Page 17 of Flock This

“Don’t you know?”

“I know what I was told, which was that you staked the head of the Garrison family, possibly after having sex with him. You’ve never been a corpse chaser, though, so I’m assuming that isn’t quite right. Care to clear up the details for me?”

“First of all, I for sure didn’t sleep with him.” I shuddered at the thought of letting that man ever touch me. “And no, I didn’t stake him, either. I went to deliver something and he was already dead when I got there.”

“And you had the stake exactly why?”

I groaned at how horrible an answer I had for that. “That’s what I was delivering.”

“You mean that in a literal way, right? Not in the way that you delivered it into his heart?”

“You aren’t as funny as you think.”

“As long as I amuse myself, I’m happy.” Even as he said that, though, he tapped his fingers on the edge of the table. “This isn’t good, Grey.”

“I figured that out when I dove down a laundry chute.”

“The vampires won’t just let this go. They’re calling for your head.”

“And they hired you to come get me?”

“Nope. This is well over my position. When the warrant comes down, they’ll pick a Justice to bring you in, and he won’t play so nicely.”

“So if you aren’t here to get me, why are you here?”

“I don’t think you’d look so good without your head, so I figured I’d see what I can do to keep that from happening.”

Which I wasn’t about to trust. Kelvin did what he wanted, and I had no reason to think he’d actually help, especially if it ever ended up where something else would help him more.

Still, why not see what I could get out of it? “So how exactly can you help?”

“I’m going to look into it. Clearly, someone wanted to get Garrison out of the way, and using someone without any backup is an easy way to do that. If they set up a Were, they’d have an alpha to deal with. If they set up a Nature, they’d have a clan head to fight with. Instead, they picked a courier who had no one to speak for them.”

“I cut my own bangs when I was fifteen. You want to bring that up and rub it in a little, too?”

“Your face is too square to pull off bangs,” he said, then kept talking without missing a beat. “People who want to take out the head of the Garrison family include people of the same family who either wanted to move up or disliked William’s policies, Spirits from another family or race who didn’t like him, or something personal.”

“Way to offer up every single option. You didn’t really narrow anything down.”

“Well, I didn’t include you, unless you want me to add you back in? No? Then stop distracting me.”

I crossed my arms and quieted down. As much as I might dislike it, Kelvin did have more information than I did. I tried hard to not involve myself too deeply with any of the other races, even the werewolves despite my friendship with Galen. That meant Kelvin understood the politics in a way I didn’t.

He tapped his fingers as if keeping time. “William had no heirs, no direct lines in his family to take over. He had plenty of enemies who didn’t agree with how he ran things.”

“Maybe someone thought they needed a change of leadership.”

“Perhaps,” Kelvin said. “It’s too early to know. Do you still have the stake?”

I nodded. “The way delivery works, the portals where deliveries are stay locked. When a person leaves a message or delivery, they gain one-time access to place the item. Basically? Other people can put items in but only I’m able to get them out, and I put it back.”

“Can I see it?”

I hesitated. It was my only solid evidence. Sure, it didn’t show I hadn’t done it, and maybe actually having the murder weapon looked bad on me, but I didn’t care for the idea of handing over the only thing I had.

“You still don’t trust me?”

“I’d be an idiot to hand over my only piece of evidence to you.”

---