Green-Eyed Envy (8 page)

Speaking of the golden-eyed devil, he took advantage of my distraction to park on a darkened, quiet level of a downtown parking garage and pounce, sweeping my notebook and folder from my lap to the floorboard and pulling me toward his hard, warm chest. Surprise formed my mouth into a wide O, which he invaded with demanding lips and tongue. I pretended outrage for about two seconds, making a halfhearted attempt to push him away. The knowing light in his eyes called me a liar, and I gave in to the lust pulsing between us. Gods, would this raging inferno between us ever cool off? I sure as hell hoped not.

We made out like two teenagers in the backseat of a borrowed sedan, and damned if that image didn’t turn me on even more. Especially in light of the fact we were parked in a public garage in the middle of the afternoon in downtown Boston. Someone could walk by and catch sight of us necking at any moment. A scandalized businessperson coming home from the office. A security guard patrolling the dimly lit garage. Pennington Banoub could walk right up and tap on Scott’s windo—

Pennington Banoub walked right up and tapped on Scott’s window.
Speaking of golden-eyed devils . . .

This
devil’s eyes glinted with perverse amusement, a perversity I wanted to slap right off his handsome face. He didn’t even
try
to look innocent. Good thing, too, because that was one emotion he could
never
pull off. Well, gee, I guess he and his cousin
did
have something in common after all, considering the way Scott attacked me in public. My own eyes narrowed at that thought as Scott failed to react to the sudden interruption with the heat I would have expected.
Why, you little shit. You
knew
Penn was walking up to the car . . .
Another woman might have gotten pissed off at being branded by one Hound to antagonize another. Sadly, the Fury in me reveled in it all too much. Not that I would ever admit that to either of them.

I leaned over Scott to shove his door open and into Penn’s side. Hard. I arched a brow at his grunt of pain. “Enjoying the show much?”

The fact he ignored the pain long enough to grin wickedly only endeared him to me.
Ah, hell.
How could I dislike someone with a streak of mischief so much like my own?

“Definitely enjoying the scenery anyway.” He wiggled his eyebrows and looked me up and down. Even though I knew he was doing it just to tick off Scott—which worked—I found myself flattered. The appreciation on his face wasn’t feigned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Furies are impossibly vain.
I
didn’t create us that way.

Scott moved to assert his dominance over the other Hound, shouldering me back and growling. Penn smirked and stepped back, but only to give us room to exit the Ferrari. I scrambled across the driver’s seat seconds after Scott and grabbed his shoulder to keep him from doing anything rash. Like knocking his cousin’s lights out—permanently.

He turned a growl my way, and I shot him a
down, boy!
look. “Behave yourself,” I muttered under my breath, even though both Hounds could easily outhear me. Then I glanced back at Penn and frowned. “Wait. You just get here,
alone
?”

Seeing as how he’d agreed not to go anywhere solo for the next few days, that fact pissed me off far more than his ogling my assets. He apparently sensed—and respected—my rising Rage, because he wiggled a small, gift-wrapped package and rushed to reassure me. “No, I’ve been upstairs with Christabel. Just came out to get something from my car.”

Curiosity piqued, I admired the elegant silver-and-white paper. “What’s that?”

He smiled mysteriously. “You’ll see. Now, if you two kids are finished necking, I don’t want to leave Bel alone any longer than necessary.”

Christabel. Gods, I was going to have
so
much fun with that one. Later. Like after we caught the psycho killer stalking those poor guys unfortunate enough to be her ex-lovers.
Including Scott . . .
Gods, I hoped no one knew that. But seeping worry had me questioning how sure I could be of that.

My hand tightened on his arm, and he shot me a questioning look. I forced a smile and took off after Penn, not wanting to verbalize my fear that the killer would somehow find out about his one-night stand with Harper. The only thing allowing me to keep my Rage under control as far as that went was convincing myself that neither of them would have gone around blabbing about
that
little interlude.

Yeah, if only my overprotective Fury instincts reacted so easily to silly things like
logic
and
reason
. Then again, if they did, Furies probably wouldn’t be such effective hunting and killing machines. Oh, life’s little trade-offs.

My brain returned to cataloguing potential suspects (something I
could
control) on the walk to the lobby of Harper’s building and the elevator ride to her floor. Elevators still made me leery—after being ambushed by a human sorceress in one—but living in Boston made developing a downright phobia of them impossible. One of the very few benefits to my magical Rage was the ability to channel a tendril to beat back the fear and focus on the suspect list.

I’d been to Harper’s place a few times over the months we’d gotten to know each other and had to admit she had much more elegant taste than me. She opened the door to Penn’s knock and ushered us through the wide foyer that separated the entryway from the large, spacious area consisting of her living room, dining room, and kitchen. Decorated in crisp white with bold slashes of black and teal, the open floor plan was modern and more put together than anything I could have managed in my own townhouse.

My feet had barely crossed the threshold into Harper’s living room when I started picking up weird vibes from our arcane version of Romeo and Juliet. They kept exchanging surreptitious glances I caught from the corner of my eye. The weird part was they would then look in my direction and quickly away again. As if they were planning to ambush me or something.

And the way my life went, that might not be far from the truth.

I tensed and crossed my arms over my chest, stopping in the middle of the floor and causing Scott to bump into me. “Riss?” Harper and Penn—both preparing to sit on a long white sofa I would have spilled whiskey on in a heartbeat—cast guilty looks in my direction and froze.

Ignoring Scott’s questioning tone, I tilted my head at Romeo and Juliet. “I should have
known
something was up when you seemed so insistent about having us over for dinner tonight.”

Harper tried—and failed as miserably as Penn would have—to look innocent. “What are you talking about, Riss?”

“Don’t pussyfoot”—ha!—“with me, Christabel.” Okay, so I couldn’t resist. “I’m a Fury
and
a cop, and I know a sting operation when I see one. So spill it.”

Penn jiggled the gift in his hands again.
Is that for Harper?
The Cat in question took the package from her fiancé as if she expected it, answering that question. Which could only mean . . .
It’s for
me
? Okay, just why are they trying to butter me up?
I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer to that question—and I was right.

Harper cleared her throat and stepped toward me. “Penn and I were thinking.” I didn’t like this already. “We don’t want to give this bastard power over our lives, but at the same time, we want to see him caught more than anything. So, what if we killed two birds with one stone? Took back control of our own futures and set a trap for his psycho ass all at once?” Well,
that
didn’t sound so bad. “We took more than a year to admit our love publicly, but we’re not doing that with our engagement. In fact, we want to move the wedding up. Way up. To next month.”

What the—wait. That could actually work. Trinity, Scott, and I could investigate all the major players behind the scenes leading up to the wedding and—“ And we want
you
to be our wedding planner.” She settled the package in my hands.
What. The. Hell? ? ?

I blinked. Then tilted my head to the other side. Looked behind me to Scott, and then back to Romeo and Juliet. No, I hadn’t suddenly woken up from some bizarre dream. Harper really stood there with a straight face and said she wanted
me
to be her
wedding planner
.

Harper took advantage of my shocked silence to tap the gift. “Open it.”

Still unable to formulate a coherent thought, much less a sentence, I ripped into the elegant wrapping paper and found myself staring down at a thick paperback entitled
Wedding Planning Made Easy
. And for once, found myself just as speechless as a creepy dummy doll.

 

 

“JESUS, RISS, FOR THE DOZENTH TIME, NO, I did
not
know about Harper’s crazy but brilliant scheme!”

I paused in the act of unlocking the door and looked over my shoulder. “Wait. You think her plan to have
me
be her
wedding planner
is brilliant? When did she slip you the Kool-Aid?”

Scott rolled his eyes. “Think about it, Riss. You’re a shape-shifter. So you assume a disguise, come up with a cover story, and get instant access to everything and everyone involved in the wedding. The bridal party, relatives, guests, caterers, entertainers—you get the perfect excuse to poke your nose into everything associated with the bride and groom. Because they’re supposedly
paying
you to make sure their perfect little day goes off without a hitch.”

“So you think it’s a great plan and I should roll with it?”

He leaned against the doorway and shrugged. “I think it’s got potential. Trinity and I could pose as your assistants easily enough. We’re much less newsworthy than the Chief Magical Investigator and, thus, easier to disguise without magic.”

“Oh no, Murphy. You don’t get off so easy if I have to go through with this stupid idea.” I poked him in the chest. “Harper and I discussed that while you were in the little boys’ room. You, my dear, are now Groomsman Number Eight. Congratulations.”

Horror seeped into his gorgeous features. “Oh hell no, I’m not being groomsman to that . . . that—” His brows shot straight up. “Did you say
eight
groomsmen?”

I fought back a snicker as his horror ratcheted even higher. “Eight out of ten. You know how Cats and Hounds are serious about that whole
be fruitful and multiply
thing. Look at it this way: You’re not
really
his groomsman; you’ll be acting as his bodyguard during wedding-related events. It
could
be worse: Your pal Vic the Slick is stuck being her man of honor to avoid a brawl between all her sisters and cousins.”

Scott shuddered. “Gods, you couldn’t
pay
me to stand up there with
nine
bridesmaids.”

While I’d valiantly held back a snicker, I couldn’t fight off the smirk that came over my face. “Would the thought of playing the part of ‘Groomsman Number Eight’ go down easier if I remind you that I
am
paying you? Well, the MCU is anyway.”

“Only if you promise I don’t have to start being
nice
to that jerkoff.”

“Why would you start being nice at this late date?” I shot him another smirk and finished twisting the key in my front door. Magic rushed over my skin, cataloguing me as being on the
allowed
list, and then set a dozen magical alarm bells shrilling painfully. Scott’s supernatural hearing had him clapping hands over his ears and letting out an inadvertent whine. I reacted instantly at the warning that
someone
had breached my home’s very expensive magical defenses sometime over the past twelve hours. Nemesis and Nike hissed into action when I shifted to full Fury form, twining their way from upper shoulders to lower arms and mentally demanding I let them down. Which I did.

They promptly slithered into the townhouse to take point. Scott grabbed my arm and bit out a choked, “What the hell, Riss?”

“The alarm. Someone got in while we were gone.” I didn’t have to specify that
someone
had been an arcane. We both knew the alarm wouldn’t have reacted so violently to mortals.

“The Cat killer?”

“Maybe.” Unease trickled down my spine in the form of shivers. “Stay here while I check it out.”

“Oh hell no, Princess.”

I rolled my eyes since he couldn’t see them. “Fine, come on in with me and get zapped into unconsciousness by the defenses just like whoever broke in did.”

He cursed up a storm when I darted into the house but wisely stayed on the other side of the threshold. Stubborn but not stupid—just one reason we made such a perfect match. When we didn’t want to kill each other.

I kept my body low, following the magical trail left by Nemesis and Nike, and checking each room on the lower level, though I found nothing out of the ordinary. I frowned. How did whoever broke in stay conscious long enough to get in and back out? It would take someone with an insane level of magical ability to counteract the defenses I’d had installed after my bout with arcane and mundane assassins just months earlier. Unless whoever it was had broken into an upstairs window?

Sure enough, I circled back around through the dining room to the front entryway and found a spitting Nemesis and Nike slithering their way along the stair banister. They allowed me to scoop and carry them rather than fall behind my headlong flight up the stairs. My office and guest bedroom were both empty, as was the guest bathroom between the two rooms. Which left only
my
bedroom—and wasn’t
that
a chilling thought?

I hurtled through the open doorway only to find yet another empty room. Everything seemed to be in its usual place, although the room seemed a bit chilly thanks to the breeze pouring in through the open window—

Wait, I
never
leave my windows open . . .