Of course, neither had I.
“Damn it! There must be a way!”
“If you have the pass code to the wards,” Tami agreed. “Otherwise, you need a way to bring them down, and then a safecracker to get you in. Or you’re going to be here a very long time.”
Chapter Thirty-six
I found Rico in the kitchen when we got back, doing the breakfast dishes. He had his jacket off and his sleeves rolled up, showing off muscular forearms. His dark brown hair was disheveled, the neck of his shirt was open, showing a V of taut bronze skin, and a smear of soap suds decorated his cheek. He looked like every woman’s dream, and I caught Rhea staring.
Rico did, too, and dropped her a wink.
Rhea did not appear to know what to do with that. Maybe because the only men at the Pythian Court had been about eighty. And because the initiates did not appear to have learned normal social skills. Like they’d been trained to be stoic and serene, but not how to interact with regular guys.
Or not-so-regular ones.
Rhea finally solved the problem by awkwardly winking back, which caused Rico to burst out laughing.
“I need a favor,” I told him, and nodded at her. The silence spell clicked shut around us.
“My dream come true,” Rico told me, still grinning at an increasingly flustered Rhea.
“I need a safe cracked. Do you know someone who can do it?”
Those liquid eyes slid to me. “What kind of safe?”
And some days, I loved vamps. No question about what was inside; no debates about possible legality. Just what kind is it?
I pulled my cell phone out of my jeans and showed him a photo. “That kind.”
A request to commit a felony didn’t even rate a blink. “Does it have to be operational after?” he asked, taking the phone from me.
“I don’t care if you rip it out of the damned wall.”
An eyebrow went up. “What about wards?”
I glanced at Rhea. “The wards . . . aren’t going to be a problem,” she said, a little breathlessly.
“Not a problem? Then this is a human’s safe?”
She looked at me.
I sighed and came out with it. “No, but the house it’s in is about to blow up, so the wards will be offline.”
A second eyebrow joined the first. “Sounds intriguing.”
“It will be okay,” Rhea said, as if she was trying to convince herself as much as him. “No one should be in the room at the time—”
“If the house is about to blow up, that would seem prudent,” he said gently.
“—but to be on the safe side—”
“Was that a pun?” he teased.
Rhea looked confused some more.
“Rico,” I said impatiently. “Do you know anyone who can do it?”
“Yes, me.”