Free The Outlaw Demon Wails by Kim Harrison

they weren’t going to hibernate again this year, the urge was still there.
    Sourly contemplating my new and improved list, I cracked the bottled water Ivy had brought me. I thought about heading into the kitchen for a glass of wine, but after glancing at Ivy, I decided to make do with what I had. The pheromones she was kicking out were enough to relax me as much as a shot of whiskey, and if I added to it, I’d probably fall asleep before two in the morning. As it was, I was feeling pretty damn good, and I wasn’t going to feel at all guilty that most of it stemmed from her. It was a thousand years of evolution to make finding prey easy, but I felt I deserved it for putting up with all the crap living with a vampire brought. Not that I was that easy to live with either.
    I tapped the eraser against my teeth and looked at my list. The Weres were probably out, and Lee. I couldn’t imagine the Withons would be that ticked, even if I had busted up their daughter’s marriage to Trent. Trent might be angry, though, seeing as I’d gotten him jailed for all of three hours. A sigh lifted through me. I’d built up a lot of animosity with some pretty big people in a remarkably short time. My special talent. I should concentrate on finding traces of demon summoning and go from there, rather than investigating people who might hold a grudge.
    The dinner bell Ivy and I used as a doorbell bonged, startling us. A jolt of adrenaline pulsed through me, and Ivy’s eyes dilated to a thin rim of brown.
    â€œI’ll get it,” Jenks said as he flew up from the coffee table, his voice almost lost in the commotion his kids were making from the front corner of the newspaper-plastered sanctuary.
    As Ivy went to turn down the music coming in from the back room, I wiped my mouth of cracker crumbs and did a quick tidy at the table. Ivy might take a job two days before Halloween, but if they were looking for me, they were going to be sadly disappointed.
    Jenks worked the elaborate pulley system we’d rigged for him, and assoon as the door cracked, an orange cat streaked in. “Cat!” the pixy shrilled as the tabby headed right for his kids.
    I bolted upright, breath catching as every pixy in the sanctuary was abruptly eight feet higher. Shrieks and calls echoed, and suddenly the air was full of little black paper bats dangling enticingly from thin strings.
    â€œRex!” Jenks shouted, darting to land right before the black-eyed animal, which was entranced and frozen by the overwhelming sensory input of twenty-plus dangling bits of paper. “Bad cat! You scared the fairy-loving crap out of me!” His gaze went to the rafters. “Everyone up there?”
    A shrill round of “Yes, Dad,” made my eyeballs hurt, and Matalina came out of the desk. Hands on her hips, she whistled sharply. A chorus of disappointed complaints rose and the bats fell. A flow of pixies vanished inside the desk, leaving three older kids to sit and dangle their feet from the rafters as casual sentries. One of them had Jenks’s straightened paper clip, and I smiled. Jenks’s cat patted one of the fallen paper bats and ignored her tiny master.
    â€œJenks…,” Matalina said in warning. “We had an agreement.”
    â€œHo-o-o-oney,” Jenks whined. “It’s cold out. She’s been an inside cat since we got her. It’s not fair to make her stay outside just because we’re inside now.”
    Her tiny, angelic face tight, Matalina disappeared into the desk. Jenks streaked in after her, a mix of young man and mature father. Grinning, I snagged Rex on my way to the door and the two shadows standing hesitantly in my threshold. I had no idea how we were going to handle this new wrinkle. Maybe I could learn how to make a ward to let people through but keep felines out. It was just a modified ley line circle. I’d seen someone do it by memory once, and Lee had put a ward up across