Chapter 9
I found myself standing in the middle of my living room, arms wrapped around my elbows, staring at nothing.
My coat was thrown on top of my couch and I only had one boot off. I inhaled, exhaled, digging up out of my funk.
Sven had seen Ryder when he died.
Unless that was a vampire trick—an implanted suggestion.
Ryder wasn’t on the tape.
That wasn’t Ryder’s hand.
Was it?
My thoughts circled again, questions that just made more questions and answers that couldn’t be proved.
What if he’s guilty?
I’d stop loving him. Right? I’d have to. No one loved a murderer.
Liar, my heart whispered.
A knock at the door brought me fully conscious. I glanced at the throw blanket I’d been planning to crawl under, then pushed my shoulders back and walked to the door.
I opened it without glancing outside first.
I should never do that.
“Hey.” Ryder held a bottle of wine in one hand and his heart in his gaze. “Got a minute?”
I should say no. I should tell him to leave. Tell him I didn’t want to see him, couldn’t see him alone like this.
Don’t be sexy. Don’t be a murderer. Don’t be a sexy murderer.
He bit his lower lip and I was a goner.
“Sure.” I stepped back, let him into the house and shut the door. “Wine?”
He glanced down at it like he wasn’t sure it should be there. “Yeah. I feel like I owe you an apology.”
“For?”
“Letting my business get in the way of a police investigation today. With Jake and Rossi and...everything.”
Are you innocent? Did you kill Sven? Are you a murderer?
“It’s fine. Everything worked out fine.”
Liar.
I stared at his right hand holding the wine, trying to decide if it matched the blurry hand of the killer in the video. Maybe I stared a little too long.
He raised his hand, holding the wine out to me. “Uh...Delaney?”
Yep. Definitely a little too long. He moved to stand in front of me, close enough I could feel the heat from his body. I took the wine and set it on an end table.
Was it cold in my house or was I just a little too freaked out about my not-boyfriend being a maybe-murderer?
“Tell me you didn’t kill Sven.”
That startled both of us. He caught his breath, held it, his mossy eyes hurt at the accusation. Hurt and confused. “I already told you that last night.”
“I know. I need to hear it again.”
“I did not kill Sven Rossi.”
It sounded like the truth. It felt like the truth.
But then, wishful thinking had a way of feeling like the truth sometimes.
“Why do you think I would kill him?”
He was whispering. I was whispering too, like somehow, if we didn’t put our voices into the words, that would make this less real.
“Someone saw you. At the bar. With a group of men.”
I almost thought I could hear his heart stop beating.
“Who saw me?”
No denial.
I shook my head. “Truth. I still have seven questions left.”
“So do I.”
“Were you at that bar?”
“Yes.”
Six questions. Technically, by his rules, it was his turn to ask. I wasn’t following his rules.
“Who were they?”
“People I work with.”
“Killers?”
That left me with four questions.
“Delaney...just...” He stepped away, paced toward the kitchen, then back. He stopped and leaned his shoulder on the corner between kitchen and living room, right next to my little breakfast nook. He crossed his arms over his chest.
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not involved in Sven’s death? How many times do I have to tell you I don’t know who was?”
I watched his eyes, watched the tension in his shoulders, his mouth. Part of what he said was a lie. Or maybe all of it.
“Only once if it’s the truth.”
He ground at his molars, watching me. I watched him back.
“I had nothing to do with Sven’s death.”
Your blood killed him. Those words locked right behind my teeth, but I couldn’t get them past my lips. I wanted to tell him what I knew. Come clean. Not just about Sven’s murder. About everything. About Ordinary, the creatures, the gods. His blood used as ichor techne.
Could he explain that?
I wanted to trust him. That was my problem. I wanted to tell him I knew he had to be involved, and I wanted him to have a reason, an irrefutable explanation that would clear him of this crime for good.
Maybe it was time to push this into the no-turning-back territory.
“Those men don’t have anything to do with your architecture business, do they?”
“Delaney.”
“They came here because they are a part of an agency. A group. Of hunters.”
Yep. I was putting cards on the table. No turning back. Pressuring him to react.
“A group of hunters,” he said. Was his voice a little tighter? “What are they going to hunt on the Oregon coast in August? Crabs?”
“Vampires.”
He held his breath.
That. That was enough of a tell. He knew. He knew about the hunters. Or vampires. Or both.
His eyebrows lifted up, and he exhaled on what sounded like a forced laugh. “Vampires? Are you bingeing on Buffy again?”
Nope. Not believing him. Too flippant, too tight, his voice too thin.
“Is that one of your questions?”
“No.”
“That group, and I’m assuming you by association, are here in town looking for vampires. I’m assuming you’ve either been hired by someone who trained you how to kill vampires, or you are working for an agency developed for the same reason.”
“I’m an architect,” he protested.
“And a shitty liar.”
We stood there, silent again and it felt like if one of us blinked, we would be declaring a surrender.
“Truth,” I said. “I know more about this town than you ever will, Ryder. And vampires amongst us is just scratching the surface of the weird here.”
“I don’t—”
I held up one finger. “Think very carefully about what you’re about to say. I am the law here. Law of this city, county, state, country, and above all that, law of Ordinary. I have vowed to keep Ordinary’s citizens safe. All of them. No matter their race, creed, or other circumstances. I failed Sven. But that doesn’t mean I will fail to bring his killer to justice. I’m brutally efficient at keeping the peace. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“That you believe vampires are real, and you might actually be a mob boss?”
“That I believe I have enough evidence to haul you in on murder charges. Unless you start talking and trust me to do my job to prove you’re innocent.”
“I am innocent! You’re the one telling me over and over that I’m guilty.”
“I’m trying to trust you here, Ryder. Could you trust me back a little?”
“Is that one of your questions?”
“Yes.”
“I’m trying.”
His jaw tightened and flexed, and his eyes narrowed, creasing lines in the corners and between his eyebrows. Finally, he uncrossed his arms and stuck one hand in his back pocket. It was a stance he took when he was unsure or going out on a limb.
“We’re going to take a second,” he said, “and do some hypothesizing.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“I’m very aware of that. If you’re telling me the truth, you are admitting that there are vampires in Ordinary. Are you using the term vampire as a metaphor or slang?”
“No.”
“How did Sven die? More than just a bullet through the head?”
Now he had five questions left. I nodded.
“He was a vampire?”
Again with the nod. Four.
“Who else in town is a vampire? Old Rossi? All the Rossis?”
“Is that one question or three?”
“One.”
“Pass.”
“Who were those men you met?” I asked. “Who do they work for? How do you work with them?”
“You only have one question left after this.”
“I know.”
He rolled one shoulder back and tipped his head so he was looking at me a little sideways. “I can’t—I can’t talk about that.” He said it so quietly, I almost missed it.
“You don’t want to make me doubt your level of involvement in this,” I said. “It won’t end well. You don’t know the kind of pressure I can bring to bear on this situation. On those men. On you.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Two. “I’m telling you the truth, Bailey. Deal with it.”
“You’re kind of hot when you’re all bossy and in control.”
“Flirting won’t work on me.”
It totally would.
“What will work on you?”
“You only have one question left after this.”
He took a couple steps forward, closing the space between us. “I know.”
What works on me? That sexy look. Your sexy eyes. That smile that makes my mouth go hot, and that purr you get in your voice when it drops an octave and teases across my spine.
“Honesty.”
“Honesty?” He was so close to me I could loop my fingers in the tops of his jeans almost without moving. “Or a confession maybe.”
“Honesty.”
His eyes were faded jade, flecks of brown scattered within them. He had a couple freckles on the arcs of his cheeks, almost invisible beneath his tan. His nose was strong, and the laugh lines at the corners of his eyes were trails of pain and joy. He was familiar waters and uncharted shores. He was the boy I’d always known and the man I’d never met.
He was innocent words and guilty eyes.
And he was absolutely not someone I should kiss.
Should not lean toward.
Should not slip my fingers along his waist and stroke up his back.
He bent just slightly, easing down to me, the shape of him, the scent, the heat swallowing up all my space, all my world, all my air.
“I’ve done some things I regret,” his words were warm puffs of air across my cheek, moving toward my mouth. “Breaking up with you before we really had a chance to see if we would work out is right up there on the top of my list. You want honesty? All right. I want this.”
His blunt fingertips pressed across my waist, skimmed up my back, one palm warm and right between my shoulder blades, the other shifting lower, cupping heat onto my lower back.
“I want a second chance I don’t deserve. I want to be with you, Delaney. And honestly?” His mouth drifted closer to mine, breath soft against my skin. “I didn’t kill Sven. I haven’t been near him since I went to the bar to meet those men who, yes, think the town is full of vampires.”
A hot current raced down the core of me like a heating coil on fire. I wasn’t sure if it was lust or victory. He had told me the truth. Admitted there was a group of vampire hunters in town.
That’s what Rossi had suspected. All I had to do now was figure out which of them had killed Sven, who sent them to do so and why, and then see that justice was done.
Kiss me, my heart begged, over and over in rhythm to my ragged pulse. Kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.
But my mouth had other ideas. “You said you work with them.”
He shifted away, inch by inch until he was standing above me looking down into my eyes.
“Not how you think.”
A bucket of ice down my pants couldn’t have chilled me quicker.
It was my turn to take a step back. “Then tell me how you know them, who they are, and how you’re involved in this mess.”
More than a hint of my official tone crept into my voice. From the flash of irritation in Ryder’s gaze, he wasn’t a fan of that kind of bossy.
“There are things you shouldn’t know, Delaney. Things I can’t talk about.”
“I want names. I want to know who’s behind the group of hunters. I want to know any information you have on who killed Sven. This is murder, Ryder. Someone lost his life. In my town—our town. A place that is supposed to be safe. So I don’t give a damn what you think you can’t talk about. You will talk about it to me. Or I will take you in and deal with you with the kind of thoroughness you might never recover from.”
Something kindled in his expression—hunger—and I felt the snap of sexual tension spark between us. And right after that, I felt his anger.
“You’ve already decided what I am,” he all but growled. “Already decided I am guilty and not owed the same kind of protection as any other person in town. Decided it the moment you got your hands on whatever evidence you think implicates me in this thing.”
“Your blood. They used your blood to kill him.”
I said it softly, but Ryder’s head jerked back as if he’d been slapped and his mouth went thin. He stood there for a long moment, his eyes sharp and turned inward as if he weren’t in this room, as if I weren’t standing in front of him, as if this conversation weren’t happening.
“That’s why you were asking about the Red Cross.”
“Did you really give blood to them?”
“It was a Red Cross mobile van. I thought it was a whim...but maybe...”
I waited as he sorted through things he didn’t want to tell me. I could press to make him talk, but he’d push back. Better to give him a minute and see if he would come around.
“Who would have wanted your blood? Who would have taken it, and wanted to implicate you in Sven’s death? Someone in your group?”
“My group?”
“You said you’re a part of them. The hunters. Tell me how.”
He was still tight, his fists clenched at his side, the fabric of his shirt straining against the bulge of muscle. He looked like he wanted to hit something.
I understood the feeling.
“How about I make us both some coffee?” I asked. “We can talk this out. Take our time.” It was a peace offering. A cease-fire. He nodded, accepting both. “Sit down and get comfortable.”
I walked into the kitchen, which was mostly hidden from the living room. I made myself busy at the sink, then the coffee pot, measuring out my favorite grounds, putting in extra. I needed either espresso-strength coffee or whisky, and my day was far from over yet.
By the time the coffee was done, and I had two cups poured and made the way we liked them, he was sitting on my couch.
“Just so you know,” I handed him the cup, “I’m on your side here, Ryder. There are a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t be, but I refuse to throw you under a bus because you make a convenient scapegoat. I really do want justice. I really do want to catch the killer. It won’t do me or anyone any good if I pin the crime on someone who was stupid enough to get sucked into this insanity.”
He swallowed coffee. “Thanks for your vote of confidence.” Sarcasm. Yeah, well, I had just told him he was stupid.
“You’re welcome.” I took the chair across from him, blew across my coffee, then took a sip. “What are you caught up in?”
He drank, and for a long moment, I thought he wasn’t going to talk. Then something changed in him, as if he had made a decision, and even though he wasn’t comfortable with it, he wasn’t going to shift course.
“I was approached by a man who wanted to know about Ordinary.”
“When you were working for the firm in Chicago?”
“Sophomore year of college. His name was Frank Walsh.” He lifted his eyebrow as if to say his name really wasn’t Frank Walsh.
“Is that what we’re calling him?”
“That’s what he called himself. But it wasn’t who he was. Eventually, when...things weren’t adding up, I looked into him. Name and driver’s license number belonged to a man who had been dead for fifty years.”
“Vampire?”
“That wasn’t the first thought that went through my mind, no. I confronted him about it. Thought it was identity theft. That’s when I realized it was a test of sorts. That I questioned him. That I was observant.”
“Is Frank one of those men you met in the bar?”
“No. Frank was my boss.”
“Is he a vampire?”
“No. Though I still don’t know what his real name is.”
“I thought you worked for yourself.”
He took a gulp of coffee. His fingers pressed into the mug, knuckles white. “I do.”
How could two little words hold so much ambiguity?
“All right.” I’d let it slide for now. “How is Frank involved with Sven’s death?”
“Frank is a part of a research group.”
I waited. He drank coffee. I rolled my eyes.
“Do not make me get the pliers to pull this out of you, word by word, Ryder, because I will.”
The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “Bossy.”
“Stop enjoying this,” I grumbled.
A full smile curved his lips and set a sparkle in his eyes I hadn’t seen for far too long. “You just hate not knowing something. Have all your life. It makes it so easy to needle you. If I stop talking, if I do nothing, you’ll lose your nuts. You do know you don’t actually have to know everything about everyone everywhere all the damn time.”
“And you do know I’m an officer of the law. It’s my job to know things. A lot of things.”
“You’re nosy.”
“It’s a small town. I get paid for being nosy.”
“Good career choice, by the way. High school counselor talk you into it?”
“Nope. My dad. My high school counselor thought I should teach P.E.”
“I could see it. Whistle power. Brass knuckles. Bossing people around trying to make them play fair. Expecting the best of them, never giving up on them even when they disappoint you.”
I was surprised to hear that he thought of me in that way. Was I like that? Did I expect people to be, if not good then maybe diligent, no matter what was proved otherwise to me? Did I want a fair playing field for people, did I want to enforce rules that would level the disparities in the world?
Yes.
It warmed me to realize he knew me that well.
“Don’t make this about us.” The words came out too thick with emotion.
“How can it not be? This is us. We’re right here throwing these dice, dealing with our devils and taking huge risks on faith and trust.”
“Devils I have plenty of. Give me details.”
“Not sure that can happen.”
“Trust me that I will do my best to keep you safe,” I said.
“Trust me that I will do the same,” he said.
So we were both hiding secrets, and navigating dangers that the other person wasn’t aware of. Crow was right.
Cards, meet table.
“The vampires in town know you’re involved in Sven’s death.”
His body language went hard even though his facial expression didn’t change. He took it for what it was: confidential information given freely. I was trusting hard here. I just hoped he would return the favor.
“The men at the bar came to the notice of my boss. They are...known to the agency I work for.”
Pretty sure he didn’t mean housing agency.
“If I can’t prove your innocence in the next couple days, you’re not going to be alive long enough for it to matter.”
Another piece of truth, freely given.
“Ordinary is being targeted. We don’t know who is behind the sudden attention.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Who is the prime vampire?”
We sat there, stared at each other. My heart was beating too fast—fear. If I confirmed what he suspected, if I outed Old Rossi, I would be taking him into a confidence that could not be undone.
It would leave both my town vulnerable to whatever he was really mixed up in, and it would leave him vulnerable to the forces in my town.
“Ask me something else,” I said.
He didn’t hesitate. “What really killed Sven?”
“An ancient blood spell. What is your agency’s objective?”
“To contact the unknowns in this town.”
“Contact as in kill?”
“We didn’t kill Sven. Deadly force isn’t forbidden, but isn’t encouraged.”
“Define contact.”
“Just what it sounds like. You’ve told me there are vampires in the town. That Sven was one. We’re here to meet them. To offer them certain protections. To ensure they have oversight.”
“Oversight?” He obviously didn’t know much about vampires if he thought they would allow an agency to keep tabs on them.
He tipped his head in agreement. “What is a blood spell?”
“What agency do you work for?”
He leaned forward and set his cup down on the short table between us. “That’s...” He sighed as he leaned back, then rubbed his hand over his mouth.
“You want to know anything about vampires in this town, you want to find some way to facilitate that ‘oversight’ or make contact, you’re going to have to go through me.”
A wash of heat poured off him, his eyes went intense with a focus that had nothing to do with this town, these deals, or those words. That spark between us smoldered, kindled, and caught.
“Jesus, Delaney,” he breathed. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Who said I’d let you?”
He stood up. I was standing too, even though I didn’t remember getting off the couch. Then one of us moved. Or both of us moved. All I knew was that suddenly the space between us was gone.
I looked up into his eyes and knew the want there was echoed in me. I could feel it like a strumming beneath my breastbone, a rhythm as primal as time, as the sea, as a heartbeat.
Whatever we might have, whatever our past had made us, whatever our future might be, we could not deny this draw, this connection. We had walked away, but were walking back together as if there were no other state in which we could exist. As if we would always walk back together no matter what ripped us apart.
As if we’d been doing it our whole lives.
And maybe we had.
“Delaney,” he whispered, his palms on either side of my face. In that one word, my name whispered and husky between his lips, lived layers of emotions. I thought I understood. He was trying to protect me, didn’t want to see me hurt again, shot, or worse.
What I should do was step away. Take care of business. Take care of my vampires, my murdered friend, my town.
It would be selfish to do anything else. Reckless.
I grabbed hold of the front of his shirt and dragged his mouth down to mine.
At first, I thought I’d read this wrong, read the heat between us as attraction when it was something else. Then his mouth softened, his body bent. His fingertips pressed against my jaw, cheekbones, back of my skull as he angled my mouth to better fit his own.
I lost myself to the warmth of him, the sensation of his lips, sliding against mine. His tongue darted across the corner of my mouth, and I opened in answer, licking across his lower lip, wanting him and finally, finally tasting him: coffee, mint, and something rich and unique that made my heart beat heavy and slow.
We kissed, until the world disappeared, until the doubts and questions were burned away. When I couldn’t breathe any more, I pulled away.
“Don’t...” Ryder reached for me again, to pull me near.
But I took another step back. And another.
I had kissed him. Kissed the man who had dumped me when I was lying in a hospital bed. Kissed the man who was still not proven innocent. Kissed the man who wouldn’t tell me who he worked for.
All those things were just details.
No, they were the devils.
Was there a difference?
“Who do you work for?”
The warm, open lines of his body tightened. His eyes that had seemed glassy, soft, narrowed down to slits. His mouth hardened into a frown.
“Is that all this is? All you care about?” His voice was deep, angry.
“Why shouldn’t I care about that? You won’t tell me, and we can’t build anything...”
...between us...
“...on this case until you do.”
He wiped his hand over his jaw, and when he pulled it away, there was a sardonic grin where his frown had been. I knew him well enough to know that grin covered anger.
“The case. That’s your priority. Your only priority. Fine. You shouldn’t care who I work for because I’m not going to tell you. If you want answers out of me, then you’re going to have to play by my rules, Delaney, not yours. You can’t use...whatever this is between us to make me do what you want.”
Hold on there. What? He thought I was what—throwing myself at him to get information? I didn’t know if I should laugh or punch him.
My unreasonable heart didn’t care about a case, a murder, or anyone’s innocence. It wailed at me to argue with him, to tell him that I loved him, even though he was being a total idiot. Maybe I was too, but that was exactly the reason I was fighting so hard for him, whether he knew it or not.
But my heart didn’t get to run my mouth. That was all brain territory, and right now my brain was one-hundred percent cop.
“Then we have a problem. You won’t get your answers unless you tell me who you’ll be sharing them with. I, however, have ways to find out what I need to know without you. I will find out who cuts your checks, Ryder. If you want any kind of damage control in your life, in your job, in your innocence or guilt, you’ll talk to me now.”
Silence stretched under the weight of words neither of us could speak. Our secrets locked away all sound, smothered trust. That attraction between us wasn’t gone, but two tons of stubbornness had buried it deep.
“I’ll see you at the station,” he said like I had just asked him to have a nice day. As if this entire conversation had never happened.
“Fine.”
Ryder made it a point to walk around the couch and around me, so we weren’t even within each other’s reach. I didn’t know if that was to keep him or me from reaching out.
But just in case, I crossed my arms over my chest and hugged my ribs tight to keep from doing anything else I’d regret. The door opened, and I waited, back turned, until I heard it click closed again.