“Don’t let me down. Any of you.” He rapped his knuckles on the table and stood. “We’ll see each other soon, I’m sure. Safe travels.”
He snagged up the basket and beer, and with a wave toward the waitress, who waved back absently, strode across the place, and out the door.
“That didn’t sound like a threat at all, did it?” I asked Lu.
She rocked her hand in a maybe gesture and finally plucked up a pickle chip and bit through it.
“He wants the book,” she said.
“I saw that.”
“Not sure how I feel about it,” she said.
“I feel suspicion and distrust. A whole lot of distrust.”
“He said he’d help find it.”
“Yep. But now I’m wondering why, if he wants it so bad, he won’t just come out and say it.”
“Gods,” Lu said, as she went for another chip. “Always something up their
sleeve. Who’s the ghost?”
“I haven’t asked. Name’s Valentine, apparently.”
“You could ask,” Val said. “You could ask right now. I’m right here.”
“Don’t care,” I muttered.
He growled, his wolf growled in agreement, then he just wasn’t there anymore.
My shoulders dropped. I exhaled.
“He left?” Lu asked.
“That obvious?”
“For someone who knows you.” She flashed me a little smile and pressed the toe of her shoe against the side of my shoe.
I didn’t even wince.
“Where do you think we missed the rabbit?” I drank the last of the beer and rolled the bottle to study the label.
She shrugged. “We haven’t gone far since we last saw Bo. Just across the rest of Illinois and about a hundred and fifty miles into Missouri. It won’t be hard to backtrack.”
“Backtrack all those miles looking for a tiny rabbit,” I said. “It can’t be a real rabbit, can it?”
Lu sipped the cherry cola, and I watched her eyes flutter shut as she savored the taste. I knew eating was more difficult for her now that she was athrawan.All those years ago when she’d been attacked, she’d craved blood, but hadn’t ever bitten anyone, worried that would force her into the final stage of vampirism.
She didn’t crave blood now, or so she told me. She still needed food to stay alive, but ate very little of it. So when a cherry cola and damn fine pickle chips sparked her hunger, I was glad to see it.
“I don’t think it’s a real rabbit,” she finally said. “But if not that, then what? A statue? A book? A metaphor?”
“I have no idea.”
“He said we passed it.”
“He didn’t say we’d seen it, though. Gods have a way of keeping details up their sleeves, too.”
