Priceless

for me. Nope, best not to go down that route; too dangerous by far.
    “You need to soak for at least ten minutes, make sure you dunk your head. We’ll put your shoes in after.” I stepped out into the main room.
    While I waited for O’Shea, I started to go through the list of mineshafts Kyle sent me. There were four, as Kyle said, and one was cemented, so that was a no go. Which left only three to consider. One of those three fell short of the two hundred feet by six inches. But if there was one thing I’d learned, it was if a Shaman said two hundred feet or better, they meant it in a very literal sense.
    I stared at the last two mineshafts, my gut clenching as the details became clear. One was relatively new, only fifty or so years old, and there were ongoing happenings around it, including a still active mine with employees working there on shift 24/7.
    The other was pretty much out in the middle of nowhere; the closest town and actual road was over sixty miles away from it. Not to mention—I flipped the page to make sure I was getting the facts right—it was closer to two hundred and fifty feet and was about to be capped as several people had fallen into it over the last few years. Kyle sent me a newspaper clipping on the last victim of the mineshaft fall. “The body was so badly mangled that the coroner repeatedly questioned the rescuers on the location of the body. He stated that it looked like some of the wounds had not been inflicted by the fall itself, but by some other source.”
    Interesting they didn’t actually mention what the other source of wounds might be.
    Alex let out a fart and rolled over, his tongue lolling out in a toothy grin.
    I opened the window with a grimace and, as I turned back to the bed, a soggy, grumpy agent stormed out of the bathroom.
    “My clothes are ruined,” he snarled.
    “Ooh, now that was the O’Shea I’d been missing,” I said, shrugged and continued. “Better that than having you strip tease for me and putting the clothes in after.”
    His face slowly turned red and the veins running up the side of his neck pulsed, but he said nothing.
    I smirked and enjoyed the momentary silence. It didn’t last long.
    “You said you’d explain everything,” he said, his eyes hard and flinty. He was not a happy agent.
    Alex jumped up and looked out the window as I started to give O’Shea the rundown. Witches, Daywalkers, werewolves, and Ogres. Just to start. He dried his hair with a towel, which gave it a very, very sexy rumpled look.
    Sexy? Who said that? I caught the turn of my thoughts before they could get me into trouble. Damn, but it was sexy. His hair was still damp, and the moisture caught the little bit of light coming through the window. He leaned back and ran one hand through his hair, his bicep flexing under the wet cloth of his shirt. I scrambled back, blinking. Maybe I’d got some of the spell on me? Like when he’d me pinned up against the wall in the elevator, or thrown me over his shoulder. I was only
mostly
immune to magic. Some of it could stick. Damn, this was not the time to have my immunity fail me.
    Problem was, being a supernatural myself, when I
did
get some sort of spell on me, I was way more susceptible to it than others. Almost like an allergy. What made O’Shea horny was about to send me over the deep end of whoredom. I was about to make Milly look like the Virgin Mary. Crap. I tried to sidle past him to the bathroom, but all I could think about was how I’d kissed him the other day, the sharp tang of mint on his tongue, how his body felt holding me against the wall.
    “This is bad,” I whispered, my hand reaching for his hair as I struggled to make it to the bathroom without pouncing on him.
    “What’s your issue now?” He grumped at me, the deep bass of his voice giving me chills in a not unpleasant way, his dark eyes glaring at me. Never in all the years he’d tried to pin Berget’s death on me had I thought him attractive. Of course, I’d hated him with a passion, and it would have been impossible for me to see past that.
    I clenched my jaw, pulled my fingers back and ran the last few steps into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. My body shook with the need to feel him against me, skin on skin. I let out a low groan and sat on the edge of the tub, relishing the unfamiliar sensations rippling through me. A sex life was just not something I’d engaged in. Too dangerous to get close to people, not to mention messy as