Page 46 of Lucky or Knot
I’m not invited, I’m glad to say. Heard what happened last night. Don’t get involved.
If he’d already heard, he could’ve passed that on to me immediately instead of sitting on it, that sneaky fucker.
Thank you, Sean will email, I sent back. And then after thinking for a second:I’m already involved. If something happens, my parents will need someone to tell them. Sorry.
His reply:I’ll take care of it, but don’t let it come to that.
And that was that from Declan, I knew. He’d made up his mind.
“Email your resume, and put his name on it, and you’ll get an interview,” I said, in lieu of a lot of obscenities. “I may not see you around, Sean. Thanks for everything.”
He called after me as I walked away, his tone somewhere between worried and pissed, but I let it wash over me. At least I’d taken care of my obligation to him. That was something.
Next, the cash for Louie, and then I’d have to make the call. Kill Cunningham, or try to add another option to my dwindling list?
But as it turned out, another option came to me.
My phone rang as I walked in my apartment door. Not a number in my contacts, and it had an area code I didn’trecognize, either.
If Raven had managed to steal a phone…I fumbled to answer it so fast I almost snapped a claw. “Yeah?”
“Tony?” said a pleasant, medium-pitched male voice that distinctly wasn’t Raven’s. “I’m Blake. We haven’t met. Not through any fault of mine.”
Blake. Declan’s mate, who wanted to hang out at Lucky or Knot, much to Declan’s horror.
With or without Declan’s brains, I knew he couldn’t possibly know Blake had called me.
Fuck, exactly what I needed: Declan MacKenna hunting me down in a jealous rage. Great. I had to get Blake the hell off the phone before he somehow talked me into letting him in the back of the club when Declan wasn’t looking, or something equally suicidal. Like I didn’t already have enough problems with other alphas wanting to kill me for being involved with people they thought of as theirs.
“Blake,” I said warily. “Nice to meet you. Um, I’m not working for a few days, so I can’t really—”
He burst out laughing. “I’m not trying to get you to take me to Lucky or Knot behind Declan’s back,” he said, and then laughed some more. “That would be hilarious, just not for you. I’m not that much of an asshole. I used to be, and that would be…ha! Okay, no. But you still can’t tell him I called. He told me about you and your problem, and I have an idea.” His voice had been quivering with barely suppressed mischief, and now he lowered it—clearly for dramatic effect, because he had to be a mile away from Declan and his alpha hearing if he expected this phone call to be a secret. “So…Tony. How do you feel about posing as a trained circus tiger?”
***
In the face of Raven’s precarious, dangerous captivity,how I felt about posing as a trained circus tiger obviously didn’t matter much, if at all.
And yet.
It was Friday afternoon, the sun pouring down out of a cloudless sky into the narrow parking lot attached to a local shaman’s office and workshop. I tilted the small paper bag I held toward the light, illuminating a brown, grainy, waxy lump of spell components—that I was supposed to swallow before I shifted that afternoon, for fuck’s sake—and wrinkled my nose against an odor that gave notes of oregano, maple syrup, unwashed socks, and most disturbingly, tiger piss. Not even mine, either. I hadn’t given the shaman a sample.
“This is probably the worst idea of my entire life,” I said, as soon as the door to the shop closed behind us and the weird, cranky old shaman who’d made the lump presumably couldn’t hear us anymore and get offended. “Actually, strike that. I’m not taking responsibility for this. Blake, this is the worst idea of anyone’s entire life.”
I glanced at him sidelong and found him grinning, blue eyes sparkling with delight. He “used to be” that much of an asshole, huh? Yeah, I wasn’t going to be the one to break it to him, but I doubted he’d changed as much as he thought. Dick. A helpful dick, and possibly an evil genius, but a dick nonetheless.
“I just wish I could be there to see it,” he said with a sigh. “I haven’t been to a party that sounds this fun in years. But Declan would lose his mind. He obviously couldn’t come with me to keep an eye on me, because Cunningham wouldn’t let him on the property, and Declan’s a little overprotective.”
Coming from an alpha, and about an alpha, that statement carried more weight than it would have otherwise.
Translation: Murderously, obsessively possessive.
Well, I couldn’t blame Declan. Raven had inspired some similar feelings in me, and anyway, Blake would be mostpeople’s idea of a strong nine, maybe even a ten if you went for charming blonds.
“No worries,” I said, choosing not to comment on their relationship. After all, I’d only met Blake an hour ago, when we rendezvoused at the shaman’s shop. He hadn’t wanted to miss out on any of the prep for his crazy plan to get me into the party, and he needed to be there for the next part of it anyway. “With my luck, someone’s going to film it and put it online.”
“Gods, I fucking hope so,” he said, with a level of relish I found off-putting. Ugh. Strong nine or not, Declan could have him. Did he know what he’d gotten into when he’d mated this guy? “Anyway, I’m great at blackjack, but my poker face isn’t the best. It’s probably just as well.”
I got in the passenger seat of Blake’s car, since Blake had sweet-talked the shaman into letting me leave mine there for now while I used his magical concoction. After all, I’d be arriving at Audacity in a form that didn’t lend itself to operating a motor vehicle.
