“Gee, tough crowd,” Zoey murmured to Danielle, taken aback.
“What a bunch of butt-wipes,” Danielle said indignantly. “We worked hard on this plan. Well, you and Stewart and Andrea worked hard on this plan and I offered moral support. Well, I whined less than usual.”
“Yes, you did.” Zoey bobbed her head in agreement. Andrea had kept Danielle’s mouth stuffed with apple dumplings, and as long as Danielle was chewing, she wasn’t bitching.
She cleared her throat and pasted a big smile on her face. “If we can help out the homeless community here, there will be less crime, which benefits all of us!” she said into the microphone, her voice bouncing off the walls.
Not a word. Everyone just stared in her direction, in frozen dismay.
“Oh. It’s not you. I think there’s actually something behind us,” Danielle said, in a low voice.
Zoey stood perfectly still, suddenly very aware of every beat of her heart. In Encantado, “something behind us” could be…very scary. She just prayed it wasn’t a ghoul. She didn’t want to spend her final hours in a killing rage ripping her friends’ flesh from their bones with her teeth. They probably didn’t want that either.
Then again, she’d have smelled a ghoul, because from what she’d heard, they reeked enough that even garbage wouldn’t disguise their odor.
The two women turned around very slowly.
Ottavio and Carlo, of the Blood Oath Pack, had just walked in the room from the back door, and were standing behind them. Lorenzo’s face lit up and he looked at them admiringly. “The Blood Oath pack? Wow!” His mother smacked him on the arm.
The room was completely silent.
Danielle went pale and her coffee cup slipped from her fingers, a sure sign of how shocked she was.
Ottavio opened his mouth to speak, but Dominic and Romano burst through a side door, and his mouth snapped shut again. From the look on Ottavio’s face, he hadn’t been expecting them and he wasn’t happy to see them. Carlo just stood there, glowering at the room with dull menace.
Ottavio stormed over and started talking to Dominic and Romano in low, angry tones. While the men argued, the audience members jumped to their feet and began streaming from the room.
Jordan stood frozen in place, with an uncertain look on his face, his eyes darting between Dominic and Ottavio.
Ottavio crossed the room swiftly, stopping in front of Jordan, whose eyes widened in terror. “I understand that you have been collecting fees, but not paying the garbage collection company,” he said in a loud voice, although there was hardly anyone left in the room to hear him, and those who were still there were running in fear, not listening to Ottavio.
Jordan started to protest. Ottavio shifted so fast Zoey barely saw it coming, and ripped Jordan’s throat out with his teeth. A fountain of scarlet jetted up from Jordan’s throat, and he staggered backwards and crumpled into a heap.
Andrea went pale and grabbed Lorenzo’s arm and dragged him off. Stewart hurried after them, taking care to put his body between them and Ottavio.
People ran out of the room screaming. Danielle followed them. She paused in the doorway, looking for Zoey. “Zoey, you moron, you can’t Pollyanna your way out of this one! Comeon!” she screeched, and then ran for it.
Ottavio’s cold gaze swept the room. He met Zoey’s gaze as she stood alone on the podium. “Collection will resume tomorrow.” He scowled at Dominic. “You didn’t need to come here. I had it handled.”
“Since it involves my mate, yes, I did need to come here. And you shouldn’t have tried to keep me out of it.” Dominic’s voice held an edge of steel.
“I don’t report to you,” Ottavio growled. “You’d do well to remember that.”
And he left without a backward glance.
Dominic walked over to the podium and helped Zoey climb down.
“You all right?”
She struggled to find her voice. “A little shaken.”
“You should have told me about the garbage problem,” he said mildly.
Zoey shot him a dirty look. “Excuse you? I mentioned that my neighborhood smelled bad.”
“But I…okay, you did mention that,” he conceded. “I haven’t been here myself in months. I wasn’t aware that this was happening. Next time there’s a problem, let me know right away.”
Zoey was swaying on her feet and struggling not to barf. Jordan had been a horrible human being, but seeing him killed right in front of her, so casually, made her feel ill. She backed away from Dominic. “Is that an order?”
