“You only hired him within the last year.”
“We were friends at the time. He walked in not long after…” Her face lost color again, and I felt like a bastard for making her relive it. But I needed to know every threat to her safety.
“He took the body?”
She nodded, and I almost cursed. The fae and I would be having a chat. Soon.
“I trust him, Vas. Orin would never do anything to hurt me.”
Just hearing that pissed me off. Of course, it made sense if she’d been friends with him for years. But it killed me that he was the one who’d been here to help her and I hadn’t.
Mere was watching me, her gaze shuttered. “Do you think I’m a m-monster?”
“Oh, Mere.” I pulled her into my arms. She tensed for a moment, as if she wanted to pull away, but then she buried her face in my chest, her hands clutching at me as if I were her lifeline.
I wanted to be her lifeline. I wanted to do anything I could to make her problems disappear.
“I killed my father.”
“I know. He deserved it.”
She lifted her head. Her lower lip trembled, but she clamped down on it with her teeth. “He did.”
“Tell me who else. I need to know every single threat.”
She hesitated, then finally let out a long sigh. “Nero.”
“Nero?” The name was familiar. I’d definitely heard it before.
“He’s a…loan shark.”
I cursed. “If you needed money, you could have come to me.”
Her foot swung at me, hitting my shin. “I didn’t go to him, you jackass. My father did. But when he died, Nero ordered me to visit him. He told me the loan was attached to the bar, not my father. That made it my responsibility.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
I could pay off her bar without coming close to depleting my savings. I’d been alive for over seventy years, and it was easy to collect human wealth when you had time. Yet I was smart enough to not even suggest such a thing to Meredith. Her pride…
Well, if she wouldn’t allow me to pay her debt, I would make the debt disappear instead. Truthfully, I preferred it that way.
I was looking forward to meeting this Nero.
* * *
Meredith
I’d been putting off going downstairs. Vas had watched me out of his dark eyes as I puttered around my apartment, running a load of laundry and stacking the dishwasher. Finally, I changed into old jeans and a ripped T-shirt—cleaning clothes—and went to wade through the wreckage, Vas shadowing my every step.
I heard voices before I got halfway down the stairs, and I almost stumbled.
Then I heard Orin’s rough laugh and smiled. Of course he was here.
I opened the side door of my bar and froze.
There must have been a hundred people hard at work. Gnomes, goblins, dark and light fae, witches, demons, and werewolves.
I gaped. Orin strode toward me with a grin.
