Page 6 of Clubs

BROOKE

No sooner than they had hauled Declan out the front door did they line us up.

“Shut the fuck up,” they’d told us. “Nobody says a word until we talk to each and every one of you.”

“You either have to charge us or let us go,” I snapped. “You can’t just—”

“We found a dead girl behind this bar five minutes ago.” A big cop around my height—around six feet tall—with the statue of a linebacker stepped closer, a feat I imagined intimidated the hell out of most.. On the younger side though, probably around thirty, with icy blue eyes and a firm set jaw.

I was never known for my petite stature. It helped that I was a Witch who could make this guy’s eyes boil out of his skull with a few words under my breath, so that look didn’t do what he thought it did. Or at least, not for the reason he thought it did.

“We can hold you all night, ma’am. So shut the fuck up and do as you’re told.”

“Who?” I asked, ignoring the fury ignited by the do as you’re told comment. “Whose body?”

He was almost chest to chest with me now, eyes darkening with every heartbeat. “Did I not just tell you to shut the fuck—”

“My sister was supposed to be on her way here.” I had no power in this situation, but somebody was going to tell me if the dead girl out there was my sister. “Ariana Lewis. Twenty-one years old. Long black hair, blue eyes, white skin. Is that who you found out there?”

Stiff shoulders loosening, the officer eased back a few steps. “She’s blonde.”

A deep breath of relief fell from my lips. Nodding, I stepped back and leaned against the bar beside Emory. Not to say I was happy somebody else was dead, but I was happy it wasn’t Ria.

* * *

For the next three hours, they questioned us. They questioned Declan too, and a peek into his mind showed me the bullshit interrogation. They kept insisting he knew the girl. Declan kept saying that he hadn’t, and the loop persisted.

The cops who interrogated us were less aggressive with their questioning. They showed us the dead girl’s ID, Alicia Tanner, asked us if we knew her, if we had seen her inside the bar tonight, and we answered honestly.

Although I had spent most of the evening in the back with Declan, it didn’t seem like she’d been here tonight. No one had seen her. Of course, the cops didn’t tell me that. They wouldn’t tell me anything. But they told Emory. Since they had arrested the owner of the bar, they had to refer to the bartender.

They were on to the last few of us, five people, when Emory and I finally got a moment alone to talk.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How can they arrest Declan for murder when this literally just happened? Don’t they have to build a case against someone to arrest them for murder?”

“They’re supposed to.” Emory grabbed a bottle of whiskey from the edge of the counter and poured two glasses. I assumed one was for me, but when I reached for it as he gulped down the first, he snatched it away, tilted his head back, and chugged it. “But they’ve been looking for a reason to throw Declan away since we were kids.”

“The local cops just make a habit of framing toddlers then?”

He narrowed his gaze. “Hit the nail on the head.”

This was how mine and Emory’s relationship worked. He was Declan’s best friend, so we spent a lot of time together, but we butted heads.

Emory was an asshole, and I was a bitch. We were both known for our sarcasm and lack of smiles. If not for Declan, I doubted we would’ve ever crossed paths, let alone been friends. Now though, after seeing one another almost daily, we loved to hate each other.

“Why? What’s the beef here?” I asked. “Does it have something to do with his parents?”

“It has everything to do with his dad,” Emory said. “Declan ever talk about his old man with you?”

More often than I talked about mine. “He’s told me that he was in and out of jail and rehab for drugs, but that’s about it.”

“Not just drugs, but dealing. Trafficking. Murder, manslaughter, and a thousand other things. Only ever got charged with possession and dealing, though.” Lowering his voice, Emory propped his elbows on the bar top and leaned in. “He had a lot of friends. Powerful friends. Guardians, Witches, Werewolves. You get the gist.”

I was beginning to. Like there was an underground network of business in narcotics and gambling, there was an underground network of supernaturals in the human world. And those supernaturals had issues. The emotional damage from killing rogue Demons did a number on you. But some of us were just fucked up because of our shitty parents who had killed rogue supernaturals. And what happened to people like that?

Some of us left, like yours truly. Some of us ended up like Ariana. Barely an adult, addicted to substances to numb the horrors of our reality, but powerful as hell.

We were good at muling drugs, selling them, even killing for them, because we had paranormal abilities on our side. And the Chambers, the organization governing the underground world of supernaturals, did its fair share of killing, too. I had worked for them for a while to get myself through college. The money had been next to impossible to refuse. As a new adult, I had supported myself and Ria, trying to keep us both off the street and fed, and trying to keep Ria from returning to foster care. I’d made ends meet through part-time jobs, but had barely scraped by. Any hang-ups I’d had about the Chambers, about doing their dirty work, I put aside. In that line of work, killing for the Chambers, I had learned to be pretty damn good it. And at covering it up.

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