hi,” I said quietly, trying to remember my manners somewhat.
There was a lot of deep laughter at first. “Little steps, doll,” the shadow said to me. “The world hasn’t even begun to get weird for you.”
I found that simultaneously horrifying and impossible to believe.
“You okay?” Rog asked, as the shadow walked away and disappeared into the crowd.
“So, this is just my life now?” I asked frankly, looking at the last place I’d seen the shadow. “Demons, Shadows, Lycans, witches, and talking cats?”
“You know, you get used to it like you get used to anything,” he assured me. “Like, you know the jump between high school and college? It’s like that!”
I rolled my head in his direction. “It isnotlike that. What college didyougo to? Stripper college? No, it’s not like that atall.” I swiped my hand through the air.
Wendy finally appeared out of the crowd, wearing a flowy little mini skirt that was downright scandalous… I wanted it. She seemed excited to see us, judging by the way her golden eyes were twinkling at us. In fact, she ignored Rog and came to me first. “Why, hello,cher! How are dem boys of yours?” She threw her slender arms around me.
“They’re out?—”
“Huntin’? Yeah, I thought they would be. I keep hearing dem wolves a-howlin’ all night. It is disturbing my beauty sleep.” She threw some hair over her shoulder. “But gives you a break,ouais?”
“Hey, Mama—you got the stuff?” Rog asked in a way most people talked during drug deals.
Her eyes sparkled mischievously as she turned to him. “You know I do! How much you love me?”
Rog grinned. “I love you so much.”
I cocked my head to the left and then to the right. “What? Why do you love her? What’s going on?”
She pulled a little vial out of a pocket in her skirt.
It was small—not even an ounce worth of anything could have fit in there. “Dragon blood.”
“One hundred percent?” he asked excitedly. When she nodded proudly, he said, “This stuff is impossible to get!”
“Not impossible for Little Mama,cher!” she said, still praising herself. “I got a whole pint of it. I feel rich as an oil baron, make no mistake!” She turned to me and pulled out a Mardi-gras necklace.
Being about as far as you can be season-wise from Mardi-gras, I stepped back when she was about to reach up to put it around my neck. “What’s that?”
“Honey, I read some weird shit in the tarot this morning. I talked to Ombre and Silas about it, and they said to put this onyou. It’s not just any ol’ necklace. I just dipped it in dragon blood. It’sexpensive, but I’m gonna give it to you for the price of on-the-house, because we’re neighbors now, and I need to keep a girl around me sometimes so I have someone to complain to. It feels like a straight-up sausage fest around here all the time.”
I eyed the necklace, and was not happy about how dirty it looked, especially knowing that it wasn’t dirt. “Thanks,” I said, reaching forward to put it in my pocket.
“Put it around your neck,” she spelled out firmly, seeming to get my hesitation. “You need some good gris-gris on you. Can’t believe your men just putRogthere to watch you. Should have made you come stay withme! We could’a had a slumber party. No place safer than Little Mama’s!”
I shrugged and thanked God, who was surely getting a real good laugh at my life lately, that Ry and Caelum hadn’t deposited me at the demon house. “Well, your place seems kinda crowded,” I said politically. “Maybe that’s why. Can’t think of another reason.”
“Hey, I am not as worthless as all that!” Rog assured, looking at her like she was razzing him on purpose.
She looked up at him, her mouth a thin line. “Sugar, you’re just about as worthless in a fight asMisterRogers. Cards say that these wolves bejumbo. You ain’t set to fight one who’sregularon your own.”
