“Here you go.” He set our drinks on the bar and I paid, since this outing was my idea.
I made a point of looking at his name tag. “Oscar, right?”
He smiled. “Yep, that’s me.”
Now came the tricky part. Getting him to answer my questions. I could flash my badge so he’d be obliged to answer, but that ran the risk of word somehow getting back to Xen or Frost, and we couldn’t afford to draw their attention. At a stretch, if we kept it social, I could say that it was Mase’s idea to come here for a drink after work.
Option two it was.
I flashed Oscar my best smile instead, gratified when he fumbled the glass he was drying. “I’ve not been in here for a few months. Pretty sure I’d have remembered you though. You worked here long?”
Thankfully he laughed at my rather obvious attempt at flirting. “About a year and a half.”
I leant forward, looking left and right like I was about to share a secret. “To be fair, I usually end up in the back room.” He stiffened so I shot him a wink. “The pink lobster is amazing.” He relaxed as soon as I mentioned the code words used to gain access to the back rooms, because like I said, it wastechnicallyillegal. Not that it was a well-kept secret or anything. But whatever; he lost that suspicious glint to his eyes. “You ever work that bar?” I added a little growl to my words, the roughness of it never failing to get a reaction.
Oscar’s eyes darkened. He set the glass down and leant on the bar. “Not since the start of the year.”
That didn’t match up with the bar’s employee records from that night.
“Maybe I should rectify that,” Oscar added. The smirk that followed was accompanied by a wink of his own.
I smiled back just as Jake’s hand clamped down on my thigh, claws out.
Ouch.
“Maybe you should,” I fired back, ignoring the sharp pain in my leg as Jake dug his claws in.
A couple of witches walked in, drawing Oscar’s attention, and as soon as he walked to the other end of the bar, I grabbed Jake’s hand and carefully peeled his fingers off me. A quick scout of the room showed no one paying us any attention, and the pub had enough scents lingering in the air and on the surfaces that detecting anything amongst it all was difficult.
Which was why I’d brought Mase.
I didn’t know how his fae magic worked, but hopefully he’d be better able to identify whose emotions were whose. If his magic worked at all. It was a long shot, granted, but we didn’t have much else to go on at this point.
Not wanting to risk showing our hand or pissing Jake off, I pointed to a table in the corner by the window. “Let’s sit over there.” It’d give us a semblance of privacy, at least.
After another round, we called it an evening. I gave Oscar another wave and a wink as we left, for no other reason than to needle Jake. Not a wise move, considering we were trying not to draw any attention our way, but fuck it. Drawing out his possessive streak set my pulse racing. He couldn’t show me in other more tactile ways, so I got my thrills where I could. My wolf also approved, and that made it doubly hard to resist.
As soon as we were in my car and out of earshot of the bar, Mase prodded me in the shoulder. “Okay. What was all that about?”
The words were on the tip of my tongue. A full explanation of everything we were dealing with, but Xen’s order sat like an invisible barrier, preventing any of them spilling out.
“Did your magic work at all in there?” I asked instead, hoping that for once the odds were in our favour.
“I think so, and I’m guessing Oscar was the target, but I’m not sure what emotions you were expecting me to pick up. Nothing out of the ordinary stood out. He wasn’t scared or nervous, if that’s what you were expecting.”
Jake sat in the passenger seat, arms folded. “Are you certain it was working though?” He turned in his seat to face Mase better.
“Erm… pretty sure, yeah. Not for as long as I would’ve liked, but it’s all still so new, I’m not good at maintaining it.”
“Did you get anything from him?” Jake persisted, and Mase shot a glance at me.
Oh.
“Well. He, um… had a few strong emotions about Max.”
“Iknewit.” Jake’s growl filled the car and it took everything in me not to preen. “I caught the scent in there but couldn’t pinpoint where it was coming from.”
“I take it this has something to do with the thing you can’t talk about?” Mase asked.
