Demon Song by Cat Adams Page A

office, lying on the couch. What the hell? I put a hand on the cat and gave her a stroke or two. She responded with extra purring. Then I gently lifted her up and put her on the floor. The purring stopped and she gave me an annoyed look with wide green eyes before walking into the nearest sunbeam on the carpet to begin bathing her face with one paw. I sat up and immediately regretted it. I’d been through a battle, and from the way my shoulder moved I was betting there was a bandage underneath my shirt, which was actually a button-down shirt and not a black turtleneck with a hole in the shoulder. Oh, crap. That meant my shirt had been off while Gaetano had been operating on me. Logical, and it shouldn’t bother me. Except it did.
    My vest, clothing, and wrist sheaths, with knives, were neatly stacked on my desk. My first thought was to check the safe. The lock was still red, but I wouldn’t know if they’d used my palm to deactivate the magical part of the locking system until I looked inside. I was hoping not, but I wouldn’t put much past Jones.
    I spun on the couch and sat up. The sound of crinkling paper had me looking around and then groping in the pockets of my bloodstained jeans. I hoped they’d been dry when I’d been laid on the couch. A folded slip of paper came out after a second of tugging.

I don’t date soldiers or coworkers, but you’re not either. Call me.
Gaetano
    A phone number followed, and not surprisingly, it was local. How else would he have been around to swoop in, medical kit in tow, twice in a month?
    Feast or famine. That’s nearly always how it worked with me. For five years, I couldn’t get a date on a bet. Now I’d attracted a growing flock of men, milling like the birds that were undoubtedly outside my office.
    The problem was that everything I’d heard and experienced told me it was all frosting, no cake. Having a date who is magically compelled to worship the ground you walk on isn’t quite the same to me as earning his respect and him liking me as a person. It didn’t matter whether I could help it or not. I didn’t want to wind up like some of the starlets who abound in Hollywood and complain nobody respects their minds while on their way to the plastic surgeon to add a cup size. Maybe I needed to get a whole bunch of those anti-siren charms made up and hand them out to everyone I met.
    I stood up and went to the desk, automatically checking each and every pocket of my vest. The place where the bullet had pierced the vest was obvious—the fabric covering the strips of Kevlar was frayed and slightly charred. Jeez! Were they using tracer rounds or something? I could fit my ring finger into the hole. It felt like a .30-06 to me, except that a hunting round would probably have gone right through me. Maybe I would call Gaetano sometime, just to ask what he’d pulled out of my shoulder.
    Nothing was missing from the pockets except what I knew I’d used in the fight. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Damn my paranoia anyway. I could think of a thousand hideous spells that could be contained in seemingly innocuous ceramic disks. I might think I was throwing a mudder and wind up choking to death from a lack of oxygen around my head.
    I sighed. Better safe than sorry. Part of my weapons safe has a containment unit where I store unknown stuff until I can take it to experts who can tell me what it is. All my disks would have to go there.
    I put my palm on the sensor of the lock mechanism, then entered the code. There was a long pause. I’ve gotten used to the pause. It used to open right up, but that was before the vampire bite. The tech people got it to work for me after my DNA altered by telling it I was pregnant. Nobody knows what’s going to happen at the nine-month mark. I needed to add a note to my computer calendar to remind me of my “birthday” so I could clean the safe out the day before. I’d hate to not be able to get to my stuff just because I forgot.