Page 104 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“What can I do for you?” she asks.
“Why are you avoiding us?” Cyrus asks.
“I get why you’d avoid the rest of them, but why me?” Yorick demands.
“I wasn’t. Do you wish to speak to Emily? She’s in the back. Please wait one moment.” And with that, she rushes into the back where I have to assume the offices are. When another woman comes out, I immediately tense, recognizing her as the werewolf who had attacked Cyrus.
Cyrus doesn’t seem to notice, but Yorick does. Almost at the same time, we slide in front of Cyrus as the woman stares at us before nodding toward the back where she’d come from.
“Let’s talk,” she says as she turns around and starts walking.
“Is she…?” Cyrus trails off.
“Yes,” I say as I reach down and squeeze his hand, hoping to offer even a bit of comfort.
“Hmm… not sure how I feel about that.”
“Do you want to wait out here? I’ll wait with you. Casimir and Julian can go back.”
“No,” he says. “Come on.” And with more confidence than I think I’d have after being mauled by someone now leading me to a small room, he heads into the back. Of course I don’t let him go first, but once we’re in an office, the woman waves to the chairs.
“Sorry that I don’t have enough. I can get more if you’d like to sit. My name is Emily,” she begins as she sits behind the desk before turning her attention to Cyrus. “And you…” She bows her head. “I… don’t know if I can ever apologize enough for what I did… I… after I got out of the hospital, I wanted to reach out to you, but what the fuck do you say to someone you tried to kill? It gets a bit hard.”
“Understandably,” Cyrus says.
She rubs at her short hair, almost like she’s nervous and needs something to fumble with. “I truly cannot apologize enough.”
“Why were you in such an unsafe area?” I ask, irritated at her negligence. I understand that Casimir doesn’t always keep Julian in his cage, but he keeps him in a locked room with no windows and a door that Julian couldn’t get out no matter how hard he tried. “You have humans who come into this club, and it was such a huge risk to be in that room.”
“I know… I got lax. Van always watched over me. So, in my mind, what did I have to fear with him right there? It was stupid. So much of it was stupid. The crate clearly wasn’t enough. There was a window… and I nearly killed you. I heard what I did to you and I’m just… honestly, I’m shocked I didn’t kill you… I’m even more shocked you didn’t just shoot me in the head.”
“I thought about it,” Cyrus says. “I really planned to more than once. But I just kept thinking about how Julian can’t control himself when he shifts… and what if someone shot him in the head…”
“I really can’t apologize enough.”
Cyrus nods slowly. “I know. I’m sure. And thank you for that. I really appreciate it. But now… more than an apology, we need help.”
“This Donovan…” I say. “You called him Van. He wouldn’t be Van Mercer, would he?”
She glances up at me and nods. “That’s his name.”
“He’s the man who helped me ‘kill’ Louis. He’s the one who told me that Louis was dead.”
“I don’t know a Louis. Van and I weren’t together very long—a year or so—and I’m sure he had people he interacted with that I didn’t know. We were friends before dating, but… I’m sorry, I don’t recognize the name and don’t believe he’d been meeting with anyone who was called that.”
“He’s the guy who came in here with the dark jacket. He went into Donovan’s office,” Cyrus says.
The bartender, who must have followed us, speaks up. “I saw him. I know who you’re talking about. I hadn’t seen him in the club before, so my attention was drawn to him. I described him to Emily, but she didn’t seem to recognize him.”
“Who was the woman I was talking to before I went back and found Donovan dead?” Cyrus asks. “You and Clara saw me talk to her and looked quite displeased by it.”
“That’s Farrah. She… I guess she and Donovan went way back. They didn’t always see eye to eye, though, but they were civil.”
I turn back to Emily. “Van promised me that he’d killed Louis. So was he protecting him? Were they in on it together? I got severely hurt, and the woman with us saved my life while Van claimed to have finished off Louis. Did they both lie to me? Was it just Van? Or did they think they killed him but they really didn’t?” Fuck. If only I had been stronger back then, none of this would have happened.
Emily shakes her head. “I literally know nothing. I just… I don’t even understandwhythis man killed Van. What the hell did Van do wrong?” she asks as she fights back tears. “Sorry. I just…”
“We have reason to believe that Louis is working with a young vampire named Phil Witt. I heard he worked here,” Cyrus says.
