“Friends?” I narrowed my eyes. She wanted to be friends? What?
“Yes,” she said, still grinning. “So, what will it be? Can you come with me for a bit?”
Like I was going to say no. “Sure,” I said. “Sure thing.”
“Wonderful.” She started for the door.
I went after her.
Outside, the sun was beating down onto the pavement and the sidewalk. It was hot and humid, and it would have been miserable if it weren’t for a breeze blowing in off the ocean. Overhead gulls soared in the blue sky, calling to each other. In the distance, I could hear the sound of traffic on Atlantic Avenue.
We strolled down the sidewalk to the Flamingo.
I was hoping Ophelia would be there again, so that I could get her to see Darla, but when I asked after her, the waitress said she was on break and wouldn’t be back until the dinner hour crush.
Darla and I sat on opposite sides of the table. She ordered a sandwich and fries. I looked at the dessert menu, but opted for an appetizer instead—spinach and artichoke dip—because this baby had really turned off my sweet tooth. Sweet stuff just sounded gross to me.
While we waited for our food, Darla made small talk about the weather and traffic. She babbled on about how there were more cars on Atlantic Avenue every day, and how it took twice as long to get anywhere.
For my part, I tended to agree. I needed the influx of people during the summer, because I needed paying customers. But they did gum up the works around here. Because of my passion on the subject, I found myself joining rather eagerly into the conversation.
Before I knew it, our food was there.
Darla picked up her sandwich and took a bite. “Delicious. You must come here all the time.”
“Basically every day, yeah,” I said.
“Well, that’s lovely,” she said. “We don’t have anything this nice close to our headquarters, only a bunch of chain restaurants. I get things delivered sometimes for lunch there, but it’s easier to simply bring things from home most of the time. Of course, home is really just up a few floors. We all live at headquarters in addition to working there.”
“I live at the hotel,” I said. “I can’t ever leave work either.”
“But you do work with the police, don’t you?”
And just like that, I was on edge again. I remembered that this wasn’t a social visit. It wasn’t getting to know a new friend. It was something dangerous. “Yes, sometimes. But lately, the hotel keeps me busy.”
“I’m sure. Must be a lot going on this time of year.”
“Yeah,” I said.
“So, that detective that you work with? He’s nothing more than a co-worker?”
Alarm bells were going off in my head. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. Seems like a woman like you would have a hard time staying single, and when we were vetting you for the drake job, I didn’t notice any other men in your life.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t think of a good reason to deny my relationship with Lachlan, but I didn’t really want to admit it, either. If I told her it was none of her business, then I’d sound rude and she’d know she hit a nerve. I ate some artichoke dip to stall.
She babbled on. “You really are something. I imagine you have men falling over you in droves. What do you use on your skin?” She was gazing at me and smiling.
And I felt that same uncomfortable feeling that I’d felt in her office when she’d held my arm for too long. And then… it sort of clicked. She was flirting with me, wasn’t she? She was asking about men, because she was trying to figure out if I was straight before she embarrassed herself. I cleared my throat. “I don’t use anything special on my skin. And yes, Lachlan and I are seeing each other.”
“Oh,” she said, and her face fell.
I’d been right. Jesus. I felt myself blush. “Listen, uh, Darla, you’re a very nice person, and I do want to be friends.”
She recovered, smiling at me. “Yes, of course. That’s why we’re getting to know each other.” She pushed her plate toward me. “Want any fries? Help yourself.”
* * *
I woke up to the sound of an angry voice, yelling from outside. “I know you’re in there, Brian!”
I sat up straight in bed. Darrell, Brian’s boyfriend. He was here.
“I traced your cell phone, and I found your car parked outside, so just come on out now.”
It took me only a few minutes to throw on some clothes and go out the back door of my apartment, onto my balcony. From there, I could see Darrell, who was pacing back and forth next to my pool, just outside the back entrance of the hotel. He must have really honed in on the GPS on Brian’s phone, because he was right outside Connor’s apartment.
When Connor had woken up earlier, he’d been glad to see Brian, and had assured me that it was no problem at all for Brian to stay with him in his suite.
I tried to caution him that it was better if Brian stayed on the couch, and that things didn’t get romantic between them yet, and Connor had gotten huffy with me. “I know,” he’d said, as if I had just suggested something completely outlandish.
Anyway, whatever the case, if Darrell saw them together, he was going to assume the worst.
I bounded down the steps off the back of my balcony and hurried up behind him. “Darrell!” I called.
He turned, squinting in the dim lighting. “Who’s there?”
Behind me, the ocean was a faint roar. I stepped closer. “Hi there, how are you doing?”
He could see me now. He looked me up and down. “Who are you?”
I could see him too.
He was one of those drakes who was lucky enough not to have much of his facial features mutated. His hair was totally gone, swallowed up in black and red scales. He had spikes that started on top of his head and ran down his back into his clothes. But his face still looked human. It was a handsome face, the kind of face that seems trustworthy. Even as a drake, he was still handsome.
“I’m the owner of this hotel,” I said. “I know you’re looking for Brian, but I don’t think he wants to see you right now.”
Just then, the back door to Connor’s suite opened, and Brian came out, with Connor trailing behind him.
Darrell stiffened, looking at both of them. “What the hell is this, Brian?”
“Hey,” said Brian.
“You need to leave,” said Connor.
Great. Connor was antagonizing him. This was going to go well.
“Leave?” said Darrell. “And who the hell are you? You fucking my boyfriend?”
“No,” said Brian. “He’s just a friend. I didn’t have anywhere to go after what you did to me.”
Darrell shifted on his feet. “Look, I never meant it to go so far. You just made me so fucking mad when you wouldn’t lend me that cash.”
“I don’t have any cash to lend you,” Brian said. “I have our rent money, and that’s it.”
“So, we’re late with the rent,” said Darrell. “What’s the big deal?”
Brian shook his head at him. “That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You’re not here to apologize. You’re just looking for money for dice.”
“Come on, Brian, of course I’m trying to apologize.” Darrell started for the other man. “I love you, baby. You know that.”
Connor stepped in between the two of them. “You need to leave.”
Darrell’s nostrils flared. “Hey, how about you keep your nose out of things that aren’t your business?”
“You’re outside my home,” said Connor, “so it’s my business.”
“Then we’ll leave.” Darrell held out his hand to Brian. “Come on, let’s go. We’ll talk this out. I really am sorry.”
Brian didn’t respond. His face was bruised and swollen, and it looked worse than it had earlier. “I don’t have any money for you,” he said in a low voice.
“Just come with me,” said Darrell. “We’ll talk about that at home.”
Brian
shook his head. “No, not tonight. Not yet.”
“No?” said Darrell, shaking his head in disbelief.
“You heard him,” said Connor. “Now get the hell out of here.”
“What are you going to do without me, Brian?” said Darrell. “How are you going to make it without me? No one else on earth is going to put up with you. No one else is going to love you. You know that I’m the only person—”
“Stop talking to him,” said Connor.
Darrell reached out with one hand.
Suddenly Connor was pinned to the wall of the hotel, held there by magic.
Crap. If Darrell had magic, that wasn’t a good thing. Drakes who ate dragon flesh were crazy strong. Their magic didn’t last that long, but it was intense and powerful.
Connor reached up and clutched his magical talisman, which hung around his neck. He concentrated, but he couldn’t do anything. He was stuck.
“Let him go,” I said in a warning voice.
Darrell looked over his shoulder at me. “What are you going to do about it?”
I sucked air into my lungs and when I expelled it, I let out a few puffs of smoke. “I’m going to stop you.”
“She’s a dragon,” said Connor. “And I bet she’s pissed you’re eating her people for kicks.”
I saw fear flash in Darrell’s eyes. But instead of complying, he picked Connor up and used magic to throw him into the pool. Then he made a wide gesture with one hand and all the lights around the pool shattered, bathing us in darkness.
It was pitch black for a moment, and then my eyes adjusted.
I could see the shadow of Darrell, and he was heading for Brian. I blew out a bright tongue of flame—a warning. I didn’t let it touch anyone. I just wanted Darrell to know that I could and would burn him if I had to. “Stop right there,” I said.
He kept going.
I blew out more fire. This time, the flames licked the back of Darrell’s neck.
He cried out. He turned to look at me, fists clenching and unclenching.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.
“God damn it,” he muttered. He looked back at Brian. “This isn’t over. You got that?” And then he stalked past the pool, the glass from the broken lights crunching under his feet.
We all watched him disappear around the building.
Connor climbed out of the pool, sopping wet. “Thanks, Penny.”
I smiled at him. “What are friends for?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I was sweeping up shattered glass outside the pool the next morning when Lachlan showed up in a pissed-off mood.
Okay, I wasn’t actually doing the sweeping myself exactly. I was using magic to control two brooms and two dustpans. Still, I wasn’t sure it was really less exertion that way. Using magic took it out of me just as much as actually sweeping. But it was easier on my muscles, anyway.
“Fucking bastards!” I heard Lachlan yelling. “Penny, where are you?”
“Out back,” I yelled. “Can you not swear so loudly in front of my customers?”
He came out the back door. “There were no customers anywhere.”
“People heard you on the moon,” I said. “What’s wrong?”
He looked around the pool at the sweeping brooms. “What happened here?”
“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”
“Did you kill someone else?’
“No,” I said. “Connor has this friend who has an abusive boyfriend, and I told Connor that his friend could stay here, and then the boyfriend showed up last night—”
“Jesus, Penny, you should have called me.”
“I handled it,” I said. “Connor and I did.”
“But should you be handling things like that?” he said.
“Look, just because you think it’s horrible that I fight magical creatures when I have to doesn’t mean that—”
“I meant that it could be dangerous,” he said. “And I would think you’d be trying to be careful.”
“I am careful,” I said.
He started to say something else. Stopped. Shook his head. “Call me if something like that happens again.”
“It was the middle of the night. You would have been asleep. And it would have messed up your ability to do your job if you hadn’t gotten your beauty rest.”
“Yeah, well, that’s not going to be a problem anymore.” He went over to one of the chairs by the pool and threw himself down in it.
“What?”
“I’m on suspension,” he said.
I made the brooms stop sweeping and came over to sit next to him. “Suspension.”
“You are too, as a matter of fact.”
“Me? They can’t suspend me. They don’t even pay me.”
“Well, that’s only because you refused compensation,” said Lachlan. “But you’ll find that you’re locked out of the computer network if you try to log on.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, they took my keys and my badge and my gun and they kicked me out of the station.”
“But why?”
“Because of the shit with Alastair,” he said. “Because they suspect us of murdering him.”
“You are kidding me,” I said. “They can’t suspend you over that.”
“They can and they did,” he said. “It’s with pay, if that means anything. But they said that if I was a murder suspect, I wouldn’t be able to do my job properly.”
“Lachlan, this is insane.”
“I know. And I think that if they’re suspending me, it’s not just because we’re suspects. It’s because we’re the number one suspects in the case.”
“But he was killed by a slayer.”
“Apparently not. They must know something that we don’t know. They must have some reason to be pretty convinced that it’s us.”
“But it’s not us.”
“You know that. I do too. But that doesn’t mean that they’re just going to take our word.”
“Well, we have to prove our innocence, then,” I said.
“Yeah, I was kind of thinking the same thing,” he said. “And we’re going to have to work fast, because they’re going to be looking for something that they can use to make an arrest.”
“What? You think they’ll arrest us?”
“They need some kind of proof, Penny, and there’s no physical evidence, because neither of us did it, so we’ve probably got time. We’ll need to make a list of all the people who could have killed Alastair.”
I chewed on my lip. “I can’t think of anyone.”
“Guy like Alastair? People had to hate him.”
“He was very charming to people he wasn’t close to,” I said.
“Maybe someone who did work for him. You can’t tell me he was charming to the help.” Lachlan raised his eyebrows.
“Um… well, he was.” I got up and picked up one of the brooms. Maybe I’d think better if I was doing something. I started to sweep.
“Jesus, Penny, let me do that.” Lachlan was on his feet, coming for me.
“I can sweep,” I said.
He took the broom from me. “Sit down.”
I furrowed my brow. “I’m perfectly capable of sweeping up glass. And it needs to be done before it gets much later, because I don’t want to have the pool closed today.”
“You don’t need to overexert yourself,” he said.
“Sweeping is not exactly climbing Mount Everest,” I said. “What’s up with you?” I sat down on one of the chairs.
He wouldn’t look at me. “I’m worthless as a detective currently. I can be helpful here, at least. I can sweep your damn patio. You just sit there and think about who hated Alastair.”
I shook my head. “Besides us? No one.”
* * *
Lachlan was drinking beer, but he hadn’t offered me any. Which was fine, I wasn’t drinking while I was pregnant. But I was kind of annoyed that he didn’t even seem to think it was rude that I didn’t want any
.
We were nowhere near coming up with any suspects in Alastair’s murder.
“Look,” I said, “it has to be a slayer. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. Let’s go talk to that Clarke Gannon person we talked to last time. She seemed marginally more together than that Otis guy, but we could talk to him too. Maybe one of them knows something.”
Lachlan took a long drink of beer. “I’ve got it.”
“You do?”
“Fletcher Remington’s family. Maybe his dad. You remember how aggressive his father was when we were interviewing him?”
Fletcher Remington was the heroin-addicted dragon that Alastair had sacrificed in order to gain his powers.
“I don’t know, Lachlan,” I said. “None of this makes any sense. Alastair was crazy powerful. How could anyone have killed him? We couldn’t kill him, and it wasn’t for lack of trying, and we have the blood bond.”
Lachlan grimaced. “I don’t know either. Is there anyone powerful who hated Alastair?”
“I’ve been telling you,” I said. “No one hated him.”
He sighed.
And then someone was banging on the door to my apartment.
I got up, heading across the room to open the door. Who the hell was knocking like that? I hoped Brian’s stupid boyfriend wasn’t back again, itching to pick another fight.
“SCPD,” called a voice on the other side of the door.
I froze, turning to Lachlan. “You said we had time. You said they’d need evidence.”
He was on his feet as well, his face pale. “Penny, listen to me—”
“Open up!” called the voice, rapping on the door again.
“Open the door,” said Lachlan, “or they’ll break it down.”
“But…” I hesitated. I lowered my voice. “We should fight them.” I held out my wrist. “Drink.” Lachlan and I needed to charge up the power of our blood bond by his drinking my blood.
“No, that’s a bad idea,” he said. “We don’t know what would happen if I drank your blood.”
“You’ve done it tons of times,” I said.
“Yeah, but not now that you’re—”
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