In the kitchen, I put the kettle on for tea and handed Ralph a plate of cookies. “Sit your ass down for a moment. You do realize what my boyfriend would think if he found out a satyr crashed my shower in the middle of the night? And what he might do for payback?” I was feeling particularly snarky. Might as well make him sweat.
And sweat he did. Ralph turned an ugly shade of green. “You wouldn’t really do that, would you, Maddy? Come on. We go back too far for that sort of torment.” He fiddled with one of the cookies before setting it down with a grumpy sigh. “Listen. I really don’t know who the chick was, but she offered me five hundred for some of your hair. I wasn’t going to lay a whammy on you—I know better than that. But it’s the off-season. And this old decaying hunk of house is looking mighty nice now. Too good to ignore for tourists. You’re going to ruin our business.”
“I am not. We have two entirely different types of clientele.” I pursed my lips, not wanting to feel sorry for the lecher, but I couldn’t help it. Ralph and his brothers had dreamed big since the day I met them, which was shortly after I joined the Moonrise Coven. They never quite reached those dreams. They were always looking for the next big thing, the next get-rich-quick scheme. Their inn was the most practical thing they had ever done in their lives.
Relenting, I shrugged. “Fine, I’ll have mercy on you. But dude, you knock next time you come over. Or ring the bell. And if there’s no answer and it’s unlocked, stay out. And I swear, if you find out the name of whoever paid you to fetch my hair and you don’t tell me, I’ll turn you into a hamster and give you to Bubba as a chew toy. Get the idea?” I poured our tea.
“Yeah, I get it. If it helps, the woman who hired me is a blond bombshell. I swear, if somebody had figured out cloning, this dame could be a duplicate of Marilyn.” He arched his eyebrows and the scent of musk rose again.
“Monroe or Manson?” I knew just how to bait him.
Ralph let out a sputter, but then relaxed and laughed. “Either, for my tastes. But no, Monroe. She’s tall, has some sort of allure about her.” He leaned forward. “I think she’s a vampire, Maddy.”
Vampire? That was new. Aegis was the newest to come out of the coffin about his existence. There were probably fewer than thirty vampires on the island, and most of them belonged to Essie Vanderbilt’s nest. She just happened to be one of the regional vampire queens, and kept aloof, though cordial, relations with the community.
“New?”
He nodded. “I don’t remember seeing her around. She wasn’t wearing the mark of the local nest, and most of the loners are well-known. I don’t remember her name. You’d think she would have told me, but I can’t recall. But she’s got everything that counts.”
I snorted. To a satyr, that meant readily available sex organs. “Dude, you already slept with her?”
Ralph threw half of his cookie at me. “Stereotypes, always with the stereotypes. No, I did not sleep with her. I draw the line with vampires. Unlike some witches I know.” He touched his finger to his nose, nodding at me.
“Leave my sex life out of this. Aegis is a wonderful man, even if he’s dead.”
“He’s a vampire. They’re all the same, in the end—dead and clammy. But no, I didn’t mean I slept with her. She has money and isn’t afraid to use it.” He shrugged. “This is going to sound silly to you, but the woman can carry a tune. We sang together for a good two hours. I think she was bored, but she humored me. Not very many people around here will take the time to sing with us. Including that boyfriend of yours.”
The only thing satyrs liked as much as sex was music. Money was good, but they loved their music. And then it hit me. Aegis had been a servant of Apollo, who had been in a major fracas with Pan, the god of the satyrs. They’d basically created the first Olympian Idol contest, so to speak, and Apollo won. Pan had never forgotten the slight. It made sense that Ralph wouldn’t like Aegis, even if Aegis hadn’t become one of the Fallen.
It was hard to fault Ralph for being suckered in. Music to a satyr was like gold to a leprechaun or a big fat juicy steak to a werewolf.
I let out a long sigh. “Empty your pockets before you go.”
“Damn it, Maddy. Oh, all right.” Ralph emptied his pockets. A switchblade, a couple grape lollipops, three condoms, twenty-five dollars and some change, and a set of lock picks.
“Pull up your shirt.”
As he flashed me, I realized that Ralph had put on about twenty pounds since I’d last seen him. He was still incredibly built, but with a little padding around the edges. But nothing there to say he’d managed to actually get my hair out of the brush. I had no intention of patting him down. I knew where that would lead. For him. Not for me.
“All right. You’re clean, as far as I can tell. But I’m warning you, Ralph. If this woman actually does get hold of my hair—or any other anchor—I’ll know where to look. And I’ll bring Aegis with me and he’ll take it out of you in blood, and after that, I will turn you into a nanny goat who’s constantly in heat. Got it?”
Ralph nodded, eyes wide. All pretense was gone and he just looked grateful to be escaping with his skin intact. “I’ll go now.”
“You do that.” I saw him to the door and locked it, considering putting a reinforcement spell on the lock. But that would make it harder for Aegis when he came home. I glanced at the clock. I still had to get ready for the after-party.
After-party! Crap. I raced back upstairs to get dressed.
By the time I decided on what I wanted to wear—a black Bohemian gauze skirt with a skull-patterned corset, a silver-colored belt, and black lace-up leather boots—Sandy had arrived. Franny peeked around the corner of the door to my bedroom. I’d warded it heavily so she could only get in if there was an emergency, and she knew better than to fake one.
“Your friend is here. The blonde.” She sniffed, affecting a long-suffering tone.
“You don’t like Aegis because he’s a vampire. What the hell is wrong with Sandy?”
“She’s not very lady-like.”
“Neither am I. Go bother Bubba. He’s always up for a good spar.” I shooed her away. Then, wrapping a silver and black shawl around my shoulders, I headed downstairs.
Franny was nowhere to be seen, but Sandy was petting Bubba, taking care to steer clear of his belly. Cjinns were sneaky. While they were all cat on the outside, in their heart and soul they were djinns and they granted wishes based on belly-rubs and how persnickety their mood was.
A happy and purring cjinn? Might be magnanimous. An irritated cjinn would twist your words into the worst possible meaning. Trouble was, they could read emotions and—I suspected—thoughts, to a degree. If you offhandedly were talking to a friend while petting a cjinn’s belly and you happened to say, “I wish I had a million bucks,” you might very well find yourself the owner of a very large herd of elk. Mostly, it was safest to avoid the stomach area, especially when Bubba offered his fuzzy tum-tum up for adoration.
“You look good.” Sandy gathered up Bubba, kissed him on the nose, and gently tossed him on the sofa. He gave her the stink-eye and wandered off. “In fact, you look good enough to eat. Hope Aegis has been topping off the tank at the blood bank lately.”
I snorted. The local blood bank also took donations for vampires who didn’t want to drink from humans. Aegis used it more often now, given how I felt about him dining on our friends. “Yeah, he has. And you look good, too.”
Sandy Clauson was five-nine, thin, blond, and seldom showed up for anything other than parties in yoga pants and a crop top. She had the abs for it but despite the new-age getup, she was as experienced a witch as I was. We had been in the same coven for years, and friends for what seemed like forever.