Page 32 of Taming the Beasts (Crooked Point #3)

“Well, there’s still one other guy he reached out to. Patrick. The one on the dig site. Bennett thinks he’ll hear back from him any day now.”

“Hopefully he has good news for us.”

I nodded. I hoped so too. “And maybe Ray will turn up.” But I wasn’t sure I believed that. “Okay, enough depressing talk.”

“Please.”

“What else do we need to do for wedding prep?”

“I think the last thing we need to do is figure out the food situation. Do you think one of the places on Main Street will cater?”

“Absolutely. Especially if we invite the owner.”

Emma laughed. “That’s fine. Callum said we could invite whoever.”

“Have I told you how much I adore your fiancé?”

She raised her eyebrow at me. “Okay, you already have five men.”

I laughed. “I just meant in an appreciative way. What restaurant were you thinking?”

“Just not the Italian place.”

“Fair. That would be way too much garlic in the air.” My phone started buzzing. I pulled it out to see Grudge’s name on the screen.

“Are you going to take that?” Emma asked .

“I kind of have to. He’s the only one with eyes on Kebe.”

“But...you gotta stop talking to him all the time, right? Or your boyfriends will be very jealous. And when they’re jealous, they...”

“Turn. I know. It might be important though. And I’ll tell the guys about Grudge tonight.” I answered the call. “Hey,” I said. “I’m putting you on speaker. I’m with Emma.”

“How are you two lovely ladies this morning?” Grudge asked.

I ignored the question. “Grudge, is it possible that Elias went to Egypt and killed someone?”

“Nice to be speaking with you too, hot stuff. And...um...I guess so? I haven’t been able to locate his whereabouts the past couple of days. Maybe he hopped on a plane and went to Egypt.”

“Or,” Emma said. “Is it possible there are more werecats loose in Egypt and they may have killed someone?”

“Emma,” I said.

“I thought we agreed that it might not have been a vampire.”

“I’m really confused,” Grudge said. “Did someone die?”

I sighed. “We’re not sure. Bennett reached out to one of his contacts in Egypt so we could find out more information on the cure. The guy texted him saying he wanted to talk to him on the phone about it. But then he never called. And he was reported missing.”

“Interesting,” Grudge said. “Can we change this to a video call? I always do my best thinking when I see your tits. ”

Emma’s eyes grew round.

“No,” I said. “I have five boyfriends that would be very displeased by that.”

Grudge sighed. “Fine. Sorry, what was the question?”

“I don’t really know if there was one,” Emma said. “We’re just freaked out that Bennett’s contact went missing right before he told us what he knew about the cure. It feels like the timing is too much of a coincidence to not be concerned.”

“Yeah, definitely. You’re smart and gorgeous.”

Emma blushed.

“Stop flirting with my friend and focus,” I said. “Could you maybe do some digging?”

“Already on it.”

I could hear his keyboard keys clicking. “And maybe you can text me what you find?”

“Huh,” he said.

“What, did you already find something?”

“I think there might be a serial killer loose in Egypt,” Grudge said.

Emma and I looked at each other. It wasn’t very long ago that we’d thought there was a serial killer loose in Crooked Point. It ended up being much more supernatural than that.

“What makes you say that?” I asked.

“Because there are actually two people missing.”

“So maybe it was a coincidence?” Emma said.

“Maybe,” Grudge said. “Give me a second to read the article.”

I started tapping my foot.

“Do the names Raymond Davis and Patrick Anderson ring any bells? ”

“Yes, Bennett’s contact that went missing was named Ray. That must be Raymond Davis.” My stomach dropped at the name Patrick. It couldn’t be their other friend, could it? “Does it say what happened to Ray?”

“No, only that he’s missing. And you haven’t heard about the Patrick guy?”

I pressed my lips together. Patrick was a very common name. It wasn’t necessarily the Patrick. “Maybe. Does it say anything about his profession?” I asked.

“Apparently he’s an archaeologist. He was on a dig site.”

Crap. This was not good at all. “Are you sure that’s what it says?”

“Yeah.”

Emma and I looked at each other. There could only be so many coincidences.

Fuck. “Bennett’s other contact that he was waiting to hear from was an archaeologist. Currently on a dig site. Named Patrick.” Damn it!

“Maybe it’s a different Patrick,” Emma said. “Who’s also on a dig site in Egypt.” She looked less convinced with every word she spoke. “It really could be someone else.”

“Or maybe it’s not someone else. And everyone that Bennett reached out to has been murdered.”

“It doesn’t say murdered,” Grudge said. “It just says they’re missing.”

“When did the archaeologist go missing?” Emma asked.

“Um...it wasn’t reported until this morning. But authorities think he could have been missing longer than that. He was living alone on site. And the first guy was last heard from early Saturday morning.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Right after he texted Bennett.”

“Weird.”

“What?” I asked.

“Well early Saturday morning is the same time Kebe disappeared.”

Wait. I did remember him saying that. That’s why he’d called me last time. To let me know Kebe had made the cameras “glitch” again. “What time did you say that Kebe disappeared again?”

“It was around 3 am that morning.”

“Shortly after Ray was last heard from.”

Grudge laughed. “But that is definitely a coincidence. Kebe is too hot to be a serial killer.”

“She’s a vampire, Grudge! How many times do we have to go over this? She’s very dangerous. She could have easily done this.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “You said she has super speed. Does that apply to crossing oceans quickly? She was only gone for like an hour and a half that night. It certainly wasn’t enough time to find two random guys, murder them, and come back before anyone missed her.

I get that she’s fast. But no one is that fast.”

“Grudge. She’s a vampire! She’s totally capable of this.”

“No, Grudge is right,” Emma said. “I was asking Callum a little more about his powers last night. He’s fast. But the human eye can still see a blur.

It’s not like he turns completely invisible or anything.

And I don’t think that speed is fast enough to travel all the way to Egypt, find two people she doesn’t know, and murder them for no reason. ”

“Not no reason. The coin is evil and she’s trying to hide the fact that it is.”

“But what about everything else I just said? She’s not that fast. She can’t be.”

“Just because Callum is a slow vampire...”

“Excuse you,” she said.

I couldn’t help but laugh. She looked truly offended. “Kebe is super old. Maybe the older you get the faster you get.”

“Pretty sure it’s the opposite of that,” Grudge said.

“In humans.”

“Still. I get honing your vampire skills. But quadrupling your speed? Eh. She’d have to be faster than any known mode of transportation. There’s no way. Besides, Kebe is so hot.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I think I’m helping a little,” he said.

My head was spinning. “She might have killed Bennett’s friends,” I said.

“But probably not,” Grudge said.

“Emma.” I looked at her. “She disappeared between the hours of Ray’s last text and when he went mysteriously missing. This can’t be a coincidence. And Patrick too? They both knew about the coin. It doesn’t make sense.”

Emma pressed her lips together. “Look, I’m not the first person to defend Kebe. Trust me. But I don’t see how she could have possibly done this. Did she even know the names of Bennett’s contacts?”

I sighed. That was a really good point. “No. I don’t think so. I didn’t even know their names until Otto told me in bed. And obviously Kebe was not in the room when that happened.” I’d also heard a few more stories about the guys yesterday. But Kebe wasn’t at our house or anything.

“So...Kebe is innocent,” Grudge said. “I can’t wait to meet all of you in person on Saturday.”

“Grudge, why did you call in the first place?” I asked.

“I just wanted to say hi. It’s a good thing I did call though. So we could figure out that other guy was missing too.”

My stomach churned. I didn’t want to be the one to bring the guys this information. This freaking sucked. “I have to go.”

“Do you want to do that video call real quick first?”

“Bye, Grudge.” I hung up the phone. I groaned and put my face in my hands. “They’re all going to be so upset when I tell them about their other friend.”

Emma rubbed my back. “I’m so sorry, Zoey. And now we’re never going to find out more information about the coin.”

“Yeah.” This was all such a big mess. But unlike Emma, I was still very suspicious of Kebe. I’d wanted to keep her around because she knew about the coin. But only bad things had happened since she’d come to Crooked Point. She was like a freaking plague.

I get that it seemed impossible for her to be murdering people halfway across the world. But...I just had a terrible gut feeling that she was still hiding stuff from us. We needed answers before anyone else got hurt.

Titan had originally wanted to torture her for information. I think it was about time to let the beast loose.