A SCRATCHING SOUND, like a cat claw raking across a hard surface, awakened me from dreams of being bound to an ancient Egyptian mummy preparation table.
Not only a dream. A memory.
I’d been sleeping on my side, as usual, so in one motion I rolled out of bed and was standing on my feet in the shadowy room, my bare toes curling into nylon shag, something unlikely to carpet any ancient chamber. The silver familiar filled my right palm with a cold metal weapon of some kind.
“Del,” Ric’s sleep-slowed voice drawled from behind me. “Where’s the fire?” He was half-sitting on the … yes, bed—not a stone table edged with a slim gutter for draining blood—behind me.
“I heard something,” I said.
“I guess,” Ric said as he turned on the bedside lamp. “What’re you carrying?”
I turned my hand over in the weak light. “A humongous biker switchblade. The haft is etched with a screaming dude face wearing buffalo horns etched like a bad tattoo.”
“Place-appropriate, I’d say,” Ric said, yawning and checking his watch. It was so multifunction I couldn’t even find the time display. “Ten a.m. I didn’t hear any—”
The scraping sound came again, longer and louder. From the motel’s metal door. I went to the curtained picture window and peeked out the side.
“Quicksilver wants in.”
“That’s new. Tallgrass must have dropped him off as a wake-up call.”
“They’ve both had enough of our long, luxurious coed bedroom time,” I guessed, going to undo the chain lock that was shimmying like a stripper from Quick’s latest “knock.” Luckily, even his big nails couldn’t etch steel.
I looked around before I opened the door wide enough to admit him. Most of the parked cars that were here when we came back for the evening were gone. The motel was in the dead zone between guest shifts.
Ric had already retreated to the bathroom, so Quick gave my weaponless hand a lick in greeting and headed for the stainless food and water bowls next to my side of the bed. I hid them under the chintzy chintz dust ruffle when we were out during the day. No problem. The maids never cleaned in the closet or under the bed, and, frankly, I didn’t blame them one bit. I hurried to the bedside to slide my feet into my cowboy-boot mules.
Meanwhile, I’d lost the awesome knife, replaced by a bicycle chain–style bracelet.
I put kibble in Quick’s bowl and turned on my bedside lamp to use my first chance to inspect him for damage, although he’d probably licked it all away at Tallgrass’s place. The big black leather collar he’d come with at the Sunset Park adoption event had a few more fang scratches between the silver circles that never dented, although they changed shape with the moon cycles and were now nicely three-quarter shaped.
“You’re my Moondoggie,” I told him, causing his perpetually perked wolfish ears to flatten a bit. Quicksilver wasn’t one for mush. “I wonder what this collar is about?”
I gave his hackles a rough fluff with both hands and ran them deep into the thick silvery gray hair of his back and chest. It’s unusual that a big dog, a dog with both wolf and wolfhound genes, would tolerate being petted or even touched while eating. Quick continued gulping.
He’d seemed fine after the Zombie Cattle Company jamboree. Of course, he was the first of our partnership to exhibit a healing tongue, and I was not about to try mine out again on anyone but Ric. I leaned down to murmur, “Physician, heal thyself,” in one big-bad-wolf-large ear. He was too busy wolfing his food to react to my little nothings.
Just then, Ric came out of the bathroom, and I turned to look. A new man, freshly showered, bare-chested and barefoot, contact lens inserted, and jaw shaved so close he must have lost half of his follicles.
“First,” I suggested. “I’d get your baby-pink bottoms off that unsanitary motel carpet and into some shoes, then I’d tell me why the super-close shave. I know you had to have one yesterday for your new girlfriend, Mrs. Haliburton, but today?”
“Today, I’ve got to make the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport in less than an hour to pick up a big gun I had flown in.” He frowned at my wrist. “Lost the switchblade. Too bad.”
“Yeah, I feel naked without major edged weapons too.”
Naked we were not. Quicksilver had a prudish streak for an unfixed dog, but that wasn’t why both Ric and I, without consulting each other, had brought along jogging outfits for pajamas. We needed to be action-ready in case something big and bad besides Quicksilver wanted into our motel rooms along the way. Stray supernaturals of exotic ilk were still turning up all across America.
Like us.
“We need to talk about those fast-forward zombies and company,” I told Ric.
“Yeah, but not until we settle Mrs. Haliburton’s haughty hash. We’re not leaving the Child Protective Services building today without more answers than are in your skimpy file.”
He was at the tiny closet, donning his one French-cuffed silk shirt. White, that made his Latino skin gleam like a bronze god’s.
“I could steam out the wrinkles over a tub of hot water.”
“No time, although I’d enjoy watching you be domestic. Wrinkles will ease out with my body heat and won’t show under the suit jacket. Trust me, I’ve traveled before.”
“You tempt me with bare cheeks and references to body heat and are ready to bolt out the door. You are sure all business this morning, Montoya.”
“Don’t whine,” he said with a grin. “You’ll get yours later. You have anything to do here while I’m gone?”
I gestured at the wireless router I’d bought and installed yesterday beside the small flat-screen TV. “Going to catch up on the local news.”
Ric thoughtfully pulled on his suit pants under his shirttails, whether in deference to Quicksilver or me, I wasn’t sure. He grabbed his conservative diagonal-stripe tie and bureaucrat-navy jacket.