Mad for a Mate, page 23
“Go rogue,” Berne interrupted. “Nadia explained it to me.”
“Swell. Did she also explain that movies are fiction? Except for documentaries? And musicals?”
“She didn’t have to explain that,” he replied, exasperated. “And which musical is nonfiction?”
“All of ’em! Well, Chicago, mostly. And The Book of Mormon. And Hamilton. And The Phantom of the Opera. And The Little Shop of Horrors. And King Lear.”
“King Lear isn’t a musical.”
“Yes, it is, Magnus!” She paused, heard herself, added, “This is a ridiculous thing to be arguing about. We should be arguing about Nadia’s ridiculous team-up rules.”
Magnus cleared his throat. “The whole reason I hired David was because I didn’t want you to feelcompelledto-investigateonyourownandmaybegethurt.”
She needed a second to parse what he’d just blarped out, took her gaze from the road to look at him for a few seconds, then looked back at the road. “Okay. Smart. And generous. I know I thanked you already, but…thanks. I know it’s not just a squib thing with you. It’s a bad idea for anyone, Shifter, squib, Stable, or other, to go blundering around trying to catch a multiple murderer.”
Magnus cleared his throat. “Nadia also said David would be the one throwing himself into danger and th’lad would fight the good fight and triumph.”
“I feel safer already.”
“And fall in love,” Magnus added. “That’s also supposed to happen.” Verity snorted and Magnus actually flinched. “I know that’s not what this is.”
“I didn’t—” She glanced at him again. Dammit, she wished she weren’t driving. At least traffic was minimal. “I wasn’t making fun of you, Magnus. Not that time. It’s just…” Her grip tightened on the steering wheel. “This is real life. We’ve got no business being here.”
“And yet.”
“And yet.”
Her GPS chirped at her, announcing their arrival at Les Mearn’s house, and she parked across the street. And the reason they had arrived at casa de Mearn was because Jerry had written down all their addresses in his notebook, along with his favorite colors, his least-favorite professional wrestler, and a recipe for something called Cullen skink. Or maybe it was a spell?
“Before we go see Les, I wanted to tell you—”
“That we’re daft?”
“—sure, but also, last night. When we—uh—” Her knuckles were white on the wheel. Christ, why was this so hard? Couldn’t one single thing about Magnus fucking Berne be easy? This was why people died alone! Who needed the hassle?
Oh, owning up to your fuckups is a hassle now?
Yes. It always has been.
That’s Magnus Berne’s fault now?
Yes. Now shut up.
She took a breath and told the windshield, “It’s really good you didn’t take me up on my revolting drunken offer.”
“It wasn’t revolting!” His eyes were so wide in his distress, they showed the whites all around. He looked like a sexy horse about to bolt.
Sexy horse?
I told you to SHUT UP.
“God, lass, don’t think that, please don’t think that. I just couldna—”
She reached out, took his hand, which had locked into a desperate fist. She slowly and carefully pried his fingers out of the fist and smoothed his palm. He watched her like a man who had no idea what was happening but couldn’t wait to see what came next. “You don’t have to explain. You were a hundred percent right. I shouldn’t have made you doubt the wisdom of not raping me. I have no excuse.”
“That’s o—”
“Don’t say it’s okay. It’s the polar opposite of okay. I’m really sorry.”
“I could have handled it better,” he replied.
“No, you really couldn’t have. Anyway, before we go talk to Les, I wanted to tell you in case we get murdered.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“Right? I’ve been saying and thinking that a lot lately. But listen. In case we get stomped and bleed out in Hampton, Minnesota, of all places, I’m here because I need to talk to Les face-to-face. But you don’t have to be here. Not for any of it. But you are, and I appreciate it. You’re coming along not because you think I can’t handle myself but so I don’t have to do this alone. It’s taken me a few days to get that.” She paused then coughed it up. “I appreciate you. Every part of you, even the nosy buttinsky part of you.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Thank you, lass. And you said it yourself: there’s no way to fix it. But we can at least try to get justice for your friend. Or what passes for it. If Les is involved, you have to find out. And I have to help you.”
“So let’s go find out. I’m calling it now: Les had to grow up with an asshole older brother who hates squibs, which is why Les started the Damp Squibs, and his brother’s been picking us off.”
Chapter 51
Nope.
Chapter 52
So there’s this movie, North by Northwest, where you blink and suddenly everything’s a terrifying mess (where before it had been a suspenseful mess): villains are rampant, there’s a goddamned plane to dodge, and bullets to dodge, and there’s a heroine about to plunge to her death…everything goes tits up at once.
All this to say Verity Lane had never seen North by Northwest, but given that a dark-brown coyote was intent on killing her, she could relate. Magnus was trapped in the house, and she was trapped in Les’s enormous fenced backyard with a pissy coyote.
“Bite first, ask later? Really?”
The coyote jumped for her throat, because he was complacent and forgot that bipeds’ throats are too far off the ground. Knowing that hadn’t saved Jerry; Verity was determined it would save her. She put her forearm out, and the coyote latched on to it and bit down. The plan, no doubt, was to drag her down until he could get a chunk out of her throat.
Verity’s plan was somewhat different, and the coyote’s beady brown eyes widened when he couldn’t immediately drop the bite. While he was stuck, Verity swung her arm around and bashed Les’s big brother (father? uncle? random killer coyote?) right into the trunk of the tree behind her, hard.
“Let me guess,” she said, shaking off the dazed coyote. “You thought, ‘Squib, easy meat.’ Like all you assholes do. I sniffed out the crime scene, you fucker. I know exactly how Jerry died. You think I wouldn’t take precautions?”
The coyote ignored her awesome speech and jumped for her again, giving her an opportunity to smash her gloved fist into his throat. The thing that had killed her friend let out an anguished yelp and fell back, stunned, which worked out nicely. Verity stepped close and kicked him—yep, definitely a him—in the jaw. The coyote flopped over, started to rise, and she followed up with a kick to the ribs that sent it rolling through the grass until it fetched up against a tree trunk.
“Roll of quarters. Steel-toed boots. Padded gloves. Chain mail. Just think, some people believe you can’t buy anything good at the Renaissance festival.” Her voice wasn’t shaking. She was glad. She wasn’t afraid, exactly—too much adrenaline for that—but it wasn’t as one-sided a fight as she was pretending. She only had to slip once, be too slow once, and she’d go in the ground. (Possible upside: her parents would be vindicated.)
She heard the crash of wood behind her—excellent, Magnus had broken out of the basement, and then the back kitchen door, and then the fence. Also, who keeps a trapdoor in their kitchen? An honest-to-God trapdoor, like in every Scooby cartoon? Thank God she’d been standing a foot to the left.
The rest was a bit of a blur—somehow she and the coyote had ended up in the backyard, fighting for her life: he to take it, her to defend it.
She dealt the cowering thing another kick. The fights she’d been in since she was old enough to understand Shifters thought she was less-than had taught her there was no such thing as overkill. She’d be bruised as fuck, and he broke the skin in a couple of places, but she’d take bruises and blood over a trip to the morgue.
She’d heard Magnus charging behind her, but he skidded to a halt in the grass and stared at the whimpering, trembling thing that had killed Jerry.
“Change back, shitheap,” she told it. “We have questions. No, not you, Magnus.”
It did change back, and Magnus had to clamp his teeth onto the back of her shirt to keep her from killing the thing that was Les Mearn.
Chapter 53
“You utter, complete piece of shit.”
“It isn’t my fault!” Les yelped, cowering.
“Which part?”
“It was Jerry’s fault!”
“So you want me to beat you to death. Wish granted—aw, Magnus, leggo.”
He did, but only to shift back. Then he stood there, gloriously naked and covered in splinters (ack, one was sticking out of the top part of his ear) and not a little blood, and he was scowling. “You’re not a farmadoch!”
“And also, you lied! What kind of pathetic puke pretends they’re a squib so they can kill squibs? Which, now that I think about it, is kind of clever.” Verity was reminded of the basic truism in their world: You couldn’t prove you were a squib. You could only prove you weren’t. It wasn’t like they had any kind of membership tests. “But also pathetic!”
“You’re proving me right,” Les replied.
“I’m definitely not—wait.” She reached over and pulled the splinter out of the tip of Magnus’s ear, ignoring his yelp. “Sorry, that was really bugging me. And I’m not proving you right, you repellant shit stain.”
“Who’d fake being a squib?” Les said, managing a sneer through his rapidly swelling jaw. “Nobody with any pride.”
Magnus let out a snarl. “How’s your pride now that Verity handed you your arse? She’s not even out of breath!”
“I’m a little out of breath,” she confessed. “That might be adrenaline, though.”
“Oh. Good.” From behind them. Which would have been alarming if she hadn’t recognized David’s voice. “You broke and entered without me.”
“The door was unlocked. It was just entering. And watch out if you go in there,” Verity cautioned. “There might be more trapdoors besides the one in the kitchen.”
David had walked through the Magnus-sized hole in the fence and up to their little group. Good thing the Mearn house was practically in the country or they’d have to worry about nosy neighbors. “Trapdoor? For real? Like the kind Mr. Burns has in his office?”
“Exactly like the kind Mr. Burns has in his office.”
“My dad was a huge Hart to Hart fan,” Les volunteered.
“What? Oh, who cares. This guy,” Verity added, aiming a kick and smirking at the pained yelp that followed, “faked being a squib and killed Jerry. Don’t even bother denying it! I can see the bruises all over your shins.” She aimed a kick as Annette’s words came back to her: Your friend fought back, because he was clever and brave, and whatever killed him didn’t walk away unscathed.
“Wow,” David said, eyeing the greenish-yellow bruises all over Les. “Jerry put up a good fight.”
“That’s why you ditched his memorial. You had a limp, didn’t you, you clandestine motherfucker? He must have clipped you really hard.”
“Barely,” Les sniffed.
“Hard enough that a couple of days later, you’ve still got some bruising,” David commented. “I’ll bet your shins were black from knee to ankle.”
“You said it yourself, lass,” Magnus added. “There were clues, but only in retrospect.”
And isn’t that the way it always was? Now that she was seeing the truth about Les, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t put it together sooner. He’d even explained what he thought of the Damp Squibs: a tight little pack of malcontents who can’t shift.
If she’d pulled her head out of her ass and paid attention, Jerry might still be alive.
“I ditched his memorial,” Les said, because he definitely had a death wish, “because who fucking cares about a dead squib?”
Verity turned her back on him, about as big a diss as one Shifter could give another. I’m not worried about you at all. I don’t even need to look at you. That’s how harmless you are. “So anyway, David, it was all part of some silly, sinister plan and the details will probably be infuriating. Infuriating detail number one, he’s blaming Jerry for his own murder.”
“It’s true, though.” Les was carefully palpating his pulped jaw, and Verity was reluctantly impressed he was even able to talk. Better get that set by the end of the day, she thought with spiteful glee. Or it’ll mend all crooked. One of the rare disadvantages of Shifter metabolism. “It’s because he—”
“It’s because he saw you,” Verity interrupted. Damned if Les was gonna get to do the reveal. “You were sloppy, stalking your next kill or soliciting a sex worker or whatever the fuck you do in your spare time, and he saw you. But he wasn’t close enough to realize you were a coyote.”
“He was, he—”
“He never seriously thought it was you!” The urge to kick him in the face two or seventeen times was getting harder to resist. “It never even occurred to him, do you understand? You killed a sixteen-year-old kid who didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He was born a squib, wasn’t he? Plus he had my address! He left his notebook behind at the Radisson Blu last week, and I flipped through it—”
“Rude.”
“—before he came back for it.”
Urge to kick rising…rising… “He had all our addresses, you paranoid fuck! He also had a recipe for Chex Mix! That doesn’t mean you need to worry about buying up all the Chex!” To Magnus: “Right? That parallel makes sense?”
“Not really,” David said as Magnus nodded vigorously.
“And Andy Bray?” David asked. He was eyeing Les with what appeared to be compassion—good-cop routine, maybe? The injured coyote wasn’t going anywhere, but he didn’t have to confess to shit.
“Was on to us, obviously. He was a cop!”
“Naw. He lied about his job because he was worried you wouldn’t include him if you knew. It’s small-time, petty shit like trespassing, but still—you’re breaking the law. Would you have been so cavalier about it if you’d known he was a cop? He loved what you guys were doing and wanted in.”
“Not to give off Psychology 101 vibes,” Verity said, “but a squib becoming a cop makes perfect sense.” What better way to prove they weren’t to be fucked with?
David was nodding. “Yep. I talked to his family first thing this morning. That’s why you couldn’t reach me. His folks knew what he was doing, but they never approved of him lying to join you. They didn’t approve of any of it. They had a hard enough time dealing with his decision to go to the police academy.”
“No wonder Mrs. Bray hauled off and hit you,” Verity observed. “Good.” Not for the first time, she wondered if evil was defeated because good always triumphed or because evil was often petty and careless.
“Then I got your message,” David finished. “And here you are.”
“That’s two people you murdered for no good reason, you worthless shithead. What was it even for?”
“I told you. It’s about War Wolves.”
If Les was expecting gasps when he revealed his motive, Verity was thrilled to see he was disappointed in their lack of reaction.
“What are you even talking about, you silly shithead?”
“Lass, I never told ye before, but I love your array of insults.”
“Thanks. What can I say? If you’re gonna do something, it’s worth doing right.”
“Don’t you remember? We talked about War Wolves, and I said you can’t just join.” At their blank stares, he cried, “You were both there when I brought it up! How can you not remember?”
“Because you’re neither memorable nor special?” Magnus asked with faux sweetness as Verity smirked.
Les huffed. “What I said when you were both right there is that to be a War Wolf, you have to earn your spot, just like squibs earn their spots. Except all a squib has to do is be born.”
David cocked his head. “So…not the way squibs earn their spots.”
“And that’s not the zinger you think it is,” Verity added, “since War Wolves and squibs couldn’t be more different.”
“But it’s irony!” he yelled then winced and wiped more blood off his jaw. “I made you losers feel like you were special, when all the time I was proving how unspecial you are and securing my spot as a War Wolf. Jerry even told me to my face that I couldn’t be a War Wolf. I taught him different.”
“You know being kicked to death is a thing, right, Les? A thing I can make happen? Look at you trying so hard to pat yourself on the back. You killed a teenager who thought you were a friend. And even that took a bit out of you—a sixteen-year-old deer fucked you up enough that you didn’t dare go to his memorial.”
“And that’s another thing! Where’d Jerry get off hiding his age? That brought IPA into the mix. And that guy.” Jabbing a bloody finger in David’s general direction.
“Ha! You must have shit yourself when David walked into the meeting.” Verity remembered how intent Les had been about finding out if she’d known Magnus had hired David. Trying to work out if she was on to him, or if David was. “You killed two people because you panicked. That’s it, Les, that’s all it is: you jumped to conclusions because you’re impulsive, freaked out, killed them for no reason, and brought Stable cops and IPA into your mess. What a fucking waste of…all of it, really. Not very War Wolf-y.”
“He had no business being a Damp Squib if he was just a kid.”
“Wow, you’re definitely worrying about the wrong thing here. But sure. Whatever you have to tell yourself to feel like a decent person instead of a walking, talking shitbag.”
“No business,” Les emphasized.
