Tom turned fatherly eyes in my direction. “Sorry, this happened, kid. We’ll see what we can find out about that mage and Beetlejuice. I’ll keep you posted.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
“Bernadetta Fiore sent them,” Jake said.
Tom’s eyes narrowed. “It’s not wise to throw accusations without proof.”
Jake huffed.
Tom turned to me. “I would assign you a police escort, but we’re short-staffed. Why don’t you stay with me tonight?”
“It’s fine, Tom. I’ll be all right.”
Jake watched with interest, one eyebrow raised.
Tom rubbed his forehead, preoccupied. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“If you want, I can—” Jake began.
“No.” I glared at him, cutting short whatever he’d been about to suggest.
“I can take care of myself. I’d already subdued the intruder when you showed up, remember?” I turned to Tom. “And thanks to you, I know how to use a gun, so I’m fine.” I paused, then almost asked if they had any leads on Stephen’s case but thought better of it. “Is that all?”
Tom nodded. “For now.”
“Wait,” Jake said as I stood, “you’re not going to ask her to help us find Stephen?”
Tom’s deep brown eyes went from Jake to me, then back. “No, I am not. Ms. Sunder has declined to aid our department in missing person cases even in a salaried capacity.”
Yep, Tom had offered me a job. I would’ve helped his closing rate in Skew cases, but I picked the cheerier path of mate tracking. I didn’t have his strength of character and probably would turn into a psycho bitch if I saw the same thing every day.
Jake pushed air through his nose. “Yeah, I heard she turned selfish.”
“She has her reasons, and I respect them,” Tom said the last few words with emphasis, hinting that Jake should respect them, too. Opening a folder, Tom started perusing it, a clear indicator that he was done with us.
“Thank you, Tom,” I said. “Good luck with your case. And get some sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he said, without looking up.
Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I walked out of Tom’s office and started dialing Rosalina’s number. Jake’s hand on my shoulder stopped me in my tracks.
“So now you call him Tom?” he asked.
“You’ve been gone for a while. A lot has changed around here.”
I stared pointedly at his fingers on my shoulder. He let go and held up his hand, apologetically. His silver gaze intent on mine, he leaned closer. I immediately pulled back, my eyes falling to his mouth of their own accord.
He pinched his eyebrows and scoffed. “Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart.”
Anger twisted in the pit of my stomach like a writhing snake. The bastard! I wanted to slap him right then and there, but I controlled myself. As ideas went, starting a brawl around all these uniformed cops didn’t exactly get the prize.
“I see you’re still the same narcissistic jackass you’ve always been,” I shot back. Still as hot as hell and able to set my panties on fire with one smoldering look, too. Damn him!
God, I hated him.
“I only want to warn you.” He leaned closer again, his deep voice a mere whisper that made the tiny hairs on the back of my arms stand on end. “You have to be careful. This wasn’t a random attack. I think it’s related to Stephen’s disappearance.”
“Stop trying to make everything about Stephen.” I held his gaze, resolutely. Even if my panties had turned to ash, I still had my pants on and could hold my own. “The Hill has never been a safe place. Things like this happen.”
“Kidnapping, Toni?”
He had a point. Hit-and-runs, burglary, armed robbery, spell robbery... they topped the list of what we normally dealt with, but kidnapping? That belonged in an entirely different category. Still, he wouldn’t drag me into anything I didn’t want to be part of. It’d taken a lot of work to build my life back up, and I wasn’t going to throw it all away for a pair of smoldering clear eyes and a hot body. Not to mention other hot things...
I squared my shoulders. “Like I said, I know how to take care of myself, and even if I didn’t, it’s not your job to worry about me, is it? You quit that job a long time ago, so you need to stop pretending you care when what you’re really worried about is a fat paycheck from Ulfen Erickson.”
His expression tightened. A muscle jumped in his jaw and his eyes smoldered in an entirely different way. Uh-oh, I’d pissed him off. Good! To my surprise, when he spoke, his tone sounded noncommittal.
“I don’t want anything bad to happen to you, Toni.”
“Isn’t that charitable of you? But I’ll be fine. Don’t worry your werewolf head about it.” I turned and walked away.
I thought I’d gotten rid of him, but he caught up to me outside.
“I hope you’re not going back to your office,” he said, trying to sound casual.
I ignored him as I stood at the edge of the sidewalk and thumbed through my contacts. It was past midnight, and a blanket of dark gray clouds covered the sky. I hoped it wouldn’t rain. At least not until I got to Rosalina’s.
“Do you have somewhere to stay besides the loft?” he asked.
How the hell did he know I lived in the loft?! I raised my eyebrows at him. “You've been spying on me, I see.”
“It’s my job to know things,” he offered.
“If that’s the case, then you should know where I’m headed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone call.”
I walked away and dialed Rosalina’s number.
“Is everything all right?” was the first thing she said, her voice in a panic.
“Not exactly, but I’m fine,” I reassured her. “I need to crash with you for a few days if that’s okay?”
“Of course! What happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now, I need to get out of here. I’ll be there in twenty.”
I disconnected the call, then got an Uber. I couldn’t get away from Jake fast enough, and I didn’t like the way he stared at my driver one bit. He certainly looked like someone who thought it was his job to worry about me.
Chapter 11
The next day, I woke up with a terrible headache. My head pounded, and no amount of Rosalina’s strong Columbian coffee did the trick. She stood by the stove, scrambling eggs, and frying bacon, while I sat at her kitchen table, holding my head. She lived in a small, two-bedroom, one-bath condo in Soulard. She’d moved in only six months ago and loved it.
In part, our partnership had made it possible. She’d had savings from before, but the agency kept us solvent. We made enough to pay our loan, rent, cover our bills, and still have enough money to do fun stuff, which was more than most people our age could do for themselves.
From what I’d learned about Rosalina during the short sixteen months since I’d met her, she’d always had a good head on her shoulders. She got good grades in college while studying Business Administration, even as she worked odd jobs in her free time and saved as much as possible. I met her at one of those jobs. Starbucks, evening shift after classes, I’d ordered an espresso, and when the change in my pocket came short, she waved it off and said it was on the house. Not only that, but she also noticed my gaunt face and the slobbery way I ogled the pastries behind the glass display.
I’d been on the streets for a month by then, but I hadn’t stopped being embarrassed by charity or hunger. I bit my tongue and took the cup because of the hollow in my belly. Grateful for something warm—it was freezing outside—I sat in a corner, nursing my coffee, and listening to Christmas carols from the overhead speakers.
At closing time, I walked out and glanced around, trying to decide which way to go. My hands itched to call Mom or Daniella, my older sister, but I hated the thought of going back with my tail between my legs, and I didn’t want to hear the inevitable “I told you so.” Stubbornness and pride ranked high on my list of personali
ty traits. So instead, I set my jaw and walked toward Tower Grove Park. I’d slept there before anyway.
“Hey,” Rosalina called, rushing out of the coffee shop, a paper bag in hand.
I turned to face her.
“I thought you might be hungry.” She offered me the bag.
I stared at it with a frown.
“It’s just an egg muffin. They’re pretty good,” she said with a gentle smile that, for some reason, made my heart tighten weirdly.
I was broke and on the streets, and that espresso had been more than I’d expected. And now, here was food. My stomach gave a painful pang, and I couldn’t refuse it, not even after hefting the bulk of my pride on top of my shoulders.
Slowly, my hand reached for the paper bag. Rosalina waited, wearing the same comforting smile. Something about her sincere expression touched me in a way nothing had. Maybe because, at that moment, I’d become as vulnerable as an abandoned kitten. Either way, I immediately wanted to know her, to be her friend.
“Thank you,” I said, my voice breaking.
“No worries. Are you all right?” she asked, her expression full of genuine concern.
I nodded, a lie. I was scared, worried I’d end up in a ditch with my throat cut, another victim of the high crime rate in St. Louis.
Rosalina’s lips had tightened. I could tell she hadn’t believed me. “Um, I live nearby. Would you like to hang out for a bit? We could watch some Netflix or something.”
The rest was history.
Now, I smiled fondly at my friend as she walked up to the table, carrying two plates. She handed me one and sat across from me. “Eat up! You’re gonna need your strength for the trance.”
I dug into the eggs and bacon. She cooked them just the way I liked them, the eggs underdone and the bacon crispy.
“Thank you,” I said through a mouthful. Normally, I didn’t eat a hot breakfast. The loft didn’t have a kitchen, so my first meal of the day came out of a mini-fridge. A yogurt or cheese stick that never did the trick.
Rosalina picked up her coffee cup and held it thoughtfully. “The news are disturbing this morning. Some battle between vampires and werewolves broke out in The Scourge.”
The Scourge was a commercial district reserved for supernatural beings. Regular laws didn’t apply there, and Stales and vulnerable Skews entered at their discretion.
She continued. “A band of werewolves immolated a couple of young vamps. They held them in the open ‘til the sun came out.”
I grimaced. “What a horrible death.”
“The article suggested the vamps belonged to Bernadetta Fiore’s faction and that the attack might have been in retaliation for Stephen Erickson’s kidnapping.”
“Things are getting uglier by the minute.”
“Yes, they are.”
We sat in silence for a moment, then Rosalina got to business.
“Okay,” she held a piece of bacon between her thumb and forefinger as she spoke, “we need to go to the office to pick up the potion. Hopefully, the trance won’t take a huge toll on you this time, and we can go back later to straighten things out.”
“Sounds good.” I really needed this trance to be easy. I had to be at my best to deal with the current shit storm.
“God, I swear, if I could get my hands on that bastard who attacked you, I would kill him all over again,” Rosalina said. “And instead of beetles, he would have fat, juicy cockroaches coming out of his asshole and going back into his mouth.”
I burst out laughing. “Maybe there’s a reason you’re not a witch.”
“Who says I’m not a witch? Check out my wand.” She waved her piece of bacon in front of my face.
Slowly, and in her company, my headache dissipated. She could always distract me, even from attempted kidnapping. I still hadn’t told her about what had happened in Elf-hame, but why worry her more?
An hour later, we got to the agency. She parked her car by the front door, a red Scion, or the “box with wheels” as I liked to call it. She had bought it about three months ago. It wasn’t new, but it was in great shape. Only twenty thousand miles on the odometer, not a scratch, no collision reports, and no stench of cigarettes inside. She fell in love with it immediately, even if it looked like a cube and had the aerodynamics of an armoire.
Today, Rosalina’s black hair tumbled in curls onto her shoulders. Her eye makeup sparkled flawlessly and matched the subtle blue of her blouse.
We walked toward the door. Yellow tape stretched across its width. I tore it off and crumpled it into a tight ball, a surge of last night’s panic filling my chest.
“This can’t be good for business,” I said, as my eyes drifted next door without my permission.
Rosalina placed a finger on my chin and redirected my attention to the door. “Eyes on the prize, remember?”
I nodded and took a deep breath. Before we left her place, I’d reminded her to remind me to forget about Jake.
“God, you didn’t say it was this bad.” Rosalina’s face fell as she peered through the glass-paneled door.
“I don’t think it—” I stopped when I pushed the door open and saw the mess: file cabinets open, trampled papers on the floor, Rosalina’s desk ransacked and her laptop gone. I walked in, rendered speechless by the disaster.
“It wasn’t this bad when I left with the police,” I heard myself say.
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know.” I pressed a hand to my forehead, trying to wrap my head around what this could mean for the agency. Would this give us a bad name? Would we lose potential clients? At the thought, my head snapped toward my office.
“The potion!” I exclaimed.
I clutched my purse tightly since I’d stashed the revolver inside. With two attempts on my person, I felt safer carrying it around. I stepped gingerly around the files on the floor and went into my office. A similar disaster welcomed me there. They’d ransacked my desk and taken my laptop, too.
“Shit,” Rosalina mumbled as she walked in behind me.
Hand trembling, I opened the door to the alcove. Had they been able to break Mom’s protective spell?
Please don’t. Please don’t.
But they had. My heart sank. Everything inside was a wreck. The shelves and tiny drawers I kept clean and organized were empty, their contents strewn on the floor, all my ingredients ruined. Their distinctive scents wafted in the air, creating a messed-up potpourri that made me wince. A familiar scent rode the air, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Dammit, I would have to go back to Elf-hame and spend a boatload of money to replace everything.
And Celina’s potion? I didn’t want to glance up to find it broken and spilled over my worktable.
“At least, the potion’s okay,” Rosalina said before I could look.
I let out a pent-up breath of relief. With the potion intact, I could still work today and keep one of our clients happy. We would have to cancel a couple of appointments until we restocked, a luxury we couldn’t afford since we could only take so many customers a month. What a mess!
Rosalina placed a warm hand on my shoulder. “It’s fine, Toni. Don’t worry. The insurance will pay for the laptops and anything else that’s broken. I’ll get to work on submitting a claim, and I’ll call the police, try to find out what happened. The rest should be easy. I’ll pick up all the files and make sure everything is there.”
I nodded. “You’re a saint, Rosalina. Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. We’re a team.”
I glanced down toward the floor at the broken bottles and ruined ingredients. “Damn! All this is expensive.”
“We’ll claim it all as a loss,” Rosalina said with confidence. “Who could have done this? And why?”
“I have no idea. Maybe a competitor? A maniac? I don’t even want to go upstairs,” I said, picturing everything wrecked on the floor, my underwear, and maybe even poor Cupid, which I hadn’t fed. Again.
“I’ll check.” Rosalina r
an upstairs. A short minute later, she returned. “It’s undisturbed,” she said with a frown.
“That’s odd. Not that I’m complaining. Is Cupid all right?”
“Yeah, he’s fine.”
It seemed unlikely that whoever had torn up the office looking for who knew what would leave without searching the loft.
“Maybe we’ll need to splurge and get that alarm system we’ve been talking about. Just another layer of protection besides the spells,” Rosalina said.
“Yep, well...” I rolled my shoulders, forcing myself to relax. “Let’s make a list, so we can divide and conquer.”
“On it. Let me find a notebook and pen.”
She went back to look at her desk. That was when my subconscious, which had been busy coping with the loss, came up with a name for the familiar scent I’d detected among my ruined ingredients.
Jake!
He had been the one in my potions alcove. But why? Was he trying to sabotage me? Ruin my tracking business so I would help him? God, I was going to kill him.
Fury lighting my fuse, I whirled and headed out.
Chapter 12
I burst into Jake’s place with my ass on fire, though this time from rage. He’d left the door unlocked again, though no one was here, at least not in the front room.
“Jake!” I hollered as the front door swung closed behind me. “Jacob Knight!” I called again.
He appeared through the back door, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans and biker boots. He was cleaning his fingers with a rag. They had something white on them that looked like caulking. A light sheen of sweat covered his broad muscles. And I swear if I hadn’t been so pissed, I would’ve babbled like a fish. Instead, my anger redoubled. No one had a right to be this damn hot, sexy, and infuriating.
“You’re here,” he said, relief in his voice. “Something happened—”
“It was you, wasn’t it? Your twisted way of dragging me into this Erickson mess.”
He frowned and discarded the rag on the floor. “What are you talking about?”
The Tracker's Mate: Sunderverse (Mate Tracker Book 1) Page 6
