I sneered. Not even if I lived to be a thousand.
He snorted, obviously unimpressed by my sneer. “I do not envy whoever takes you under their banner.”
“Yeah, I’m going to make all of your lives hell until you give me back my freedom.”
He might as well know what he was dealing with from the start.
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” he said, clicking a key fob. The lights on a black Lexus turned on. The car was from this year and top of the line from what I could see. “Our kind don’t take disrespect very lightly. If you’re not careful, your next hundred years will be very unpleasant.”
Only if I got caught. There was more than one way to make your thoughts clear without ever giving the appearance of disobedience. Ask any newly minted lieutenant upon arriving at their first duty station. I’d seen some of the best at this game. If I couldn’t find a way out of this mess, I was going to be putting what I’d learned to the test.
“Where are we going anyway? Thought I had until I resolved my debt to the sorcerer before you took me into custody.”
“We’re going to work together to fix this mess you’ve found yourself in,” he said.
“And how do you think we’re going to do that?”
“You’re going in a safe house while I go hunting. Once I find the murderer, we can turn him over to the sorcerer, and you’ll be free.”
That wouldn’t work for me. I needed to be out, working things to my advantage if I was going to figure out a way around his ultimatum, not sitting on my ass waiting while he did all the heavy lifting.
Judging from how Liam and Brax were handling the problem, I wasn’t convinced either of them would be able to find their way to the bottom of this without my help. Power and strength, they might have. The ability to find and decipher clues? Not so much. Neither struck me as having the patience to sift through details. They definitely weren’t able to get people outside their supernatural species to talk to them.
“That would be great if that was the only condition for my release,” I said, seeing an opportunity.
He stopped. “What do you mean?
I shrugged with feigned nonchalance. “Nothing much. Just that the murderer’s capture wasn’t the only part of the deal.”
He spun me to face him. I gave him a sweet smile, widening it when he flashed the tip of a fang. I’d discovered that fangs, for us, were a good indicator of mood. They could mean we were hungry, or angry, or horny. In this case, I was going with irritated.
“That’s not what you said at the park.”
He didn’t believe me. At least not entirely. He was right to be suspicious. I planned to take advantage of his ignorance as much as I could.
“Well, excuse me for not laying out every aspect of my deal with the sorcerer right before your fight with the werewolf.” I wasn’t sure how developed a vampire’s truth sense was. The werewolves seemed able to accurately identify any lie I told, and I didn’t want to expose more than I needed to. Sticking as close to the truth and irritating the life out of him was my best smoke screen.
He visibly struggled for patience. “Tell me everything about your deal with the sorcerer.”
Thought he’d never ask.
I went over what I could tell him and what could be twisted to my own purposes. There wasn’t a lot of wiggle room. I’d have to tread carefully.
“Finding the murderer is part of it,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “But he also needs me to find certain items.”
“What items?”
I shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. I don’t think he knew.” That was true enough. “He just said I’d know them when I saw them.”
“No. Absolutely not,” Liam said, seeing where I was going with this. “You’re not assisting. You’re going to the safe house where you’re going to wait like a good little girl until I can resolve this mess.”
I rolled my eyes, not even trying to hide my amused scorn. I didn’t even know where to start with that antiquated, chivalrous male bullshit. Wait in the corner like a defenseless woman who needed saving? What century did he think this was?
“Do you even hear yourself when the words come out of your mouth? You sound like you’re some ancient geezer who should have been retired about three decades ago. For that matter, do you have any idea what is doing all of this? No? Okay. So, don’t tell me to go hide somewhere while the big boys pound their chests and stomp around like a herd of idiotic buffalo fucking everything up.”
Liam glared at me with irritation. Guess he wasn’t used to people, especially women, challenging the edicts that fell from his lips.
“If you don’t know what items are to be found, we will meet with the sorcerer, and he can tell us.”
