A Wolf at the Door

I hadn’t told her. I should have, but I hadn’t. I think that makes me some kind of asshole. “The person who sent me out here said that everything would be settled one way or another by New Year’s Eve.”

“That’s tomorrow. Settled how?”

“I don’t know.” She gave me a suspicious look, and I took her hand. “I swear, Gretchen. Even the person who said that didn’t know what it meant.”

“Y’know, it might have been nice to know that the world was gonna end in twenty-four hours or something.” She stood up, snatching her translated contract out of my hands. “The original. I want it back too.”

Cindy handed that over with a rueful smirk that said she’d have kept it if we’d have conveniently forgotten about it.

“I’m getting goddamn tired of you people playing chess with my life.” Gretchen shot me a glare of pure venom, then whirled on her heel and stalked out of the room.

When I tried to follow Gretchen as she stormed out, the translator caught my wrist to stop me. “Hang back a moment.” I really, really didn’t want to be alone with this woman, but good manners required that I stop. Cindy waited until she heard the alleyway door slam before she continued. “I see things, Jesse Dawson.”

“Like dead people?”

A flicker of annoyance crossed her face. “You don’t have time for snark. Listen to me. That girl’s light isn’t much longer for this world. You mentioned New Year’s Eve…I don’t expect her to see the new year.”

“And you would know this how?”

“Like I said, I see things. I see the thin golden threads on you, stretching back to the East over so many miles. Protection spells, from a woman who loves you very much. I see the shadows left behind by contracts you’ve made. I bet you never knew that they left ghostly little marks. I see how long your light stretches for. Would you like to know?”

“No.” A man shouldn’t know the hour of his own death. It’s just not right. Not that I believed she’d tell the truth anyway. “These things you see…are they certain?”

“Of course not. Nothing is ever certain until it’s passed, and even then it’s negotiable.” She smiled a little, finally releasing my arm to sit back on the futon again. “My own light should have ended…well, longer ago than you’ve been alive.”

“You expect me to believe that you’re older than me?” I’d have bet money that I had a good decade on her.

Cindy smiled sweetly again. “The woman who let you in here? She is my great-granddaughter.”

“Why would you tell me this?” I mean, if she really was what she said she was, you’d think that kind of thing would be a little more hush-hush.

“Because someday, you’re going to come to me, Jesse Dawson, and you’re going to want to know how it was done. And if you’re very, very unlucky, I might even tell you.” She grinned then, showing teeth, and a shiver went down my spine.

“You see that too?”

“No. We’ll call that one a hunch.”

I shook my head. “Does Ivan know what you are?” I had a hard time believing that he’d have sent us here, knowing that she was…what the hell was she?

The strange woman chuckled softly. “Ivan and I have known each other for a very long time. You’d better be going. She’s going to take off without you in another few moments.”

That, I believed.

18

“I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

We’d ridden back to the hotel in stony silence, Gretchen’s pique with me obvious just by the set of her lovely jaw. It was only after we were alone, Tai retiring to the spare bedroom for some much needed shut-eye, that the movie star deigned to speak to me again.

“Everyone dies, Gretchen.” I looked up from my place on the couch, my armor in my lap as I lightly oiled the leather straps.

“Yeah, but soon. I’m going to die soon.” On the other sofa, she sat with her feet curled beneath her, her legs bare in a pair of tiny shorts, but the rest of her almost lost in the huge sweatshirt she’d thrown on. A man’s shirt, that much was certain. Dante’s, if I had to guess. “You said it’s all going to be over by New Year’s.”

How to answer that? If Mystic Cindy was to be believed, Gretchen had just over twenty-four hours to live. New Year’s Eve was fast approaching. The thing was, I didn’t trust Cindy any more than I trusted Axel. Neither were what I’d call a reliable source. “The ancient samurai believed that death wasn’t a thing to be feared. It wasn’t the dying that was important, it was how you died.”

“Do you believe all that?” She sat forward a little, watching as I worked with my mail armor. “The whole samurai bit?”

“Yes, I do.” Since she seemed so interested, I shifted my position so she could see what I was doing, laying the piece out flat. “These are chausses. They cover my legs when I fight.”

She reached out to touch the tiny links of chain. “So if you think that dying is nothing to be feared, why do you wear armor?”

I chuckled. “Just because I’m not afraid of it doesn’t mean I wanna jump into it. Besides, there are worse things than dying.” Excruciating pain came to mind. Picking your own intestines up out of the dirt. Things like that.