Hunt the Moon : Cassandra Palmer #5 Read Free Page A

his head in the door as I was running hot water into my lovely big tub. “You need anything? ’Cause I go off duty in a couple.”
    “Food,” I said, shrugging out of my coat.
    “What kind?”
    “Anything. As long as it isn’t good for me.”
    He nodded and ducked out when I started to pull off my T-shirt. It was far too flimsy for where I’d been, but the saying on the front fit my mood perfectly: “I keep hitting escape, but I’m still here.” I tossed it on a pile with the coat, my stiff-with-cold jeans and the expensive scrap of silk that had been wedged up my ass for the past half hour. Then I slowly climbed into the tub.
    Oh, God.
    Bliss.
    It was actually a little too hot, but I figured the amount of ice clinging to me ought to even things out. I added a generous amount of bath salts, found my pillow under some towels and let my head sag back against the tub. After a few moments, my muscles began to unclench and my spine sagged in relief, and I seriously began to wonder if sleeping here was such a bad idea after all.
    I think maybe I did drift off for a while. Because the next thing I knew, I was at the pink and pruney stage, the mirrors were all fogged up and the water was no longer hot. And a ghost was sitting by the tub, staring at me.
    I’d have been more concerned, but this was a ghost I knew. I grabbed a towel and shot him a look; I don’t know why. Billy didn’t worry about his numerous vices. He’d cheated death like he’d cheated at cards in life, and he intended to keep it up. That made his morality a bit of a mixed bag, since he never intended to answer for any of it, anyway.
    With an insubstantial finger, he pushed up the Stetson he’d been wearing for the past century and a half. “I’ve seen it before,” he told me with an exaggerated leer.
    “Then why are you looking?”
    “’Cause I’m dead, not senile?”
    I threw the sponge at him, which did no good, because it passed right through and hit the wall. “I can’t feed you yet,” I said. “Not until I eat.”
    Billy and I had a long-standing arrangement, dating from the time I’d picked up the necklace he haunted in a junk shop at the age of seventeen. I donated the living energy it took to keep him feeling frisky, and he did little errands for me in return. At least, he did if I complained enough.
    He stretched denim-covered legs out in front of him, as if on an invisible sofa. “Can’t a guy drop by without you immediately assuming—” He caught my expression and gave it up. “Okay, I’ll wait.”
    I was trying to decide between getting out and running some more hot water when there was a knock at the door. “You decent?”
    I pulled the towel up a little higher. “Yes, if my wrinkled toes don’t offend.”
    Marco’s swarthy head popped around the doorjamb. “Naw, they’re cute.”
    I wiggled them at him since I could actually feel them now.
    “Anyway, grub’s outside and I gotta go.” He grinned at me. “Big date tonight.”
    “Date?” I blinked in surprise, because master vampires don’t date. Not unless forced, anyway.
    “Witch,” he said succinctly.
    “Isn’t that a little . . . unusual?”
    “I’m like the master. I like to walk on the wild side.”
    It took me a moment to realize what he meant. “I am not the wild side,” I told him flatly. “I’m about as far from the wild side as it’s possible to get.”
    He raised a bushy black eyebrow. “If you say so.”
    I opened my mouth, then decided I was too beat to argue. “Well, have fun.”
    “Oh, I will.” He paused. “And just FYI, there’s a bunch of new guys on tonight. Well, not new new, but new to you.”
    I didn’t know why he was bothering to tell me. The bodyguards were changed on a regular basis. Round-theclock security meant that some of them got stuck on the day shift, which was hard on vampires. At least I assumed that was why, after a week or two, they started looking a little peaked.
    I nodded, but Marco just stood there,