Page 129 of Junk Magic

She spread her hands. “It’s a hotel. Plenty of people are here—”

“Not in this section!”

“—and besides, Ulmer brought us as part of Sebastian’s retinue. He has us guarding the bardric—”

“Or the guy they have pretending to be the bardric,” Jen added. “We helped to smuggle him in, all wrapped up in this gorgeous caftan. I think it was Dolce and Gabbana—”

“—as back up for some of the guys they lost—”

“Wait. What?” I said, because the girls were talking over each other, almost too fast for me to keep up.

“It’s a whole thing,” Sophie said impatiently. “You’d know if you hadn’t gone AWOL all day.”

“It’s been so exciting!” Jen said. “We spent all day in one of the upper floors here—Sebastian took over a whole one, just for his staff—”

“What kind of thing?” I asked Sophie.

“—and he has his own private plane, did you know?” Jen continued, unabated. “And it’s not one of those little things, either. It’s a converted Airbus—”

“Stop perving on the old guy,” Sophie told her.

“He’s not old. He’s forty—”

“That’s old.”

“Not for a Were. And he’s hot. And a widower—”

“Who has a daughter your age!”

“Who isn’t me,” Jen tossed her hair and turned to me. “Anyway, he used it to get here, the plane I mean, so his wolves are flying commercial. They’ll be here soon, but we’re covering in the meantime—”

“We were told to check around for anything weird,” Sophie added. “All of us, the guys, too. Ulmer said to look for something a wolf wouldn’t notice. He said his gut is grumbly, which I think means he’s worried—”

“I don’t give a damn what he is,” I said furiously. “He can’t just throw you into the middle of—”

“Tell him that.”

“I will! And what is this thing you’re talking about? And why the hell didn’t you go back to the house with Caleb last night?”

She sighed. “Yeah, you missed the fun, didn’t you?”

“It was not fun,” Jen said, suddenly serious. “It was not fun at all.”

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Oh, nothing,” Sophie said. “Except that you almost missed the start of another Were civil war. People were pissed—”

“Mostly at you,” Jen interjected.

“—at what you did, and Whirlwind wanted to have a go at you, once he’d recovered. I think he was planning to finish the job while you were out cold, the bastard. But Caleb hexed the fuck out of him, and then he fell over onto his face—”

“Whirlwind?” I said, my confusion growing.

“No, Caleb. Or rather, both of them—”

“He was out of magic. He shouldn’t have tried it,” Jen said, while my head spun.

“And then Whirlwind’s people started for both of you,” Sophie continued, “but the townspeople got in their way. And it was looking bad for a second, because that Whirlwind guy brought, like, a private army with him, and the townspeople were not in the mood, you know? I mean, you’d fought alongside them, bled for them, and where had the council been? It was intense—”

---