by Lexi George
Yes sir, that letter had caused quite a stir. But, this was the first Beck had heard about Old Man Peterson still being alive the night of the fire.
“I thought Cole Peterson was dead,” she said. “I thought he died years and years ago.”
“There’s dead and then there’s dead,” Junior said with a forlorn smile. “Granddaddy and that demon were well and truly caught. Like a fox in a snare, only there was no chewing off a leg to get out of the trap. See, if he died, the demon died, and the demon wasn’t having any part of that. So it held on, and they had to fake Cole’s death to avoid a lot of uncomfortable questions. In the end, Granddaddy was dried up and brittle as a dead cockroach.” The ghost’s body wavered briefly, and Beck realized he’d shuddered. “It was a mercy, if you ask me, when Mama burned the place down, even if it did leave me homeless.”
“Your mother must have been desperate to do those things,” Beck said, thinking of Meredith’s murder and the horrible fire.
“Yes, she was.” Junior’s voice was sad. “Quite desperate, for a long time.”
“What about you?” Beck asked without thinking. “How did you die?”
The temperature inside the cab of the truck abruptly plummeted. Oops, somebody had their ectoplasmic knickers in a twist.
“It’s impolite to ask a ghost about their demise.” Junior’s voice was stiff with displeasure. “You wouldn’t ask a demonoid about their possessed parent, would you?”
“Sorry,” Beck said. “I’m not up on my spook etiquette.”
“We don’t like the term ‘spook,’ either,” Junior said in the same frosty tone. “If you’re really sorry, give me a job.”
Beck swallowed a sigh. This day had started out like any other. Where had it gone wrong? Her gaze moved to Conall and stuck.
He raised a quizzical brow at her. “Why do you glare at me?”
“I was wondering exactly where my day went to shit,” she said, “and remembering that it started to go south right after you showed up.”
He chuckled. The sound was deep and rich, and it made her stomach do the squishy thing again. She didn’t know who she was madder at, him or herself.
Him, she decided. Definitely him.
“Well?” she said. “Don’t just sit there grinning like a possum. What have you got to say for yourself?”
“Nothing, boss.” Conall leaned against the door and draped his left arm over the steering wheel. Confident, arrogant, and totally at ease. “Nothing at all.”
“Huh,” Beck said, unable to find anything objectionable in that statement and ticked off about it. “You know what you get when you spell the word ‘boss’ backward, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Double s. o. b.,” Beck said. “That means I’m gonna make sure you earn your keep.”
He grinned, the cheeky bastard, his teeth gleaming white in the darkness. “I look forward to it.”
“So, do I get the job or not?” Junior demanded.
“Sure,” Beck said, surrendering to the craziness. “Why not? The more the merrier.”
Chapter Eight
Still on auto pilot, the Tundra crunched across the gravel lot at the back of the bar and eased into one of the slots marked EMPLOYEES ONLY. Judging from the number of parked vehicles, Beck’s was doing a land-office business.
The entrance to the bar lay down a lighted, wooden walkway that curved around one side of the building and disappeared into the darkness. A sign in the shape of a finger pointed the way. There was one way for customers to enter Beck’s, and that was through the front door, whether you came by land or water.
At Toby’s suggestion, she’d hired Cassandra Ferguson, the town “witch,” to place a number of deterrent spells around the property to further discourage outsiders. Cassie was a shrewd businesswoman. Her spells had an expiration date and she charged a pretty penny. But she was worth it. She’d glamoured the building to appear menacing and shabby from the river and woods to prevent unwanted guests.
Thanks to Cassie, the private road leading to Beck’s was impossible to find if you were a norm. In fact, she’d done such a good job that Beck had to hire one of the kith to haul off the garbage because Waste Be Gone couldn’t find the place. Cassie had even put a spell on the heavy metal door at the back of the bar to keep out the norms. That way, they didn’t have to worry about some norm sneaking into the bar through the kitchen.
Beck wasn’t sure which would scare a norm worse, the things he or she might see inside the bar or a run-in with their bad-tempered cook. If she had to pick, Beck’s money was on Hank. He wielded a mean meat cleaver.
Norms hadn’t been much of a problem so far. The kith liked having a place where they could let down their metaphysical hair, so to speak, and they’d made sure Beck’s had an unsavory reputation to keep it that way. The rumors and the fact that the bar was a private club kept most of the unwanteds away. In spite of their precautions, a few norms managed to stumble across the bar from time to time, usually around the new moon when Cassandra’s spells were at their weakest. These were turned away at the door by Toby.
Nobody but nobody who wasn’t a supernatural got past the Great Schnozzola. Toby could smell a norm a mile away.
Beck pushed open the passenger door of the truck. Conall zipped around the vehicle and helped her down.
“Thanks,” she said, balancing on her high heels.
“You are most welcome,” Conall said.
His hands lingered at her waist, and she felt the heat of his skin through the thin fabric of her dress. A few inches higher, and he’d be touching the bare flesh of her back. What would it be like to have his hands on her, to be surrounded by all that warmth and strength? Her stomach fluttered at the thought.
It had been too long since she’d been with a man. That was the problem, and Conall was undeniably handsome. He exuded danger and suppressed violence, and a raw, dark energy powerful enough to light up Behr County for a year. He was a bad boy with a capital Bad.
He was the kind of guy that made a woman’s hootie switch flip to high and stay there. So naturally, she was tempted. But having sex with him was out of the question. He worked for her now. Fraternizing with an employee would be unprofessional. Besides, Beck had a feeling that sex with Conall Dalvahni would be lethal, in more ways than one.
“That you, Beck?”
The worried voice from the darkness yanked Beck’s wayward mind and raging libido out of dangerous territory.
Tommy hovered at the end of the walkway with Annie perched on one shoulder like a furry copper-eyed parrot. He cast a nervous look around. “You all right? How was the wedding?”
“The wedding was very . . . wedding-ish,” Beck said, smiling at his politeness.
Most of the supers she knew could learn a thing or two about manners from Tommy Henderson. The nicest guy she’d met in a month of Sundays, and he was dead.
“Everything okay here?” she asked.
Tommy’s anxious gaze skittered around the parking lot. “The band’s warming up and Hank’s cussing a blue streak ’cause some redneck dumped ketchup on his precious étouffée. Other ’n that, everything’s fine.”
The back passenger door of the Tundra opened with a soft, metallic creak, and Tommy jumped back twenty feet, like a cartoon character with springs for legs.
“Who’s that?” Ignoring Annie’s mewl of protest at his unexpected gymnastics, Tommy peered past Beck. “You got somebody with you?”
“Yes,” she said. “We met someone on our way back from town.”
“Who?” A suspicious expression settled across Tommy’s pleasant features, and he sounded almost querulous. “Who you done met?”
Junior slid smoothly out of the truck and straightened his jacket. “The name’s Junior Peterson.” He arched a blond brow at the zombie. “And you would be . . . ?”
“Tommy Henderson.” Without taking his gaze off the ghost, Tommy reached up and stroked the fractious kitten. “I work here.”
“As it
happens, Mr. Henderson, so do I. I’m the new piano player. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to check out my new digs.”
Nose in the air, Junior flowed past Tommy and disappeared up the walk.
“Don’t mind him,” Beck told Tommy. “Junior’s a little touchy this evening. He’ll warm up to you. Just give him time.”
Tommy frowned after the ghost. “He ain’t gonna warm up to nobody. He’s deader than I am.”
“I know,” Beck said.
“And we ain’t got no piano,” Tommy said.
“Oh, shoot,” Beck said. “I forgot.”
Following in Tommy’s shambling wake, Beck picked her way along the plank sidewalk to the front entrance, taking care not to catch her stiletto heels between the slats. Conall walked beside her, his stride purposeful and relaxed, a warrior aware of his surroundings and ready for anything.
Of course he was relaxed and ready for anything, Beck thought with a mild sense of annoyance. She’d be relaxed, too, if she wasn’t wearing a skintight dress and hoochie heels.
No, she wouldn’t, not with Captain Hah-tay at her side. Conall had shed his jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves, and he looked absolutely yummy, damn him.
It was getting harder and harder to remember why she shouldn’t jump his bones.
It was a beautiful, clear night, and the sweet, slightly musty scent of the river hung in the air. Beck breathed in the damp, earthy smell of deep woods and water, trying to cleanse her mind of her randy thoughts. She let the slow, relentless tug of the nearby river wash over her, strengthen and center her.
There, she was back in control. She glanced at Conall and fell right back into lust. His hair looked very black against the collar of the white shirt. Her fingers itched to touch the ragged, silken strands.
She sighed. So much for her Zen moment.
As they came around the side of the building, Beck saw that the pitched, tin-roofed porch was packed with customers. It was a crisp autumn evening, and the absence of bloodsucking mosquitoes and their annoying midgie cousins called no-see’ums had lured people out of doors. Beelzebubba’s rockabilly sound drifted out of the bar, mingling with the chink of beer bottles and the murmur of conversation. At the end of the pier, boats rocked in the sluggish current and a dog paced up and down—Toby, standing guard.
The double doors leading into the bar were open to the night air. Things were jumping at Beck’s, inside and out, and it wasn’t even ten o’clock, a fact Beck noted with mingled satisfaction and unease. It was the weekend before Thanksgiving and the air tonight had an electric quality to it, the kind that heralded the change in the season. Her blood hummed in response, and the wild streak, the one she kept firmly in check, roused and strained at the leash.
She glanced up. The moon was nearly full and glowed with a dull, orangey haze. Shifter moon, Toby would call it.
A man in the crowd outside the bar laughed, and Beck’s heightened senses jangled in response. There was an edgy, brittle quality to the sound that filled her with foreboding. She wasn’t the only one who felt the charge in the atmosphere and the pull of the pumpkin moon.
Alabama and Auburn had both won their football games that day, which you’d think would make folks more jovial and in the mood to celebrate. Nothing doing. All that energy and excitement could turn ugly in a heartbeat, especially with the kith.
Nothing worse than a demonoid hepped up on booze and team spirit—unless it was a bar full of them.
“Who’s tending bar?” Beck asked, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
Tommy situated himself at the foot of the steps with Annie. “Some guy named Jason,” he said. “Friend of Toby’s, I think. Come up in a fishing boat not long after you left. Toby acted real glad to see him.”
“What?” Beck said.
She hiked up her skirt and charged up the steps and into the bar. She took a quick glance around. The band ended a song and drifted off the stage on break. Daddy stood behind the lighted glass block counter serving drinks to a long line of thirsty patrons. Shapes floated inside the clear bar, like blobs of colored wax inside an enormous lava lamp. The blobs were pretty, but they weren’t decorative. They were demons.
She’d learned purely by accident that demons couldn’t pass through certain kinds of glass in their amorphous state. It was a discovery that gave her great pleasure. Every time a possessed human came into the bar, she extracted the nasty little demon bastards and put them behind glass. It was her little way of avenging her mother and Latrisse.
Daddy was laughing and joking as he worked, his moves practiced and efficient, a seasoned bartender in his element. He had no idea, of course, that a few inches of glass was all that separated him from a swarm of pure evil.
Beck’s throat tightened at the sight of him. Just like old times.
Except this wasn’t old times and this wasn’t the old Beck’s. Jason Damian was a norm in a kith bar. He didn’t belong here, anymore than she belonged in his world.
But, whereas she might feel awkward around his kind, being around her kind could get him killed, especially tonight.
Even if he survived the experience, Brenda would have a conniption if she found out he’d been tending bar again. She’d never stop praying over him. Alcohol was the devil’s handmaiden, and Daddy was back on the road to ruination.
Holy cats, what was he thinking?
She worked her way through the crowd and behind the bar. The murmurs of appreciation from the females in her wake told her that Conall had followed.
“Daddy, what are you doing here?” she asked.
He grinned at her, his eyes shining. “Hey, baby doll. You look pretty. Long time since I seen you in a dress.”
He wore jeans, his rubber fishing boots, and a green Guy Harvey T-shirt. A faded blue ball cap covered most of his hair, but a few wavy strands had managed to escape and curled around his ears. His sandy blond hair was sprinkled with gray, Beck noticed with a pang of dismay. When had that happened?
“There you go, darling, two Bud Lites.” He slid a couple of beers across the bar to a woman with teased bleached hair, sharply penciled-in brows, and leathery tanned cleavage.
The blonde threw some bills on the bar and swished off, making way for the next patron.
“I was doing a little fishing when Toby hollered at me,” Daddy continued, slinging beers and mixing drinks as he talked. “He said you’d gone to the Corwin wedding and that he could use some help. Been meaning to come see you anyway, so I thought why not? and came on in.”
“Why didn’t you and Brenda go to the wedding?” Beck asked.
She knew they’d been invited. Evie had thrown it out as a lure when she’d hand-delivered Beck’s invitation. She’d had no idea, of course, how awkward things were between Beck and her dad.
“Brenda’s feeling under the weather, so we bowed out,” Daddy said. “I was glad, to tell you the truth. I hate that kind of thing. Rather take a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.”
“Me, too,” Beck said. They had that much in common, at least.
Topping off a draft beer, Daddy gave Conall a speculative glance as he handed the glass to a man at the bar. “What about you, Mr. Dalvahni? What brings you here?”
Conall’s expression was impassive, but he was studying everything Daddy was doing, like he was memorizing it. Beck suspected that’s exactly what he was doing. She had a feeling the Dalvahni were quick learners.
What would it be like to have all that attention focused on her? Hot and intense and extremely satisfying, she imagined.
Shit. There she went again, thinking with her vagina.
“I work here now,” Conall said.
Daddy’s eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his hat, and he gave Beck a questioning look. “That so? Doing what?”
“Oh, you know, a little of this, a little of that,” she said vaguely.
She couldn’t be more specific, because she didn’t know the answer herself. This morning when she’d gotten up, things had be
en normal. Or as normal as things could be when you ran a demonoid bar. Somehow, in the space of a few hours, she’d acquired a zombie bouncer, a ghostly piano player, and a hunky demon hunter would-be bartender who specialized in dragons. Not to mention a long-lost brother with multiple tats and piercings who smelled of eau de demon.
Wouldn’t Brenda just have a big old cow if she saw Evan? The thought cheered Beck.
A scrawny, middle-aged man with bright, darting eyes and a receding chin shoved his way to the front of the line at the bar. His flushed face and listing gait signaled loud and clear that he’d already had too much to drink.
“Hey.” The man slammed his hands on the bar, his wispy mustache twitching in irritation. “Who do you have to kill to get a goddamn beer around here?”
The swirling disquiet in Beck’s stomach solidified into a brick of tension. The Skinners were here.
Fan-damn-tastic. It was the icing on this birthday cake of a day.
Chapter Nine
A stocky guy with drooping jowls and mournful eyes clapped his hand on No Chin’s shoulder. “Hey, asshole, wait your turn,” Droopy said.
With a crack of bone and sinew, Earl Skinner—Beck knew this particular lowlife from previous encounters of the icky kind—shifted into a weasel and sank his teeth into Droopy’s hand.
Droopy howled in pain. Snap, crackle, pop. He morphed into a mastiff and attacked Earl with a deep bah-rooh of rage.
“Oh, crap,” Beck said. “Here it comes.”
Conall was at her side in a blur of motion. “Something is amiss?”
Oh, yeah, something was amiss, all right.
People in the bar started to shift like kernels of popcorn on a hot stove. Pop, a tiny woman with bulbous eyes and long bangs turned into a Pomeranian and chased a calico cat out the door. Pop pop, a redheaded man morphed into a chow and launched himself at a scruffy terrier. The two rolled across the floor in a ball of fur and teeth.
Beck gritted her teeth. Shifting was contagious, like yawning, and her body thrummed with the urge to change. The call of the wild was especially strong tonight. Her blood sang with it.
