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Kris cast Liam a sharp look. How did he know so much about it?
“No,” Alan Mac said. “Not bopped over the head and drowned. Not this time.” He took a breath. “Maybe it’s not the same killer.”
Liam lifted a brow. “Because two would be better?”
Alan Mac’s broad shoulders slumped. He obviously hadn’t thought of that.
“If not drowned,” Liam continued, “then what?”
“Knife to the chest.” Kris stilled. “But that wasnae the strangest part.”
“A third dead woman, this one with a knife in her chest, isnae the worst of it?” Liam asked.
“I dinnae know about worst, but strange, aye?” Alan Mac took the pint Johnnie brought and drank it more slowly than he had the others. “The knife was silver.” His gaze held Liam’s. “And not just silver plated, ye ken? Pure silver, through and through.”
Uh-oh, Kris thought. How many pure silver knives could there be in the area?
It didn’t matter. She was pretty sure this one was hers.
*
Silver, Liam thought. Could Edward Mandenauer still be in the area?
Ach, no. If the dead girl had been a shape-shifter, she would be ashes. No body left behind to become stuck in the lock at Dochgarroch. Edward, for all his faults, was very good about not stabbing humans with knives meant specifically for the inhuman.
Still, everyone made mistakes, and Mandenauer was getting quite old. Though it would be best not to tell him that and meet the pointy end of another silver knife.
Alan Mac continued to stare at Liam, lifting his brows up and down like a demented Groucho Marx. As if Liam didn’t know what silver meant. But if Alan kept it up, Kris soon would. If she didn’t already.
Kris wasn’t a Jäger-Sucher, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t something else.
Mandenauer had come here off and on for decades, if not centuries—Liam was not all that certain the man wasn’t immortal himself—and he’d never discovered their secret. However, Liam wouldn’t put it past the wily agent to pay someone like Kris—smart, resourceful, with an agenda of her own that paralleled that of the Jäger-Suchers—to keep an eye on things, then call Edward if anything turned up.
Hell, Liam wouldn’t put it past Mandenauer to kill a few women, toss them in the loch, blame it on Nessie, then wait for her to show up and—
Pow!
Liam had gone so far into his thoughts, he actually jerked as if he’d been shot. Stabbed. Blown up. Whatever.
Alan Mac frowned. Liam shook his head just once.
Not now, he thought, then shifted only his eyes to the left. Later.
Alan Mac’s chin dipped in a nearly imperceptible nod.
Liam glanced at Kris, expecting her to be staring at him with lifted brow and a do you think I’m an idiot? expression. Instead, she stared at the door with longing. The dark shadow of a bruise already marred the perfection of one cheek.
He’d promised to care for her, and less than a minute later she’d been hit. He’d said he’d see her home, yet he stood in the center of a pub while she became paler and paler.
“Time to go,” he murmured.
Her eyes met his, and something shifted in Liam’s chest, so sudden and startling, he rubbed at the spot. What was that? Both pleasure and pain, which left behind a sense of joyful sorrow. He’d never felt anything like it before.
Outside, the night was cool and dark. Clouds had moved in, covering the moon and the stars. Liam didn’t mind. Sometimes the moon only reminded him of things he’d prefer to forget.
Kris slid her arm around his waist, leaning into him. The warmth of her caressed; the scent of her soothed. He’d never strolled down the street with a woman before. Never held her to his side, matched his steps, his very breath, to hers. When Kris left, he was going to miss her for the rest of his days.
When she left, the ghosts would come back. They would torment and haunt him. But it was nothing less than he deserved.
