The Unlikeable Demon Hunter (Nava Katz #1)(45)

I shot a couple of sparks at him. “I’m a menacing badass.”

He leaned back in his recliner with a smirk. “You don’t have the literal or figurative balls to hurt an old man, and since you didn’t bring the appropriate bribe, we’re done.”

I stood there seething because he was right. I couldn’t hurt him. But if I didn’t, and word got out that I was soft, it’d mean a rep as easy prey.

Easier prey.

“Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.” If the Vancouver chapter dealt with this guy even semi-regularly, there had to be some kind of contingency fund for the bribe. Though I shuddered at the paperwork involved. And explaining how I’d found him. Could I bribe Ms. Clara to keep this visit from Rohan?

The old man rose out of his seat, heading for the front door at a good clip. “Out you go…” He paused, half-turning back to me. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Nava,” I sighed.

He choked on his cigarette. “Nava?” He stabbed a finger at me. “What’s your last name?”

“Katz,” I replied, totally confused.

He burst out laughing.

“Old man, you’re pissing me off.”

A few more guffaws and he got himself under control. He tore a corner off a detailed sketch of an alien, grabbing a stubby pencil and scrawling something across the drawing. “The goblin should be here for another half hour.”

I took the paper. “What about the cost?”

“This one’s on the house.”

“Why?”

He reached his knobby fingers out as if to pluck the paper away. I got the hint and fled.

I plugged the address he’d given me into the car’s GPS, finding it on a two-block long street in one of the skeezier areas of town. I pulled into the tiny, weed-choked parking lot, gazing up at the sputtering neon sign for Motel Shangri-Lola, having had no idea this place existed.

Motel Shangri-Lola was a low slung building painted a faded green. More a memory of green than actual paint. Lola wasn’t some former grand dame of a motel fallen on hard times, no, she’d been brought into existence a hard-livin’ fungirl. An impression made more vivid by the row of outward-leaning scraggly pines extending from either side of the building, like legs drunkenly falling open.

I slammed the car door, strode up the sidewalk, flung open the lobby door, and gasped. My eyes watered at the overpowering stench of tuna fish. I threw my sleeve up over my nose until I’d climbed the worn stairs to the second floor. Sniffing and finding the air tolerable, if not fresh, I dropped my arm, searching the room numbers for 207.

It was a thick brown door like all the others in the hallway. I pressed my ear against it, but couldn’t hear anything, so grasping the knob and finding it unlocked, I opened it, hoping to surprise the demon.

A dim table lamp provided the sole lighting in the room but it was strategically placed to show off the velvet painting of “Shangri-Lola” herself, a large-breasted wonder in shades of blue. On the table under it sat a digital recording device, capturing the sounds from the room adjacent to this one. Specifically the slow but steady pounding of the headboard against the wall and some man’s rumbled, “Yeah, baby. Use that cat tongue.”

I didn’t realize he’d meant it literally until I heard his partner answer in some kind of demon language. Seems the snitch was a goblin P.I. on the case of some human/demon bow chica wow wow. Gathering evidence of a little interspecies adultery?

Speaking of the snitch… On the far side of this room, lay some short chick in shadow. She rested atop a garbage bag spread on top of the faded bedspread, staring up at the ceiling, one black, knee-high boot tapping against the lumpy double mattress.

I hadn’t expected a female goblin. I stepped closer trying to spot her pointy red cap and long white beard, or just her facial features, when I got distracted by the guy in the next room orgasming with a final hard pound against the wall and a lusty shout.

There was silence for a minute and then the sound of wet snuffling. I grimaced.

“One minute you’re enjoying your tawdry affair in a bed solidified with the sweat of a thousand asses, the next you’re laying in a demon wet spot with the niggling suspicion that your kink is a bit too out of hand,” said the woman here with me.

I froze, knowing that voice anywhere. “Leo?”

My high school best friend bolted up, allowing me to see her face, and the familiar fall of red hair that spilled over one shoulder. She blinked her brown eyes twice, her small silver eyebrow ring glinting as it caught the light. “Nava? What the shit are you doing here?”

“What are you doing here?” My brain failed to compute her presence.

She motioned toward the neighboring room with the sex noises. “I was on a job. P.I. work.”

Huh? But the old dude had sent me here because– “You’re the goblin?” My heart stuttered. That wasn’t possible. This was my Leonie in her trademark black stockings, cut-off shorts, and funky T-shirt worn underneath a cool velvet long-sleeved shirt, accessorized with all her silver jewelry.

Leo scrambled off the bed, looking around frantically. “Is Ari here?”

Ari?! A growl tore from my throat and I slammed my crackling hand right into her chest, knocking her back.

“Psycho!” Leo threw a chair at me.