Eyes narrowing, I stepped up to their makeshift huddle right at the diner’s entrance.
“You wouldn’t happen to be talking about welcoming a new member onto the Town Council, would you?” I didn’t disguise the suspicion in my tone. If they were going to draw in another member to their fucked-up club, I had one guess at who it might be. Someone who had too muchsparklefor his own good,and a drop-dead gorgeous daughter who sucked cock like a dream.
All sets of eyes shifted to land on me. Let them look. Iwasn’t here to play games; I was only here to claim prizes. One prize in particular: Harlow.
The sheriff took a step forward, but Mayor Dennison grabbed her shoulder, forcing her to stand down.
“Now, Bale,” the Mayor Dickwad spoke like he was about to lecture a child. “All Town Council matters are confidential, you know that.”
I grunted. “Of course, I wouldn’t want to overstep. Now would I?” I replied sarcastically.
Giving a mockingly flourished bow with a tip of my cap, I gestured for them to continue on their merry way towards coffee as bitter as field rot and as dark as the burnt straw of my soul.
Without rising from my bent-over position, my cerulean eyes tracked their wary movements as they shuffled into the diner.
The sheriff was the last to walk past, the condescension rolling off her in waves. She leaned over, murmuring, “Happy hunting tonight, Bale.”
I nearly cracked a molar from clenching my jaw so tightly.
Only when the door rattled shut behind them did I fully straighten.
Let them plot their next moves. I was plotting mine.
A few minutes later, I was schmoozing my way past the librarian on shift while Mrs. Sampson nursed her hangover from last night’s festival activities in her office.
The motion-sensitive lights flicked on overhead as I hit the bottom step leading into the designated reservefor all the town’s historical records. If silence were a smell, it’d be stale and oppressive as death.
On full alert, I wandered between the shelves looking for anything out of place. Books were lined up on shelves, chairs were lined up neatly at the tables, and no ghosts haunted the room other than those in between the pages.
Approaching the door that always remained shut behind the staircase, I ran my fingers over the tarnished brass handle. Someday, I’d show my kitten a piece of this town that very few knew of. First, I needed her to survive the hunt—survive me.
Seeing no one down here, I turned to go back towards the steps when something caught my eye. Not only were the indents in the carpet off track, suggesting it had been moved recently, but something was underneath the machine.
It could have been nothing, or…
Aboutfacing and stalking over to the copier, I pulled it away from the wall it was set against, the power cord getting drawn taut and nearly yanking the plug from the outlet.
Beneath it was something that set something in my gut on fire. Red wax. Black soot. Remnants of a sigil drawn in something that smelled like copper and evil. Witchcraft.
Dropping to a knee, I picked up a corner of a piece of parchment that hadn’t fully been burnt to ash. Inspecting it, nothing was damning about the paper other than ithad survived whatever flame had eaten up the rest of the page.
I pocketed the evidence. Corbin would need to see this for himself. Harlow may have been in more danger than I had originally suspected. Fuck the Dennisons, fuck the current Council. This was far beyond any of them.
Roughly shoving the copier back into place, I took several steps back and gave another look around the unoccupied space.
“You fucking make one chant in her direction, I will fucking destroy you down to your pointy shoes. I’ll light this whole damn town on fire, and no amount of water will extinguish the flames,” I warned.
I hope she fucking heard me.
The snickering coming from the shadows suggested she had.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
When Harlow and I finally dragged ourselves off the couch, I escorted her straight home. Standing outside the front door of the caretaker’s former residence that she now called her own, I pulled her face to mine. My lips reminded her of the bond we shared, of my allegiance to her.
Each flick of our tongues mingling made separation infinitely more difficult. Fuck, I just wanted to kiss away the shroud that was slowly descending over us. The hunt would be here sooner than any of us wanted.
