Ghost at the Feast: The Nightwatch Book 3

by Cassidy, Debbie

  “And why the hell isn’t this Morpheus or Marowitz dude doing anything to stop him?” Mai pointed out.

  Jay set down his teacup. “Maybe he can’t.”

  There was silence for several long seconds, and my mood plummeted. I shouldn’t have read the damn book this minute, fucking snuffed out the joy, and all I wanted to do now was hit something.

  I pushed back my chair. “I’m going on patrol.” I looked from Kris to Mai. “Who wants to drive me?”

  Bres stood. “I will.”

  Everyone looked up at him in surprise, but then Jay spoke. “You’re staying?”

  Bres shrugged. “For now.”

  It was obvious Jay was reining in the happy. Hell, these two guys had been besties for a long time.

  “In that case,” Jay said. “Welcome to the team.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bres settled behind the wheel of the van. He’d donned a jacket and boots for our trip. The rest would be hidden by the universal glamour, which only worked for him because of the runes inked into his flesh.

  I quickly buckled my seatbelt. “Um … how long has it been since you drove?”

  “A decade.” He started the engine and pulled away from the house smoothly.

  I relaxed in my seat as we eased out of the gates. Okay, maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad.

  He drove expertly through the streets. “Where to?”

  “You remember the town?”

  “I remember most things once I’ve seen them a couple of times, and we were in Scorchwood for a few weeks before the Watch were killed.”

  Yes, Jay had taken his descendant’s place here, and Lark, Mai, and Kris were new to the posting by only a handful of years.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said, flicking a glance my way. “Are you nervous I’ll crash, raspberry girl?”

  Every time he called me that it was the equivalent of a belly rub on an eager puppy. It felt that good.

  Play it cool, Kat. “Nah. I’m fine. Just head for the center of town. It’s Friday night, which means it’ll be busy. Easier for the supernaturals who want to cause trouble to blend in.”

  “Jay said you were having a quiet spell.”

  “We are, aside from the rider incident last night.”

  “Rider?”

  Oh, crap. We hadn’t filled Jay in, so it stood to reason Bres wouldn’t know either. I gave him a quick rundown of events. CliffsNotes version, purely informative, leaving out the oh-shit-I’m-about-to-die emotions.

  His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You could have died.”

  “Pfft, it wasn’t so bad.”

  His gaze darted to me again. “Liar.”

  It sucked trying to pull the wool over a lie detector’s eyes. “Fine, I almost died, but the point is, I didn’t.”

  He made a sound of exasperation. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘rush in and get your skull bashed?’”

  “Huh? What? There is no such phrase.”

  “Maybe not in your world. There is nothing wrong with self-preservation.”

  “Says the man who gave his life to the crown to save his father’s.”

  He was silent for a long time. “No. I’m not the noble son you think I am. I wanted to use my power. I wanted to be recognized for it. Saving my father … It was a bonus.”

  Silence was a shroud for a long minute. “Since we’re doing confessions, I haven’t been to see my mother in almost a year. I told myself I couldn’t bear to see her like that when the truth is, I don’t want to go and sit in a room with a woman I have no emotional connection to. The truth is, it’s never been a priority until now. Now that I know what she did for me …”

  He parked the car opposite Cryptic Gods and killed the engine.

  “She saved you from the shimmer man.”

  I hopped out of the van and slammed my door shut. Bres strode around the van to join me.

  “Yeah, and now she’s dying. I need to see her. Soon.”

  “Then we go,” Bres said. “Now. We just drive. How far is it?”

  We could go. It was an hour-and-a-half drive to the care home. We could do it. All I needed to do was call Kris and Mai, let them know I was—

  “Kat!”

  Max jogged across the street toward me, his perpetual grim expression firmly in place. Behind him, a thick queue was forming to get into the club.

  Bres crossed his arms and turned to face him.

  The club owner stopped a couple of feet away. “New recruit?” He looked Bres up and down.

  “Sure, we can go with that.” I offered him a close-lipped smile. “And what can I do for you, Mr. Mysterious?”

  “Bastardized fey wreaking havoc in the club. I need you to take care of it.”

  “And you can’t kick him out yourself?” I arched a brow. “Are those muscles just for show?”

  Max clenched his jaw. “Firstly, it’s a she not a he, and secondly, she’s harpyblood.”

  I winced.

  Bres looked confused.

  A brief Harpy 101 coming up. “Harpybloods tend to look like petite, angelic beings under the universal glamour. Kinda ironic considering what they really look like.”

  Max snorted in annoyance. “I hardly think my manhandling a five-foot female who looks like a stiff breeze could blow her over would go down well.”

  Point taken. “Fine, we’ll get rid of her. Lead the way.” Bres frowned, and I shrugged. “Duty calls, big guy. Come on, let me show you how it’s done.”

  Bres followed me and Max back to the club. There were a few groans when Max let us straight in, but one glare from the owner, and the patrons soon stopped their whining, and then we were in the gloom streaked with strobe lights. The floor vibrated with the bass beat as we walked toward the dance floor.

  “There, in the center of the dance floor.” Max pointed.

  A leather-faced, bat-winged female with blonde straggly hair wearing a sequined mini dress was shaking her ass surrounded by several guys. They couldn’t see her true form—the glamour prevented that—but if I squinted and canted my head just right … yeah, there it was, the form humans were seeing. Wow. Hot enough not to need the attraction mojo harpies tended to exude.

  “She’s attracting males,” Bres said. “She will prey on them?”

  “Nope. Check out the women around her.”

  “They look upset.”

  “Yeah, they would be. Those women are with the guys. They’re the girlfriends.”

  The harpyblood always went for prey that was taken. And when I said prey, I wasn’t referring to the guys. Her targets were the women and the little green-eyed monster that lived inside of them. Once the harpy was done with her prey, they’d never be able to muster up an iota of jealousy. You might think the harpy was doing her prey a favor, but you’d be surprised how quickly a relationship would crumble without the green-eyed monster making an appearance now and then. Harpies didn’t need to feed on jealousy, but it was like a drug, an addiction that had been outlawed by the council over a decade ago.

  This feyblood was a lawbreaker.

  And now a bloody fight was breaking out—guys shoving guys, girls screaming and storming off. And look, there was our target shooting off in pursuit of her victim, a human female headed to the ladies’.

  So much shit went down in ladies’ rooms, and I wasn’t just talking about the flushable kind.

  I glanced at Max. “You got another exit aside from that fire exit behind the bar?”

  Max nodded. “There’s a fire exit in the corridor where the toilets are.”

  Good. “I’m going in. I need you to stop anyone following me; stick an out-of-order sign on the main door if you have to.” I jerked my head at Bres. “Come on, big guy, you’re about to get a peek into the magical world of ladies’ washrooms.”

  We skirted the dance floor and made a beeline for the neon sign marked Toilets. I pushed through into a dingy corridor that was at odds with the fancy décor of the club. Too many establishments negle
cted the restrooms. Looked like Cryptic Gods was no different.

  The carpet was a muddy brown color with patches of yuck stuck to it, and the smell of urine and other unsavory things hit my nostrils. Yep, it was coming from the men’s loos.

  “This is why you guys don’t get nice toilets.” I wagged my finger in Bres’s direction. “I mean, how hard is it to point and shoot?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve always had excellent aim. But for intoxicated humans? Not so easy.”

  I guess he had a point. The ladies’ loo was a few feet down from the men’s, a nondescript brown door with the word women printed on it. The lights flickered as we entered in the perfect creepy-shit-is-about-to-go-down vibe.

  Mirrors lined the wall under a counter housing circular sinks with classy chrome taps, but forget the gumball machine and the fancy soap dispenser, this was all about the bat-winged, talon-wielding creature that had a human female pinned to the wall and was sucking the yummy green out of her.

  “Is that green smoke jealousy?” Bres asked.

  “Yep. A delicacy to harpies.” I unclipped my holster and drew my gun. “Oi, leather face.”

  The harpy snapped her mouth closed and turned her head to fix me with blood-red eyes. The human slumped in the harpy’s grip, her eyes fluttering closed.

  “Let the human go and back up with your talons in the air.”

  The harpy shook herself. “Fuck you, Watch bitch.”

  “You wish. I want you wings to the wall. Now.”

  “You can’t stop me from feeding. I have a right to sustenance.”

  “Yep, you do, but not in a way that threatens the universal glamour, and not on jealousy. That was prohibited a decade ago. Look, you can give me your word you won’t do it again, and I’ll let you leave.”

  “Fuck you. Your laws mean nothing to us.” She glanced up at the ceiling behind me with a wicked grin.

  Us?

  Oh, fuck. Us. Brain fart moment. Harpy 101. They traveled in trios.

  The flap of wings and the scrape of claws on tiles filled the air behind us, and just like that, this was no longer a slap-on-the-wrist, let-me-escort-you-out-of-town situation. It was a will-I-be-able-to-shoot-them-before-they-can-gouge-out-our-eyes situation.

  I tightened my grip on my gun, addressing the two harpies I knew were behind me. “Stay where you are, or I blow your friend’s head off.”

  “Do it.” This female’s voice was scratchy and broken. “And I’ll blow a hole in your partner’s head.”

  Fuck.

  “Bres?”

  “She has a gun,” he confirmed. “Pointed at my head.” He sounded too calm.

  “Okay, don’t panic.” Shit, shit. I should have left him outside.

  “Yes, don’t panic,” the scratchy voice said. “I doubt your Nightblood partner will want to lose a hunk of deliciousness like you. She’ll put down her weapon if she knows what’s good for her.”

  One thing we’d been taught at the Academy was to pick your battles. Bres’s life wasn’t worth taking down one harpy over a feeding violation.

  “Fine.” I made to lower my weapon.

  “Don’t,” Bres said.

  “Do you have a death wish?” the scratchy-voiced harpy asked.

  “No,” Bres said. “Because I have protection runes etched into every inch of my skin.”

  He did? He fucking did!

  I guess the scratchy-voiced harpy didn’t believe him because, in the next moment, a gunshot echoed off the walls. Fuck this. I shot the harpy in front of me, but she moved in a blur, so the bullet only grazed her shoulder, and then she was gunning for my eyes with her nails.

  Throat punches were effective, no matter what breed of supe you used them on. The harpy doubled over, gasping for breath. There was a crack behind me, and then a leathery body dressed in jeans and a halter top slammed into the gasping harpy. Wings cut at my face, fluttering like crazy, and then the two harpies smashed through the window high up in the wall and vanished.

  Dammit! I turned to find the third harpy bleeding on the ground. Bres retrieved his dagger from her abdomen and wiped it on his shirt impassively before tucking it back into the holster beneath his jacket.

  “If you want her alive, we need to get her medical help,” he said.

  Fucking hell. I dialed our contact at the med center. We’d used her on several occasions over the past two months. “Poppy, it’s Kat, Kat Justice of the Watch. I need—"

  “You!” The harpy’s eyes blazed, and then her lips curved in a sadistic smile. “You’re the one he wants. You’re the one who’ll free us all.”

  “Kat?” Poppy said down the phone. “Are you there?”

  The harpy’s eyes fluttered closed.

  I grabbed her chin and shook her slightly. “What did you say?”

  “The shimmer man says hi.” She smiled smugly and then died.

  “Kat?” Poppy said down the phone.

  “It’s fine. False alarm.” I ended the call and stared at the dead harpy with a smug smile frozen on her face.

  The shimmer man … How the fuck did she know the shimmer man?

  Chapter Sixteen

  Two days searching for the harpies and no joy. They must have left town. Tris hovered while I sat on the edge of my bed, head in hands, going over how the washroom incident could have gone down differently. Instead, we’d ended up with a body in need of disposal and a smashed window. The ass, Max, hadn’t stopped harping on about that one. Ha. Harping.

  The temperature dropped, and Philip materialized in the center of my bedroom.

  “Any luck?”

  “I’m sorry. Nothing.”

  “Fuck.”

  “You want us to do another sweep?” Philip asked.

  They’d done three already. “No. That’s fine. Thank you.”

  He glanced at the wall behind me. “New occupant?”

  “Trust me, Philip, you do not want to mess with Bres. I doubt he’ll be as accommodating if you try perving at him in the shower.”

  Bres in the shower, now that was a pretty picture.

  “Chickie,” Tris said. “You have a little drool …” She indicated the corner of her mouth.

  I shot her a shut-it look.

  “Now you have me intrigued,” Philip said. He floated right through the wall and was gone.

  Bres had taken Henri’s chamber next door to mine. It was weird having him so close. No, not weird, it was comforting.

  A muted bellow followed Philip’s exit, and then the specter was back, eyes wide. “My god.” He floated hand on heart with a creepy smile on his face.

  “Okay, you’re freaking me out. Piss off.”

  Philip winked and vanished. The temperature went back up, and my stress levels came back online.

  “Calm down,” Tris said. “You guys have searched everywhere. If the harpies were still in Scorchwood, we would have found them. Stressing out won’t help.”

  “I know, but it seems wholly appropriate right now. I just … I just need to know how she knew the shimmer man. He’s up to something. He’s back somehow, and we don’t have enough information to prepare for his attack, so yeah, stressing is just the ticket.”

  “So, we wait,” Tris said. “I’ve made a note in the journal of everything that’s happened so far. We can go over the details later. But first …” She took my hand and pulled me to my feet. “First, we put up the decorations.”

  I shook my head. “Stressing, remember. No time for festive cheer. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m not in the mood.”

  She stood, hands on hips. “Nonsense. You’ve been working nonstop the past two days scouring the town. The harpies are gone. There is nothing we can do about the shimmer man right now. But Yuletide is less than a week away. What we can do is add a little cheer to this mansion and be thankful for what we do have.”

  The anxiety churning inside my chest ebbed a little. Maybe stressing could be put on hold. “And what do we have?”

  She smiled softly. “Each othe
r.” She placed her tiny hand over mine. “We have each other, chickie.”

  “You’re a soppy thing, you know that?” But she was also right.

  The harpies were gone. There had been no more incidences in the town. No more messages from the shimmer man. Sitting in my room stressing wouldn’t achieve anything no matter how appropriate it felt.

  “Fine.” I stood and stretched. “Let’s do decorations.”

  “Yippee!” Tris leaped up, and I caught her in a hug. “I’ll ask Emmett to make eggnog.”

  “Ask him to add some O-neg to mine.”

  “I doubt I’ll need to ask. After all …” She gave me a look.

  I grinned. “Emmett knows what we need.”

  * * *

  The tree was eight feet tall and alight with twinkling star-shaped lights and delicate baubles. Mai turned off the main lights, and with the fire crackling and the lamps and candles burning on the sills and shelves, the room was suddenly a Yuletide haven. A shiver of excitement washed over me. I bloody loved Yuletide in all its glittery, cheerful glory. Heck, last year, I’d even gone into the dungeons and handed out treats to all the prisoners. Okay, so most of them had spat at the reinforced glass that separated us, but I’m sure once I’d left them to it, they’d been pleased with the treats.

  Candy adjusted the bottom branches of the tree and sat back on her haunches. “I’m glad you didn’t get a real one. Real trees need to remain connected to their roots.”

  Of course, the nymph would find desecration of nature offensive.

  “But they smell so much better than fake ones,” Kiran said bluntly.

  It was weird seeing the police officer out of uniform. She looked softer, almost approachable in worn jeans and a baggy knitted jumper.

  Candy shot Kiran a sharp, disapproving look, and Kiran rolled her eyes. “Fine, we can use the real tree smell instead.” She handed Candy a small spray with a tree icon on it.

  Candy sniffed it and made a face. “That does not smell like a tree.”