Summoning the Night (5 page)

I laid my head back down on the pillow and stretched my toes. Even without the suitcase and open-drawer evidence, Lon was the only other person with a key to my place, and the house wards hadn't alerted me to an intruder. But why in the world was he home so early? I hadn't expected him back until well after my shift started at the bar later in the afternoon, and the alarm clock read 9 a.m.

The shower faucet squeaked off. Seconds later, a wonderfully wet and very naked man emerged from a transitory cloud of steam like a scene out of a '70s porno flick. He was beautifully built, all lean muscle and golden skin—more golden above the waist than below, I noticed. His outdoor shoot in Mexico must have been spent sans shirt. Good thing he was shooting travel ads and not women in bikinis, or I might've been jealous.

My eyes lingered over his taut stomach and followed the enticing dip of muscle curving over his hipbone, then lower. When he stopped toweling his hair, I glanced up, meeting his gaze. My heart hammered and a warm happiness spread through my chest. An easy grin parted his lips, outlined by the thin pirate mustache that trailed down past the corners of his mouth and matched a roguish triangle in the center of his chin. When he smiled, small wrinkles at the outer corners of his eyes deepened. I found this strangely enchanting.

“Morning, witch.”

“Hello, devil.” I raised my head and leaned on my elbows. “If this is a dream, it's a pretty good one,” I rasped, clearing my throat. “What's going on? Why are you here early?”

“Caught a red-eye,” he said, sounding weary.

“What about your shoot?”

“I got all the night shots before I left.”

“Why?” I repeated.

He finished drying his shoulder-length light brown hair. “Why what?”

“Why did you come back early? You look exhausted.”

“I caught a couple hours of sleep on the plane,” he said with a shrug. “I came home because I got a call from Ambrose Dare.”

That took a couple seconds to register. “Dare? The head of the Hellfire Club?”

“Mmm-hmm.” He flung the wet towel on the floor and stepped to the edge of the bed. I reached out to run my hand over the soft hair on his thigh, still damp from the shower. He smelled good. He looked good. I'd missed him in all sorts of ways.

He made a small noise, one that told me he was listening to my emotions with his empathic knack. Until I met him, I paid little attention to my own feelings. But he did. He often pointed out nuances I'd never considered . . . like arousal. He said that my accompanying emotions sounded like a song going up an octave, and he could identify it even when I was ogling him from several feet away.

“Dare wants to see us,” he said.

“Us,” I repeated languidly. My wandering hand stilled. “Wait,
us
?”

“About those missing kids.”

“Huh?” I tried my damnedest to process this information. What in the world did we have to do with two missing kids in La Sirena?

“Tomorrow afternoon. Wants some favor from you. Probably magick. He wanted us to come today, but I told him you
were working a shift later.” His eyes flicked to Mr. Piggy curled up by my feet. He scooped up the sleeping hedgie, toted him across the room, and set him down inside his open suitcase.

“You could've called. And if the meeting's tomorrow, then why did you leave the shoot early?”

In answer, he returned to the bed and lay down on top of me over the covers. The box spring groaned with his added weight, dipping lower when he shimmied to wedge his thighs between mine. He immediately kissed me several times in quick succession before I could protest.

“Do I have disgusting morning breath?” I asked after the assault, slightly breathless, but unable to stop smiling. Damp locks of wavy hair fell around his face. I tucked it behind his ears.

“No worse than your evening breath.” As I laughed, he slipped his arms around me, gathering me close to bury his face in my neck. “God, I missed you,” he murmured near my ear in a voice that was alluringly deep.

Tiny jolts of happiness surged through me. His warm weight resting on me felt so good. He was startlingly firm between my legs, even through the heavy quilt between us. His beautiful halo swirled in my vision, forest-green flecked with bits of golden light. When he held me close like that, our halos mingled around the edges. I wrapped my arm around his broad shoulders, holding up my hand in the middle of the cloudy haze. Gold, silver, and green lazily curled around my fingers like smoke.

“You kinda look like a sexy Jesus,” I whispered, running a slow hand down his back.

“Would you like to reenact the Gospels?” His mustache tickled the sensitive skin behind my ear. “You could be Magdalene and wash my feet with your hair.”

“
Pfft
. You could wash mine instead.”

“Or you could pretend to be paralytic. I'll heal you.”

“With what? Your cock?”

He pulled back to look at me, slitted green eyes shining as he grinned. “The night before I left for Mexico, you said it was a gift from God.”

That coaxed a laugh out of me. “Hmm . . . this
does
sound better than Nurse and Doctor.”

“How thin are the walls here?”

I sighed. “Paper.”

“Your Silence spell?” he asked with hope.

He referred to a handy sigil that, when charged, would create a field of white noise a few feet around a door. It was too small to help here, and not worth the trouble to set up several in a perimeter along the wall. I'd be so tired by the time I finished, I'd be too nauseous to do anything else. I shook my head no.

“Damn. I was looking forward to hearing you wail.”

My jaw dropped indignantly. “Wail?”

“Mmm-hmm. Like a cat giving birth.”

I squeezed one eye shut, considering. “Wow . . .
that's
what I call romantic. I guess I should thank you for choosing cat over hippopotamus or some other sort of extra-degrading analogy.”

“You're welcome.”

“Is that why you came home early?”

“Maybe.”

It totally was. I grinned up at him. “For the record, I like it when
you
sound like a dying horse.”

His hips rocked against mine in one slow but insistent push. “First Jesus, now a stallion? You've really got it bad for me, don't you.”

“I'm not the one who took an early flight home,” I said as I smacked him on the ass with the tips of my fingers.

He retaliated by running his teeth over my neck and making a humorous growl that sounded neither holy nor horse. “Goddamn, it's cold in your house, Cadybell. You gonna let me inside the sheets?” He hooked a finger over the bedcovers. “Hold on just one minute . . . are you wearing”—he tugged at the quilt, trying to pull it down—“a nightgown?”

Crud. I'd forgotten all about it.

I didn't own much lingerie. Before Lon, I slept in a T-shirt. After Lon, I mostly slept naked. But this was the first time Jupe had spent the night at my house, and all of my acceptable lounge pants were dirty or at Lon's. I didn't want to be surprised in the middle of the night if the kid couldn't sleep, which is why I was wearing the ugliest nightgown known to human- or demon-kind. The printed design was scattered with cupcakes, hearts, and the word
HUGS!
repeated on a Pepto-Bismol-pink background. Kar Yee gave it to me in college as a prank. Hard to believe at times, but she really did have a sense of humor.

“Cupcakes?” His nose crinkled and he struggled to yank down the covers while I slapped at his fingers. I couldn't have been more embarrassed. This was
so
not helping my ongoing anxiety over our age difference. He knotted his fingers into my sides to tickle me. I jumped and squealed. He redoubled his effort. I tried to buck him off of me, half laughing, half yelling in protest.

Without warning, the door to my bedroom was flung open and slammed against the wall with a loud crack.

A throaty “Hey!” boomed from the open doorway.

Lon and I yelped in surprise.

“Goddammit, Jupe!” Lon bellowed.

“Dad?” Squinting away sleep, he stood in the doorway with his hand over his heart and his shoulders sagging in relief. No shirt, barefoot, army-green drawstring pajama bottoms, his hair a frazzled electric mess. “I thought maybe that mugger from the parking garage had followed us and broken into the house or something.”

“Mugger?” Lon said.

I jerked the edge of the quilt up and wrapped it around Lon's hips as he rolled off me, settling against my side. “We didn't get mugged,” I said quickly. We
almost
got mugged. Completely different. And Jupe was supposed to keeping quiet about it, the little traitor.

“What are you doing back so soon?” he asked his father.

“I just am,” Lon grumbled.

“You were both screaming pretty loud in here. . . .”

“Laughing,” I corrected.

“Go away.” Lon buried his face in my hair and draped his arm across my waist.

“Wait!” Jupe pleaded. “I've got twelve things to tell you!”

“Twelve? That's twice as many as usual,” Lon remarked, pushing my hair out of the way so that he could scoot closer to better share my pillow.

“I've been busy.” Jupe shuffled over to the bed and plopped down near our feet. I pictured him lying in bed and counting all twelve things out before he went to sleep. He claimed to struggle with history dates at school, yet he had memorized the original release year for every horror movie in existence and was excruciatingly exact with numbers in his daily life. “And some of it's
really
important,” he insisted. “I haven't seen you in three days.”

Total guilt trip. Well played, Jupiter.

Lon moaned and consented. “Five minutes.”

I braced myself, debating what riveting news he could possibly lead off with. He'd already blown his promise to keep the mugging secret and I wasn't eager to rehash the Snatcher rumors.

“Okay, the number one most important thing: I met the hottest woman in Morella. Her name is Kar Yee, she's Cady's best friend, and she promised to give me her phone number when I turn sixteen.”

I should've guessed.

“Number two: this hippie waitress at Tambuku gave me an awesome tiki mug shaped like a mummy. It's worth twenty dollars. Col-
lect
-ible.” He'd obviously bought into Kar Yee's promotional scam. “Number three: Cady's crazy next-door neighbor, Mrs. March—”

“Mrs.
Marsh
,” I corrected.

“Whatever. More like Mrs.
Hag
.”

“Jupe!” we both scolded.

“That's not very nice,” I added. Kind of accurate, but still.

“Well, it sure wasn't very nice when she gave us those nasty homemade cookies, and mine had a big orange cat whisker baked into the middle of it. Not a hair, Dad—a fucking
whisker
.”

Lon made an appreciative retching noise.

“I wasn't letting him have sugar or anything—we just accepted the cookies to be hospitable and threw them away when we got in the house,” I added quickly as I sat up in the bed and slid out from underneath the sheets.

“You mean those Pop-Tarts were sugar free?” Jupe asked seriously. “They sure tast—”

I gritted my teeth and sliced my fingers across my throat repeatedly. “Ix-nay on the op-pay arts-tay.”

Something close to a smile crept over Lon's face. The jerk was enjoying seeing me squirm.

Jupe continued. “Anyway, number four: today I became independently wealthy. . . .”

Uh-oh. Time to make a run for it before he ratted me out for the savings account. I mumbled an excuse about getting a drink downstairs in the kitchen and scampered out of the bedroom. As I did, Lon chuckled at my nightgown and made some comment about licking frosting off cupcakes while Jupe continued jabbering. Halfway down the stairs, I heard Lon say, “She did
what
?” So I took my time getting water. About twenty minutes' worth, in fact. But long before their voices died down, my thoughts drifted back to the Snatcher. I wanted to know how Lon really felt about the missing teens, whether he was concerned about Jupe's safety.

On top of all that, I was anxious about meeting Ambrose Dare for the first time. My last experience with the Hellfire Club wasn't something I wanted to repeat. Lon assured me that Dare was made of better stuff than most of the other heathen Hellfire officers, but I didn't know if I totally believed this. Regardless, why in the world would someone like Dare insist on speaking to
me
of all people about these missing kids?

Midday sun spilled over Ambrose Dare's perfectly manicured lawn, which Lon and I could just glimpse as we drove onto the elegant estate through wrought iron gates. Gnarled Monterey cypress trees and palms lined a long, curving driveway that occasionally branched off to a small guest villa, gardens, and a pool. We headed to the main house, a multilevel Mission-style home with thick, white stucco walls, arched windows, and a red tile Spanish roof. The grand arcaded entry was studded with curving palmettos and housed a deep-set porch. Underneath its shelter, two rustic church pews flanked the massive wooden entry doors.