“Ah.” She stabbed a dumpling with her fork. “You don’t trust my judgment, but you want brownie points for framing the offer as if you do.”
Prickly, prickly. Handling her when money was involved might require wearing gloves. Maybe multiple pairs.
“The person you choose for the job is up to you. I won’t interfere with that decision. I just want to make sure we’re leaving your dad with someone we can trust to take care of him.”
We.
Just like that, she and he were a we.
The room spun around its edges, and his throat grew tight. This was moving too fast. Way too fast.
And Grier had no idea. No goddessdamned idea.
She would hate him for this, but not half as much as he despised his cultivated reputation for the message it would send her. That she was just another girl, just another kiss, just another warm body.
You’re better than me, Grier, better than I ever will be. I hope you know that.
“Giving up control is hard for me.” Adelaide kept nudging her food back and forth. “You don’t deserve me snapping at you.” She angled her head toward him but not her eyes. “You’ve been very kind, about everything.”
“We’re in this together.” For better or for worse. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Together,” she whispered, as if trying it on to see how it fit.
The phone in his pocket buzzed, and he checked the caller ID. “I have to take this.”
“No problem.” She ditched her fork for the remote. “I’ll get the movie set up before our food gets cold.”
Standing, he walked across the room for a modicum of privacy. “Boaz.”
“We got another one.” Chambers exhaled across the receiver. “This one down at the railroad museum.”
“I’ll be right there.” Boaz itched to get moving. “Hold the cleaners off as long as you can.”
Adelaide rose as he ended the call. “Work?”
“Yeah.” He scrubbed a hand over his prickly scalp. “Looks like I can’t stay after all.”
“No problem.” She tossed the remote aside. “I’ll walk you out.”
An honest laugh escaped him. “That eager to get rid of me?”
“No,” she said, dragging out the word like she was still making up her mind. “I was remembering what you said about a case keeping you in town. I didn’t want you to think you had to stay on my account.”
An hour or two made no difference to the dead. Boaz could have blown off work, plopped back down, and gotten to know Adelaide better on her home turf. That was what he should have done, but he was a coward.
When Adelaide stared at him, his future looked back, and he couldn’t see Grier even on the periphery. The loss gutted him. So, yeah. He could have stayed and done the fiancé thing, played his role, but Adelaide gave the impression of being just as eager to get rid of him as he was to escape her.
“Night, Adelaide.”
“Good night, Boaz.”
Goddess, this was it, wasn’t it? The beginning. So why did it feel like the end?
Five
When Cass came to retrieve her car, she found me curled up on the couch and plopped down beside me.
“You look rattled.” She flicked the end of my robe’s sash back and forth like an irritated cat swishing its tail. “Want to talk about it?”
“Boaz dropped by tonight.”
“I thought he was in Savannah.”
“So did I.” I twisted to face her. “He got drafted by the local sentinels to help investigate a serial killer. It dovetails with a case he’s been working back home.” I might as well tell her the rest. “Ron might be the latest victim.”
“That’s not ideal, but we can manage.” She crossed her long legs and kicked her foot, smiling an evil little smile at the silver tip on her boot, probably thinking about when she would get another opportunity to torment Gustav. “He’s got no reason to think you’re involved, and he doesn’t know me from Adam.”
A weird caving sensation filled my middle. “I invited him to stay here.”
“Smart.” She tapped my knee. “This way we can keep an eye on him.”
That was the plan, but he had keen eyes himself. Who would be watching whom? How much had I slipped up tonight? How much had he noticed? How would I explain any of this if I got caught?
“Are you sure it’s safe for us to stay involved?”
“There are always idiots who fancy themselves vampire slayers, Addie. You would not believe the quality of stakes I’ve been assaulted with in my time.” She slipped into her mocking-humans voice, low and brutish. “I sharpened a pencil.” She mimed stabbing me in the chest. “Fear me!”
“First of all, you only did that to cop a feel.” I slapped her hand off me. “Second of all, the Society wouldn’t get involved if it wasn’t serious.”
Boaz was an Elite, a special class of sentinel. They wouldn’t spend him on a case that wasn’t priority.
“The Society loves to stick its nose into vampire business. They’re helicopter parents if you ask me.”
The Society was responsible for resuscitating humans, using necromantic magic to transform them into vampires, but they only cared for their offspring up to the point when the check cleared. Past that, as long as they weren’t making waves among humans, the Society would sit on its hands and allow the vampire masters to police their clans. Or not. Obviously. Or I would be out of a job.
“Before I forget.” She reached between her boobs, taking far too long, and pulled out a wad of cash. “There’s your cut.”
“How did you manage this?” I gawked at the money I never expected to see. “The cleaners took the body into custody, right?”
Cleaners kept the paranormal world from bleeding over into the normal, and that meant cleaning up our crime scenes and disposing of bodies before they were discovered by humans.
“Do you remember Frank?”
“The human who thought he got turned into a vampire because you bit him during sex once?”
“That’s him.” She chuckled at the memory and then sighed with amusement. “He’s a cleaner these days. I talked him into giving me the head after the rest had been catalogued.”
“Won’t that get him in trouble?”
“Probably.”
“Don’t you care?”
“Not especially.” She frowned when I gave her the look. “Please don’t lecture me, Addie.” She bared her fangs then pointed at them. “I’m carnivorous. Dare I say, a maneater.” She hooked her fingers into claws and raked the air with them. “This is what I do. I use them, and then I throw them away.”
“So basically, you’re a predatory litterbug.”
“I don’t believe in double-dipping.” A shudder rippled through her. “Do you know how many alcohol wipes I used before I bit him? Five. And now he’s always baring his throat around me and talking about blood exchanges like he’s seen in the movies.” She gagged a little. “He believes everything he sees on TV. It’s ridiculous.”