For several minutes afterward we didn't move, just allowed the warm bubbly water to caress our skins. Then he stirred and gave me a sweet, gentle kiss.
"I suppose I should now let you tend to the second of your needs."
I draped my arms loosely around his neck. "I don't think I have the energy to move right now."
"Well, we can't have you starving to death. I like my women with meat on their bones, thank you very much."
With that, he slipped his hands under my body and lifted me up. I laughed in delight and kissed his cheek. "So, if I was as naturally skinny as most werewolves, you wouldn't love me?"
"Oh, I'd still love you," he said, dark eyes twinkling as he climbed out of the tub. "I'd just always be trying to fatten you up. But as luck would have it, my girl normally has luscious curves. I just want them back."
With a smile teasing my lips, I began to kiss and nip his neck and earlobe. "That could cost you, you know," I murmured. "Because I have quite an appetite."
"Oh, I think I'm more than capable of catering to your appetites."
And over the next hour or so, he did indeed prove more than capable.
I t was almost one forty-five by the time I got back to the brothel. I flew up to a rooftop on the opposite side of the road, then shifted shape and found a position behind a billboard that provided shadowy cover yet allowed me to see what was going on down the street.
For the next fifteen minutes, nothing happened. Several clients came out, but none went in. Maybe midafternoon was a slow time.
At two - right on time - the lights in all the nearby buildings went out. And there wasn't a bad guy in sight. I cursed softly and briefly wondered if Cass had played me. But I'd felt no lie in her words or in her thoughts, so either she was better than a vampire at concealing lies, or the two men hadn't turned up for other reasons.
Which would be just my luck.
I continued to wait, silently hoping Jack could keep the power grid down for long enough.
At two-ten, a battered-looking brown station wagon cruised by slowly. It turned around at the end of the street then came back, pulling into a parking spot several doorways down from the brothel. Two men got out - one brown-haired, the other blond.
Cass hadn't lied.
I took out my phone and began taking pictures. The blond moved toward the brothel, but the brown-haired guy remained near the car, his gaze sweeping the surrounding buildings. Though I knew he wasn't likely to spot me in the shadows of the billboard, I still drew them closer around me. Better safe than sorry - especially when you had red hair.
When I looked back over the building's edge, the blond was just disappearing into the brothel and the wolf was leaning against the back of the car, his arms and feet crossed, the picture of casualness. Only his ever-alert expression and the tension evident in his body suggested otherwise. I took a final picture to make sure I got the plate number, then carefully moved backward. Once I'd pocketed my phone, I shifted shape again and circled around the block, coming at the brothel from the rear.
On closer inspection, the broken window I'd noticed earlier would barely provide enough room for a sparrow to get through, let alone a seagull.
I swore - which came out as a harsh squawk - then shifted shape. My T-shirt - or what was left of it - fell from my shoulders, and my jeans were looking decidedly worse for wear. I swore again as the wind swirled around me, freezing my skin and buffeting my body. The windowsills in this old building might have been deeper than usual, but that didn't mean they were any less precarious. I teetered for several seconds, trying to gain balance. Trying to ignore the old fears that rose in a rush every time I looked at the drop below me. Such fears were totally ridiculous, because my seagull shape now meant drops of any length no longer had the power to hurt me, but I guess some fears were just too ingrained to be easily erased.
I checked the window for wires and sensors, but couldn't see any, so I dug my fingernails under the sill and lifted it upward. Cass had been right about the locks - this one basically fell apart as the window slid open. I slipped inside, dropping to the floor softly, my senses alert for anything and anyone.
The first thing I spotted was the camera in the far corner, but it was pointed at the other wall and wasn't moving. Temporarily cutting the power had worked - at least in this case. I just had to hope they didn't have backups on the other systems.
The air was stale and smelled faintly of urine - but whether it was human or animal in origin, I couldn't say. Although the little pellets littering the floor suggested at least one possum had taken up residence. I wondered how they'd gotten in without triggering the security system. Obviously, the little buggers were smarter than me. The room itself held little else but empty shelving units that were thick with dust and webs. I shut the window -
just in case the power came back on at the wrong time - then padded forward, avoiding loose-looking floorboards and possum poop as much as possible.
Once at the door, I wrapped my fingers around the handle but didn't immediately open it. Instead, I switched my vision to infrared. A quick sweep of the rooms beyond the door revealed life in a room near the front of the building. That had to be the blond shifter - and given he was supposed to be a bird of some kind, it was worth the risk of stepping out. The wolf might have smelled me, but birds generally didn't have great olfactory senses. And these rooms, like the ones below, weren't very bright, which meant the shadows lay thick in the corners. With any luck, I could hide in those shadows.
I twisted the handle and opened the door, but just as I did, the shifter moved, his body heat showing him stepping through the doorway. I froze, half in and half out of the room, hoping the shadows were enough to conceal me.
He glanced my way, then stopped, and his sense of alertness increased twofold. He drew his gun and pressed a button on his lapel.
"Greg, we have an open door on one of the storerooms. I'm going to check it out."
Meaning he hadn't spotted me yet, but if I didn't do something real quick, he would. The shadows weren't strong enough to hold up under any sort of close scrutiny. Not when it was daylight, anyway.
But rather than step back, I hit him telepathically, slipping into his mind as silently and as efficiently as any vampire. I wrapped ghostly fingers around his control centers, stopping his movements and washing any awareness that something was wrong from his mind.
Then, knowing I didn't have much time before his partner started getting suspicious, I rummaged quickly through his thoughts. His name was James Cutter, and both he and the wolf worked for the Melbourne division of an organization known as Revanche. Cutter didn't know who owned or ran the organization, but the man they reported to was one Dillion Pavane. I searched for more information, but he didn't really have much. There were no offices located in Melbourne, as far as this man knew. They always met in bars, and never the same bars. He was paid in cash - another rarity in this day and age. He was also sick of the courier duties - which involved checking the various phones situated throughout the suburbs - and eager to make his first kill.
Meaning whoever was behind this organization didn't trust anybody.
I grabbed my phone and quickly typed in all the locations of the other phones, then placed the image of a closed door and a conviction that nothing was out of place other than a smashed window in his mind. With that done, I turned him around and released him.
For the barest of seconds, he paused, as if wondering what the hell he was doing, then the suggestions I'd put in his mind took hold, and he touched his lapel communicator again. "There's a smashed window in back storeroom number three," he said. "Nothing to worry about."
He paused, listening to the comment from the other end, then added, "How the fuck do I know how the door opened? Maybe the catch is broken, like everything else in this dump. The main thing is, no one can get in or out, except those damn possums."
Again he paused, then added, "Yeah, I erased the tape after I took the notes. Don't fucking worry."
He turned and walked away. I waited until the door slammed, then glanced down at the handle in my hand and snapped it off. When the men came back, they'd be expecting a broken door lock, so I'd better provide it.
As I turned around, the power came back on, cutting off any chance of investigating the other rooms. I just couldn't risk it when the whine of the camera beginning to rotate filled the dusty silence. And who knew what other security measures were in place that I hadn't yet spotted. Jack would be less than impressed if I inadvertently let them know we were onto them.
I quickly closed the door then shifted shape - half wondering as I did so whether I was going to have any remnants of clothing left by the time I got back to the car.
The camera had already begun its rotation back toward the door, and was almost at the window. If I didn't go now, they'd see the window, realize it wasn't actually smashed as the shifter had said, and start to wonder why he'd lied. And if they had a decent enough telepath on their team, he'd probably uncover traces of my presence in the shifter's mind.
I couldn't take that chance.
I jumped forward, flapping my wings as hard as I could, aiming for the tiny hole in the middle of the glass. At the last moment, I closed my eyes and tucked my wings together, bracing for the impact. I hit with speed, shattering the glass and spraying it outward. Which might make them wonder how, exactly, the glass had broken, but I couldn't help that. The jagged edges of glass scoured my side, tearing past feathers and into skin. Then I was out in the open air and tumbling downward. Panic rose just for a moment, then I spread my wings and began to fly, swooping past several rooftops as I curved around to the front of the building. I perched on the nearest rooftop, briefly shifting to my wolf shape and back again to stop the bleeding, then took to wing again.
The men were in the car, driving away. I followed them for a couple of streets, then swung around and flew into Cass's window. I needed to question her a little more about her boss.
She was with another man, but the door was open as she'd promised. Given that I didn't particularly want to watch her in action again, I sauntered through the door to have a look around. The hallway beyond was long and shadowy, and there were four doors leading off it. One was closed, but the other three were open and the rooms empty. I walked to the stairway and looked up. The camera sat above the landing, and was indeed an infrared.
It seemed a lot of trouble to go to for what was basically little more than a phone depot, but then I hadn't explored the other rooms, so who knew what was in those?
I suspected it wouldn't be much. Even though it had been Surrey's soul that had given us the lead, Surrey himself would probably have done so had he lived - even if he'd done it unwillingly, via a telepathic raid. We would have found this place - and this phone - one way or another, and I very much suspected they'd be ready for such an event.
I went back to the room. Cass's client was just finishing up, so I waited until he left, then shifted to my human shape.
"Couple of nasty-looking wounds you have there," Cass drawled, swinging her legs around and sitting up on the bed.
"Glass will do that," I said. "I don't suppose you know where T. J. Hart lives, do you?"
She raised an eyebrow, amusement glimmering in her eyes. "It's not listed on the business registration?"
"Apparently not." I plopped down on the chaise longue and tried to ignore the stale scents rising from it. "I'll give you another thirty for the information, because that's all I've got."
She considered me for a moment, then said, "How much trouble is T.J. in? Because as much as the clients suck, this is a reasonably secure and clean place to work."
I hesitated. "It depends on whether he's merely renting the room or actively involved in what is going on."
"Well, I know he raised a hell of a fuss about the shit they put on the roof, so I suspect his only involvement is a pocket-level one." She held out a hand. "Payment first. You look the trustworthy type, but I've been fooled before."
I dug out my wallet and handed over the last of my cash.
She tucked the cash into her tin, then gave me a smile. "T.J. lives down the road in Elwood. He likes to be near his investments."
She grabbed a scrap of paper and wrote down the address before handing it to me.
I shoved the scrap into my pocket. "So he has more than one brothel?"
"Yeah. The other one is in Caulfield. It's a little more upmarket. I used to work there when I was younger." She shrugged, like age and demotion weren't really a problem.
"Can I ask why you're still in the business? I mean, you seem pretty savvy, and I suspect you could get a job doing something else easily."
"I trained as a personal assistant and I'm a damned good one, so there's no doubt that I could. But the money here is good, I can set my own hours, and medical is included." She shrugged again. "Another year or so, and I'll probably open my own - "
She paused and cocked her head sideways. "T.J.'s just walked into the building."
"He's a shifter?"
She nodded, amusement playing around her lips. "Unfortunately for him, his alternate form is less than exciting. He's a hare."
I laughed. I couldn't help it. "A hare?"
"Yeah. It does explain his penchant for the sex business, though." She paused again, then frowned. "Those men are back. The bird-shifter - "
The rest of her sentence was cut off by two short, sharp gunshots.
Chapter 6
As screams erupted from the floors below, I glanced at Cass and whispered urgently, "Get under the bed and don't come out until I say so."
