“Anyhoo. Robert attacked him for me, distracting him, but he got blasted so I put his finger bone in Centennial Park when we got back.” I could feel myself slipping deeper under the spell of the alcohol, plus the exhaustion that had been a constant state for me since I’d moved back to Savannah. “Sean O’Sean was going to fling a spell at me, but I cut through it with a knife and it blasted us both backward. Me into the drink, him into the back wall of the tunnel.” I wrapped an arm around Corb’s middle.
“What happened to him?”
“Broken neck. He’s dead.”
And with that, having made my confession, I fell sound asleep.
12
Sleep is something not to be taken lightly, especially if you are over forty. So many things can disrupt it. Aching muscles and joints. The need to pee. Bad dreams. Hot flashes. Dry mouth. A raging werewolf.
That last one I really wouldn’t recommend.
“What the actual duck is going on here?” Sarge roared, snapping me out of my deep, relaxing, alcohol-induced sleep. I jerked to one side, my hands going for my knives, which of course I didn’t have on me. But score one for me and my training! My roll took me out of bed and onto the floor, away from danger.
Floor. Where the hell was I? I stared at the floor, recognized that I was still in Corb’s loft. Only this was not my room. I peeked up over the edge of the king-sized bed—Corb’s—to see that he still lay on the other side of the mattress, the sheets pooled around his waist. Shirtless, no less.
“Morning, Sarge.” Corb ran a hand over his head. “Can I help you?”
Sarge’s eyes glittered with a sharp amber that all but screamed wolf as he glared at Corb. “I came to talk to you, and I find this ducking traitor in your bed.”
Sarge shot me a look that had me sitting up and then wobbling to my feet, muscles protesting despite the Advil from the night before, but I knew better than to show any weakness to a mean dog like him. Seriously, what the hell had gotten into him? Then again, it fit with the others. No matter how much I liked this mushy side of Corb, none of them were acting like themselves.
I stumbled around the edge of the bed, struggling to stay upright. “Listen, I know a cranky-ass dog when I see one. Don’t make me swat you with a newspaper!”
His mouth thinned, and his eyes glittered with nothing short of hatred. “I’d like to see you try.”
I pointed a finger at him. “You want me to stuff my fingers in your nose again? This time I’ll yank hard enough to tear you a new nostril!”
Sarge growled at me and I glared in response. What in the world was his problem? Corb swung his legs out of the bed and stood up. “Go easy, man. It’s been a rough night. Meow”—he shook his head—“damn it.”
I grinned, my mean streak showing up. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of that. Sarge, what do you say when you try to talk about what happened to the mentors and the trainees?”
“What do you mean?” he growled.
Both of my eyebrows shot up. “I mean when you and the trainees got knocked out by Douche Canoe and Sean O’Sean? Also, that is a terrible name, his parents had to know he was going to get teased.”
Sarge stared hard at me, his current hatred forgotten for just a moment. “How do you know oink oink oink?” His eyes bugged out and I fell forward on the bed, belly laughing.
Jaysus, my life was complete. I’d heard a werewolf oink like pig and I could die happy now. Which might be sooner than I’d planned given the way my life was going. Someone had shot me, and I currently had two enemies: a werewolf and some powerhouse mage named O’Sean.
I stuffed my face against the blankets, unable to keep back the peals of laughter that would no doubt wake poor Suzy. I couldn’t stop them, I really couldn’t. When I lifted my head up, I thought I’d be alone in the room, but Corb was still there watching me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered around a last giggle. “I really am, but that was too much. And he deserved it considering what a prick he was yesterday.”
Corb shook his head. “It’s dangerous not being able to warn you of anything. I tried writing names and information down last night. Same effect.”
My eyes widened. “You wrote meow, meow, meow?”
His lips might have twitched, but if they did, it was gone very quickly. Speaking of being gone, I did a quick glance around the room for Kinkly. She’d said she would come back after talking to Karissa, but she hadn’t. Which meant I was off the hook for missing last night. Crap, I needed all the guard duty I could get now that I was unemployed. Of course, the sleep was good too—and probably necessary, to be perfectly honest.
I blew out a breath. “What is going on with Sarge? Why does he hate me? Honestly, it’s like he’s a different person now.”
“He doesn’t hate you.” Corb grabbed a pair of pants and yanked them on, his movements jerky. “He’s angry with me, and you’re just getting the spillover because you’re here. But yes, he is more intense than usual, even for him.”
“What’s he angry about?” I asked, not really expecting an answer.
“Nothing to do with work,” Corb muttered. “That would be easier.” He came around the side of the bed and touched my arm. “You feeling okay?”
I shrugged. “Fresh as a daisy. But don’t change the subject. I’m the one getting my ass handed to me because he’s mad at you? That makes no sense.”
He bent and kissed me on the forehead, a rather tender move that set off more warning bells. “You don’t have to leave if you don’t want to. You aren’t disrupting my life. I . . . like having you here.”
Well, that was . . . unexpected. “Thanks.”
“That wasn’t really an answer,” he pointed out.
I smiled and shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a woman of mystery and full of plot twists you’ll probably never see coming.”
His smile was way too bright, and it struck something in my chest that was a little too close to my heart. “Good. I’ll see if I can straighten things out with the other mentors for you and Suzy. But don’t hold your breath. Everyone is out of sorts since meow-meow showed up. Stay low until we have a direction, okay?”
I gave him a jaunty salute, and he patted my cheek of all things before turning and heading out into the main part of the loft. Yeah, something was going on with him too. I crept down the hall to my bedroom and let myself in. Suzy was sleeping fitfully, perhaps fighting an unseen opponent. “No, don’t!” She flung her hands out as if to stop something.
I touched her shoulder and shook her gently. “Suze, it’s just a dream.”
She jerked upright and grabbed at my arm, her eyes wide and not really seeing me. “He had me.”
“He’s gone now.” I pulled her into a hug and she leaned against me, not crying but shuddering from the residual effects of her nightmare.
A solid minute slid by, then another, as the shaking in her body eased. “I need to forget about this for a little while,” she said. “Just pretend like we’re normal, like we didn’t get spelled, and we didn’t see two dead bodies last night.”
“Can we also pretend I didn’t get shot?” I suggested. That was weighing heavily on me. Part of me wanted to believe it was an accident, some hunter off in the woods with an accidental discharge. But of course it wasn’t.
There were too many shots, and all of them aimed at Eric’s house. I knew he’d be safe for now at Gran’s place, but for how long? And who the hell was hunting him, anyway? Or was it me they were after?
Crash had gone looking for the shooter; had he found him? Them?
Suzy squeezed me. “You are cooler than I thought. And the first of us to get shot. It’ll be a good scar.”
I snorted. “What do women do best when they are stressed?”
“Day drinking?” she offered.
“Yeah, that’s a no,” I said.
“Binge-watch Sex and the City while eating ice cream?”
I cringed. Sex and the City was not my cup of tea. “Let’s pass on that one.�
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She sighed. “Well, we could go shopping. To be honest, retail therapy is my favorite, so of those three, I prefer the last.”
I gave her a slow nod. While it didn’t really qualify as lying low, it was probably one of the safer things to do given there’d be people around us. “Why don’t we go down to Death Row? We can do some window shopping, and maybe get Annie to give us a better reading? Maybe she can give us some actual direction.”
Suzy bobbed her head. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
“A girl’s day,” I said. Maybe I would see if Feish would come with us. She could use another friend too. And that would give us another set of eyes on the people around us.
Just in case.
I found some clean clothes, and noted that my leathers were clean and folded on top of the dresser. Corb had stayed up to clean my clothes for me? Or maybe he was looking for clues as to what had happened. Either way, I’d give him a serious amount of points not only for cleaning them, but for having the sense to do so in the first place.
The leathers were probably the better choice than jeans today. Call me cautious, but I doubted things were going to slow down after last night. I’d killed someone. A bad someone, but a death was a death, and Douche Canoe was bound to come looking for Pink Eye’s killer.
Gawd in heaven, I was a killer. My stomach rolled hard and I bent at the waist, breathing slowly. I mean, yes, I’d killed Hattie in self-defense, and Pink Eye’s death had been an accident, but that didn’t make them any less dead.
I frowned and searched through my mind as I pulled my clothes on. I felt sick, but there wasn’t any guilt or remorse hanging out in the corner of my brain. No sentiment that death was bad even when it was necessary. Did that mean I was a psychopath? I grimaced and made a mental note to talk to Crash about my lack of feelings. Surely he’d killed a person or two?
I felt a sudden rush of excitement at the thought of talking to him, and not just because I knew he would understand. Which was all kinds of confusing because Corb had hit some seriously good buttons last night. But I suspected those buttons were not really his to push. Corb, Suzy and Sarge . . . all three felt off. Though looking at Suzy as she got dressed, she seemed much more herself than she’d been the night before.
I made my way out to the kitchen, where Sarge was leaning against the far counter, big arms folded across his chest and a glare etched on his face. Suzy followed me out in her clothes from the night before.
“What are you doing here?” Sarge shot at Suzy. “I fired your ass too.”
She cringed a little, which I didn’t like. So I put an arm over her shoulders. “Threesome.”
Suzy leaned into me, picking the thread up right away, and slid an arm around my waist. Her one eyebrow arched upward, and the sass I knew her for came flooding from her mouth. “You missed out, Sarge. If you’d gotten here earlier, you could have joined in.” For good measure, she kissed me on the cheek. “She’s good.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at her, partly because I was relieved a little bit of the Suzy I’d known from before had shown up to the party, even if I didn’t understand why. “Oh, please. I’m good, but you were definitely better.”
She wrinkled up her nose. “But do you think that last move, with the twist at the end—”
“Stop teasing him,” Corb said from the other side of the room. “You’re going to send him through the roof.”
Defiance ripped through me. “So? He’s not a mentor to us any longer. And if he keeps up this bad behavior, I’ll call the pound on his furry butt.”
Sarge took a half step toward me, which was when Corb stepped between us. “Do not go there, Sarge. Do not come at her.”
Sarge glared back at him, but something else flickered across his face, something I couldn’t quite pinpoint.
Corb put a careful hand on Sarge’s chest and pushed him back. “There was no threesome. They had a rough night, and Breena knows that no matter what, she is always safe here with me. Always.”
Wow. That was some serious protectiveness going on, even for Corb.
The werewolf blinked a few times and the lines in his face eased. “Oh. So no threesome.”
I threw my hands into the air. “That’s all you hear? Jaysus in heaven. No, there was no threesome. Suzy and I are going to Death Row for a few things. Corb, I gave you the details of what happened. Will I get any repercussions from meow-meow?” I winked at him.
“Not right away. Stay together, though. From here on out, we travel in pairs,” Corb said. He walked over to us, gave Suzy a quick hug, and then hugged me too. Only he also dropped a kiss. When I saw his mouth lowering to mine, I turned my head quickly so it ended up on my cheek instead of my lips. “Together, okay?”
I bobbed my head, grabbed my bag from the counter, and headed for the stairs. Suzy followed. Her eyes were locked on me. “Are you two a couple?”
A growl from upstairs paused my feet. Sarge could hear us. “I’m moving out today. Moving into Crash’s place.”
This time it was Corb who let out a growl. Don’t ask me how I could tell them apart, but I could.
This time we made it out the front door before Suzy grabbed my arm. “But are you a couple?”
I shook my head, thinking about all the lube in his bathroom, about how pissed he’d been when I’d shown up at his door with a suitcase and interrupted his hookup sesh, and about the kiss we’d shared in front of Himself.
Which was how I found myself thinking of a different kiss, between Crash and me. The kiss that had given me a new standard to all kisses.
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Huh. He likes you though.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. Let’s get Feish and go shopping.”
Picking up Feish would give me a chance to talk to Gran about the card I’d drawn with the tarot reader, Sean O’Sean. Gran might be a ghost, and her memories could be spotty at times, but she was still the one source I trusted above any other in the shadow world.
I could also tell Eric he needed to lay low until we figured out who the hell was shooting at us.
We didn’t bother driving to Gran’s place—scratch that, now Crash’s place—as it really wasn’t that far. Ten minutes of walking through Savannah’s squares brought us to the door of the house that I’d grown up in.
“You sure about bringing Feish?” Suzy asked. “Crash is not known for being a good guy.”
I’d heard that enough times that I was doing my best to believe it, even if my body wanted me to pour a bottle of Corb’s lube out on Crash and roll around on him. “Sure, but Feish is his slave. It’s not her fault and she really is lovely. She’s helped me out more than once, and I consider her a friend.”
Lovely might have been a stretch. I mean, Feish was . . . well, she was Feish. A river maid who had more than a few fish-like features. But she was a good friend and that was all that mattered to me.
As we stood on the doorstep of my gran’s house (I’d decided on our walk over that I was not going to call it Crash’s house), I knocked—which felt incredibly odd—and Feish opened the door.
A normal human saw a woman with a harelip and narrowed eyes.
We saw a woman with fish lips, big bulbous eyes, greenish-yellow skin, and a flash of gills along her neck when her high-collared shirt slipped. She had webbed fingers and I assumed webbed toes, though I’d never seen them. “Is this the one from the Hollows?” Feish said, looking Suzy over suspiciously.
I wanted to roll my eyes but contained myself. “You know it is. You were there when she got fired too, so don’t be difficult. And she’s a friend,” I said.
“But I am your friend.” Feish looked at me with what could only be hurt on her fishy face. I sighed.
“I can have more than one friend, and so can you. Suzy worked with me at the Hollows, and we had a rough night. She’s got siren blood.” I hoped that last bit would help, seeing as they were both from water backgrounds.
I took a few steps into the house past Feish.
“Corb called you last night? He filled you in?”
Feish nodded. “He did. He was polite. I think he loves you, but it’s not real.”
My feet stuttered and I cleared my throat. “Right, well, that’s a problem for later. Right now I need to speak with my gran. We have problems in spades and no shovels to dig our own graves.” That was a saying my gran had pulled out more than once, and it flowed out of my lips before I could catch it.
Feish leaned around to look at Suzy. “You are a siren? Do you know,” and then she made a sound that was like bubbles flying out of her mouth.
Suzy gave a slow nod. “I do.”
Feish gave a sharp nod. “Good, come in. I’ll make tea.”
“The good stuff.” I gave Feish a pointed look and followed it with a pointed finger. “Not like the first time you met me.”
She gave me a wide grin that showed off some stubbly flat teeth. “Ha. Fine, I make good tea.” She motioned for Suzy to follow her into the kitchen, where the rumble of Eric’s voice called out, “I have biscuits ready. I bake when I’m nervous, and I couldn’t sleep, even after we heard from your friend that you were okay.”
Suzy glanced at me, and I gave her a nod, shooing her along with a wave of my hands. I trusted Feish and Eric far more than I did Sarge. Suzy was safe here.
“What happened the first time you met Bree?” Suzy asked Feish.
“I tried to give her tea to make her poop a whole lot. Just in case she was there to hurt Boss.”
Suzy choked on what was probably a laugh as I took the stairs to the second floor of the house. “Gran?”
Movement in the direction of the sitting room that had doubled as Gran’s library turned me in that direction. Gran was sometimes a full-blown apparition so clear you’d think you were looking at a real live person, but this time there were just hints of her—the outline of a body and sway of a skirt. I hurried toward the library. “Gran, are you fading?”
A sigh rippled through the air and her body solidified in front of me. She entered the room and sat in the high-backed chair behind her oversized dark mahogany desk. Her long hair, which usually flew about her face in messy, bright silver waves, was actually swept off to one side. Green eyes that reflected my own were as keen as ever. Today she wore one of her favorite garments, a long flowing burgundy skirt that had more volume than necessary, as if she were doing a throwback to the eighteen hundreds. The fact that she’d paired it with a white blouse that was ruffled at the collar and cuffs only added to the effect. I almost wondered if she was wearing the outfit to freak out the neighbors, which was quite possible. “No, I am not fading really. But it will be better when you are here. You took Crash up on the offer to move in?”
Midlife Fairy Hunter: The Forty Proof Series, Book 2 Page 14
