Page 2 of Amber Gambler

The name-dropping was a shot in the dark, but it hit its mark, bringing a grim smile to his mouth.

“Maybe not today.” He swirled the contents of his cup. “But who knows what tomorrow will bring?”

Oily dread churned in my stomach at the edge in his voice, and one absolute truth solidified in my mind.

I had made a mistake. Ahugeone. I should never have asked him for help last night.

But a girl was missing, and a client had hired me to find her. I had no idea what I was doing, but Harrow was a professional. I shouldn’t have let that fact, and the one case we worked together, convince me his skills were now at my disposal.

“What happened with Lyle wasn’t your fault.” I rallied my flagging courage. “It wasn’t Kierce’s either.”

Lyle Harrow had made his own choices. He decided to become a dybbuk, and the shade he let bond with his soul had turned him into a killer. But it was easier for Harrow to blame Kierce than see faults in the uncle who had raised him.

The commotion drew my roommate’s attention, and Badb came to stick her beak into my business.

“You kept her,” Harrow breathed when she sailed onto my shoulder, the better to glare at him.

“She’s tame.” I bobbed the shoulder not burdened with a judgy crow. “She has nowhere else to go.”

And I had promised Kierce I would care for his sticky-fingered—clawed?—friend.

Until he reappeared to claim her, she was my problem.

Oh.

Oh no.

No, no, no.

Second mistake: Allowing Harrow to glimpse what his hungry gaze proclaimed to be an insurance policy Kierce had left me to guarantee his return. Except Kierce had made no such vows.

“Good.” He drank in the sight of her as if she had quenched some unnamed thirst within him. “I’m glad.”

“We’re talking about the same crow, right? Badb? Her moving in makes you happy?”

Badb had bitten him once and threatened him with a repeat performance several more times.

“Kierce will come back for her.”

Damn it. I knew it. Iknewit. As stubborn as he was, there would be no convincing him otherwise. Not while he had it stuck in his head that Kierce was at fault for his uncle’s death.

“Oh.” Matty stumbled on the lowest step before my apartment’s landing. “Hey.”

Had he not been tucking in his shirt, standing there in unlaced boots, I might have believed his surprise.

“Matty.” Harrow tipped his head toward my brother. “I’ll wait for you outside your office, Frankie.”

“Until I get back from Bonaventure.” I afforded him no wiggle room. “I won’t be gone long.”

Matty held his ground while Harrow took the stairs. He waited until Harrow reached the bench outside my office at The Body Shop, well out of hearing range, before shoving me back and following me inside my apartment. “What’s he doing here?”

Leave it to Matty to sleep through anythingexceptfor the sound of Harrow’s voice in my apartment.

“Not this again.” I bundled clothes in my arms then hit the bathroom. “I thought you had moved on.”

“I could say the same of you, Mary.”

Right about now, I regretted having such a close relationship with my siblings.

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