Kept (6 page)

With a grin, I clicked a few buttons. The GPS unit said,
“Take the second left, you must, or you will fall to the dark side.”

Both Alex’s and Thorn’s heads snapped in my direction.

“Yoda?” Thorn asked.

“I got quite the deal from the manufacturer,” I said. “I can even have Han Solo or Darth Vader berate him, if you like.”

Thorn chuckled, low and soft. “I don’t think even Stormtroopers could convince Alex to go in the right direction.”

I wanted to tease my brother further, but he didn’t give in to the dark side. He followed Yoda’s directions, and we reached one of the nicer hotels and parked in a nearby garage. As we walked inside, I pondered the question neither of them had brought up. Where would we stay? What were the
sleeping
arrangements?

And most importantly, how the heck was I going to survive with no meds, one shirt, and nothing else clean to wear?

No one said anything about the two beds in the room or who’d be sleeping in them. Of course I had other things on my mind, such as the fact that the room could be harboring countless germs. In recent years, hotels in the northeast have had some bedbug problems. The very idea that I could settle into one of these beds without a careful inspection was impossible. This trip was stressful enough as it was.

“Lay low for a bit,” Thorn said to me. “I’m taking Alex out to talk to the people in the note. Once we get a solid lead, you can check it out with us.”

Here we go
. I should’ve known this was going to happen. “You’re not serious, are you?”

“Nat, you don’t know these kinds of people. You’ll have more problems than your missing father if you show your face to them.”

Anger welled up inside me, furious and flowing. “What’s that supposed to mean? I’ve held my own before.”

His face remained even. “Your bravery—and stubbornness—isn’t the problem. It’s how other werewolves perceive you.”

No matter how much I strived to keep my universe sparkling clean and free from germs, there was something I still couldn’t control: the fact that other werewolves thought my scent was inferior. My inferior scent
was the one thing I couldn’t scrub off. Worry, doubt, and fear clung to me and alienated me from others.

I stood and marched to the door. Thorn meant well and all, but reminders weren’t necessary. “If we’re leaving, we should do it now.”

Alex got up from the other bed and tried to hide his smile. “I don’t know why you try, man.”

As we walked out the door, Thorn groaned. “I don’t know either.”

My first visit to a casino should have been on a vacation with my girlfriends. A night out to enjoy drinks and perhaps snag a good Russian man to bring home. Or at least a clean one anyway. Instead, I stood in the middle of the Golden Saddle Casino trying to find my missing father. As of this moment, my only option was staring at the multitude of blinking machines within a fog of never-ending smoke and other people’s body odors. A few of the valued customers hadn’t bothered to get up from gambling their mortgages away to freshen up for the day.

As we browsed the aisles looking for leads on Old Leslie Leatherback, every part of me wanted to hose this place down with bleach. Who in their right mind would touch these slot machines after everyone else had put their grimy hands on them? Some of the patrons were even stranger. Humans weren’t the only gambling addicts. In between the regular customers, hidden with glamours, sat supernaturals. A zealous brownie, dressed in a tweed jacket and dirty brown pants, stared at another customer playing the slots, perhaps hoping to feel the excitement of a win. Personally, I would’ve been creeped out to have someone gaping at me like that.

A werewolf, thin and hungry, clung to a machine,
pressing the buttons continually. He looked to be around my age, twenty-five or so. A cigarette precariously hung between his lips and dipped every time he pressed the button. Press. Dip. Press. Dip.

“Nat?” Thorn touched my shoulder.

We pressed on and I tried to ignore the persistently skeevy feeling while I passed a group of human men who were taking a succubus to the nearby bar. The female sex demon’s glamour was strong and brightened her white skin. But even under all her glamours, she couldn’t disguise her scent from my well-trained nose. She stunk of magic. Not your average clean white magic, but the kind that could give you more than a mystery venereal disease. Those poor guys had no idea she planned to drain both their wallets and their souls. With a smile, she took them to one end of the bar while Thorn directed us toward the other.

From there, I spotted two werewolves enjoying a drink. The men smelled old—quite old by werewolf standards. They were even a bit older than my father. However, to humans they looked to be in their late forties. One wore dressy clothes while the other sported a worn brown leather jacket with jeans. The dressed-down one had a shaggy haircut that gave him the air of a hardened ranch hand.

When Thorn stood before them, the dark-haired man in the nicer clothes spoke. “Can I help you?”

He eyed me next, slower than I’d prefer. Long enough for Thorn to push me behind him. The wolf’s gaze switched over to Alex.

“I’m looking for Old Leslie Leatherback. You heard of him?” Alex asked.

The man who’d addressed us rolled his shot glass between his fingers. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m—” Alex began.

“We’ll introduce ourselves once we find Old Leslie,” Thorn said. “Our business is with him.”

The dark-haired man offered a small smile before he stood. Thorn had a good few inches on him, but the other man had a cockier stance.

“That’s enough, Jack,” the dressed-down man warned. “Quit acting like everything’s a pissing contest.” Not long after, he laughed. “I’m Old Leslie. What’s your business, son?”

Jack stepped away from Thorn and sat, but he kept his eyes on Thorn.

Old Leslie continued. “You’re definitely not a pup,” he said to Thorn. “You’re much too powerful to be one.”

From behind Thorn, I could see Alex stand straighter, but I doubted he’d made much of an impression.

Thorn said, “I was told to come see Old Leslie Leatherback if I was looking for work.”

My mouth threatened to drop open, but I kept it in check. What the hell was he doing?

“Do I look like an employment office?” Old Leslie chuckled.

“You look like a man who has connections.” Thorn shrugged. “I’ve heard a thing or two.”

“From whom?”

I bit the inside of my mouth.

Thorn didn’t hesitate, though. “Fyodor Stravinsky’s from my area. I haven’t seen him for a while, but he told me if I needed quick cash you’d be the man to see.”

“I haven’t seen Fyodor in a while either, but he’s good enough folk.”

He stared at Thorn for a few seconds. From my angle, I couldn’t see Thorn’s face. But I had an idea what was happening. I’d seen my father do it with other wolves. Their eyes would examine each other in an elaborate
dance that spoke words I didn’t understand. I suspected it was some kind of male thing where they measured each other’s machismo.

“Good enough, then.” Old Leslie flicked his fingers in Jack’s direction. “Meet up with them right here at ten tonight and take them to Roscoe.” Then he said, “You better be as good as you look.”

Jack’s frown filled his whole face when he met up with us later that night. Maybe his life as a thug and working for Roscoe was the reason he was so talkative and cheerful.

None of us said a single word as we followed him from the bar and then out of the casino. The streets of Atlantic City around the Golden Nugget Casino buzzed with life. People walked along the street holding drinks in their hands, holding conversations with their friends. The stench of cigarettes and cheap beer clung to their clothes. Ugh. To make matters worse, we passed a man who staggered toward us after he’d upchucked on the sidewalk. A part of me was grateful I’d mostly missed out on that particular tourist attraction. The only thing I did enjoy was the succulent scent of fine dining. We’d eaten a light meal while waiting to meet up with Jack, but we hadn’t made any plans for a
real
dinner. Alex and I had been far too worried about Dad to think about that.

Jack led us three blocks down the street before we reached the entrance to the Jersey Juniper Resort. This place wasn’t as large as the Golden Saddle, but it had just as many customers. Supernaturals swarmed as both customers and staff. The entryway beckoned to us with obnoxious maroon and dark pink lights. Two unfortunate souls, both of them dressed in costumes from the latest hit Broadway show, passed out flyers and tried to
generate excitement for their show with an elaborate singing routine.

Alex took the lead into the hotel while Thorn brought up the rear. I followed my brother with my arms crossed, hoping I wouldn’t come into contact with anyone. Jack led us down several corridors in the hotel before we finally came to a door labeled FACILITIES. The scent of wolves lingered here from one corner to another. Their musk filled my nostrils and made me wonder which pack controlled this area. The last I’d heard, the Atlantic City pack had severed into several factions after its leaders had quarreled. I wasn’t sure if one of the rival packs held Dad’s debt or if it was held by a single person. The name Roscoe didn’t ring a bell, so I had no idea what we were about to face.

From the locked door we walked down several flights of stairs until we reached the facilities floor. We didn’t run into any maintenance employees, so no one stopped us before we reached the final set of doors. Two burly guards stood in front of them. I froze. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t seen guns that big before, but seeing two men as large as my father holding them made me twitch in fear. Like my dad, the guards were thickset—muscle built on muscle. The guns they held were most likely to ward off any curious humans, but from the way they softly growled at us, they saw us as a threat, too, even with Jack as a tagalong.

Jack’s hand rose. “They’re with me. Old Leslie cleared them to see Roscoe.”

The guards parted and reluctantly allowed us to pass. The room we entered looked like I could fit my whole cottage inside it. From one end to the other, it was a palace for men who liked to play: pinball machines, luxurious black lounge chairs, a full bar. Not far from the pinball machines sat a large desk with a massive screen. The whole setup screamed gamer.

The only thing that seemed off about the room was the stacks of crates behind the pinball machines. Their strong metallic scent led me to suspect Roscoe’s boxes stored weapons, not holiday cheer like mine.

But the room wasn’t relatively empty of people. Only a few sets of eyes flicked in our direction. Jack led us all the way down to the end of the room, where a man sat at the desk playing on a computer. When you thought about crime rings and gangsters, you didn’t picture a guy around my dad’s age playing a computer game. At least I didn’t. I tilted my head slightly to the side to get a better view of the computer screen. A dark-haired man with a beak-like nose was playing World of Warcraft, but he wasn’t playing as just any old regular WoW character. He was playing as an elf—a well-endowed blood elf death knight who could also have been a real dark elf hooker snagging a john on a corner. Why he preferred to play as a woman wasn’t any of my business, I figured.

“Old Leslie told me to bring these people to come see you, Roscoe,” Jack said.

Roscoe flipped off his headset, giving us at least a part of his attention, though his right hand still flew across the keyboard, as if he planned to continue to fight orcs while he spoke to us. “What do you want?”

His black-eyed gaze swept from Alex to Thorn, and then finally his eyes rested on me—on my boobs anyway. His grin wasn’t attractive. Not with those oversized chompers. “Perhaps I need to make an addition to my stable.”

Most werewolf men who approached me didn’t say such things. When I walked around town, strangers would leer at me in my pencil skirt, but once they actually met me, my behavior told another tale—I wasn’t like all the other werewolf girls.

“What kind of place is this?” I asked Thorn.

“One that your father hadn’t meant for you to ever see,” he murmured. He kept his face forward, his eyes focused on the guards.

Even though Thorn wasn’t as large as them, the guards assessed him with wary, alert eyes.

“We’re here on business,” Thorn said.

“You men don’t look like the type who usually come looking for people like me.” He switched his gaze to Alex. “You’re rather scrawny.”

Looking at the guards standing around us, I had to concede that he had a point. Alex matched my height of five foot seven. He had a muscular build and all, but he took after my mom, and she definitely didn’t have my father’s girth.

Roscoe’s gaze went to Thorn, and I wondered what the older man thought of him. But instead of lingering on Thorn, he assessed me. “I have plenty of men—but I could always use a pretty girl.”

“No, thanks,” I whispered. “You don’t want me in stock at your little store. I have cooties.”

At the same time, Thorn said, “She’s with me.”

Roscoe laughed. “Interesting. So, what does an alpha want in a place like this? No need to deny it. You practically have most of my men hungry to fight you.”

Three of the guards faced Thorn head-on, but no one else looked directly at him. They didn’t need eyes to see his stance. The way he filled space with his powerful presence.

“What is it? You lose a few thousand at the tables?” Roscoe’s bushy eyebrows danced. “You need to buy back the
farm
you came from?”

“Not exactly. I’m actually here looking for someone.” Thorn motioned for Alex to speak.

Alex seemed hesitant but stepped forward. “We’re
looking for Fyodor Stravinsky. He had business here recently.”

Roscoe made a sarcastic snort. Then he rolled his tongue over his teeth. “What do you care for that
ublyudok
?”

I tried to take a step forward, but Thorn grabbed me. How
dare
Roscoe call my father a bastard? I tensed as the urge to attack him strengthened. Thorn’s hand on my hip tightened painfully.