Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(26)

Bob sat in a stuffed chair next to her, his feet on an ottoman. He appeared quite comfortable, lounging in a light blue Hawaiian shirt, white pants, and no shoes. A taupe blanket with a woven cherry blossom pattern lay across his legs. I wondered if this is where he’d been sleeping instead of the couch in the living room.

As I stepped through the doorway, they looked up from what they’d been watching on TV. They were both smiling goofy grins.

Clearly, I’d walked into some sort of apocalyptic nightmare.

“What are you watching?” I asked.

“A Three’s Company marathon,” Kar Yee said in a lazy voice. “Bob says the three of us should move in together and recreate episodes. What do you think? Tambuku could be the Regal Beagle.”

“Are you both on painkillers now?”

This was too weird for me. I’d be glad when the bar was open again and Kar Yee was in the back office being her normal ruthless self.

“Are you okay?” Bob asked me.

Kar Yee feigned a pouty face. “Never mind little miss killjoy. She’s sad. She doesn’t get to sleep with her big-handed boyfriend tonight. Boo-hoo.”

“Big-handed?”

A lock of Kar Yee’s hair slipped out of its sloppy topknot. We’d managed to get most of the paint out, but not all, so she’d had her hair stylist come by and chop off an inch of her bob. Now it was too short to stay in its binding. “His hands are veiny and muscular,” she explained.

“You make it sound like he’s got gigantic ham hands.” They were like the rest of him: strong and lean. He was in perfect shape. It was almost criminal. Muscular, but not showy or beefcake-y. Fabulous arms. And a beautiful stomach with the most perfect ridge of dipping muscle right above his hipbones and—

“His fingers are long, but they sure aren’t skinny,” Kar Yee noted. “Pressing all those camera buttons must give them a regular workout.”

And taking all these pain pills must be rotting soft spots right through her brainpan.

“They are very tan fingers,” she added, the beginnings of a slow smile lifting her lips.

“So’s the rest of him. He spends a lot of time outdoors.”

“Is he tan below the waistband?”

“Please stop fantasizing about Lon.”

Bob squirmed uncomfortably beneath the cherry blossom blanket. He looked as if he might hack up all the popcorn they’d been chowing down. “Is this what you two talk about after work?”

I said “no” at the same time Kar Yee said “yes.” Then she threw a piece of popcorn at me.

“Seriously, Bob,” I pleaded, bending to pick it up and toss it back in her bowl. “Wean her off the meds. You said she could take the brace off tomorrow.”

“She can,” he insisted, then mumbled, “You try to wean her off.”

Kar Yee was laughing at the TV, oblivious to our conversation. Once Bob left, I was going to swap out all her pills with Tylenol. “Hey,” I said, snapping my fingers in front of her face. “If you even care, I got the name of one of the guys who robbed us.”

Her languid gaze sharpened immediately. “Don’t tease me.”

“Noel Saint-Hill. The one who used his knack to cut the lights.”

“The wimpy elf?”

Bob threw off the blanket. “Are you serious? How did you find this out? The Morella Racetrack thing?”

I gave them a brief account, leaving out the parts about the silver fog and my dead mother’s voice. Though I did tell them about biting my tongue, which still hurt like hell. Kar Yee offered me one of her painkillers; Bob quickly shook his head while she wasn’t looking.

Part of me wished Bob wasn’t here. It might’ve given me a chance to talk to Kar Yee about my identity. Confessing while she was doped up might make things easier. Then again, that was pretty chickenshit. I guessed I’d wait until after she was healed up, but it was starting to make me antsy. Once I decide to do something, I prefer to get it over with.

“By the way, I need two favors,” I said.

Bob looked up. “Yes?”

“Can you start searching for Noel Saint-Hill’s address online?” I’d already done some poking around on my phone during a short break in the Giovanni-Butler reunion and found what could very well be a couple of his social network profiles—it was hard to tell from the photos, but it didn’t matter, because they were protected.

“On it,” Bob said, whipping out his laptop.

I thanked him, then spoke to Kar Yee. “I also need the key to the rooftop access stairs.”

“Why?”

“Magick. I have to do a spell.”

“On the roof?” she complained. “It’s past midnight.”

“It’s important. Will take me thirty minutes, tops. No one will see.”

She raised a slim, dark brow and puckered her lips, as if she might say no, then blew out a spacey, drug-blissed breath. “Ehhh, all right. As long as you’re not painting pig’s blood on anything, the key is hanging over the phone in the kitchen. But if any of the other tenants catch you, I have no idea who you are.”

• • •

Kar Yee’s apartment building stood ten stories high on the edge of midtown, surrounded by Morella’s twinkling high-rises. Behind me, twenty miles in the black distance, lay La Sirena and the Pacific coast . . . and the bed I normally shared with Lon. I wondered if he’d have trouble sleeping without me. He said he did when he was on business trips.