Chapter Eighteen – Luke

 

A mental image of Molly formed in my mind. Beautiful, sweet, caring Molly, with her long limbs, and lovely smile. And her laugh, and the way she cared about her friend, and the aching melancholy that seemed to surround her.

I turned my face as Roxanne’s lips came closer. “No,” I grunted, removing her arm from my waist and taking a step back as far as I dared in case the security system, or whatever it was, kicked in.

“I wouldn’t take much, sugar,” she said, her hand still reaching out to me. “It’s been decades since I killed anyone. And, believe me, it’d be the most fun you’d ever have paying a bill.”

My voice was calm, but firm, when I spoke. “I said no.”

“Oh, come on,” she said, putting a hand on my lower back. “It’d only be a teensy bit.”

I frowned, my stomach twisting in disgust. “Come up with something else, Roxanne. I’m not doing that. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

She harrumphed as she retracted her hand from my back, her fingers lingering for a second longer than I liked. The succubus crossed her arms and leaned in closer, her smell of sulfur and perfume filling my nose again. “Oh,” she said in almost a whisper. “I see.”

“See what?”

“Nope. What a shame. I would’ve made you beg, too.”

The queasiness intensified. “What do you mean?”

A smile grew on her lips, and she clucked her tongue twice as she shook her head. “Nothing. But don’t worry, it wouldn’t have worked anyways. Should’ve had Tabitha send me a live one for payment. You shifters are plenty of fun to play with.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Well, pretty sure we’re fresh out of promiscuous shifters. Only one we’ve got that’d be willing to play with you is a dragon.”

Roxanne frowned at that prospect. Dragons were notoriously difficult to deal with.

“So, guess you’re shit out of luck on that front.”

She shrugged. “Tell you what? How about I make a counter offer? One that doesn’t involve my siphoning off a bit of your life force, or any fun? At least not any fun for you, that is.”

I sighed, shaking my head. I didn’t have much choice here. Between my desperation for the unicorn’s horn, and nothing on hand to really pay for it, she kind of had me over a barrel. “Fine,” I grunted. “What?”

She stuck out her lower lip in a fetching pout.

“I don’t have all day,” I growled.

“Call me Roxy.”

My face went blank. “Really?” I asked in a monotone. “That’s it?”

“Well, you refused to do it earlier. So, give it to me just one time. As payment.”

“I don’t believe you. It’s too easy.”

“Oh, sugar, my first offer would’ve been easy, too. You’d have gotten the horn, and one hell of an afternoon to remember.”

I let out a deep breath. “Fine,” I said. “Roxy. Is that good enough?”

“Hmmm,” she said, lacquered nail held to her lower lip as she searched the room’s ceiling with her eyes. “Let’s just try one more just for good measure? You mind?”

“Yeah. I do.” I straightened up. “You just said you only wanted me to call you Roxy, that that was payment enough. But now you want it twice? You’re going back on your word.”

She smirked a little. “You know what part of the contract people always forget?”

“What’s that?”

“The part where you have to raise your objections and call them on their bullshit.”

“Yeah, well, not everyone’s been making deals for centuries, now have they?”

“Millennia, actually.” She seemed so smug and satisfied with herself, that if she’d had a tail, it would’ve been wagging. She nodded to the unicorn horn in its metal security box tray. “Go ahead, Mr. Oldham, it’s yours.”

I wrapped it up quickly. “Have anything I can carry this in? Left my bag down in the car.”

“This ain’t the Piggly Wiggly, Mr. Oldham,” she replied as she slid the tray back home in its wall safe and went to close the door, “it’s the Whole Foods in California.”

“No bag, then?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. She led me out of the vault, and I stayed on her just like before. It said something about her confidence that she just left her back unguarded, and didn’t instead insist that I walk ahead of her.

As soon as Roxanne’s foot crossed back over the threshold of the vault, the door began to close. Not like a slamming-shut door, or anything, but moving at a fast enough pace that I needed to jig to the side to avoid it locking me inside. And, somehow, I had a feeling that that wouldn’t exactly be a good turn of events.

Just as we rounded the corner from the vault and reentered her office, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I caught the glowering eye of Mike, who looked both simultaneously bored and incredibly attentive. “Just my phone.”

He nodded subtly as I reached slowly into my pocket and pulled it back out. A multimedia message from a Seattle-area number I didn’t recognize. I opened the text and downloaded the image.

A picture of some European gold coin with the caption: “Found something. Call me soon as you get this.”

Holy shit. She’d actually found the damn thing! Not wanting to get too excited, or consider too many questions without having immediate answers, I stuffed the phone away in my pocket, turning to the confusing Japanese succubus.

“Roxanne?” I asked.

“Yeah, sugar?” she asked from where she was leaning back against her giant rainforest killer desk.

“One last thing. Tabitha mentioned you might have a way to track a token left by a zmeu?”

“That’s right.” She smiled that wicked smile of hers, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched delicately. “I might.”

“Well? Do you or don’t you? I don’t have time to dick around on this.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes again. “You’re no fun, you know that?” she asked as she went around to her desk, pulling open her bottom right drawer. She leaned down inside and began digging for something I couldn’t see.

“Sorry. Never been one to mix business with pleasure.”

She chuckled as she bent over lower, dug even deeper. To the point where she almost disappeared inside, like it was a doorway to another dimension. “You Full Moon Security boys all say that, don’t you?” she asked, her voice hollow and distant as it echoed back from the fathomless chambers of her drawer.

I didn’t say anything, just bit the inside of my lip. Moments later she was back upright, a small rawhide pouch in her hand. She kicked the drawer closed with one high-heeled foot and came over to me, the object dangling from her pinched index finger and thumb.

“Here. Take it. On the house.”

“What’s this?” I asked as she dropped it in my outstretched palm.

“Sprinkle the powder inside on whatever token he left. Knowing his kind like I do, I’m going to assume it’s some sort of gold coin. Right?”

I nodded.

“It’ll draw the coin to the rest. Only catch is, you’re gonna need to be kind of close.”

“How close is close?”

“A few hundred yards, at least. Attraction only works so well, you know.”

“What is it?”

“You’re using a unicorn horn to kill this bastard, Mr. Oldham. Do you really want to know what’s in the pouch?”

I pressed my lips together in a thin line. “You make a valid point.”

“Precisely, sugar.” She turned to Mike. “See? He can be reasonable.”

Mike only grunted, a guttural sound from deep in his chest that sounded like the noise an angry rhinoceros would make.

I stuffed the powder away in my pocket. “Thanks, Roxanne. I’ll tell Tabitha you’ve lived up to your end of the bargain, and she should consider whatever debt you had paid.”

“Awfully fine of you, Mr. Oldham.”

With that, I turned and left the office with Mike. He returned my pistol in the lobby, and I was calling Molly before I even reached the elevator.

“The back porch?” I asked after she’d told me where she’d found the coin. I shook my head, confused why he would have left it there of all places.

“So you’re coming?” she asked, her voice nervous and frayed on the other end of the line.

“Yeah, of course. I’m leaving right now.” I checked the time on my watch.

“How soon till you get here?”

“Fifteen, twenty minutes?”

“Good. Okay. Great.”

“Everything okay, Molly?” I asked just as the elevator buzzed its arrival.

“Yeah, of course! I mean, other than the obvious! I’ll see you when you get here, okay?”

“Sure, all right.”

I hung up the phone and, not sure of what I should think, just stared at it in confusion. She’d sounded like a manic woman on the phone. All raw nerves and jumpy. The kind of nervousness I’d seen in panicked soldiers on the battlefield.

Something was wrong. I just didn’t know what.