Magick Rising (32 page)

away then glanced at the floor. “Did you drop something?” She didn’t wait

for his answer and bent over, positioned so that the convenient slit in her

dress left little to the imagination.

She righted herself with the purloined picture in her outstretched hand.

“Yours?”

When Jon reached for it, she pulled the photo away, pretending to

study it. Instead of David Worth, she studied the side featuring Serenity’s

image. “She’s pretty in a sort of house-wifey way. Yours?”

“My picture. But no, not my wife.”

“Good.” She infused more sexuality in the word than he’d thought

humanly possible. She tossed the photo toward him. “I’ll be back in a

moment.” Then she added as if an afterthought, “With your drink.”

It only took a few minutes for Laila to glide back, slide into the seat next

to him, and hand him his drink. “That woman. The not-your-wife in the

picture. Is she someone . . . special?”

He pretended to sip the drink, using the time to formulate a suitable

answer. If she’d looked at the other side of the photo, and surely she had,

then there was a good chance she’d recognized her boss. “Just someone I

used to know. She’s married to someone else, now.”

“Is she somebody you wish you’d gotten to know a little bit better?”

What’s with the third degree?
He gave her a non-committal shrug.

She placed her hand over his. “C’mon, Studly. I think there’s someone

you need to meet.”

Aha! She
did
see Worth on the other side.
“Who?”

Laila pointed to his drink. “Finish that and come with me.”

He took a fortifying swig, not surprised that cheap bourbon burned a

scalding path down his throat. Threading a path through the room, she led

him to the employees’ door. He hid his sigh of relief as they left the crowds

behind. It took a lot of concentration and energy to maintain the

disconnection he needed to survive close quarters with so many.

Once they escaped the main room, they stood in a long, quieter hallway,

lined with alternating black and white doors. Someone had taken a color

scheme a bit too far.

“This way.” She headed to the last door on the left. He hesitated before

entering, but Laila gave him a push and pointed to the picture that he still

held. “You wouldn’t carry that picture if it wasn’t important, right?” She

closed the door behind them and slipped behind a room screen-divider. The

lamp behind the screen created a provocative silhouette of a spectacular

all-feminine figure. Then the red dress appeared in a puddle beneath the

screen.

Damn, he was here to do a job, not get laid. He backed toward the

door. “Look, Laila, you have the wrong—”

“I saw the picture,” she said. “I recognized . . .” her voice was muffled

by material “. . . so I realized why you were here. It all has to do with
her
,

doesn’t it?”

“Sort of.”

Laila stepped out, her back turned to him. “Can you button me,

please?”

She’d changed into a floral print dress that fastened up the back—quite

a comedown from the sexy red number she’d just discarded. He tried to

ignore the heat that rose from her exposed back as he worked his way up the

column of buttons.

Men didn’t usually help women get dressed in places like this. It was

usually the opposite.

“It’s difficult to want someone and not have them. You can spend years

pining away about what could have been, about people you wished loved

you.”

Jon reached the top button, his mind racing to make sense of her

words. Was she talking about Serenity and David Worth? Or . . .

That was the moment he recognized the material and style of Laila’s

dress, which was eerily similar to the one Serenity wore in the photograph.

He took a step backwards as Laila continued to fuss with the skirt.

“Why waste your time remembering the past? Or dwelling on what

could have been? You don’t have to wonder. You can have her. Right here.

Right now.”

She turned around, but it wasn’t Laila standing there.

It was Serenity Worth.

Laila reached out with Serenity’s hand to stroke his cheek, but Jon

recoiled, stepping out of her reach. His mind reeled.

“What’s wrong? Shy?” Her smile didn’t quite reach Serenity’s eyes. “Or

would you prefer someone else? Someone more classic?” She closed her

eyes and shifted into the face and body of Marilyn Monroe.

“Is this more like it?” she said in a fair approximation of Marilyn’s sexy

whisper.

His heart thundered wildly, the word “shapeshifter” echoing with each

beat. He’d never met another person who could do what he did. Shifting had

been a closely guarded secret for all his life, and yet, here was a woman who

was not only shifting from one face to another, but doing it so easily.

No signs of concentration or pain.

And she wasn’t hiding her abilities as if she was some freak.

“How do you do that?” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Talent.” She threw back her head and laughed, this time transforming

into a dead ringer for Julia Roberts. “How would you like to have your very

own ‘Pretty Woman?’”

He stepped forward, grabbing her by the shoulders. “How?”

She continued to laugh, her face transforming with each peal,

effortlessly, cycling through a whole litany of beautiful and famous features.

He tightened his grip on her shoulders. “Stop that and talk to me.”

She settled back into Serenity’s face. “Talk? Not what I have in mind,

Studly.” She began to fumble with his jacket, trying to remove it and caught

the picture as it fluttered from his pocket. “If you want Miss Peaches and

Cream, then who am I to complain? Just finish your drink and surrender to

that delicious buzz in the back of your head.”

He snatched the picture from her. “I don’t want Miss . . . er . . . her.”

He turned the photo over and pointed at Worth on the back. “I want him.”

“Really?” She released a theatrical sigh while giving him a scathing

onceover. “God, what a waste. You don’t look the type.” She took a step

backwards. “Sorry, no transgender stuff.”

He closed the distance between them. “You don’t understand. I only

need to talk to him.”

She dismissed the picture with a wave of her hand. “Never seen him

before,” she lied, coloring slightly.

“Never? Look again.” He didn’t transform as quickly and certainly not a

painlessly as she did, but his results were just as impressive.

He became David Worth.

She took one look at him and bolted for the door.

JON REACHED FOR Laila as she sprang toward the door. But instead of

trying to escape, she locked them in then pushed aside a picture near the

door, revealing a switch which she flipped.

“Does anybody know?” she said between gasps.

“That I’m like you? Or that I’m here?”

She shushed him and glared toward the door as if expecting the

Shapeshifting Police to burst in any minute and arrest him for identity theft.

“That you can change,” she whispered.

“A chosen few. Emphasis on the ‘few.’”

She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the room screen. “Hurry.

There’s a security camera in here, and it‘s possible someone might have seen

you shifting.”

“Shit!” he growled, curbing the urge to look for the camera and risk

giving it a full-face view.

“Don‘t worry. I just turned it off.” She tugged him harder. “This way.”

He followed her behind the screen, where he discovered another exit.

“You need to get out of here,” she ordered. They heard muffled voices

in the hallway behind them, and she pushed Jon toward the backdoor. “This

leads to the alley. Meet me in a half hour at Dougie’s. It’s a diner a block

south of here.”

“But—”

“Run now. Talk later.” She pointed to his face. “And stay like that. No

one will stop you if you look like him.”

“What about you?”

She paused as if no one had expressed concern on her behalf in a long

time. “I’ll . . . I’ll be fine.”

He hesitated. Was he making it worse by leaving?

She pushed him again. “It’s you they’ll want, not me. Run!”

Jon stumbled out of the room and into a back hallway filled with dusty

boxes and discarded furniture. He slipped through the obstacle course,

stumbling out the exit door and into the quiet darkness of the alley.

Scanning the shadows, Jon saw no one but still had to fight the urge to

sprint. A running man always attracted more attention than a walking one.

After reaching the street, he dared to glance over his shoulder, expecting to

see guards bursting out of the building.

He saw no one.

By the time he reached the diner, he had tamped down his heart rate,

ridden out a wave of emotions and regained control, while still wearing

David Worth’s face. He stepped inside.

Once upon a time, Dougie’s Diner had been a twenty-four-seven greasy

spoon, but it’d survived long enough to come back into style as fashionably

retro. However, the trendy crowd had abandoned it for the night, allowing

Jon his choice of empty tables. As was his habit, he chose a booth toward

the back of the diner with a good view of the front entrance. Without

glancing at the menu, he ordered a cup of coffee and piece of pie, having the

appetite for neither.

After a few minutes, the waitress returned. She slammed the cup on the

table, sloshing tepid coffee everywhere and then threw down the pie, which

luckily remained on the plate. Barely.

Jon stared at the oily sheen on the coffee’s surface and pushed the cup

away. The pie had survived the rough landing because it consisted of three

cherries suspended in a red gluey substance. Jon experimented with its

resilience, trying to distract himself as he waited impatiently for Laila.

Twenty minutes later, a lone woman entered the diner. She didn’t have

Laila’s face, or that of Marilyn, Julia, or Serenity. Call it instincts,

professional courtesy, or dumb luck, but when she sat down at the booth

across the aisle, Jon knew she was Laila.

“You okay?” he said in a low voice.

“I may have been followed.” She continued without a pause. “Who are

you?”

“Just a guy.”

“Try again.”

“I’m a private investigator looking for David Worth.”

“I don’t care about that. Where’d you come from? Who are your

people? Are there any other men in your family with your abilities?”

“You ask too many questions.”

She whirled around in her seat and faced him. “You have no freakin’

clue, do you?” She thumbed over her shoulder. “There are over two dozen

women in that club who can shift. We become whoever our clients want us

to be, and then we make sure they very well pay for that privilege.”

Jon remembered the hidden camera. “And if they don’t pony up

enough, you resort to extortion.”

She shrugged. “It never comes to that.”

“I don’t believe that. So what? You want to expand your scope? Find

guys like me and put the ‘male’ back in ‘blackmail?’”

Her sigh dripped with exasperation. “You don’t get it, do you? There is

no
blackmail. People are very willing to pay good money for our ability to

fulfill their fantasies. How many people do you know that can shift?”

“Counting you?”

She nodded.

“Two.”

Laila gaped at him. “But your family—”

“Don’t have any. It was just my dad and me, and he’s been gone for a

while, now.”

She gaped. “You mean you got your abilities from him?”

The memories flooded back, accompanied by the usual pang of regret.

“No. He taught me how to pick a lock or a pocket and how to be a

second-story man. But the shifting came from my mother.”

She crossed her arms in doubt. “That’s impossible. We can’t have male

children.”

“Maybe
you
can’t, but she could. And according to Dad, she was a great

shifter.”

Laila pulled out her cell. “Then I need to talk to her. Ask her questions

about who her people are.”

He stared across the room, his eyes refusing to focus. “You can’t. She’s

gone.” The words tasted bad in his mouth.

“Dead?”

“Ran away after I was born. Never met her.” This was
not
the time to

discuss his feelings of abandonment, the sense of rejection and isolation,

when he refused to use his freakish talents to build a criminal career like his

father demanded.

Jon shook away the bitter memories. “But you can answer
my

questions.” He leaned toward her. “When you changed, it was fast and

looked effortless. But when I shift, it hurts like hell and takes all my

concentration, especially for a fast shift. Can you teach me how you do it?”

Her expression darkened. “I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

She hung her head. “Can’t. It’s not all me.” After a moment, she looked

up, guilt coloring her features. “I take . . . an enhancer to help me change.”