Chapter 2
Sympathy for the Werewolf
“Absolutely not,” I said with total conviction. And also with the knowledge that resistance was futile. Esther could’ve given the Borg a few lessons in extracting compliance.
“You found him, you deal with him,” she replied, sounding irritated that I’d made her repeat herself, with her fingers twitching around the TV remote. She’d reluctantly paused an episode of some show with very angry people decorating cupcakes to deal with me and Jack when we showed up on her doorstep. “It’s in your job description, Angelo.”
“I don’t have a job description!”
She shot me a glare that could’ve withered even the brash, bug-eyed, ranting cupcake man who hosted her show.
“Your job description is whatever the fuck I say it is. Someone needs to supervise his hunt for his missing mate to make sure the situation is what he says it is.” She sighed and took a swig of her wine. I followed suit. At least she’d offered me some once she chivvied Jack out the door with an admonition to stay at his motel until contacted. That meant I wasn’t totally in the doghouse. “I think I believe him. But I’m not infallible.”
I considered, then reconsidered, making some comment about wanting her to repeat that so I could record it and mark the date for posterity.
Yeah, no. At best, I wouldn’t get any wine the next time I had to come to her house and bother her after hours. Not that our jobs had set hours any more than they had descriptions.
Although I tried to avoid dropping by Esther’s when possible. She scared me, for one. For two, all the buttery tan leather furniture and polished pine and oil paintings of cows grazing green hills really freaked me out, especially in context of how much she scared me.
Unfortunately, she was not only scary but also correct. Jack’s story hung together fairly well, especially after Esther made a quick phone call to a contact of hers in Idaho law enforcement and confirmed the twin brother in a coma and the accompanying police reports. Fine as far as it went, but I still had my doubts about why his mate had done all that in the first place. Yeah, okay, no excuse for attempted murder. (Well, there were lots of excuses for attempted murder in my book. But Jack’s story hadn’t made it sound like the mate had one.) But if Jack had been abusive, had caused part of the problem in the first place? Well, we had no way of knowing. His mate might be a piece of shit, but that didn’t automatically mean Jack wasn’t also a piece of shit.
So someone had to “supervise.”
And Esther, in her capacity as my boss, had designated me.
That didn’t mean I had to like it.
“I have other things going on right now, though,” I said, attempting one last protest that might change her mind. “We all do. I haven’t given up on—”
“No one’s given up on Emile,” she cut in. “But even Doran can’t seem to trace him. And Fenwick’s working the diplomatic angles the best he can to try to see if anyone knows anything. For now, focus on the job in front of you. We’ll find him. But not tonight.”
I drained my wine glass and set it down carefully on the coaster Esther had given me, because I wasn’t suicidal. But I nodded brusquely in acknowledgment and left with poor grace, my boots clomping a little too heavily on her shiny hardwood floor.
Damn it. Emile, a new vampire who’d only joined Fenwick’s organization a few months ago, had vanished earlier in the week. Vanished, as in he was there one minute and apparently nonexistent the next. He’d been patrolling the edge of our territory with a colleague, and when she’d returned from walking away for a minute to take a phone call he’d been gone.
It’d put everyone on edge. Jack might not have gotten a warm reception on a better day, but the only reason he hadn’t been jumped as soon as he walked into that bar was that whoever or whatever had abducted Emile, it wasn’t a werewolf. Werewolves, except for the occasional shaman, didn’t have that kind of subtle magic.
I’d parked on the street in front of Esther’s house, Jack following me in his own beat-up pick-up truck, now absent—and presumably, hopefully, parked in front of his motel like Esther had instructed him. The early-February nights closed in quickly, and even though it’d been twilight when we arrived it felt like midnight now. A few stars twinkled between banks of high, puffy clouds, and a chill wind swept through from the mountains to the east. And now, instead of going home to my own cozy house with its piles of cushions and strands of fairy lights and sleepy tabby cat, or back to the bar for as many martinis as I could stand, I’d be following Jack in turn and spending my evening looking for his stupid fucking mate.
What a life. But I had to keep busy. A lot of humans seemed to think immortality meant idleness, languidly swanning around wearing goofy cloaks and making mysterious pronouncements.
Well, been there, done that, got the fucking lame cloak. And believe me, a decade or two of acting like a vampire stereotype was more than enough to grow incredibly sick of it.
Human life might be fleeting, but the drives that made us human lingered long after we’d gone through the gruesome ritual that made us vampires. And those drives, for survival and sex and love and revenge, and for small pleasures, be that martini olives or shows about cupcake bakers, affected us just as much as they did humans. We simply had more time.
And if we didn’t work, didn’t have a purpose, we eventually withered and died. At least, I knew I would. And I’d seen it happen to a few others who’d been unmotivated as humans and equally useless as vampires.
My purpose for the evening: mediate a werewolf marriage.
Ugh.
I started my little hatchback and set off for the cheap motel at the edge of town Jack had claimed to be staying in.
Fifty-fifty on whether he’d been lying, I thought.
But when I pulled into the parking lot, there was his truck, parked in a long stretch of empty spots in front of a ground-floor room with the lights on.
Jack opened the door before I could knock. Right, werewolf hearing could be even better than vampire, depending on the individual. He’d clearly showered, by his damp hair, and he’d left the jacket off, dressing in old faded black jeans that hugged his muscled thighs and a black t-shirt that could’ve been painted on. His bare feet on the disgustingly thin and oily-looking carpet made me cringe.
