“—rs!” Sara finished on a high note, blinking to orient herself as they materialized.
They were no longer in the plush Wizard Council chamber, but in a sun-washed office. Jack knew it had to be Sara’s, back at Baltzer’s hacienda in San Cristóbal, because no matter where in the world she was, her offices were always identical. All of the furniture and accessories were creams, beiges, and black. There was an intentional lack of color in her primary work space.
She grabbed the high back of her black mesh desk chair to maintain her balance. “They’re certainly theatrical.”
But real. Fucking, horrifically real. And they both knew it. If she was hoping he’d tell her otherwise, Sara was in for a giant fucking disappointment. “If all twelve members of the Aequitas Archon were killed as Edge claims, then we’re in deep, and I mean fucking deep, shit.”
“I don’t think he made that up,” Sara said dryly, pressing her fingertips to the middle of her forehead.
Jack rested his butt on her desk and stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles in a relaxed posture that in no way reflected the myriad of facts flipping through his mind as he tried to come up with a cohesive plan. “No. No reason to lie.”
Dropping her hand, she shot him a disbelieving look. “Everybody has reason to lie at some point. Although I tried to tell him he chose poorly. Oh, not in you—you can at least try to put some of the pieces together. But me? I don’t even call myself a wizard.”
“Doesn’t matter what you call yourself. You are one. It’s not as though you have no magic. It’s your choice—always has been—not to use it.”
“I don’t want to do this, Jack. What does the Wizard Council gain by forcing us to deal with this?”
Jack shrugged. “Nothing, as far as I can see. I imagine we aren’t the only people who’ve been deputized to look into this.”
“Good,” she sighed, clearly relieved they weren’t on their own. “Then what are you going to do about their insane request?”
“Request? In case you didn’t notice, that was an order. Go your merry way, Sara. Do whatever you were doing before. I’ll do what I was told to do—look into the situation and report back. In the meantime, you have a houseguest for a few days.” Jack maintained his temper by a hair. He didn’t like this togetherness any more than she did.
“Grant hates you, and I’m perfectly aware that the feeling’s mutual.” She turned to give Jack a fix-this-damn-it glare. “He won’t be happy playing host to you.” Her tone implied she wouldn’t either.
Jack raised a mocking brow. “A hotelier not willing to rent a room?”
“This is Grant’s home. Damn it, Jackson, I’d almost prefer world catastrophe to living under the same roof as you.” She closed her eyes wearily and shook her head. “Okay, that was ridiculous, but you know what I mean. Can’t you stay at a hotel?”
“Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. At least until the Council pulls together a task force.”
“Don’t they care that I’m not qualified to do this?” Sara paced, ignoring the tempting view of a sparkling swimming pool outside her window. Her usually muted office was an explosion of color swatches and chaos. She’d clearly been in the middle of a large project when this business with Santos occurred. The mess had to be some sort of release valve to Sara’s uptight nature. Jack scratched his chin, eying the wallpaper and fabric sample books littering every surface, a drafting table that held a blueprint, and several bulletin boards covered with paint and fabric swatches and notes. Sara skirted an enormous basket holding rolled blueprints and an umbrella; he’d lay ten-to-one odds that she’d completely forgotten putting the umbrella in there.
Jack leaned against her desk. “They think we are.”
“They’re wrong.”
“Given what we know, yeah. Maybe. But I suspect that they didn’t tell us everything.”
“Great. So they throw two unprepared, unqualified, unwilling people into a life-or-death situation blindfolded. That’s insane.”
He was neither unprepared nor unqualified. “It’s what Aequitas does.”
“Too bad I didn’t get the handbook.”
“You chose not to learn, Sara. You can hardly blame the Council for that.”
She stopped and glared at him. “They should respect that I have no interest in embracing my power. I resent being called to arms because of some archaic pledge and an accident of my bloodline. I don’t want to do this. I particularly don’t want to do it with you. I don’t think I can be much plainer than that.”
“As even fifty percent Aequitas, you don’t have a choice. Suck it up and move on.”
Sara bit her lower lip. His gut took a direct hit. Why in the hell did she have to have that annoying habit that fixated him on her mouth?
“Grant isn’t going to like this one bit.”
He hadn’t seen the guy in two years, and Jack was already sick of hearing his name. “Have him take it up with the Wizard Council.”
“You know he isn’t a wizard, Jack. How am I going to explain what you’re doing hanging around?”
Jack turned away to stare sightlessly out the window where two blondes cavorted in the pool. He didn’t like his reaction to seeing Sara again. He didn’t like it a lot. This was exactly the reason he’d promised himself he’d never run into her again.
“Tell him I’m your bodyguard. Hell, tell him we’re back together.”
She cast him an exasperated look. “He’s never going to believe that; he’s not an idiot.”
No, Grant Baltzer was anything but. Jack knew she admired the guy and considered him handsome, charming, and brilliant. He was also loaded, which Jack knew she didn’t care about one way or the other. Although she enjoyed the lifestyle and the perks.
While Sara’s friend and boss was a playboy, he also worked hard. Jack had tried to be civil for Sara’s sake, but it would be a leap to pretend that he’d ever liked the guy. “Tell him the truth then.”
She thought about it for a second. “Maybe some of it. I have to explain Alberto’s absence somehow.” She looked none too happy about it. “Before I put on my Wonder Woman suit and save the world, I have to go take care of the kitchen and talk to the staff, then check on Carmelita.” She leaned over her desk to depress a button on the phone. He held up a hand, and she paused.
“None of the staff have any memory of the slaughter they witnessed—I figured they could all do without it and Mindwiped them. So you might not want to comfort them for something they don’t remember. You should think of a reason why the kitchen door is locked, though; I didn’t want anyone coming in while I was trying to deal with Alberto, and I’m assuming it’s still sealed, thanks to our hasty departure.”
“I’m stunned.”
“By my compassion? Jesus, Sara—”
“That too. I had no idea you knew how to do a Mindwipe.” She put through her call, leaving the phone on speaker.
“Thank God,” a woman’s lightly accented voice said with obvious relief. “Are you okay, Sara? No one knew where you ran off to, all the cars are here and the chopper—”
“I’m fine, Pia.” Thanks to Jack’s quick thinking, Pia had no idea what had happened earlier. “We’ll talk about it later. We have a houseguest. Jack Slater will be staying here for a few days—can you have a room prepared for him?”
“Did you say Jack—”
Sara picked up the receiver. “Yes. And I meant it. … No, I won’t let Grant or the others kill him.” She shot Jack a look meant to intimidate. He returned her glare with a bland smile.
“You’re on speaker,” Sara warned Pia, putting the receiver back in the cradle so she could continue pacing. She told Pia that Alberto and Carmelita would be gone for a while visiting Carmelita’s mother.
“God, how long is a while, Sara? Grant won’t be pleased, and William’s going to have a fit if Alberto doesn’t personally prep his meals.” Her assistant sighed. “Want me to tell Héctor he’ll have the honors?”
Sara’s uninhibited laugh went straight to Jack’s groin, and he tried to concentrate on the two practically naked women outside. How in God’s name was he going to stick to his guns and keep his hands off Sara? Liking had zip to do with lust. Spending days, perhaps weeks in close proximity was going to take a hell of a lot more than willpower and fortitude. He was going to need superpowers.
Remember that last day.
Yeah, he thought bitterly. Good as a cold shower. He turned away from the window as Sara ended her call.
“Wait here,” she told him briskly. “I’ll be back in about half an hour.”
He stiffened. If she thought she was calling the shots, she was sadly mistaken. Edge had instructed that they not be out of each other’s sight. “I’ll go with you.”
“Fine.” She changed into jeans and a crisp white shirt as she strode past him out of the room. A ripple of irritation scored him from head to toe. Sara could say all she wanted about being disinterested in magic, but when it suited her, she was all too ready to use her powers, if only to change her clothes. She was a hypocrite as well as a liar.
Good to remember.
Jack stayed in his sweat-stained, dusty clothes and followed her. “Nice place.”
“Yes.” She glanced back, the fall of her blond-streaked, light-brown hair sliding over her shoulder. He stuffed his fingers into his front pockets before he did something stupid, like reach out and touch the glossy strands. There was a time when he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her. A time when all it had taken was a look, and they were naked on any flat surface.
She’d killed that.
Hell. She’d almost killed him.
Jack looked out one of the wide windows to the backdrop of vegetation beyond the high walls of the estate. The sun was still shining, but it had started to rain, huge fat drops that turned to steam as they hit the thick vegetation. That impenetrable green wall of jungle, Jack noted, was held back by little more than a half-inch of plate glass. Made him appreciate the air-conditioning.
He rubbed a hand across his aching jaw—aching because, he realized, he was grinding his teeth. Hell, what man wouldn’t be, stuck with the one woman he didn’t want to be close to in the middle of a fucking jungle? God, what a clusterfuck.
There were a lot of windows, all barred and screened. All with views of dense foliage. Damn place was surrounded by jungle. “He’s a pretty social guy. Why have a home so inaccessible?”
“It’s logical to make a home base convenient to where we’re working. And we’re building seven new hotels down the west coast.”
Rain beat a thunderous rhythm on the tiled roof and slashed at the windows. “We?”
“Grant made me a partner six months ago.”
Yet another manipulation to keep Sara at his side, Jack bet. Baltzer did nothing that wasn’t self-serving. “Congratulations.”
She started to say something, then literally bit her tongue.
“What?”
Sara stopped walking and he almost bumped into her. She narrowed her eyes and glared at him. “Why does everything you say sound like a damned insult?”
“Maybe you’re too sensitive?”
“You’re an ass, Jack. You’d better be civilized to Grant. You’re accepting his hospitality, and he’s very important to me. Piss him off and you’ll piss me off even more than I’m pissed off already.”
She was damned appealing when she was annoyed. Her brown eyes darkened and her cheeks got sweetly pink. He put up his hands in surrender. “I’ll be on my best behavior.”
“You’d better.” She turned and started walking again. They went through the tiled entryway, through a great room, and down a side corridor. The single-story hacienda was enormous, the size of a small hotel. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to see Baltzer for days. On the other hand, sticking close to Sara when there was this much room might prove to be problematic.
“What happened to Roe?” William Roe had been Baltzer’s partner for years. About the same age as Jack, the guy gave him a serious case of the willies. The snake tattooed on his forearm, positioned so that it seemed to writhe and move forward whenever William shook hands, had a great deal to do with Jack’s aversion to him.
“Still a partner, although, of course, Grant keeps the controlling interest in the company. William lives here as well.”
God, this just got better and better. He’d have to sleep with one eye open and arm himself to the teeth. “One big happy family.”
“You never told me you were Aequitas.”
He stiffened, and crushed every soft feeling she’d been bringing out in him. “You didn’t happen to mention you were mestizo Aequitas. So I guess we’re even.”
This time when she stopped, Jack had to grab her shoulders to prevent her falling against him, to stop at all costs making full-body contact. But it brought her close. Too close. He didn’t pull her in, but he didn’t push her away. He just stood there, enduring the torture of inhaling her soft citrus scent as a flood of sensual memories washed over him.
Their high-octane gazes caught, held. They froze.
There was nothing that revived the past quite like a smell associated with it. The heady fragrance of ginger-lemon soap and the sound of the rain beating on the windows brought back vivid memories of burying his fingers in the frothy, scented strands of her hair as he bathed her in the shower.
Jack had bathed all of her. Very slowly. And often. The shower was one of their favorite places to make—
A heartbeat after the thought flashed in his mind, Jack found his tongue in Sara’s mouth, and his hands filled with her wet, naked ass cheeks. Hot water pounded his shoulders. Sara’s slick, soapy, naked body pressed against his. Her taste was still heady, the unexpected intimacy of her tongue curling against his shockingly sweet.
His erection was instantaneous and hard enough to pole-vault him to Australia. He kissed her like a starving man at a feast. Her hungry mouth beneath his gave him jolts of intense pleasure, the sensation so powerful he went deaf and blind with it. He felt something give way inside him. Something hard and tight suddenly soared free.
Her lips were just as he remembered: firm, moist, delicious. Hunger fueled equal hunger as her mouth opened wider, and their slick tongues mated. He shoved her back against the tiled wall, pressing his erection to the soft curls between her legs, and held on to her as if she might suddenly disappear.
Skin flushed, Sara murmured low in her throat, angling her mouth against his, licking then biting his lower lip. Her entire body shuddered as he held her steady, one ass cheek cupped in his hand. He lifted her slightly and felt the erect pebbles of her aroused nipples through the hair on his chest. Her arms tightened around his neck as she curled one silky-smooth leg around his hips.
They kissed frantically. Jack pulled her tongue into his mouth, wanting to absorb the taste and feel of her as he worked his mouth over hers until they were both panting and breathless.
Without warning, Sara ripped her mouth from beneath his, her breathing labored, her eyes flashing fire.
Completely disoriented, Jack surfaced. “What’s the matt—” It took him a moment to realize this wasn’t where they’d been—either physically or emotionally—a few seconds ago. “What the f—” They were bare-ass naked in a steaming shower stall, their bodies glued together.
The tight vise of her leg dropped from its position across his ass. Water dripped from her lashes as she blinked at him. “I’m going to kill you, Jackson Slater.” She pounded a fist on his wet chest. “Get your damned hand off my ass.” She used both hands to shove him away. Hard.
“Hell—it wasn’t—” The steaming water suddenly turned cold, just like her eyes before she vanished.
“Crap!” Braced by his arm, Jack thumped his forehead against the cool white tiles. To say he was in trouble didn’t begin to cover it. Sara might be amping his powers, but she was messing with his head—and apparently with his ability to control his powers.
He had to be cold-blooded around her. Unfortunately, Sara had always had a profound and disturbing ability to heat up his hemoglobin like no other woman before or since.
Good damned thing cold was his power to call.
He froze the droplets on his skin to glittering shards. Even so, it took a few moments to get rid of his erection. When he figured he was cooled off enough, he brushed the ice crystals off his skin, stepped out of the unfamiliar enclosure, and materialized his clothes.
He needed armor. Body armor and brain armor. Head-to-toe-and-everything-in-between armor.
Jack closed his eyes for a long, pained moment.
He was so screwed.
JACK CAUGHT UP WITH Sara in the north wing. He must’ve traced her, damn it.
“Whoa! Don’t go storming off in a huff. As interesting as that was, it was not my fault.”
Sara hadn’t had enough time—say, ten or fifteen years—to gather even a modicum of equilibrium after the shocker of finding herself pressed against Jack’s wet, naked body without warning.
Interesting? She still felt the rasp of his callused thumb stroking a light circle against the small of her back as he tugged her closer. Stop it. Walking faster, she bit her kiss-swollen lip until it hurt enough to bring her back to her senses.
“Whose fault was it, then?” she demanded, jaw aching from clenching her teeth. “Certainly not mine.” She was not, absolutely not, going to allow her rampaging hormones to erase the hurt and anger she felt toward him. She used to mainline her love and lust for Jackson Slater and had been forced to cut off the addiction cold turkey. She wasn’t going back down that dangerous path ever again. The withdrawal had almost killed her.
“Isn’t it funny how nothing is ever your fault?” He let out an angry breath. “Do you ever take any responsibility for your actions, Sara? Or do you just blame your own bad choices on someone else because otherwise you’d have to acknowledge your own piss-poor judgment?”
Her blood pressure spiked, making her eyeballs throb. A hundred pithy, insulting responses came to the tip of her tongue. Sara ruthlessly suppressed them all. She knew what happened when her emotions were let loose. She dared not risk blasting Jack, angry as she was. Changing clothes was one thing; if that bit of magic went wrong, she could find herself in a red blouse instead of a black one. Serious spells going wrong had much more dire consequences.
There’d been enough death and destruction around for one day, but God, she was tempted. So freaking tempted. She settled for “Bite me.”
“And get food poisoning? I don’t think so.”
She felt dizzy just imagining turning around and punching him. Hard. Somewhere. Anywhere. Words alone wouldn’t relieve this tight band across her chest.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Do. Not. Respond. In. Out. In. Out. Stay calm. Immune.
“What the hell are you doing?” He peered into her face. “Having a seizure?” He didn’t sound concerned, just rudely amused.
Sara closed her eyes and shook her head. In. Out. In. Out. “I’m ignoring you.”
“Well, can you do that without sounding as though you’re gearing up for a deep-sea dive?”
Her sensitized nipples rubbed annoyingly on the inside of her lacy bra as she moved, and the crotch of her panties was damp. Those few moments in the shower hadn’t exactly been foreplay, but her body, deprived of Jack’s for so long, didn’t give a damn. She was primed and ready for sex. And she wasn’t going to get any, not for the foreseeable future.
“No, Jack, I’m afraid I can’t.” Without looking at him, she kept moving.
They’d fought only toward the end. She’d hated it then and she hated it now. It gave her the same sick feeling, like putting on a favorite pair of jeans and realizing they not only didn’t fit anymore, they pinched uncomfortably.
Jack was walking too close. Close enough for her to feel the heat emanating from his tall body. On him, her soap smelled nothing like it did on her. He smelled like clean male. A quick, surreptitious glance out of the corner of her eye showed he was back in his dusty, disheveled pants and shirt, but his dark hair was clean and slicked back off his forehead.
No more touching, she warned herself sternly. She could convince herself she was immune, as long as Jack didn’t touch her. She unclenched her hands and took several calming breaths. If he smiled, if he even looked as though he might smile, she would smack him.
“If you ever do anything like that again, Jackson Slater,” she snapped, picking up speed, eyes front, “I’m going to take great pleasure in using every ounce of my magic to emasculate you.”
“Pull in your claws, Sara. It won’t happen again. We’re supposed to be working together here, remember? Let’s just call a truce.”
His heat—the hardness of his erection—had been shockingly familiar pressed to the tender juncture of her thighs. The encounter had been instantaneous—no buildup, no warning, no time to marshal her defenses. She’d literally melted into him before she remembered that this was now, not then.
Oh, God, Sara thought, adding jumpy and panicky to horny. How am I going to handle seeing him every freaking day? “Fine. But the truce doesn’t extend to sex.”
“Fine by me. And just as an FYI—I didn’t do it,” he reminded her flatly. “We did it. Next time you think of sex in the shower, make sure I’m not anywhere near you.”
Oh, great, Sara thought, absolutely appalled. The sound of the rain on the roof, the smell of him after so long—how did Jack know she’d been thinking exactly that when he’d grabbed her? “I wasn’t thinking about you,” she fibbed. “Or a shower. Or anything el—hi, ladies.”
Thank God. Saved by the belles, Grant’s latest vapid set of blue-eyed blond twins. The women, not even out of their teens, were identical. Both wore minuscule threads of black floss on their tanned, taut, oil-slicked bodies. Their combined IQ was close to their bra size.
“Inga and Ida Angstrom, meet Jackson Slater.”
Inga had a livid bite-shaped bruise on her breast, and Ida had tried to cover the fresh marks on both wrists with makeup. Grant forgot his own strength sometimes, and if he wasn’t careful, one day one of his playmates was going to report him to the police. None of her business, but hard not to notice. Sara sighed inwardly.
“Hi, Jackson,” Inga cooed. The scent of coconut oil and hot sunshine mingled on her rain-wet skin with the smell of chlorine from the pool. The girl licked her lips like a porn queen, her hot blue gaze pinning Jack in place.
“We can’t find Carmelita and it’s way past lunchtime,” Ida whined in the particularly annoying baby voice she used around men. Her big blue eyes were also locked on Jack like a tractor beam.
Jack had shirts older than these girls.
“Ladies,” he said by way of greeting, a faint trace of amusement curving the grim line of his mouth. He didn’t appear affected by so much nakedness up close and personal.
The girls, with no clue about personal space, crowded near him as if they were vaqueros herding a particularly interesting bull. If they got any closer, they’d leave oil slicks all over his dusty clothes. It would almost be worth seeing their reaction when copious amounts of Jack’s red dust were transferred to them.
Disgust and irritation sharpened Sara’s tone. “Did you go into the kitchen?”
“No. Yumi came to get Harry out of the pool, and she told us the door was locked and to talk to you.”
“Who’s Yumi?” Jack turned to her, his dark blue eyes filled with amusement. Sara refused to be charmed by him.
“Grant’s assistant. She and Pia both live here.” She liked Grant’s assistant very much. Because William’s personal assistant stayed in town, Pia and Yumi had to pinch-hit for all three of them at times.
Jack had sealed the kitchen earlier to prevent any of the people he’d teleported outside from returning. Yumi was a Half wizard and would’ve known immediately that the seal on the door had nothing to do with a puny lock.
“Harry was in the pool again?” Sara asked. Honest to God, living here was like running a day care center. Never a dull moment.
“Harry. Roe’s giant snake, Harry?” Jack asked, amused, changing to appalled in an instant. He looked around as if the boa constrictor might be napping nearby on the living-room sofa.
“Same old Harry.” All ten feet of bad attitude usually stayed put in William’s wing of the house. Unfortunately, every now and then the door was left open, and Harry decided to explore. He had a particular fondness for Sara’s closet.
“Isn’t bringing him here rather like smuggling a microchip into Microsoft?”
Of course it was. Just getting the darn snake through customs had been a logistical nightmare. As if William couldn’t get his hands on any number of snakes by walking out the back door on any given day.
“I offered to buy him a parrot when we came to Venezuela,” Sara said dryly, remembering that Jack had been less than fond of her partner’s pet when they’d met at a Christmas party at William’s house in San Francisco. “But he and Harry have been together for twenty years. Longer than some marriages. Don’t worry, Harry usually sleeps most of the day in William’s suite—you won’t run into him.”
“Good to know.” Jack stuffed his hands into his front pockets. “Shouldn’t we … ?”
Get the kitchen out of the way. “Yes.” She turned back to the girls, who were assessing Jack’s attributes like accountants at tax time. “Carmelita and Alberto are both away,” Sara informed Inga and Ida briskly. “They went to stay with her mother in the village for a few days.”
Sara dug inside the purse on her shoulder while she pondered this new and annoying wrinkle. She wasn’t in charge of what, or whom, the girls did, but Grant was not a man who shared. And while she didn’t want Jack, he couldn’t be allowed to mess with Grant’s girlfriends.
“Here.” She took out her wallet and handed over a handful of notes, then removed a key from her key ring. “Go to dinner on me. Grant won’t be back until late tonight or tomorrow, so go ahead and spend the night in town and have fun. Take the Aston Martin, if you like, or have Benito or Andres fly you in.”
“Really? Wow, tack, Sara, you’re the best.” Inga snatched the key from her fingers. “We’ll drive, ja?” They trotted off on ridiculously high heels, speaking excitedly in Swedish.
“An Aston Martin on these roads?” Jack asked as they headed to the kitchen.
San Cristóbal was modern and had good roads, but there were miles and miles of dirt road to get down the mountainous switchbacks and into the city proper.
Sara shrugged. She usually flew, but the three-hour drive into town would keep the girls out of her hair. “Grant enjoys fast cars. He’s not going to be thrilled I let them drive the Martin, but I don’t want them around while I clean up the kitchen and assess the situation.” And figure out how to keep them away from Jack. “I hope I don’t have to tell you to keep your hands off those two.”
“Trust me, that’ll be no problem. I like my women a little more seasoned. How old are they? Sixteen?”
Almost as bad. “Eighteen.” They exchanged looks, on the same page for just a moment. Then the moment passed.
What women? Had he been dating since they broke up? Of course he had. Jack liked sex too much to be celibate.
“Maybe Grant’s going for an age-appropriate total of thirty-six?”
“I’m serious, Jack. Don’t even think about it.”
“The fact that you think it necessary to warn me shows just how damn little you know me,” he said with dangerous calm. “Don’t worry, Sara, those kids are safe from me.”
She believed him. Jack was a lot of things, but a cradle-robbing womanizer wasn’t one of them.
“I see Baltzer’s been his usual brutish self. Don’t give me that look. I’m not blind. I saw the bruises on those two.” When she didn’t respond, he said instead, “Tell me more about this Yumi. Interesting name.”
“Grant’s new assistant, Yumi Kimura.”
“He’s got quite a harem here.”
“Yumi’s sleeping with William, as it happens. And Grant and I are friends. Always have been, always will be.” There were so many conversations she didn’t want to have with Jack again, it almost made her dizzy.
“Has he ever harmed you?”
Sara stared at him. “Of course not.” Only you did that.
“No ‘of course’ about it. He likes hurting women.”
“He likes rough sex. I am not having, nor have I ever had, sex with Grant. Not that it’s any of your business. Let’s move on. What’s the plan of action?” she asked, straightening a watercolor on the wall as they passed. How dare he ask her anything about her life? He’d given up that right years ago. “The sooner we find out what the council wants to know, the sooner I can get on with my life.”
“I’d like to talk to the local cops, see if anything out of the ordinary has happened. Crazies brought in, whatever.”
“We should start with hospitals, then.”
“We’ll visit both.” Jack put out his arm to stop her as they arrived at the kitchen door. Luckily for him he didn’t touch her or that arm would be in a cast.
His lips twitched as though he knew what she’d been thinking, and he dropped his arm and turned to the closed door. “Like I told you, I did a down-and-dirty Protection spell so no one could get in.”
Smart. Sara wished she’d thought of it first, but she’d been a little distracted at the time; large men wielding knives and screaming at her tended to have that effect. Jackson did something swift with his hands, and she felt a subtle shift.
“Okay. It’s lifted.”
Sara pushed past him and turned the handle. The stench hit her before they opened the door. Even with air-conditioning, the bodies stank to high heaven. Jack materialized two face masks and handed her one.
“Wait out here, I’ll take care of it.”
She covered her mouth and nose with the mask, not wanting Jack’s favors. “My home, my problem. I’ll take care of it myself.”
He stepped back and waved her in. “Have at it.”