“What are you doing with this?” she demanded. She was drunk, had a full drink in hand and was teetering precariously on her too-high heels. I could smell rum on her breath.
I sipped another mouthful of my beer, then took the paper out of her hands and set it back on the bar beside the photo of Lucy. “I’m looking for someone.”
“Well she’s dead.” The girl jammed her finger so hard into the picture she broke a stick-on nail. “So you can stop looking.”
Wow, someone was feisty. I swiveled on my stool, and she obviously wasn’t expecting it because she staggered backwards and almost toppled over.
“How well did you know Trish Keller?”
“Better than you,” she snapped, but it was apparent she was already losing steam. The girl sucked her drink through a little red straw and tried to act casual. “Why?”
“I’m investigating her death.”
“You a cop?” She looked me up and down, then sneered. “You don’t look like a cop.”
“And you don’t look very smart, but I’m not rushing to any conclusions there, am I?”
She choked on the next swallow of her drink and sputtered, “What?”
“I asked how well you knew Trish.”
“We party together.”
Oh yeah, real besties these two. I bet they had slumber parties and braided each other’s hair while gossiping about all the pre-law hotties. I wondered if she’d known Trish’s last name before I told it to her.
“Did you see her last night?”
“Sure, she was here for a bit.”
“With anyone?”
“That smoking hot TA from Intro to Medieval Lit.”
“Gabriel Holbrook?”
“Yeah, Mr. Holbrook.”
It felt bizarre to hear Gabriel referred to as Mr. Holbrook, as if he was someone in a position of authority. The only times I’d heard him referred to as Mr. Holbrook were when bill collectors called the apartment. Or at the police station earlier tonight.
“Did they leave together?”
“I guess.” She sipped her drink again, none of her former bluster in her words. “I mean, she left after he got thrown out.”
I was glad I didn’t have a mouthful of Guinness right then because I might have spit it out all over her. “Excuse me?”
“Yeah, he got into a fight with some guy, and they both got kicked out. I didn’t see Trish after that.”
“Do you know who he got into a fight with?”
“I just said, didn’t I? Some guy.” She rolled her eyes at me like I was the stupid one.
“How remarkably helpful.”
“Yeah, you’re welcome.” She was distracted now and waved to someone on the other side of the room. “Thanks for the drink,” she added, raising her glass and tapping it against my beer. “See you in Anthro.” Then she teetered off, shrieking, to go hug some mammoth guy in an NYU hoodie.
Okay, so she was clearly drunk off her ass. Did that mean everything she told me was pure fantasy? She’d confirmed Trish had been here with Gabriel, but maybe she was remembering a different night. And Gabriel hadn’t mentioned anything about a fight to the cops. Why would he leave out a detail that would be so easy to confirm?
The bartender returned, grumbling about idiot kids, and I slid the photos across the bar to him. He took a look at both, then slid the photo of Lucy back to me. “Never seen her before, looks like a sweet girl, probably too nice for a scene like this, you know? This one though…” He turned the photo of Trish towards me, like I’d never seen it before. “If we had a frequent-buyer card, she’d be first in line to get one. Trouble with a capital T.” Trish smiled out from the picture, oblivious to how her reputation was being sullied postmortem.
“Someone told me her boyfriend…” the word gave me pause, “…the guy she was with last night, got thrown out for getting into a fight. Is that true?”
“Two-dollar draft Tuesdays?” He snorted. “Lots of fights happen on Tuesdays, sweetheart.”
I kicked myself for not thinking to bring a picture of Gabriel with me. “Thanks for all your help.” I put a twenty on top of my empty shot glass and left.
Two bars and too many drinks later, I had an interesting mental picture of Trish Keller’s life and absolutely no news about Lucy Renard. The two were polar opposites—one a slutty party girl, the other a bookish introvert. Tomorrow night I was going to check out the campus and ask around in Gabriel’s Medieval Lit class, see if anyone remembered anything about Trish that might be helpful to clearing my ex of the murder charges. I also needed to get into Lucy’s room and snoop around for any indication of where she might have gone.
Guess the little home-schooled half-breed from Canada was going to university after all.
Chapter Twelve
Lucas’s town car was parked in front of my apartment building when I got home.
“Awesome,” I grumbled. I’d been so dead set on putting my personal life on the back burner, I’d forgotten my personal life sometimes had a mind of its own.
Dominick was waiting on the landing outside my door, texting someone, looking generally bored. He knew as well as I did that the wards on my apartment kept most of the mean and nasty things away. They did not detract ghosts. Or uninvited werewolf kings, apparently.
“You could have waited inside, you know.”
“That sort of prevents me from guarding the entrance.”
“Suit yourself.” I went to grab my keys, but it occurred to me that was probably unnecessary since Lucas had already let himself in. “Is your brother in there?”
“What do you think?” His tone was dark as he pocketed his cell phone. This was not the happy-go-lucky Dominick I was used to.
“What did I do to piss him off? He knows Lucas and I have the same bond. I thought they understood how this whole mess worked.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he was expecting you to pick Lucas.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about? I didn’t pick anybody.”
Dominick looked baffled by my response, and his former anger fizzled. He reached out to brush my hair aside. Everything kept coming back to this stupid, goddamn hickey. He was about to say something when my front door jerked open, and Lucas filled the frame with unusual menace.
“I think you’ve said just about enough,” he told Dominick.
To the bodyguard’s credit, he didn’t balk under the withering glare. “I don’t think you have said nearly enough.”
Lucas scowled and stepped out of the doorframe, giving me space to pass. How nice of him to give me access to my own fucking apartment. The second he closed the door I was standing in front of him with a finger jammed into his chest and a serious itch to go for my gun.
“You have a lot of explaining to do.”
“That seems like a common theme with us.” He ignored my phalangeal assault and guided me towards the couch. I didn’t feel much like being guided, but it would have been stupid to have our conversation standing up, so I moved across the room and intentionally sat on the armchair instead of the loveseat.
“So, what’s the deal with this?” I pushed my curls over my shoulder to show him my neck. “It isn’t healing, and it’s freaking everyone out.”
His eyes flicked to the fist-shaped hole in my hallway wall. “Apparently.”
“Either tell me what’s going on or get out. I’m not in the mood for cryptic werewolf bullshit tonight. And I’m minus one Queen’s Guard thanks to you.”
“I’ll talk to Desmond.”
“And tell him what?”
“That you and I are mated.”
“Right. Soul-bonded. I’m pretty sure he knows that,” I said sarcastically.
“No, Secret. Not soul-bonded. Mated.”
My hand flew to the mark on my neck, and I thought about how it had felt when he’d bitten me. The electricity, the fire filling me up until I brimmed over. It hadn’t just been lust. It had been magic.
“What the fuck did you do to me?”
“I asked you to let me do something, to trust me, and you did.”
“I wasn’t expecting to be mate-raped,” I yelled, hurling a pillow at him.
He caught the pillow and set it down, looking far too calm, though he did flinch when I used the word rape. “You’re overreacting. If you’ll calm down and stop throwing things, I will explain.”
The next things I’d start throwing were weapons, and the broadsword mounted on my wall was looking mighty inviting right then. I was sick and tired of Lucas behaving like my naivete about werewolf culture and ritual gave him the right to act on my behalf. I wasn’t a child, and I wasn’t his pawn.
“Start talking.”
He sighed. “The soul-bond is one part in a more complicated process. Werewolves use it to find their mates.” The glare I fixed on him must have told him what I was holding back from saying out loud, that I already knew this part. “But true mating is a different thing altogether.”
I grabbed another pillow and hugged it to my chest. Taking a weapon off the wall would be too obvious, but if there was a way to beat him to death with fabric and feathers, I would find it. And if he danced around the point of this conversation with a long, drawn-out explanation, I would find a way to make it really painful.
“Long story short,” I warned him.
Lucas shot me a look, one that might have made lesser wolves cower. I simply returned it in kind. “I sealed our mate bond when I bit you. I took in part of your essence and fed you part of mine. We are one now.”
“If we’re so bonded, why can’t I taste you anymore?”
“Because the side effects of the bond are no longer necessary. Now that we are truly mated we don’t need the soul-bond. It has done its job.”
“And the mark?” I prodded the bruise on my neck.
“It will heal. It’s a sign of the completed mating. Once it’s gone, people will recognize my power in you. The other wolves in our pack and in others will finally see you as their queen.”
