Page 22

Chapter 22

M y blood ran cold as Penny reluctantly shook his hand. The Franklins had wasted no time in getting an investigation underway.

I arranged my face into a blank look as Shawn extended his hand to me, too. Although it was the last thing I wanted to do, I shook his hand. Curse words brewed in my throat but I swallowed them down. When I thought about it, I had heard no sirens the night before which meant the Franklins hadn't called Nexus, our supernatural police service, to their property.

Of course they hadn't. They had an almost literal shit storm in their home full of evidence of illegal activity. Stealing people's memories was up there with some of the worst crimes and the fact the Franklins had so many of them meant some serious jail time for whoever took the fall. The scandal of it all wouldn't exactly do them any favours, either.

Hiring private investigators was the only way the Franklins could track us down without spilling secrets of their own. The realisation had my breakfast curdling in my stomach. If they were investigating under the table, should the Franklins find out we had raided their house, then the consequences might be, too.

"Incident?" Penny asked. "Why? What happened?"

The relief at withholding the events of last night from Penny engulfed me like a cloud of euphoria. She didn't have the best poker face and she didn't need the added stress of keeping my secrets under interrogation. Her genuine confusion and intrigue would make us look like innocent enough parties.

"Nothing too extraordinary," Shawn said, rising up and down on the balls of his feet. "A robbery, that's all."

Either last night hadn't been as spectacular as I remembered it or the Franklins had really downplayed what had happened for this guy.

"What do you think we'd know about that?" I asked.

"I'm covering all my bases," Shawn said. "You ladies wouldn't know if anyone here bears a grudge against Troy Franklin? Perhaps you noticed an altercation between him and a classmate?"

"Not that I've noticed.” Penny shrugged.

Shawn turned to me and I grasped my coffee cup to hide my face behind. I didn't have the best poker face, either.

"And yourself?" he asked.

"I don't go here," I said, taking a sip of cold coffee. "I'm just meeting Penny for lunch."

"Oh." Shawn turned immediately back to Penny. Rude, but I was glad to have his attention off me. "So, you're sure? Nothing of note that you can remember?"

Penny chewed her lip and looked across the table at me. "Bea, wasn't there that girl...?"

She trailed off, but Shawn leaned forward, his tie dangling a little too long around his belt.

"A girl?" he asked.

Damn it all to Hec. She just had to bring that up.

"Just a rumour we heard," I said with a shrug. "Someone said he cut off a girl's hand with his power or something. I don't know."

I took another sip of coffee like it didn't bother me one way or another, but Shawn tilted his head in my direction.

"Cut off her hand ?" he asked. "Can you elaborate?"

"Not really," I said. "Like I said, it's just a rumour we heard. Couldn't even tell you if it really happened."

"And the name of the girl?" Shawn tapped away on his phone, looking from it to me in rapid bursts.

I shrugged yet again. I was going to give myself a neck ache at this rate. "No idea."

Penny shot me a quizzical look across the table but thankfully, Shawn was too preoccupied with his phone to notice. I pulled a face at her, hoping it was enough to keep her silent.

"You wouldn't happen to know if this girl had a cat, do you?" Shawn asked, still not looking up from his phone. "A big fluffy type?"

My heart skipped so many beats I wondered if I had suffered a cardiac arrest. Well, anything to get me out of this situation.

Penny's eyes widened, her face reddening to the colour of an overripe tomato. Busted. I pulled a pleading expression, glancing over at the private investigator every so often to make sure he didn't catch our awkward exchange. Penny inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, which she often did during her meditative breathing exercises. But something told me that this was less about spiritual alignment and more about lowering her blood pressure.

"Right, well, thank you ladies." Shawn eventually tucked his phone away and nodded at us both. "You've been very helpful. Good day to you both."

With that, Shawn turned on his heel and marched away with a greater sense of purpose than I would have liked to see.

The moment he was out of earshot, Penny leaned so far across the table, a thick strand of her hair dipped into her mug. "Spill it," she hissed.

I reached over and extracted her hair from the lukewarm liquid, shaking it off for her. "Not here. At home."

Penny wanted to skip her afternoon classes, but I reminded her that with the private investigator snooping around, we couldn't afford to do anything differently from the plan. Plus, Edward planned to pick us up at a certain time.

When her classes finally finished and we made our way out to the car park, Penny didn't say a word but glared at me the entire walk out. I had to steer her out of the path of several people, but she still didn't relinquish her stare.

"Don't say anything to Edward," I said, as I caught sight of his car entering the car park several rows down. "He doesn't know and I want it to stay that way."

"Because you're afraid he might tell Priya and she'll yell at you?" Penny asked. "Actually, I think you deserve it."

"If you want to yell at me Penny, do it. Make my day."

Penny scowled at me and I grinned back. No matter how hard she tried to get angry, she just came off cute. Although I had never met anyone who could guilt someone the way Penny could. It was an acceptable price to pay for watching her lose her crap at me.

"We are going to talk about this when we get back," she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

And I would enjoy it thoroughly. Not just because she would no doubt have an overdue outburst to release some of the pressure she'd been holding in since she left home, but so I could tell her what I had been up to. I didn't enjoy keeping things from Penny and having an excuse to let her in on my secret.

I worried that Edward would notice Penny was out of sorts on the drive home, but the moment he shot her his heart-melting smile, all the tension fell away from her. I left them to it, staring out the back window as they nattered in the front. A part of me wondered if Asher had returned home or if he would continue to avoid me. Whether he liked it or not, we needed to have a serious talk ourselves.

When we arrived back at the house, the moment I kicked off my shoes, I stuck my head through the kitchen doorway. Nobody was in there. Before Penny could commandeer me, I hurried upstairs to find Asher's door partially open. Without bothering to knock, I threw it open.

Asher jumped up from where he sat on the edge of the bed, poised with his fists up. Oh good, he was as ready for a fight as I was. But all my prepared thoughts as I readied myself to argue with Asher scrambled themselves into a horrifying mess as I watched Hecate fall off the bed in fright.

"Well, this looks pretty bad," I said, kicking the door shut behind me. "Having a pow-wow without me?"

"First off, it's called knocking." Asher lowered his hands and rolled his shoulders back. "Second, we were going to get you as soon as you got back."

"Really? Then why were you avoiding me this morning?"

"I wasn't avoiding you. I got proactive and asked some contacts if they could find out what the Franklins know about the break-in," Asher said.

The fire fizzled out in my belly. Damn. What was I supposed to yell at him about now? Oh yeah, the strange interaction we had the night before.

Hecate jumped up into my arms before I had a chance to begin my confrontation, and pressed a paw to my cheek.

"We've talked about what happened last night..." I stiffened at the thought of Asher and Hecate having talked about that little situation. "...and we've decided we all need to lie low for a while."

"Lie low?" I asked out loud so Asher could hear. "What does that even mean?"

I had visions of myself sprawled out on my bedroom floor, bored out of my mind. Getting out and about wasn't just something I did to keep occupied, but a part of my livelihood. I had to pay the bills somehow.

"Staying out of trouble," Asher said. "No sneaking around, no raids, definitely no using your power to steal other people's for a good, long while."

I snorted. Well, that wasn't happening.

"Listen." Asher made his way around the bed at a relaxed pace. "There's no record of the Franklins registering a robbery with Nexus, which is good news. But that doesn't mean they're not going to investigate and when they do, we need to make sure we're all -" He looked pointedly at Hecate, "off their radar. It just means a few months of staying out of sight."

"A few months?" I hitched Hecate up in my arms as she started slipping down my front. "I can't wait that long, I've got commissions."

"So...do a trial run of what life would be like without doing them?" Asher's lips disappeared into his mouth once he'd spoken.

"You'd all love that, wouldn't you?" I narrowed my eyes at him.

Sure, my line of work wasn't exactly legal and sometimes not even ethical, but it gave me the ultimate independence. I was in control of what I did, my finances, and I had put away a fair lump of savings in the past few years. That was without mentioning getting up whenever I wanted and buying my own cool stuff. Ten years ago, I would never have dreamed of owning a motorcycle .

Nobody would talk me into giving up the stability I had built for myself. The Franklins had no idea anyone but Hecate had anything to do with the break-in, so as long as the private investigator didn't catch sight of her, they would never know.

Hecate's eyes widened, and she nipped at my chin.

"Ow," I said, loosening my grip on her as I jerked my head away.

Hecate wriggled out of my arms and ran over to Asher, jumping straight into his. It wasn't until she pressed her paw to his cheek that I realised what she was doing. She had overheard my inner monologue and with it, the fact that a private investigator was now in the picture.

"Hec, don't you dare." I pointed a finger at her with one hand and rubbed the sore spot on my chin with the other.

But Asher's eyes glazed over as she communicated something to him. I balled one hand under my chin and clenched my jaw. If she thought she was stealing food off my plate that night, she had another thing coming.

"A private investigator?" he asked. "Who asked about Hec?" He looked down at the giant fluff ball in his arms. "Well, you're definitely not going anywhere, then."

Hecate mewled half-heartedly. As if she wouldn't enjoy an excuse to sleep all day.

"He doesn't know anything," I said.

"If she'd gone with you today, he'd have known everything ." Asher deposited Hecate onto the bed and strode toward me.

My entire body seized up, my hands dropping to my sides as he stopped in front of me. Too close, just like last night. But if he stepped even an inch away, I would have felt it.

The second he ventured even close to my personal space, my body responded as if it had never felt the touch of a human before. The ache, the burn of anticipation. Every inch of me begged for him to grab me the way he had done the night before and hold me, lose ourselves in another kiss.

Hecate's mewl snapped me out of my reverie. Nope. No way was she sitting in on this conversation.

I slipped past Asher, picked her up off the bed and tossed her out into the hallway, shutting the door behind her. Spirit cat or not, she needed a time out. Asher's eyebrows shot toward his hairline and eyed the door handle as Hecate meowed all the louder and scratched at the door.

"Never mind her." I folded my arms to put as much barrier between us as possible, though I had still placed myself so close to him that we were almost touching. Gods, if my brain and my body could just make their minds up. "We need to talk."

"Yeah, we do." Asher folded his arms too. "Were you really not going to tell me about the Franklins hiring a private investigator?"

"Not about that ," I said. "Last night."

The corner of Asher's eye twitched. "That's not the priority right now."

"Like hell it isn't." I slipped a hand out to jab him in the chest and immediately wished I hadn't. The urge to rest my palm absolutely anywhere on him had me in a chokehold. "You have some serious explaining to do. What did you mean last night when you said you thought you were keeping me safe?"

"Bea-"

"Do not bullshit me. I've had it with your secrets. You don't get to just walk out of my life like you don't care and then pull the stunt you did last night. I thought you helping me steal that power last night was suspicious enough, but you kissed me."

"You kissed me back ."

"You try pinning this on me and I'll knock your front teeth out instead," I said, jabbing him in the chest again. For such a tiny action it helped ease the frustration a lot. "What? Were you hoping for one last fling while you were here? Clear out your pipes before you get stuck into some girl at work?"

A multitude of expressions crossed his face; confusion, offence, and a flash of something else I didn't have time to register. Then, Asher leaned in so close that I wondered if he was going to kiss me again, but he stopped just a few inches from my face.

"Yeah," he said. "That's about right."