Jack lunged forward, grabbing the edge of the table between us with both hands so hard it creaked.
“Yeah, he has a pretty fucking good reason,” he snarled. I fell back a few inches, my fangs dropping, and across the room a tableful of vampires half-rose, poised for action. “He cheated on me with my twin brother, tried to cover it up by attacking him and leaving him in a coma that even werewolf healing can’t seem to get him out of, and then stole our inheritance from our grandfather and ran for it like the fucking lying, murderous, betraying little bastard he is!”
His voice had risen to almost a shout by the time he finished, and I sat stunned and frozen to my seat.
Well, so much for him trying to keep his personal business personal. Given that everyone in the bar had supernatural hearing, every single vampire in Lancaster would know about this by the end of the night.
Jack stopped, teeth still bared, half out of his seat.
And then looked around.
And then went pale, as the same realization apparently hit him too.
Damn it. I really, really disliked werewolves. They had no subtlety whatsoever, their fashion sense ought to be illegal, and their blood tasted absolutely terrible.
On the other hand. If Jack had told me the truth, and all my instincts said that he had…
I stood up and cleared my throat obnoxiously, looking around and meeting everyone’s eyes in turn for a moment. It wasn’t hard, since all of them had stood up or leaned out of their booths or seats to rubberneck.
“Anyone who breathes a word of this to anyone currently outside this room, via technology or in person, is going to get my boot up their asses. Are we clear? Oh, and I’m not above mentioning your names to Esther. Just so you know.”
Esther was even shorter than me, very blonde, with a pretty, rounded figure and a penchant for cooking shows, pastoral landscapes, and white wine.
Anyone who didn’t take Esther seriously as a deadly threat found out for themselves how wrong they were, and if they survived the experience, they had months of rehabilitation to contemplate their mistake.
There were nods and murmurs of agreement all around, and everyone sat back down again and turned away pointedly.
I sat back down too. Jack was staring at me, his mouth open a little.
“What?” I asked. “You didn’t believe me when I said I outranked all of them, did you.”
Jack gestured vaguely by his head. “It’s the…” He gestured again, near his neck. “And the…” He cleared his throat. “And the everything else. Not that it isn’t a nice everything else.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, more resigned than anything. Maybe if I wore a black leather motorcycle jacket people would take me seriously for once.
Of course, the motorcycle jackets that would fit me were all sold in the boys’ section at Target. And I’d quite literally rather have died.
“I apologize.” He sounded surprisingly sincere. “I’m not having a great week. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.”
I still disliked werewolves, but I was starting to have a hard time hating this one as much as usual. Maybe it had something to do with my particular grudge against mates who cheated, lied, and got violent. Or maybe that little compliment he’d slipped in had softened me up a bit.
I pushed my martini glass a few inches toward him. “Have an olive,” I said, and picked one up myself. Like most vampires, eating too much human food made me sick. But I’d found that if I limited my consumption to only martini olives I could make it work. Basically, I had the diet of a fashionable ’50s housewife, only I doubted most of them liked blood as much as I did.
You never knew, though. The ones I’d known had been pretty ruthless.
Jack gingerly took an olive and popped it in his mouth. Did he know what a peace offering that had been? Probably not. Werewolves weren’t usually all that quick on the uptake.
I ate mine, chewing slowly and savoring it. Salt. Gin. That odd, spongy texture. Mmm.
“I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re going to eat these olives, and then we’ll go see Fenwick’s second-in-command. Discreetly. And if you can get your whole story past her bullshit-meter, I’m sure you’ll get a green light to do what you need to do. There will be some verification, you understand. Not a credit check. But everything else.”
Jack nodded. “That works for me. Thank you.” He smiled again, that blinding grin that seemed so out of place on his harsh-featured face. He picked up another olive and waved it at me. “I’m flattered, by the way.”
Humph. Not so slow after all.
“Don’t be,” I grumbled, but he smiled at me anyway, teeth gleaming white.
The sooner I got him introduced to Esther and on his way, the better. Jack was trouble in a leather jacket.
