Black Magic Bayou (11 page)

This might be in my best interest to not make any more vague statements about Cassandra’s wellbeing.

“There’s something unnatural inside her sorority house. The chapter president has asked for my help, but in the meantime, while I ask for Cain’s advice on that situation, I might suggest you find an alternative living arrangement for the kitten.”

Lola blanched. I could tell she had roughly ten thousand follow-up questions for me, but her instincts were those of a leader, and I’d just told her one of her leap might be in serious trouble. She whipped out her phone again and jerked her chin towards the steps as she began to dial a number.

“I hope you’re prepared to offer him a lot, Genie. He’s not in the mood for free favors tonight.”

Therein was the problem with help from Cain.

As far as he was concerned, there was no such thing as a free favor.

I spotted Cain as soon as I was up the stairs, his shock of white hair visible from across the room, and his linebacker’s frame imposing even at a distance.

He had his back to me, which was unusual for a man who never turned away from an empty room.

“Miss McQueen,” he drawled without turning around. “I was wondering when I’d be seeing you again.”

I’d intentionally avoided crossing paths with Cain every time I’d come to The Dungeon in recent months. Delphine, knowing I was gun-shy about being around him, would meet me downstairs, since we both knew Cain rarely mingled with his human patrons.

Now, here I was with my proverbial tail between my legs, and I knew how pointless it had been to try escaping him.

“Hi, Beau.”

I caught his reflection in the mirrored panels behind the bar, his cool gray eyes watching me with unblinking interest. He lifted a glass of whisky to his lips and took a long pull, then set it back on the counter and turned around on the stool so he was facing me at last.

Cain was in his late forties and had the kind of face where you knew his most attractive years were still ahead of him, like age was making him better somehow. Right now his eyes were shadowed under the dim overhead lights, but I could make out the purple circles beneath them. It looked as if Cain hadn’t had a good night of rest in a month.

What could be so bad it would keep a man like Beau Cain up at night?

I’d spoken to Delphine only two days earlier, so I knew their relationship was as tight as ever. Not bad luck in love, then.

The idea something huge and scary could be causing the look on his face sent a chill down my spine. If things were going down that could spook Cain, we were probably all fucked.

I decided I didn’t want to know. At least not yet.

“How’s your uncle?” he asked formally.

“He’s well.”

“And your brother?”

I fidgeted, knowing there was no sense in lying to him. “An insufferable douche, currently.”

A humorless chuckle bubbled out of his throat, and he fought it back in by swallowing the rest of his drink.

“You McQueens have always been quite a handful, you know that?”

I hadn’t been aware he knew anyone else in my family well enough to make that kind of assessment. It made sense he and Callum would have crossed paths, but I knew for a fact he’d never met Secret.

Maybe my aunt Savannah?

Or my mother.

The idea nagged at me for a second, but I shook it off. I was here for something else, and Mercy McQueen was not part of the equation.

“I need—”

“Need.
Need
.” He waved me off, reached behind the bar to collect the bottle of Glenlivet he’d been drinking from, and refilled his glass. Then he grabbed a second tumbler and filled it, setting it down in front of the seat beside him with a loud
thonk
. The amber liquid sloshed dangerously inside the glass, but none spilled. “I need you to sit down and drink with me, Eugenia.”

I wasn’t much in the mood to drink, but if Beau Cain wanted to share a whisky with you, then by God you were going to drink that whisky.

Hesitantly I crossed the room and sat on the stool next to him, cupping the glass tumbler between my palms. He watched me with sharp, appraising eyes until I lifted the glass to my lips and drank. The booze burned down my throat and lit my stomach ablaze.

There was a good reason I didn’t like to drink alcohol. My heightened werewolf metabolism processed everything faster. Sure, it was great for stuff like cheeseburgers and cake, but it also meant that within seconds of sipping liquor I had a pretty impressive buzz going.

It would fade within minutes, but all the same, Cain knew exactly what he was doing by offering me the whisky.

My head swam a little, and everything in the room took on a faint, hazy glow. Suddenly I felt more comfortable and relaxed, as if all the events of the day were nothing more than a bad dream and I was finally waking up.

I took another sip, because it was wonderful not to have my belly chewing me up with worry. I could just
be
, even if it was false comfort.

“I know why you’ve been avoiding me, Miss McQueen.”

Another time I might have feigned surprise and given him my best
Who me?
expression, but what was the point? Cain would know it was bullshit, and so would I. We’d just be wasting time until I eventually fessed up.

I finished what was in the glass anyway. Liquid courage.

“I’m sorry.” I set my empty tumbler on the counter and looked him right in the eye, though it made me deeply uncomfortable. I wasn’t going to lose a staring contest to a human, no matter how powerful he might be.

“What are you sorry for?” A thin smile turned his whole expression cruel.

So he wanted to hear me say it, did he? Fine.

“I promised you a life, and I didn’t fulfill the bargain.” There. Simple.

Truthfully, my end of the bargain had been satisfied the second Timothy Deerling—psycho church leader and all around shitty dude—had been killed. But Cain hadn’t seen it that way. The thing about Cain was his help came with a price. It could be money, but usually it was goods, or in my case, a favor. I was supposed to bring him Deerling alive, and instead I’d let someone else kill the dude.

Circumstances demanded it at the time.

For a while I’d foolishly believed Cain would be okay with that because Deerling had met his maker. Dead was dead, right?

Not so much.

“And now you’re here, and you want something else from me, dontcha?” He swirled the booze around in his glass, and I watched it spin, almost hypnotized by the motion.

“Yes.”

“Cost is going to go up, you know? Since you still owe me.”

I bit back my urge to laugh in his face. I
owed
him? He had given me the address of a small town, and I’d damn near died getting out of there. Now he wanted me to simper and scrounge and give him
more
?

Fucking hell.

The problem was I needed him. I needed him, and he knew it, and because of that I would pay whatever price he asked and come back for more.

I hated being here, and I
loathed
being pressed under his thumb like this. It went against all my instincts. Being a leader meant bowing to no one.

Yet here I was, on my knees.

I was glad no one in the pack could see me sitting here, ready to beg.

But maybe, just maybe, being a leader meant doing what it took, even if it was ugly and unpleasant. That’s what I was telling myself, anyway, to make this more bearable.

The inside of my head felt nice and fuzzy, enough to dampen my anger at Cain for not just letting go of the debt he thought I owed him. I guess if he was in the habit of forgiving debts, he wouldn’t be as feared and respected as he was.

Seems to me like we were two trees planted side by side, neither of us willing to bend, while our roots got more and more entangled.

I’d always need Cain, because there would never stop being reasons for me to come here. And Cain would always need something from me, because there were things he couldn’t get without me.

So it would be, until we tore each other down or simply grew together.

I grabbed the bottle of Glenlivet and topped off my glass. If we were going to do this, I’d need my buzz to last a little longer. The lick of amber courage might be the only thing to get me to say yes to whatever terrible nonsense he asked for.

I needed to say yes.

I felt tired and heavy, weighed down by a burden so ferocious it threatened to pin me to the floor and never let me up again. When I was done here, no matter what tried to stand in my way, I was going home and sleeping.

A tired Alpha couldn’t help anyone.

“I promise not to kill anyone else in self-defense if you want them dead,” I told him. My words weren’t exactly slurred, but the consonants had lost their edge, and the vowels had gotten a tiny bit longer.

“Cheeky.” Cain’s smile was more genuine this time. I wasn’t sure if he actually liked me, but he didn’t
dislike
me, and that was its own reward.

“I need your help,” I admitted.

“Obviously. We aren’t friends. I can’t imagine you’d come on a social call.” He sipped thoughtfully.

The man didn’t need an ego boost, not with a girlfriend like Delphine, so I didn’t bother coddling him. I suspected my relationship with Cain would last longer and work better if I suspended any kind of bullshit and stayed on topic.

“I have to figure out how to get a demon out of a sorority house before it takes any more girls.” I kept my voice flat and deadpan, hoping he wouldn’t get a sense of how shit-scared I was.

Both of his eyebrows lifted, and he choked on the mouthful of whisky he was about to swallow.

As I live and breathe. Had I just surprised Beau Cain?

“Is that all?” He swiped away a small dribble from the corner of his mouth and straightened up in his seat.

“Yeah. Unless you want to help me find a murderer for free.”

He smirked, then gave a full belly chuckle. For the first time since I’d arrived he looked light and free, as if I’d pushed off whatever weight was hanging on his shoulders.

I’m glad my little demon-possession problem was good for something.

Cain set his glass on the bar and slapped his hands on his thighs with something I could only qualify as giddy excitement.

“Let’s go.” He pulled me off my seat, and all the drinking went right to my head, forcing me to hold his arm in order to keep myself standing.

“Go? Go where?” The room spun. I totally shouldn’t have had that second whisky.

Cain, who was already halfway across the room, turned quickly to face me.

“To get me a demon, of course.”

The first thing I noticed as we burst through The Dungeon’s front door was Wilder, sitting next to Jimmy, pointing to something on the bigger man’s Game Boy.

“Use the Shellder,” Wilder suggested.

“Are you out of your mind?”

They looked up as Cain and I exited the building, and
both
appeared equally guilty. Jimmy was on his feet first, but Wilder wasn’t far behind.

“Ah,” Cain said loudly. “Your mate.”

I blanched and tried to come up with something to say, but Cain was already striding towards the alley, apparently not concerned in the least about one of his guys sitting down on the job.

Wilder was no help either, because he grinned broadly at me, a smile that was the very definition of wolfish, and said, “Your
mate
, huh?”

I weakly countered with, “What are you doing here?”

He pointed to himself, then at me. “Bodyguard. I’d be pretty fucking terrible at my job if I wasn’t here.” This managed to gloss over the fact I hadn’t asked him to come and had actually left the house alone so I could speak to Cain in private.

I guess I should have been grateful he didn’t charge in and come upstairs.

Instead I was mildly annoyed with him for thinking I needed a bodyguard so badly I couldn’t be by myself for an hour without his help.

Cain, who had reached the street by this point, shouted, “We haven’t got all day, Miss McQueen. They’re quite a bit more powerful at night.”

Wilder lifted an eyebrow as his version of a question.

“Well, come on, you heard the man. We haven’t got all day,” I said.

“But—”

“Just…come on.”

A sleek black limousine was waiting at the mouth of the alley when we caught up to Cain. He must have had someone at his beck and call, because there was no way a service could have gotten to us that fast. I chewed the inside of my cheek, wondering if this was a terrible idea. Wilder, for his part, was eyeing the limo like a dog being called into a stranger’s car.

“I don’t like this,” he said.

“What’s to like?” I climbed in through the open door and took a seat near the driver’s side so I was facing the back of the car.

Wilder sat close to me but not right at my side, and Cain sat next to the door. His open suit jacket and casually unbuttoned shirt made him look like a billionaire businessman who was about to leave for vacation. The excitement written all over his face was both amusing and concerning, since I’d never seen him anything less than perfectly poised and serious.

Why did happiness look so wrong on some people?

“A-are we just going to go get it?” I hated how shaky and uncertain my voice sounded, but after one encounter with the demon that day, I wasn’t particularly amped up for a second round right now.

Cain’s smile faltered, and he stared at me as if I were simple, which is sort of how I felt. “Go
get
it? Like waltz in there with a net and try to cram it in a box as if it was a sneaky bunny rabbit.
Chère
.” This last was scolding and kind of condescending, the way Callum’s housekeeper, Lina, said,
Bless your heart
when what she really meant was,
You’re a fucking moron, aren’t you?

“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never seen a demon before, have you?”

His eyes glinted, and his expression became inscrutable. “I have.”

If there was more to the story beyond that, he wasn’t offering it up freely, and outright asking for details felt like it might add to my IOU tally.