Page 60 of Incubus with Benefits
Here I was, stuck twiddling my thumbs, completely useless, while Lily was out there. She’d solved the case and cleared my name, but she was now in danger.
“What the hell do you mean they have Lily?” I paced the room. “Can’t they find her? Lily’s friends have magic. And the researcher has access to spells too. Prax is involved, and Nathan is a bear shifter. Surely together they could find her.”
Gina wrung her hands. “They have Officers Cooley and Hayes on it. But the people behind this are strong too. Their leader was a professor at Darlington University; he went MIA the day theportal appeared. Everyone thought he got sucked in,” Gina said. “They’ve tried everything and can’t locate her.”
A sharp meow had us looking down at Shadow, who’d slipped into my home through the crack in the balcony door I’d left open for her. When she jumped onto the counter, something sparkling caught my eye.
“What have you got there, Shadow?” I held out my hand, and the cat dropped something gold and metallic into my palm. It was the bracelet Lily had found the other day.
Gina gasped. “They said the guy who took the bracelet took Lily.”
My chest tightened. Shadow had found her.
“Good girl!”
Shadow preened at my compliment.
“Can you bring us to her?”
The cat started out the door, but the second I tried to follow after her, I remembered the ankle monitor.
“Fuck!”
I eyed the laptop screen, which was still open to the message board. The idea that had been simmering suddenly snapped into place.
Gina followed my gaze to the screen, then started reading the conversation there. Meanwhile, Shadow looked back at us from the top of the light post with an impatient glare.
“Lily is your woman.” Her hand turned into a piece of duct tape, and she slapped it over my mouth before I could protest. “Don’t even deny it. She might even be your mate. And if anyone should go rescue her, it should be you. But you'd better switch back with me once Lily is safe. Or else.”
Then she turned herself smoky and lined her leg up with mine, putting it into the device. There was a moment when she started to phase solid and I was phasing out that I was sure it wouldn’t work. But soon she was completely solid, which meant I must be diffused, because we couldn’t be solid in the same place at the same time.
I stepped away, leaving the dreaded contraption behind.
“Where’s your phone?” she asked.
I pointed to the device on the counter.
“Good. I’ll pretend to be you and let everyone know what’s happening. Just pretend to be me when law enforcement is around. We don’t want them patching up our little loophole. Go find your girl.”
Then I was following Shadow, phasing through any barriers that got in my way. A good thing too, because I wouldn’t have been able to follow any other way. She squeezed through some tight spaces, and I got to see a cat’s-eye view of the city.
But we didn’t stay in the city limits for long. She ducked into a forested area and continued traveling until we were in the middle of the woods. There, she stopped, putting her nose to the ground like a hound. Instead of following her scent, I was sure Lily’s familiar was following her magic.
Suddenly something came out of the trees. I prepared to fight, but I saw an animal that looked like an oversized ferret mixed with a skunk. I’d only ever seen honey badgers in videos before; this one was much larger. It moved low to the ground, stocky and muscular. And by the intelligence in its eyes and the fearless way it came right up to me, I knew it was a shifter.
“Looking for Lily?” I asked.
It nodded.
Shadow hissed at the appearance of a larger animal and leaped up onto my shoulder.
“It’s okay, he’s a friend.” I turned to the creature. “I think this is where Shadow found the bracelet. Let’s look around and see what we can find.”
I noticed a disturbed area under a tree. People had stopped here recently, and it looked like there had been a struggle. A scrap of fabric was snagged onto a low-hanging branch. After a quick sniff, the shifter barreled farther into the woods. I followed, keeping just my hand solid so I could hold onto Shadow.
As we followed, Prax in hawk form joined us.
“I was expecting Gina,” he squawked.
