Free Tales of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong

murmured.
    I nodded, cheeks heating. Sure, I did the one-night-stand thing, and that obviously involved physical contact. Beyond that, though, I avoided it. My mother hadn’t been affectionate and I’d grown up keeping my distance. In a lot of ways, I guess.
    “May I?” Kristof said, motioning at my lip. “It might need stitches.”
    I nodded. His fingers slid under my chin again. Smooth fingers. Warm skin. My heart started to race. I closed my eyes and let him check out my lips, then my nose, and even when he let go, I could sense him there, feel the heat of his body, smell his faintly minty breath, hear his breathing. As my heart pounded, I blamed a long dry spell between those one-night stands, but I knew it was more than that.
    I was falling for Kristof Nast. It didn’t matter, though, because he wasn’t falling back, and that meant it was safe. I’ve never thrown myself at a guy. Never even made a pass at one. As long as he kept it business, everything would be fine.
    “We’ll get the lip looked at,” he said. “Your nose is fine, though. Anything else?”
    I opened my eyes and shook my head.
    “Nothing?” His look told me to save the bravado for someone else.
    I lifted my arm. He examined the burn and said that it, too, needed checking. He’d take me to a doctor he knew—not a Cabal one, but another, where he could drop me off and wait outside.
    He backed the car from the lot. “As for Lavina …”
    “I need to strike back. I can’t let her get away with this.”
    He nodded. “I have a few ideas on that.”
    “I don’t doubt it. In this case, though, I think I’ve got the situation under control.” I reached into my waistband, took out a minirecorder, hit rewind, then play. My voice filled the car.
    “—killed them, Lavina. Slaughtered a family with direct ties to—”
    “The Cortez Cabal,” Lavina replied. “So you insist—”
    I hit stop and looked at Kristof. “Good?”
    “Excellent.”
    “I may screw up, but as you said, I’m capable of learning. And, unfortunately, what I learned is that I’m not going to be able to stay in Chicago, even with this tape.”
    “I know you don’t want to move to L.A., but closer would be easier. San Diego? San Francisco?”
    I shook my head. “If I’m going to move, that’s just silly. Is it easiest for you if I’m in L.A.?”
    “It is.”
    “Then that’s where I’m going.”
    Los Angeles wasn’t my kind of town. Too phony. Too sunny. Too blond. But it had a thriving supernatural underground, if a more tightly regulated one, being in a Cabal home city. Still, it was a change of pace, and I liked it well enough. Or maybe I just liked seeing more of Kristof. It didn’t matter. Nothing had changed.
    Well, it did change a little. Kristof found me an apartment in a decent building. I paid for mine and he got a second one in the same building as a discreet bachelor pad. Being in the same city meant we got together more than once a month—at least weekly, and not always for business. It was only friendship, though, and I was good with that. He needed a place to kick back with someone he could be himself around. I needed that, too.
    Once I moved, our meetings shifted to afternoons, leaving evenings open for his kids. I’d been there just over two months when he called wanting a rare evening get-together. Rarer still, he didn’t want to hold it at the apartment.
    “I have an engagement until ten,” he said. “Would you be able to come by and meet up with me after?”
    “Is that safe?”
    “It isn’t business,” he said. “It’s a personal engagement.”
    Personal? As in, a date? My gut did a weird little flip. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see Kristof after a date with another woman. In fact, I was damned sure I didn’t. Which was all the more reason to say yes. Squash any romantic hopes while they were still at the squashable stage.
    “Sure. Where is it?”
    He gave me an address and I said I’d be there at ten.
    I drove to the