Kate Daniels 01 - Magic Bites by authors_sort Page B

trace of a curl.
    Her face was perfectly formed, with high prominent cheekbones, aquiline nose, huge eyes, and a full mouth. As she strode to the highrise, her face wore an expression which on someone less attractive would be called a sneer. Elegant, graceful, and arrogant in her beauty, she was like a young Arabian horse, haughty and cruel and an irresistible challenge to any male.
    A lone passerby stopped, struck by the sight of her. I thought he whistled but could not tell for sure. The blonde ignored his presence without even trying; for her, he simply did not exist. I put away the binoculars and returned to my Almanac.
    Five minutes later the lock clicked and the blonde walked through the door. She saw me and stopped. The sneer vanished. “Oh, good. I have something for you.”
    Not again.
    She went to the kitchen, retrieved several protein cans from a cabinet, and put them onto the bar. A bag of dried apricots joined the cans, together with a bag of sugar, a block of chocolate, and an oversized blender. She took a carton of eggs from the fridge and cracked three into the blender. Two handfuls of apricots followed, with several cups of sugar, the chocolate, and the contents of at least six cans. “Ice water,” the blonde murmured, nodding to the drink I had gotten myself. “You could’ve gotten something from the bar.”
    “I wanted water,” I said.
    The blonde smiled, a strange expression on her face, and turned on the blender. The blades spun, converting the contents into a thick uniform paste. She unplugged the blender, detached the top with a practiced twist, and drank straight from it.
    “What is it, about two-thirds of a gallon?” I asked.
    She stopped drinking for a moment. “Closer to three-quarters, actually.”
    She finished and unceremoniously pulled her dress over her head. I looked at my book again.
    “Are you uncomfortable?” the blonde laughed, stripping her stockings.
    “No, just giving you a bit of privacy.” And hoping to miss the glorious moment when my stomach would clench and squirt its burning contents into my throat.
    “You could just admit that I make you ill.”
    “There is that.”
    “How do you like her?” the blonde asked.
    I glanced up and saw her standing nude on the floor. “Not bad for an ice queen. The breasts are too large.”
    The blonde grimaced. “Yes, I know.”
    “Why a woman?” I wondered.
    “Because I deal in information, Kate, and men tend to blab their secrets to beautiful women.” She smiled. “As you well know.”
    “I usually have to threaten men with bodily harm before they tell me secrets.”
    “Then I feel sorry for those men. They obviously have poor taste. Do you know who makes the converters that go into our feylamps?”
    “I have no idea.”
    “There are four companies, actually. By the end of the week the city council will decide which one of them gets a municipal contract for the next three years. Right now there are three people in this city who know how they will vote.”
    “Let me guess, you’re one of them?”
    The blonde didn’t answer, but her smile widened just a little, permitting a brief glimpse of white teeth. Even a financial moron like me knew the price of that kind of information had to be astronomic.
    Her muscles moved, stretching, twisting, as if a tangle of worms suddenly came to life under her skin. My stomach lurched. I clenched my teeth and tried to keep my dinner where it belonged. The blonde’s pelvis shifted, her shoulders grew broad, her legs thickened, while her breasts dissolved, forming a massive male chest. Ropes of muscles coiled, shaping powerful legs and huge arms. The bones of her face crawled, the nose thickening, the jaw becoming strong and square. The eye color darkened to piercing intense blue. The hair dissolved and grew again, this time turning dark brown. I blinked and a man stood before me. Muscular with the crisp exactness of a professional body builder, he was towering and quite well endowed.