Page 24 of Taming the Beasts

“I’m kind of serious.”

“Sorry, what?” Emma said. “She disappeared?”

“Grudge said it was a camera glitch or something.”

“Does he know for a fact that it was a camera glitch?”

I shook my head.

Emma ran her hand down her face. “Something really weird is going on with Kebe. First her obsession with Callum. And then she was saying all this weird stuff about Huxley…”

“What was she saying?”

Emma winced. “That she thought werecats were violent, dangerous, unpredictable, dirty, and crass?”

“Excuse you?”

“That’s not what I think! She said it. And I stood up for them and you, for the record.”

Dirty and crass? Get the fuck out, Kebe.

“She agreed that she was wrong though,” Emma said. “That they weren’t how she thought they’d be.” She shook her head. “And she got so weird about the coin. You remember how down she was with the plan. That she said she’d researched the coin and found out it was stolen. But I looked it up and I couldn’t find squat.”

“That’s the same thing Grudge said. No records of it anywhere.”

“And I really think she knows your boyfriends. Or something. I don’t know. But I believe what I texted you. The guys could have stolen that coin from Kebe. That explains why she knows so much about it. And why she got close to us. Because she wanted to use us to get it back.”

“Then why wouldn’t my boyfriends tell me that?”

“Probably the same reason you didn’t tell them why you were robbing their bank.”

I sighed. “I hate secrets. I wanted to tell them. But there’s nothing to tell if I don’t have the coin. They had it in their possession, Emma. All I had to do was tell them and we could have figured it all out together. But no, I had to go and steal it from them and get it lost.”

“It’s not lost,” Emma said. “We just need to find Kebe.”

“How? She fucking disappeared!” I tried the handle on the door to the restaurant again, but of course it was still locked.

“No one can actually disappear…right?” Emma asked.

“Of course not.” But I wasn’t entirely sure of that.

“Well I didn’t think vampires and werecats existed a month ago and here we are.”

“Good point.” I pressed my lips together. Was it possible that Kebe had some kind of secret invisibility power? “Invisibility is more superhero than supernatural. And Kebe is no superhero.”

Emma laughed. “Unless her superpower is trying to steal boyfriends.”

I shook my head. “Screw this. She’s not stealing our boyfriends. And she’s not getting out of town with this coin. Maybe she went to the train station? That’s the quickest way out.”

“Yeah, that’s what I tried when I wanted to leave in a hurry.”

“Exactly.” I turned away from the restaurant and my phone started buzzing. I pulled it out. “It’s Grudge.”

“Answer it.”

I hit the accept call button and put it on speaker. “You’re on speaker phone with me and Emma,” I said.

“Are you both topless?” Grudge asked.