As soon as they’d surrounded Marla and me, the plush toys fell to the ground. I shook off my coat and searched for my target.
Andy was gone.
Marla pointed at the sky, visible through the naked tree branches. “It’s getting light. He had to run for shelter.”
I wanted to track him down, tear him apart, but Marla said, “We need to check on Kelly and make sure Andy didn’t go to the B&B.”
She had a point, but I didn’t like it. Still, we collected my clothes and walked back together.
Andy might have gotten past our trap, but I knew what he looked like now. I knew what he smelled like. And I wouldn’t let him get away again.
15
Marla
A pain-filled yelp tore me from my dreamless sleep. I looked down on the floor beside my bed, where Grayson had slept. He jolted upright and tossed His Lordship from his chest.
The king of cats landed on his feet, took a few regal strides, then sat down and started licking himself.
“That bastard bit my nose,” Grayson said.
Kelly burst out laughing and sat upright in the bed beside me.
“That’s how he shows his love,” I said. “A little toothy kiss here and there.”
Grayson glared at His Lordship. “Sure.”
After we had grabbed Kelly from the B&B and snuck her out without Daphne or her guests seeing us, we’d returned to my place to crash. Since Andy knew about the B&B, it wasn’t any safer for us, but being there made it less safe for everyone else. Here at least we had the traps and alarm system out back. And the sun was up, so we were out of danger for the time being. After the night we’d had, we’d all slept like babies.
Well, mostly...Kelly had stayed up for a while, muttering different A words aloud as she tried to remember whatever word she was looking for. This was standard Kelly fare, and eventually Grayson and I had both put pillows over our heads to muffle her voice.
Grayson stood and paced the room. Then he stuck out his tongue and made a sour face. His eyes flashed at Kelly. “Someone’s ripe.”
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and glared right back at him.
“Your arm looks good,” I told her, partly to distract from the bickering, partly because it did. There wasn’t any black around the wound anymore, just red, and the skin was well on its way to knitting itself back together. The balm was doing its job.
Grayson bent down and smelled her arm.
“Do not ever put your...anything on me,” Kelly said, pulling her arm away.
“It’s not you,” he said. Then he sniffed the air and looked at me. “You don’t smell that?”
My room smelled like it always did, like old wood and essential oil candles. I shook my head.
His Lordship meowed and looked up at Grayson.
“You probably need a shower,” Kelly told Grayson, clearly feeling back to herself.
“The air smells like death,” Grayson said.
Kelly shrugged and grinned, clearly implying that what she said still stood.
Grayson shook his head and ignored her.
“Mr. Jameson probably left something nasty in the alley again,” I said. “He forgets to put the can out sometimes, and it can get pretty bad out there, especially in the summer, but even in the winter.”
“Maybe,” Grayson said, clearly unconvinced.
His Lordship meowed again and rubbed himself on the doorframe as he headed into the hall.
“It’s like he’s trying to show you something,” Kelly said to Grayson. “Come on, Lassie, a week-old rotisserie chicken is caught in a well.”
“Ha,” Grayson said without humor.
We took turns showering, and getting dressed. When I told Grayson I needed to pick up a doughnut for His Lordship, he offered to go for me, which was especially sweet since he hated my cat.
When he returned, he had a look of determination etched on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Here.” He handed me the doughnut bag and wrinkled his nose. “Something is foul in this place, and it’s worse outside. I have to figure out what it is.”
I gave His Lordship his breakfast, grabbed my coat, and then followed Grayson outside. As soon as the frigid air hit my nose, I had to admit, there was a little hint of something funky. I recognized the scent right away, and it definitely wasn’t old trash. Nothing smelled quite like the freshly deceased.
We circled around the side of the building. At first I saw nothing, just the shadowy alley. As we moved farther in, a lump came into view.
Yes, there was something dead here. And I was pretty sure it was that lump.
Five steps. Ten. Grayson covered his nose and mouth and his eyes watered. I pinched my nose shut.
The lump was definitely a corpse. It was barely recognizable, bloody and covered in mud. But it was a man, and his torso was crunched smack in the center of the bear trap.
Grayson’s mouth hung open as he stared at the body, and he squinched his brows together. “What the hell happened to him?”
Kelly opened the back door. “Whoa. Party in the alley and you started without me?”
Grayson flicked his gaze to her, and he tightened his jaw. “When you went out to feed, you left the body here?”
Kelly stiffened and put her hands on her hips. “Excuse me?”
I could spend my energy breaking the two of them up, again, but my attention was on the corpse’s mangled arm. There was ink on his bicep, and if I was right, I was the one who’d put it there.
I grabbed a stick from the ground and poked the fleshy flaps so they were back where they were meant to be. Well, mostly.
It was an unfinished tattoo of a bikini-clad woman. This corpse was none other than Ryan Harris, my asshole client.
“You, a vampire who hates everyone, went out in the night to feed,” Grayson told Kelly. “You murdered this poor guy, then left him in the alley with the garbage, not considering how it might affect Marla.”
I dropped my stick and stared at Grayson.
“You think I did this?” Kelly seethed. “Wasn’t it you who put the snapping metal deathtrap by Marla’s back door?”
“No way did the bear trap kill him,” Grayson said.
“He’s human,” Kelly said. “Well, he was.”
“Right, until you killed him.”
I’d had enough. I stepped between the two of them. “If Kelly says she didn’t kill him, she didn’t.”
Kelly bent her head around me and stuck her tongue out at Grayson. Grayson glowered back at her.
“I wish I could be so sure,” he said.
“Hey.”
He looked down at me, and his gaze softened.
I put my hands on my hips. “If you don’t believe my sister, you don’t believe me.”
He touched my shoulders and his anger melted away. “She didn’t explicitly say she didn’t kill him. We need to be sure what exactly we’re up against, because if this wasn’t her, it’s one hell of a message.”
I knew he was doing that alpha protector thing that men did, shifter men more than the rest. But we were all on the same team. Kelly was family. I needed my mate to trust my family. It hurt that he didn’t.
“Someone has to deal with the body before it starts attracting attention.” Kelly shot Grayson a glare. “I volunteer. I’m taking your car.”
“No.”
“How do you expect me to dispose of a body in broad daylight without a car? Drag it down the street?”
Grayson begrudgingly handed her his keys.
Kelly grabbed my wrist and pulled me aside. With Grayson’s shifter hearing, there was no doubt he could still hear what was said, and I was sure Kelly knew that, too.
“You know this guy, right?” She nodded down at Ryan’s corpse.
“Well enough to not feel too bad about him being dead,” I said.
She nodded. “Looks like my prophecy record remains perfect.”
“What do you mean?”
“A man close t
o you will die. This guy was standing closest to you at the time, right?”
Was he? I’d assumed when she’d said “close to me” she’d meant emotionally. Hope filled my lungs with air I didn’t need to breathe. If she was right about Ryan being the man her prophecy referenced, then that meant Grayson would be safe. “Why not just tell me that a horrible jerk was going to show up dead in my alley?”
She shrugged and smirked. “My powers work in mysterious ways.”
Grayson and I helped her load up the body before heading inside. He seemed agitated, probably because Kelly was out there driving his car. I, on the other hand, was relieved. That corpse was a gift. Granted I felt a little guilty, but the fact that Kelly’s vision had been about Ryan and not about Grayson left me light with relief.
When Kelly left, I expected Grayson would come inside with me, but he didn’t. He hung out in the alley, and I wasn’t sure if it was because he thought he was going to find some key evidence out there or if he just needed a little time to be grumpy and alone after Kelly had gotten under his skin.
His Lordship watched me enter and followed me over to my desk chair by the front window. As soon as I took a seat, he jumped into my lap. Sitting together, he was just about as tall as me, so it was startling when he put his face up in front of mine. His yellow eyes always had an angry look to them even when he purred. I scratched him under his chin and he leaned into me.
“Did you get your doughnut yet, Your Lordship?” I crooned.
He sent his yellow gaze to a place under my counter, and the remains of a white bag speckled with strawberry crumbs.
“Looks like you did,” I said, giving him a kiss on his furry head.
The room began to darken as the sun dropped down behind the trees. I hoped Kelly would return soon, before it got any darker. She hadn’t asked where to take the body, so I wasn’t sure how far away she’d driven to dispose of it.
His Lordship dug his claws into my lap, letting me know he was done with me petting him, and hopped down. I heard the front door click open behind me.
Kelly was finally back.
“All set?” I turned around.
But instead of Kelly, a dark shape loomed. I didn’t have time to even throw out an arm to protect myself before something bashed me in the head, and everything went black.
16
Grayson
I could tell it was important to Marla that I trust Kelly. I knew this. And Kelly wasn’t a horrible person or anything...well, she was a little horrible. To me. But to Marla? She was loyal and caring. It hadn’t been cool of me to insinuate that Kelly would leave a dead body behind Marla’s shop so Marla would be responsible for it.
I sniffed around as surreptitiously as possible, just in case anyone might pass by and see me out here. This town already thought I was the turd man; I didn’t need them to see me with my nose on the ground and my ass in the air. Still, every few seconds, I dipped toward the ground to get a better sniff. I didn’t want to believe it was Andy who’d left this body, but who the fuck else could have left the body, if it wasn’t him or Kelly?
A strange sound came from inside the tattoo parlor, and I straightened.
“Marla?” I asked. I pulled open the rear door and stepped inside.
Instead of seeing my mate, I was greeted by a scene of bizarre chaos. One of the tattoo chairs was moving forward by tilting itself onto one side, spinning slightly, and then tilting the other way. Strips of fake leather lifted from the arm of the chair and held one of Marla’s tattoo guns.
This was the work of Andy. Fear hit me, a punch to the chest.
“Marla!” I shouted. “Where are you?”
The parlor was empty, so I avoided the moving chair and ran up the stairs to the apartments. Marla’s door was locked, and I didn’t have a key. I kicked it open, calling for her, but her scent was faint, just left over from this morning. She wasn’t in this room. I ran back downstairs again.
The chair blocked the threshold into the parlor, and the tattoo gun buzzed in its strange “hand.” I kicked at it, trying to avoid the needle. Did the chair mean Andy was close? How did his power work?
I kicked over the chair, but two others had begun to move as well. Or maybe they’d been animated all along, but not active? I couldn’t tell, and I didn’t care. I just had to find Marla.
Kelly burst into the shop, a fierce look on her face.
“Andy was here,” she shouted needlessly. “Where’s Marla?”
“I can’t find her,” I said.
One of the chairs lunged toward her. She raised her leg and kicked it back. “Take that, you stupid chair!”
I wanted to point out that it wasn’t actually the chair’s fault—it was Andy’s fault. But her rage was inspirational, so I went along with it, kicking the chair in front of me. The tattoo gun in its “hand” nearly grazed my shin. The last thing I needed was a random stripe tattooed on my leg. Then again, Marla could probably turn it into a work of art later.
I wouldn’t mind my mate’s ink on my skin.
Working together, Kelly and I cleared a path for me to the back door of the tattoo parlor, past the vicious chairs and the tattoo guns they wielded. I burst outside into the alley next to Kelly and closed the door behind me. We hovered on the little step next to where the bear trap had been, panting.
“We have to find Marla,” I said.
Declan wanted us to deal with Andy on our own, but I’d promised to alert him if the situation got out of control. If this didn’t qualify, I didn’t know what did. So, I placed the call and left him a voicemail when he didn’t answer.
“There’s no reason for us to search together,” Kelly said, starting forward.
“We could coordinate, work faster,” I said.
She turned around, shaking her head. “Us? Coordinate? Not bloody likely. You do your dog thing, and I’ll do my vampire thing.”
She wasn’t meeting my gaze. Something about what she said sounded false. It wasn’t a lie, but she wasn’t telling me the complete truth, either.
Suddenly it hit me. She wasn’t going to search for Marla. She was just as afraid of their sire as Marla was—what reason would she have for sticking around? No, Kelly wasn’t helping. She was hightailing it out of Forbidden to save her own ass.
“You don’t really want to help Marla,” I said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, dog boy.”
I didn’t have time to argue with her. She wasn’t a real friend to Marla if she was leaving like this. Cursing under my breath, I watched her run down to the end of the alley and make a sharp turn. It was probably the last I’d see of Kelly, and I was glad.
Marla would be hurt, though, and that made me angry. First I’d get Marla safe, and then I’d help her forget her “sister” who was more intent on her own escape than helping Marla.
I had work to do. Panic had my heart thumping triple time. Marla was out there, somewhere, probably scared. Injured. My wolf wanted to shift immediately, seek her out, tear apart anyone who threatened her.
“Where are you,” I murmured, while giving most of my focus on the alley around me. Marla’s scent was faint. Had she not come out this way? Well, that would’ve been impossible—I’d been out here when she disappeared. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I had to concentrate.
Circling around to the front of the building, Marla’s scent got a lot stronger. A foul, dead scent mixed with it, totally unlike her scent of midnight lilies. Andy. Definitely. I followed both strong scents to the curb, detecting fear and anger, likely Marla’s. And then both disappeared.
He’d put her in a car. I looked up and down the street, not expecting answers.
Sure enough, there were no unusual cars in sight. There was no Marla, kicking open a trunk or frantically waving from a rear window. I didn't even know what the asshole was driving.
Tall lamps and storefronts lit the mostly empty street. A couple of men walked together on the opposite sidewalk.
“Did you see any
thing recently?” I called to them. “A man forcing a woman into a car?”
“No, we just came out of the coffee shop,” one of them said. “We were checking out the poop display. Sorry. Do you need us to call the police?”
“No, that’s all right, already done,” I lied. The last thing we needed was human law enforcement getting into the mix.
This would be an on-foot search. Forbidden wasn’t too terribly large, but I didn’t know how long it would take.
I glanced down the other direction, and gave a start. Kelly was still here.
“What are you doing?” I called.
“Looking for Marla, you wanker,” she said.
“You’re not running off,” I said, more to myself than to her.
She glared at me and put her hands on her hips. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”
I shrugged as I approached her, sniffing the air as I went, hoping for another whiff of Marla’s flowery scent. “We started off on the wrong paw.”
“Foot.”
“Yes, whatever,” I said, taking in a deep breath and hoping for some patience. “But you’re showing me that you deeply care about Marla, and you mean a lot to her, too. I’d like us to be friends. Or at least not at each other’s throats.”
She nodded, and her eyes glistened with emotion. “I do want to save her. I’m just as worried as you.”
I believed it. “All right, let’s get moving, then.” Figuring she might want to have some say in how we went about our search—and she knew more about Andy and Marla than I did and could better figure out where Andy might take Marla, I said, “Where do you think we should start?”
“Mrowr,” she said.
I blinked at her, but she snorted and pointed down at the stray hellion that had been the bane of my Forbidden existence.
“We start with him,” she said.
I wanted to make some kind of comment that Kelly had to be insane to think the devil cat would help us, but she looked absolutely serious, and I needed her help to find Marla.
“Okay,” I said, nodding and keeping a straight face. “How is he going to help?”
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