Page 79 of Elven Throne

Maxwell.

Because even without turning around to look, she knew he was standing right behind her.

Ignoring him, Rebecca rifled through the duffel bag she’d picked up during their last stop at the Goodwill, among other things, and pulled out a wad of cash.

The woman behind the counter widened her eyes as she watched Rebecca count out the money. But when that money went on the counter, the receptionist hardly seemed to know the payment had been made.

She was staring at Maxwell again, her eyes widening even more as her gum-smacking grew to a fevered pitch.

Then the shifter stopped right beside Rebecca, silent and brooding and completely unaware of the fact that his decision to remain protectively at her side, even during the least dangerous interactions, affected the very obviously human civilians who saw him.

The receptionist fixed him with what she probably thought was a coy smile and shifted her weight to one side, jutting out her hip. “What brings someone like you all the way out here?”

Seriously?

“Road trip,” Maxwell growled.

The woman’s eyelids fluttered as a visible shudder rippled through her, followed by an airy giggle.

Blue Hells, this was ridiculous.

“There’s your fifty,” Rebecca said, nodding at the cash on the counter. “We good?”

“Uh-huh…” The receptionist just smacked her gum and stared at Maxwell, not even bothering to pick up the cash, let alone count it.

Maxwell turned away from the counter, and the woman behind it looked like she would either faint or crawl over that counter to leap after him.

Rebecca snatched up the key and leaned forward. “Just FYI. You got a little something there you might wanna take care of.”

When the woman finally stopped ogling the shifter, Rebecca bared her teeth and pointed at them.

The woman instantly pressed a hand to her mouth to swipe at the lipstick smudged across her teeth, without the use of a mirror, and Rebecca left the counter to march back across the lobby.

“Let’s go,” she muttered as she passed Maxwell, and he followed her back out through the creaking door without a word.

Only when they were outside again in the parking lot to scour the long stretch of the motel’s ground-floor rooms for the one they’d been given did he say anything else.

“Why are you upset?”

“More like annoyed, really.” She glanced at the key with three numbers shallowly etched into the wooden block attached to the key ring, the ink inside them nearly faded—108.

She kept walking.

“Because the place you chose does not meet your expected standards?” Maxwell asked, gazing around the parking lot. “It certainly does not meet mine.”

“You know, I wasn’ttotallysure about it when the guy at Gino’s made me repeat the order three times before finally getting it right. Or when the chick at the Goodwill kept having to start over punching in the numbers because she was shaking so badly. Butthatawesome little song and dance back there just fully convinced me.”

Rebecca stopped at the door marked 108, the cheap brass numbers nailed there hanging askew.

“Convinced of what?” Maxwell asked.

She shoved the key into the door lock and paused to look over her shoulder at him with a brief scan of the empty parking lot for herself. “That you plus humans doesnotequal keeping a low profile. And that could be a big problem for us.”

He offered no reaction, standing there with his brooding mask of surly apathy covering any other reaction.

Rebecca turned back to the door only to find the key sticking in the lock.

“So from now on,” she added, jiggling the key and the door handle to get them unstuck, “if any humans are involved, Hannigan,I’llhandle the interaction. Andyoucan stay in the car.”

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