Chapter 79

Remy looked around the room at the elegant little bed and breakfast. Very nice. Very comfortable. The bed would have held the entire defense of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
"Remember to thank your friend for not using our real names," he told Mari.
Mari giggled, then paused in her circuit of the room's appointments. He could tell she wasn't used to such luxury, and he hoped he'd have a chance, after this was all over, to spoil her a bit.
"You realize she thinks you're married - to someone else. Or that you're someone so rich and famous you're hiding here incognito."
"She can think whatever she likes," Remy said. He walked up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist. "As long as she doesn't say anything. That way you'll be safe while I go retrieve the cup."
Mari leaned back against his chest and sighed. She even rubbed her delectable little ass up against his groin. "No."
She felt so good pressed up against him that Remy got lost in the sensation of her for a moment. He filled his hands with her breasts and rubbed his erection against her ass. Then her word penetrated his lust-fogged brain and he straightened. "What?"
"I said no, Remy." She turned and gazed up at him. Fierce sincerity shone in her big brown eyes. "I'm not going to let you go dashing off into danger without any back up. I know this area. I know where Delmonico lives. You don't."
"Cherie..." Remy wasn't used to feeling protective. It bothered him to realize exactly how much she'd come to matter to him in such a short time. "I promise, I'm only going to scope things out tonight. I'll call for help..."
"No." She laid one finger across his lips.
He caught her hand in his and kissed her finger before moving it from his mouth. Before he could carry the argument any further, his cell phone rang.
"Un moment, si'l te plaît." He pulled out his phone. Beau.
She nodded and stepped away with a sweet little smile.
"Hey, big guy. How's it hanging?"
Remy could almost hear Beau's grimace. The biggest and toughest of his friends had no sense of humor at all and it was fun to razz him. "Everything is hanging just fine. I have a message for you from Lady Helene."
Remy immediately wiped the grin from his face. Messages from the seer were serious. "Go on."
"She says that whatever must be done, must be done by you. Tonight. Whatever the hell that means."
"I have an idea, unfortunately," Remy growled back. "Shit."
Beau remained silent on the other end of the line.
Remy sighed and scrubbed his hand across his face. "Okay. But before I go do what a guy's gotta do, I have a favor to request. There's a lady helping me, who may need a safe place when this is over. She's a shifter, Beau. Her name is Marina Bell, and if everything goes to hell here tonight, I want your word that someone will get to Atlantic City and get her out."
"Done." One thing nice about Beau, he didn't bother with qualified answers or extraneous considerations. "I will leave as soon as we're off the phone. I can be there by morning."
Remy gave Beau the name and address of the inn. He also gave him Delmonico's name, just in case. If he didn't retrieve the cup, perhaps someone else could.
"Good luck, mon frére." Beau's voice was gruffer than normal. "Be careful. Watch that scrawny ass of yours. My mother is unaccountably fond of it."
Beau's parents had taken Remy in after his own had died. Not even gargoyles could regenerate fast enough to survive a fiery airplane crash. In human form they were almost as vulnerable as anyone else. Losing Beau's father to cancer only a few years ago had been another blow. It was one of the reasons Remy was so determined to find the cup that represented healing to his people - so no more gargoyles would have to suffer like Antoine DuMont.
"I'll be careful," Remy told his friend with an uncharacteristic seriousness. He'd moved away from Mari as he spoke and now he pitched his voice even lower and spoke in French. "I suddenly find I have a lot to live for."
After dark, Marina swam through the waves with a plastic bag in her teeth. It contained her cell phone, which had been programmed with several numbers by Remy. He'd finally reluctantly agreed to letting her come along on his reconnaissance mission, but only after she'd threatened to follow on her own if he didn't.
She'd known him less than twenty-four hours and already the thought of being without him made her want to cry. Was this how her mother had felt with each new lover? Was this mysterious pull why she'd dragged her daughters from place to place while she jumped from man to man? It didn't ring true to Mari, but whatever this complex, terrifying emotion was, it was something more than she'd ever felt before.
The moon was high, having risen late tonight, and it was almost full, casting a silvery glow on the water. At least the ocean was calm tonight, she thought as she swam. Elaborate mansions and ornate gardens dotted the landscape she swam past. She ignored them and homed in on the point of land she knew isolated Delmonico's beach house from the others.
She rounded the point and saw nothing. Dark shrubberies obscured the mansion from the coast, but as she swam closer she began to make out the shape of the house beyond the bushes. She also realized that the hedges hid an actual wall. Damn, she hoped Remy wouldn't have to go up over that.
Swimming up toward the shore she found a tall rock with a flat top. She hoisted her round, flippered body onto it and tucked the cell phone into a crevasse in the rock. Then she looked up at the house from her new vantage point. It was a tall Victorian style with bay windows and turrets. A long wide balcony ran across the third floor. Candles flickered there and a man - a human at any rate - in a black robe was bent over a small table.
Was that Delmonico? And what was he doing? She searched out a closer rock and moved to it, hoping she could see and hear what was going on.