Ilona Andrews - Hex Appeal

“You better come in,” I said. “I’m gonna have to call Ruthie.”

He stepped into the room, then stared, openmouthed.

On the outside, this place resembled a two-story Bates Motel. But in here …

White plush carpet, French provincial furniture, thick white quilts and huge, cushy pillows on a king-sized bed. Through the open bathroom door, a palatial hot tub was visible, surrounded by tropical plants and gold-tipped white tile.

I clapped my hands, and all of it disappeared, leaving behind orange carpet that I didn’t want to walk across in barefeet—I could swear something was crawling in it—a bedspread that smelled like dead moths, one lumpy full-sized mattress and even lumpier pillows.

“What are you?” Jimmy asked again.

“Ruthie didn’t tell you?” He shook his head. “Then I’m not going to.”

I snatched the TV remote off the chipped, unvarnished wooden dresser and tossed it in his direction without warning. He snatched it easily—most DKs were freakishly nimble and quick. We had to be in order to fight demons. Which meant most of us were at least part demon, too. I wondered what his part was.

“No porn,” I said.

“I’m not a kid.” He pointed the remote at the TV. “I haven’t been a kid since I killed my first Nephilim.”

Nephilim. The offspring of the fallen angels and man. Behind their human facade, they were the beings of legend—werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters, and more. My life has been devoted to killing them. Sometimes, I think I’ll never be able to stop.

“When was that?” I asked.

Jimmy didn’t even look away from the screen. “I think I was eight.”

“You were eight ?”

His dark gaze flicked to mine, then away. “Guy came at me all tooth and claw. What was I supposed to do?”

“Drink your juice box and let your parents handle it.”

“Never met ’em. I was on the streets when I was—” He paused, shrugged. “I was always on the streets. Until Ruthie.”

Ruthie Kane—seer, Leader of the Light, mother to all in need of a mother. For a price.

She and I needed to have a little talk.

I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand and escaped into the bathroom, locking the door behind me before turning the shower on full blast for cover. Although—

If the kid was something special—and I was pretty sure he was—he could hear a pin drop at Niagara Falls. I could.

I left the water on anyway. It dispelled the scent of mold that the closed door enhanced. I could conjure money and stay at a better hotel. However, I’d found over the centuries that the creepy, crawly creatures I hunted usually lived far from the amenities. So I stayed wherever I found a place and magicked that place to my liking.

I hit number one on my speed dial, and five rings later, the phone was picked up in Milwaukee.

“He there already?” Ruthie asked before I could even say hello.

Ruthie didn’t have caller ID. Ruthie didn’t need it.

“What the hell were you thinking?” I demanded.

Silence settled over the line, broken only by the distant wail of a child. Ruthie ran a group home on the south side of Milwaukee, where she took in all the kids no one else wanted. What the powers that be didn’t know was that the kids no one wanted—the ones that trouble followed—were usually the ones Ruthie was searching for.

“I don’t think I heard that quite right.”

Ruthie’s voice was soft, but there was steel beneath. Cold steel. She’d see me dead if I didn’t watch myself. Ruthie might look like everyone’s favorite African-American granny, but she wasn’t. Ruthie led the group of seers and demon killers known as the Federation, and she hadn’t gotten to that position by being kind.

“I can’t work with him, Ruthie,” I whispered. “I just can’t.”

“I know you like to work alone. But I don’t wanna send him out solo just yet. You don’t gotta worry. Fact is he’s scary good. One day, he might even be better than you.”

From what I’d seen in my dreams, he would be. And yet, still, according to those dreams, he would die.

“I can’t,” I repeated.

At last Ruthie heard what I wasn’t saying. “What did you see?”

I might be a demon killer, but I also had the sight. This should have put me in the seer line. However, instead of seeing demons, I saw the future—or at least possible futures.

I’d come to understand that free will fucked up everything. Everyone had it, which meant they could choose to turn left instead of right, take a bike instead of a car, sleep five extra minutes that morning, leave work five minutes late that night, and every choice altered my visions.

“He’ll die,” I said.

“Jimmy? How?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen it happen a hundred different ways. But it always happens.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t know who he was. Even if he was. I do actually have dreams that are just … dreams.”

And the other ones I’d had—of Jimmy and me all tangled in the sheets, sweaty and panting, my pale skin glowing like pearls sliding just beneath dusky water as he touched me in ways that just had to be wrong, even though nothing had ever felt so right …

Those I was never going to tell anyone about. Especially Ruthie.

“Doesn’t matter,” she said at last.

“He’s your soon-to-be best boy, and his death doesn’t matter?”

“If you’ve watched him die a hundred different ways, that only means he’s continually changing his fate. I bet he avoids it entirely.”

Considering what I’d done for him, I would bet he did, too.

“What you’ve seen don’t change why he’s there. In fact, now I understand why I was told you should go with him. If you recognize somethin’ from one of your dreams you’ll be able to warn him, protect him, save him.”

As Ruthie’s orders came from God himself, or so she said, I stopped arguing. I’d learned long ago that arguing with the boss only got you stranded on the wrong side of the Pearly Gates.

“What’s the assignment?” I asked.

I could almost hear Ruthie’s smile. “Ask Jimmy,” she said, then she was gone.

Since the shower was on, and I still had the grit of a dozen trolls in my hair, I lost the robe I’d tossed on to answer the door and stepped beneath the water.

I could get Jimmy to tell me the assignment, fly there myself—I didn’t even need a plane—leave him behind, hope he’d go home. But I wouldn’t.

If I was supposed to be with him, I needed to be with him. Bad things happened when DKs ignored their seers’ orders. Yes, we had free will, in theory. In practice, we did what we were told, or people died.

I shut off the water, waved my hand, and I was dry, dressed, and ready. I hadn’t really needed a shower. I just liked them.

When I stepped out of the steamy bathroom, Jimmy’s eyes widened.

“What?” I glanced at my usual outfit—tight jeans, a white, fringed, leather halter top, white cowboy hat, and boots. Not a smudge on them.

“You … uh … from Texas?” he asked.

I frowned. “I’m from Heaven.”

He laughed. “I suppose you’ve heard that line a thousand times.” At my deepening confusion, he added: “Did it hurt?”

“What?”

“When you fell from Heaven?”

“I don’t like to talk about that.”

His laughter died. “That was a pickup line. A bad one. As in, you’re so gorgeous, you must be a fallen angel.”

I sat in the chair next to the dresser. “You do know what the fallen angels are, right?”

He’d better, or we were in a lot more trouble than I’d thought.

“Grigori,” he answered, then something flickered in his eyes. He moved so fast, I barely saw it. The switchblade—pure silver, I could smell it—cleared his pocket as he came off the bed, opening with a single blurring motion of his wrist when he stepped toward me.