Patrick gestured with his coffee cup at Jono’s face. “Since you were infected.”
The espresso cup stilled halfway to Jono’s mouth. “Bit of a personal question, innit?”
“I warded our area. No one can hear us.” At Jono’s disbelieving look, Patrick craned his head around and yelled, “Hey!”
No one paid them any attention. Patrick picked up half his bagel and took a bite, eyeing Jono expectantly.
“Magic doesn’t guarantee privacy,” Jono replied.
“Gets pretty close. You’re god pack, even if you weren’t acting in that capacity at the PCB last night. You lost the right to privacy the second your eyes changed color. I know paperwork for immigration anywhere sucks, but it’s especially crappy for those with your kind of ties to the preternatural world. Did Marek pull strings to bring you over?”
“What makes you think it was Marek?”
“What he said last night about the reason you’re here. If it’s this case, and if his patrons want me to keep an eye on you, I need some background on you.”
“Why don’t you run one of your agency’s fancy background checks and find out on your own?”
“You’re sitting right in front of me, and we’re stuck together for who knows how long because immortals don’t know when to mind their own fucking business. This way is quicker, but only if you talk.”
“I’ll talk if you will.”
“So long as you don’t ask me about anything classified, then sure,” Patrick replied blandly.
Which was, oh, nearly his entire life.
Jono drank down his double espresso in one long, searing gulp before following it up with the sparkling water. He set the glass down with a sigh. “I got infected when I was seventeen. I’m thirty now. Bad blood transfusion at a hospital after a car accident on the M1 while coming back from hols. The mistake shouldn’t have happened.”
“No shit,” Patrick said. “Blood is supposed to be screened.”
Jono’s lip curled. “Their supplier was a bit dodgy. Turns out the company was doing a healthy side business with the Edgware Night Court.”
Patrick made a face. “Fucking vampires.”
“Too right. My mum and dad kicked me out after the whole mess even with the court case going on. Couldn’t stand having a bloody werewolf staying with them, and the Tottenham estate we lived in at the time almost rioted when I tried to come home. Never saw so much as a quid from the settlement either. Bunch of bollocks, that was.”
“Money is a great divider.”
Jono nodded agreement. “The London god pack allowed me to stay in their territory, but they never accepted me into their pack. I didn’t get on with the lot of them, and the alphas didn’t want me around after a while. When Marek showed up in London three years ago with a job offer to manage his friends’ bar, I didn’t say no. When I left, the London god pack exiled me.”
“Marek offered you a job and a place with the New York City god pack? Didn’t think he had that kind of pull.”
“No. The god pack here wanted nothing to do with me.”
Patrick stared at Jono, thinking about all the ways rival god packs could make life a living hell for the citizens of the cities they claimed. “And they haven’t run you out of town yet?”
“Marek won’t let them.”
“More like the fucking Fates won’t let them,” Patrick muttered.
Jono shrugged expansively at that. “I’m here, even if Estelle and Youssef wish I weren’t. I don’t care much for the way they do business with the packs under their protection, but it’s not my place to argue.”
Patrick snorted, gulping down a mouthful of coffee. “You don’t strike me as the kind of guy who’s willing to be walked over.”
“Yes, well, I’m an independent. Can’t form a pack because that was part of the agreement I made with the god pack here, and it’d be a sodding territory fight if I tried. So I don’t.”
Independent werecreatures were people who either hadn’t found the right fit in a pack yet, or they’d been exiled from ones who wanted nothing to do with them anymore. Independents were the least powerful in any territory werecreatures held beneath the watchful eyes of their local god pack. It was a lonely sort of existence.
That Jono, a god pack alpha, had yet to form his own pack when his instincts had to be screaming at him to do so, made Patrick question just what future the Fates had seen for the Brit.
