[M__M 03] Misery Loves Company (11 page)

Chapter Twelve

Bridget had taken over a conference room and turned it into a war room. A messy war room.

I stood in the doorway, searching for her amidst the nine other Gryphons running around and the piles of paper spread over every surface like snow. As the A/C turned on, some of the paper snow beneath the vent lifted off the table and blew like the real thing. As I tucked a pile of receipts beneath a box, I spotted Bridget behind a computer at the far end. She saw me at the same time and beckoned me over.

I wove across the room, dodging Gryphons and gingerly stepping over boxes containing yet more paper. “What’s going on? It looks like you have everything here but Eric’s contract.”

Bridget slid the laptop over to another Gryphon. “We might have the contract somewhere in this mess and not have found it yet. We got permission to search Marshall’s things this morning.”

“I see.”

She pulled her hair back as we spoke, ignoring my comment. “We just got back. In case we don’t have the contract, we’re expanding our search to include other ways to track down this goblin. That’s why I need your help. I was able to recruit a bunch of people, but there’s a lot to go through, and what we’re searching for might be obscure.”

“Sounds like a blast. What are we searching for besides a contract?”

“That’s the problem. It’s one of those situations where you’ll know it when you see it.”

I peered into the closest box. It was filled with green hanging file folders, each stuffed with papers. “Will I?”

“Possibly. Will any of us?”

“Your optimism is inspiring.”

Bridget grabbed the box I was poking through and handed it to a passing Gryphon. “Since when do you care for optimism? We’re searching for patterns in behavior. Marshall lives in New Hampshire. There are no pred communities in his area. Boston is the closest, so his goblin most likely lives in Shadowtown. See where I’m going with this?”

I really did try, but my brain was not up to the task. “Pity me. Agent Kassin’s reading material kept me up last night, and I’m sleepy.”

“Oh, yeah. Kassin’s top-secret stuff. I heard he was looking for you earlier.”

“Great. Hide me behind a stack of papers if you want me to stay here, or he’ll pull me away. My understanding is that he outranks Director Lee.”

Bridget smiled. “He does, and can do. So to explain—addicts need to meet their masters every now and then to keep the bond strong and healthy. As a rule, preds don’t go to their addicts. They expect their addicts to come to them. Marshall would, therefore, have to travel to Boston on a somewhat regular basis. So that’s what we’re looking for—anything to suggest when or where. Some preds let their addicts go to their houses or places of business, but others don’t. They could have met at a place in or around Shadowtown. If we get the place, we get a lead on tracking the goblin. Make sense?”

It did, but it sounded like dreadfully dull, possibly fruitless work. On the other hand, it beat going door to door in Shadowtown and asking people if they knew which goblin addicted Eric Marshall. With my Shadowtown contacts—AKA the satyrs and Gunthra—tapped out, that was all that was left to me if Bridget insisted on it.

Bridget set me down with a box of my own, this one filled with manila file folders instead of green ones. While the other people around me pored over bank statements, credit card receipts and who knew what else, I discovered my box was mainly filled with all the information Eric had kept regarding the building and upkeep of his massive house. Nothing remotely helpful.

We’d been at it for over an hour when an older woman at the opposite end of the table jerked me out of my searching stupor. “I might have something.”

Wearily, I rubbed my eyes, hoping it was the damn contract so I could stop this tediousness.

The Gryphon cleared a spot among the papers she’d been going through and laid out what appeared to be a series of bank records. “These show Marshall’s debit card uses. It’s not much, but every other Thursday evening he’s dropped money at some place called Vine. Looks like a Beacon Hill address.”

“That’s a wine bar,” one of the other Gryphons said. “Pricey place too.”

Bridget sucked on her lip. “Not exactly near Shadowtown.”

“No, but it’s near this.” Wes pointed to something on the laptop. “I found a recurring appointment on Marshall’s calendar—a support group for addicts. It meets every Thursday out of Mass General.”

“So maybe Eric goes for a glass of overpriced wine before or after his group.” I stretched my arms. “It’s not likely he goes to the group and meets the goblin on the same day, is it?”

Bridget turned to me. “Maybe, maybe not. But why make more than one trek into the city if he doesn’t have to? We should check it out, and the support group, too, to see if Marshall talked to anyone in it.”

I’d been recruited for both tasks, at least in part because I wanted to get out of the building and therefore out of Tom’s reach.

Bridget explained more on the drive to Vine. “These support groups are usually semi-anonymous because there’s such a stigma to being an addict. I could send over a plain-clothed Gryphon to talk to people, but I’d rather not.”

I rubbed a smudge of dirt off my sunglasses, parsing that one out. “Are you suggesting I lie to people about why I’m there so they’re willing to talk?”

Bridget’s lips thinned at the suggestions. “Of course not. You’re only a consultant, so you don’t have to lie, and you could truthfully explain that you’re a friend of the family.”

I almost laughed. “That still sounds fairly devious for you. I thought you were all about being straightforward and official.”

Bridget frowned at me. “That is straightforward. Nothing there is a lie or devious. It’s about putting people at ease.”

Right. Because sending a pred into an addict support group instead of a Gryphon would be much less stressful for the addicts.

Of course, Bridget didn’t know what I was. It was the advantage of being able to pass as human, as Dezzi had mentioned.

I held up my hands in defeat. “Okay, understood.” Still devious though, I thought.

Vine had just opened when we found it tucked into one of the neighborhood’s quaint brick buildings. Inside, I pulled off my sunglasses and blinked while my eyes adjusted to the dim light. I spent a fair amount of time in bars, but this was the first one I’d been to that made me feel uncomfortably out of place.

When I went out with Steph, we favored her cousin’s bar. Kilpatrick’s was one of dozens of Irish, or faux Irish, pubs that dotted the city. It was a step down from The Lair, more boisterous and more likely to see a fight break out. But The Lair, though Lucen kept it nicer than any satyr bar had a reason to be, had nothing on
this
place.

Everything here was chic and shiny, from the glassy black tabletops to the mirrored lighting, and the artful arrangement of empty wine bottles and corks that graced the walls. If I touched something, I feared I’d leave dirt behind, but I tipped one of the menus closer with my finger anyway for a better look. Then I let go of it quickly when I saw the prices.

“We don’t open for another five minutes,” one of the servers said with barely a glance in our direction. She was dressed all in black, her blonde hair slicked behind her ears, and she was lighting the votives on the tables.

Bridget made a show of checking her watch. “It’s three o’clock by my time, but we’re not here to drink. We need to ask some questions of the employees about one of your regulars.”

“Oh.” She deigned to check us out, and surprise registered on her face when she saw Bridget’s uniform and her badge. “Um…let me get the manager.” Smoothing down her skirt, she headed into the back.

Two more people emerged from the back room almost the instant after the blonde disappeared. They were both also dressed in black. The man headed behind the bar with a curt nod, and a black-haired woman approached us. She had a pinched expression, and I could taste her displeasure. Whether that was because we weren’t paying for our time here or because this was legal business, I couldn’t be sure.

She dismissed me with a glance, so maybe she also disapproved of my jeans and sneakers. “Cat Williams.” She held out a hand to Bridget. “How can I help you?”

“We’re investigating an attack on one of your regulars,” Bridget said after introducing us. “His name is Eric Marshall. I don’t know if that means anything to you.”

Cat’s spine straightened, and I bit my lip, amused by her indignation. “Absolutely we know Mr. Marshall. It’s always an honor when a celebrity shows favor to our establishment. We’ve only been open for six months, but Mr. Marshall was one of our first guests. It’s terrible what happened to him, but I wasn’t aware there was an attack too.”

Bridget let the misconception slip. “There was, and we’re following all leads in the case. Unfortunately, because of what happened to Mr. Marshall, we’re unable to ask him questions directly. We do know he came here regularly and were wondering if he ever met anyone.”

Cat’s eyebrows shot into her hairline. “I hope our establishment is not involved in any way.” After Bridget assured it was not, she went on. “He never met anyone here, no. But he usually came in with a friend. A girlfriend, possibly. I couldn’t say.”

“You wouldn’t happen to have the woman’s name, would you?”

“I’m afraid not. Jenny might be of more assistance if it’s the woman you’re interested in.” Cat waved over the blonde waitress.

The door jingled open as Jenny approached. Cat told her to stay and answer our questions while she attended the customers.

I listened again as Bridget gave a brief rundown of our purpose. Unlike Cat, who seemed to be well-informed about what happened to Eric, Jenny only knew she’d heard something on the news.

“He was attacked with magic?” A spot of color bloomed on her pale cheeks. “That’s awful. He usually sat in my section when he’d come in. He was very polite and tipped well.”

“What about the woman he was with?” Bridget asked. “Do you know her name?”

Jenny thought for a moment. “Yes, I know I heard him say it occasionally. It began with an S. Sharon maybe? Or Sienna? I want to say it makes me think of something warm. I’m sorry I can’t remember better.”

My gaze roamed the floor for a waiters’ station. “If she ever paid with a credit card, you’d have her name. We know when she came in, so the search would be narrow.”

“Good idea,” Bridget said.

“Former waitress here,” I reminded her.

But my good idea was for nothing. “Mr. Marshall always paid, which I always thought was very nice of him because I didn’t get the sense that they were together, if you know what I mean.”

“So she wasn’t his girlfriend?”

“Not the vibe I got. They talked quietly, but there was no touchy-feely-ness, if you get me.”

“What kind of vibe did you get?” I asked. Jenny questioned me with her eyes, so I tried to explain without tipping her off or freaking her out. “I mean, was there anything unusual about her?”

Like you know, a cold aura or a prickly sensation in your mind? Did she awaken any greedy urges or impulses? Did you occasionally see her from the corner of your eye and something about her appearance seem unnatural, like it was a disguise charm?

If the mystery woman was obviously a goblin, surely Jenny or Cat would have mentioned it. But preds often donned disguises when they mingled in the human world. Those came easy for satyrs, who only needed to hide their horns. Goblins would need more elaborate magic, but it could be done.

“No, nothing really,” Jenny said. “She seemed pretty normal. Sorry.”

“That’s all right. Can you give us a description of her?”

“Thirties, I’d guess. About your coloring.” Jenny pointed to me. “Tall and very thin. She kind of looked like a model, and she wore lots of rings. That’s one thing that always weirded me out about her. Every one of her fingers had two or more rings on it, even her thumb. I always thought it looked so uncomfortable.”

Bridget wrote down everything Jenny shared, and let her go.

“The rings make me think of Gunthra,” I said. “She wears them like that too.”

Bridget stuck her notes away. “Does she? I never noticed. It doesn’t sound like this person is our goblin, though. I’m sure Jenny would have noticed if something was off about her. Even the most clueless people tend to be aware of disguised preds at a subconscious level. We should check with the bartender and manager to be sure.”

We did, but neither of them provided any useful information. The excursion seemed to me to be a bust, but at least it got me out of scanning Eric’s water bills for part of the afternoon.

Jenny ran up to us as we were leaving. “I just remembered. The woman’s name is Shawna.”

Bridget wrote that down too, and thanked her.

“Did you see anything about a Shawna in Eric’s stuff?” I put my sunglasses on as we returned to the car.

“No.” Bridget pulled out the keys, and the SUV beeped as it unlocked. “But now we can look again.”

Peachy. So much for getting out of more paperwork.

Chapter Thirteen

I suspected Bridget would have kept me around all evening searching for Shawna or other leads in the mess of papers she obtained from Eric’s house, but when I told her I had plans, she grudgingly let me go. I felt bad for cutting out early, but Lucen was taking the night off for our date, and it wasn’t fair to screw up his plans either.

Speaking of my horned demon, he called me as I got off the T. “Wear a skirt tonight.”

“What?”

“You heard me. A skirt. A short one.”

“I don’t think I own a skirt. Scratch that—I know I don’t. I just finished unpacking my clothes the other night.”

“You don’t own a single skirt? What sort of woman are you?”

“One that likes pants, obviously. When have you ever seen me in a skirt?”

He sighed into my ear. “Never. That was the point. If we’re doing this whole date deal, we should do it right. You, a skirt, an easy way for me to slide my hand up your leg during dinner.”

“Not a skirt person.”

“You lack imagination. Picture a quiet, candlelit corner. You’re sipping your wine, waiting for the food, and that’s when you feel my hand brush your knee under the tablecloth. You do nothing to give it away, and slowly, I draw my fingers up your leg, nudging your skirt higher. You’re tensing with anticipation, but still not moving as I glide my fingers between your thighs. You breathe a little faster, feeling your blood rush. And still I reach higher and higher, caressing your smooth skin, watching you stifle a gasp as my finger grazes the edges of your hairline before sliding lower and spreading your folds.”

I realized I’d stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and hastily started moving again. “Okay, you’ve got my imagination going.”

“Really? Then imagine that I can tell you want me to stop, but you can’t help spreading your legs just a touch, leaving me room for another finger and another, delving deeper until I find your clit, stroking and caressing it. Again. And again, feeling it grow harder while you grow wetter. And maybe you move slightly now so I can slide one of those fingers deep inside you. Your hands are tight around your wineglass, and your nipples are poking through your shirt. You’re afraid people are watching you, sensing what’s going on, and as your breathing—”

“All right, all right. Been giving this a bit of thought, have you?”

“All day, Jess. You need a skirt.”

I swallowed. “You said eight o’clock? There’s time for me to buy one then.”

“Do that.” Then he hung up on me.

Men.

I wasn’t sure how I did it, but within ninety minutes I’d shopped, showered and changed into the first skirt I’d owned since high school. It wasn’t a very nice skirt, but I’d been pressed for time, and it didn’t look bad when paired with a lacy tank top and my knee-high black boots. Too bad for Lucen, though, I was not going commando beneath it. The skirt flared in the wind a bit too much for that.

He showed up exactly at eight, part of his insistence that we do this thing properly. He wore a plum-colored button-down shirt tucked into a pair of black pants. It wasn’t as much to my taste as his tight T-shirts and jeans, but it showed off his narrow waist and broad chest nicely.

“Anyone ever tell you you clean up well?”

“Not if they want their jaws to continue working. Anyone ever tell you that you have legs?”

“You’re well acquainted with my legs.”

He grinned. “But the rest of the world is not. That needed to be remedied. You have so many lovely body parts. You should be sharing them with people more often.”

I poked him in the chest. “We do not need to go down that road tonight. This is our date. Just us. Two.”

“Fair enough.” In a couple steps he’d rounded on me, pushing my back against the door. His lips found mine, then his tongue, pulling and taking insistently as I let him in.

I wrapped my arms around him. The warmth of his skin beneath his shirt seeped into mine, and my blood burned hotter. His cinnamon scent flooded my senses, driving away thoughts of anything but his body and the way his hard muscles moved beneath the thin layer of cloth.

I broke away from his mouth, hungry for air. “You always smell good enough to eat.”

“Is that so?” He flattened me against the door again, retaking control of my lips. One hand snaked its way beneath my skirt. Fires ignited up my leg as his skin pressed against mine, and I remembered his little tease on the phone.

With his other hand, he tugged aside the low-cut collar of my blouse, slipping the strap down my arm. I held my breath but made no move to help him. I wasn’t wearing a bra because the tank had one built in, and the fit was tight. Lucen’s face was a mask of intensity as he struggled to free my breast, and I enjoyed watching him almost as much as I enjoyed the feel of his hand. When his fingers brushed my nipple through the material, I clenched down to my toes.

Lucen breathed my name, then the hand beneath my skirt stopped abruptly. “What’s this?”

My body wailed as his grip on me loosened. I wanted to scream at him to keep going, but he’d like that too much. “That would be my thong.”

“What happened to no underwear?”

“I never promised that. I didn’t feel the need to flash my lady parts to all of Boston should there be strong breeze tonight. Besides, I know you know what to do with thongs.”

His hand squeezed my butt, but he moved slowly backward. Heat and hardness vanished, leaving me burning but empty. “I’ll rip them off.”

“You’ll owe me a new pair.”

“I’m going to need to buy stock in a lingerie company because of you.”

My body sagged with disappointment as he let go of me altogether. “Not my fault you can’t behave around underwear.”

“Your fault for being silly enough to keep wearing it around me. Now look at you, you’re a mess.” Lucen adjusted my shirt, taking care to rub my sensitive nipples as he did, then he pulled down my skirt. “How can we go out with you looking like you’ve been ravished?”

I squeezed his hands. “I haven’t been. That’s the problem. I thought I might be a bit more of a mess before we left.”

“Don’t be impatient, little siren. That was just an appetizer.”

“Steph was right,” I said, flinging his hands away. “You are evil.”

“And your sexual tension feeds me better than anything we’re going to eat tonight.” He burrowed his face in the crook of my neck from behind, an arm locked around my stomach. “I can smell the lust on you.”

I elbowed him in the gut. “If that’s all you’re going to do, then back off. So where are we going?” I grabbed a purse because the stupid skirt didn’t have pockets.

“You’ll see.” And that was all he would say about it. We spent the drive discussing Dezzi’s offer. Lucen reacted to it exactly as I’d expected, encouraging me to say yes. That allowed me to fine tune my case for why I shouldn’t, although whether that served to convince Lucen or myself I wasn’t sure.

Either way, I dropped the topic when Lucen pulled up in front of one of the North Shore’s more famous seafood restaurants. “We’re going here? Seriously?”

In response, Lucen threw a cheap disguise charm around his neck, and his horns winked out of view. While I gaped at him, a parking attendant opened my door for me. In a state of disbelief, I got out of the car. We’d left Boston proper for one of the outlying coastal towns, and the evening was heavy with the smell of the ocean. Even the air tasted salty.

A shudder of lust swept through the valet as Lucen handed over his key, and half dazed, the man got into the car. I hoped he didn’t crash it.

“Seriously?” I asked again. Lucen seemed to make decent money, but the prices at this place had to put those at Vine to shame.

He took my arm and escorted me inside. “You think I have no class.”

I made a noncommittal noise. It wasn’t that so much as I didn’t know enough about him to judge. But hey, that was partly what tonight was about. Probing Lucen for his life story. “When I said date, I imagined a burger-and-beer joint.”

“When do I ever do things half-assed?” Lucen fell silent as the doormen ushered us inside. “Let’s just the say the owner has a lusty little problem.”

I groaned. “One of yours?”

“No, not one of mine, little siren, but it helps get us a table. It also helps that it’s a Wednesday. I’m not sure anything would help if this were a Saturday.”

The restaurant was small and dimly lit, but Lucen’s connection meant we got one of the best tables the place had to offer. Tucked into a corner, I had a brick wall at my back and to my right, a large window that overlooked the water. Since it was rapidly getting dark outside, however, my best view was sitting across from me.

I kicked him lightly under the table. “For all your evil plans, you can’t even reach my leg from there.”

“No, pity. I should have scoped the place out ahead of time and found somewhere more suitable for mischief.” He handed me the wine menu. “There’ll be time enough for that later though.”

“I expect so. For now, we get to talk for a change.”

Lucen raised an eyebrow. “Because we don’t usually do that?”

“Different talk.”

“Different? Like we’re going to speak in pig Latin?”

I picked up my napkin as if to throw it at him, but I worried that sort of behavior would get us kicked out. Lucen’s laughter died away as our server came over.

After he left, my date adopted his serious face. “Okay, little siren. You obviously have something on your mind. What do you want to talk about?”

“Nothing in particular, but I feel like we don’t talk about real things enough.”

“Real things, unlike when we discussed who could have framed you for murder, or the ethical implications of you working for the Gryphons, or—”

“Yes.” I leaned forward. “Real things, unlike whatever our current crisis is. We’ve known each other for ten years, and yet how much do we actually know about each other?”

Lucen was silent as our wine came, and we both quickly scanned the menu and ordered. Once our server disappeared a second time, he sipped his wine thoughtfully. “I know you are the most fascinating person I’ve ever met. That’s been enough for me.”

“Even now that you know what I am? I’m hardly so exciting anymore.”

He shook his head. “It’s true enough that I became interested in you because of your gift. It’s the reason I contacted you that first time.”

That first time had been the day the Gryphons had kicked me out of their pre-training program, the day of my eighteenth birthday when they lost all hope of my gift developing normally. Lucen hadn’t merely contacted me. He’d followed me and kept me from doing something stupid in despair.

“My unhappiness was probably an all-you-can-eat buffet for you.” I’d never had any delusions that he’d helped me out of kindness.

“I’m not a cruel person. Misery isn’t exactly my favorite emotion, but you were full of it. But that’s not it either, Jess. Just having a weird satyr-like gift interested me, but it’s what you did with it that got my attention for good.”

“You mean with the souls?” That was the night I’d taken up soul-swapping. I’d decided if my gift had gone evil, then I would use that power for good. Since that night, I’d made a lot of trades. Only when the Gryphons had started forcing me to work for them did I stop. All of Shadowtown knew about my new job, and therefore no one was inclined to trade with me anymore.

“Yes, that’s what really made you interesting,” Lucen said. “Your gift? It was curious, but it’s not something you can control. What you did with it was. It was clever and it was gutsy, and I knew then that you were someone to keep an eye on. Someone I’d better not mess with too, although that’s exactly what made me want to mess with you.”

“Really?” I sipped my wine, feeling those words wrap around my heart.

“Really, little siren. You’re smart and reckless and sexy, and I’ve never met anyone quite like you, your gift aside. I wouldn’t have chased you down for ten years if I didn’t think you were worth it.”

I could feel my body flushing. These were the most words Lucen had spoken at once to describe his emotions. Show me, don’t tell me, he’d once said. And he had shown me, time and time again, what I meant to him. But I hadn’t realized how much I craved to hear it too. How hot words could make me feel. What a rush it was to hear this damn sexy, powerful satyr say these things to me. Lucen wasn’t hitting me with his power, but my nerves were on fire, and all I could think about was that he’d teased me about my skirt. All I could imagine was his hand slipping between my thighs. I’d never wanted to throw myself at him so badly before.

“I always thought it was just my gift that interested you. You never said anything to make me think otherwise.”

“I know that’s what you thought, but you are amazing, so some things I expect you to figure out on your own. What’s also amazing is how someone so smart can be so stupid too.” He smirked, but any urge to kick him vanished as he kissed my hand.

The sensation of his lips seemed to travel up my arm and straight down to my groin. I squirmed in my seat. His gaze was molten, heavy and sticky, as he watched my chest rise and fall. Catching on, Lucen dragged his thumb slowly over my skin, and oh God. Little ripples of desire ran through me and pooled between my legs. I held my breath a moment, then took my hand back before I did something stupid.

This was probably one of those reasons why we never talked except about essential topics. He would just say or do something irresistible, or touch me in the right place, and I was a goner. Satyr magic was hard enough to ignore without one trying to make you melt. If we weren’t in public, I would have been all over him by now. Him sitting so close and so clothed was maddening. In fact, if he told me to, I’d start doing something obscene now and damn the consequences.

I want you now. Inside me.
I didn’t have to say it. He could sense it, and was enjoying every second of it from the look on his face.

He bent over, his voice low and his breath on my face. “One day, Jess, I’m going to make you scream without even touching you. That’s my life goal. To leave you writhing, begging for my touch, but be able to make you come with just a look or a word. To know you want me that bad, that our connection is that strong.”