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I made Ollie swear not to drink again and then I made Basselt swear to look after Mom and thump Ollie in the head if he so much as looked at the booze. They were both unhappy with me and I got it. Even I thought it was stupid not to bring Basselt with me.

It would be so easy to use him and let his nose figure it out.

I wasn’t that person. I liked Basselt, and no one deserved what the Barons would do to him if they found out a Theran was banished and living among them.

I was also thinking long term. His wife had been a healer, and he gave enough of a shit to pay attention to her work.

The shifters might have remedies that didn’t need copper. If Basselt taught them to Athan and Tarja, then Ilyn could stock things in his shop. Future Argent kids could avoid selling themselves if their moms got sick. There’d be other reasons, but in Guttertown, illness was the most common reason.

Ollie pulled me into a bear hug.

“If you won’t take Basselt, why can’t you go with Neco?” he sighed.

“Because he’s being weird and he’ll fight back if I hit him again.”

“He showed up, and you had a whole conversation without screaming.”

“He was just trying to sniff out Basselt because it’s someone he doesn’t know,” I sulked.

“No, he wasn’t. If he was just here for Basselt, he would have left when you told him he couldn’t see him.”

“Were all of you eavesdropping?” I demanded.

“We had to. If you hit him again, he would fight back and the two of you would break the tavern. We were doing you a favor.”

“I hate you when you behave badly and explain it in a way that I can’t be mad at you.”

“It’s why you love me, too, and why you’d never fuck up my pretty face like you did Neco.”

“I wouldn’t hit any of you like that, even if I was mad. That’s not how you solve anything when you’re in a relationship. Neco isn’t my boyfriend. Neco will never be my boyfriend. I owed him a broken nose.”

“And the head butt you went for after?”

I just shrugged.

“He was in my personal space.”

He was in my personal space doing the ‘psycho growly’ thing and I liked it a bit too much considering I hated him. I didn’t want him to do that again, so I head butted him so he understood that.

“Doesn’t Caitrin tell you to count to ten and use your words instead of violence?”

Yeah, she did all the time when I was younger. I was much more careful with that now, but never when Neco was involved.

“I need to go if I’m going to look at the crime scene in Lower Cutwart and get back in time to help with the night rush.”

I was going to start there since it was the closest and the Ghoul changed his hunting ground for some reason. I thought that was important, even though stupid Neco refused to help me get into the mind of a killer.

I still had no idea what I was looking for, but I had a feeling I was going to find it in Lower Cutwart.