“Bye, Ben,” Jean said. “Think we should be worried?”
I didn’t know if she meant about Old Rossi’s warning, the housewarming invite, or us hiring Ryder.
“Probably,” I said, just to cover the bases.
We found Chris right where I expected him to be: upstairs at the bar.
We found him in a state I didn’t expect him to be: drunk.
Even more interestingly, we found him in the company of both Lila Carson and her sister Margot Lapointe.
They sat in the corner booth, mostly out of sight of the rest of the diners, though I noted the bartender, Nick, a mortal, was keeping a close eye on them.
I gave Nick a nod as Jean and I walked over to Chris and company.
“Delaney Reed,” Chris said, drawing out my name with more Louisiana than I’d heard out of him in a while. “Have yourself a seat. Have yourself a drink.”
Chris wore a black shirt with a black band tied around his upper arm. A petrified shark’s tooth centered his chest, hanging from a chain I knew was very old, and pure gold. It was an ancient talisman. I knew he wore it whenever a god died.
He’d once told me it was a symbol for life and death, a reminder that there was always something out there bigger than you that could, and likely would, kill you and eat you.
“I need to talk to you, Chris. Business.”
“Do you need us to go?” Margot asked.
Margot and Lila looked like sisters if you compared their pointed chins, petite noses, and the shape of their eyes. But while Margot was blonde with loopy curls held that way by lots of product, Lila’s hair was brunette and worn straight. They must have had a girls’ day out and both gotten multicolored feather extensions scattered in their hair.
Chris’s arm was draped over the back of the booth seat behind Margot, his hand absently stroking her curls and feathers. Lila sat just out of his reach, head down.
Lila was the elder sister, I decided. Any makeup she might have been wearing had been scrubbed off hard enough to leave her eyes and cheeks spotty and pink. When she looked up from the nearly disintegrated wadded napkin in her hands, her eyes were bloodshot and red-lined, her nose pink. She hadn’t scrubbed off her makeup. She’d cried it off.
“I’m so sorry about Heim, Lila,” I began, gently.
Her eyes filled with a wrenching mix of emotions, as if her heart strained for a shred of hope, even though her mind knew he was dead.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” Margot snapped. She looked…angry. Annoyed. Probably mad that her sister’s ex-boyfriend had made Lila cry again. “Heim was a selfish, cheating bastard. He deserved what he got.”
“No,” Lila said quietly, her voice softened by tears. “He didn’t deserve that. He didn’t. He was…he was so young.”
Several hundred years old, but I couldn’t tell her that. She’d loved the man he’d been when they dated for two years. I knew that man was most often kind and good, even if he did love the ocean and his ship more than he loved Lila Carson.
Gods and mortals never lasted.
Margot was still scowling at us, but she wrapped her arm over her sister’s shoulders and pulled her tight. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. Is there something you wanted?” she asked.
“Just some basic information about the last time you saw Heim,” Jean said evenly. “Would you ladies mind if I sat with you for a bit?” Apparently, she was going to take the sisters, which meant I was on gill-man duty.
“Chris?” I said. “Can we talk in private?”
“Sure.” He lifted his arm and slid out of the booth.
Margot looked a little startled that he was leaving her. “It will be fine.” He leaned down and placed a kiss on her temple. “I’ll be right back. You’re in good hands with Jean.”
Margot nodded and Lila wiped the tattered napkin over her nose as Jean sat next to her.
“This way, then.” Chris walked with a little less of his distinctive grace. Not that he was unsteady on his feet, but he had been drinking, and it showed in his almost overly loose joint movements. I was pretty sure he had a skeleton of bone, but right now he appeared to be held together by sinew and cartilage.
I followed him to the other side of the room, and up a flight of stairs to a door that opened on his office.
