Tom spat the hook right back out. Either the magic had failed or he just didn’t know.
“Go fuck yourself, Cash,” he said. “I won’t forget this, you asshole.”
He hung up. Cash sucked the sour reek of spent magic back down and tucked the phone into his back pocket. His bones ached with the first dull twinge of hunger as the monster grumbled with the wasted effort. Cash grimaced. He was out of shape. It was just easier to eat at work—demons always prepared more misery than they could eat—than find the time to make someone suffer from scratchandtake El to hockeyandhelp her with her homework.
Maybe he needed to make the effort, though. He didn’t want El to cut her metaphysical teeth on fast food.
Or, his monster slipped into his brain as Cash opened his wardrobe to grab stuff,show yourself up in front of Arkady, who spends power like it’s pennies down a well.
Cash licked the taste of smoked honey off his lips and thought about the faded glitter of Arkady’s eyes. It was unusual for anyone under a century to have worn their skin down that much. Most monsters born under the Prodigium’s rule since they decided to let humanity believe they were more or less extinct could still be outside at noon without issue. For Arkady to have shed so much that he burned it off in the morning sun….
That wasn’t his business. He pushed jackets and T-shirts aside to grab some of his dressier clothes from the back of the rail. They weren’t exactly monster fashion—which favored velvet, brocade, and frills—but they’d do well enough.
He rolled them up, stuffed them into his bag, and pinned them down with his elbow while he dragged the zip over. The invite said the ceremony started on Friday, midnight, which gave him two days to get there. There was no reason he couldn’t sniff around a bit first. If he could solve Arkady’s problem without having to play boyfriend in front of the monster aristocracy—an idea that made him feel like his chest was being crushed—he’d take it.
Your own man.
Cash had a feeling that mocking echo was his own, nothing to do with the hungry thing in his marrow. He ignored it as he slung the bag over his shoulder and headed out, grabbing the invite on the way through the living room. The paper was thin, smooth, and just a bit too warm as he tucked it inside his jacket.
If his human contacts didn’t know who was buying secrets, maybe the monsters would be more help. The Black Witch and the Worm probably weren’t going to take his calls, but he knew where at leastoneredcap was this afternoon.
Where else would an upwardly mobile monster enjoy murder and mimosas but at the country club?
THE BOOKand Candle Country Club perched on the shore a few miles outside of Roanoke city limits. If you looked it up on Google, it claimed to be a golf club, but the landscape around it was all bare rock and scrubby, salt-stunted trees instead of smooth and manicured. The members liked to play different games, and no one ever got out of the rough.
The guard at the gate leaned down to peer through the open window at Cash. His eyes flickered over Cash and then around the interior of the car.
“This is a members-only club, sir,” the man said. His breath smelled like a meatball sub, and he wanted, so badly, an excuse to punch someone. Cash didn’t even have to try to pick that up. The tag on his shirt said West, and he spun his finger in the air as he directed Cash, “You’ll have to turn around.”
Cash hung one hand over the steering wheel.
“I’m a guest,” he said.
West pushed himself off the car. “I’ll check the list.” He stepped back toward the hut and grabbed a clipboard. “What’s your name, sir?”
“I’m not on the list,” Cash said. He let West’s expression curdle into satisfaction before he pricked the smug bubble. “I’m with the Abascals.”
West was human—for now, someone had their hooks in him for him to be trusted here—but he knew the name. He scowled, his disappointment thin and tea-bitter when Cash inhaled it. He clutched his list with both hands.
“Anyone could say that,” he said.
“But they’d only do it the once,” Cash pointed out. He pulled the invite out of his jacket and held it up. In the sunlight the gold letters trembled as if only surface tension kept them from sliding off the page. The edges blistered—tiny white bubbles of water—and curled. “I have a wedding invite to deliver.”
“Who to?”
“Some lucky monster who probably doesn’t want to stand Donna Abascal up.” Cash tucked the invite away, out of the sun, and grinned at West. The low-grade anxiety that oozed out of the guard wasn’t much of a meal, but it took the edge off Cash’s hunger. “You have no idea how much she hates when people don’t RSVP. She’ll bite your head off for it.”
They both knew he meant it literally. That part was actually true. Donna didn’t value manners particularly—she’d clean her nails with someone’s bones at the dinner table—but disrespect she didn’t tolerate.
Cash could testify to that.
After a moment of indecision, West swallowed hard and leaned back into the hut to open the gates.
“I’ll let management know you’re coming,” he said.
Cash drove through the tall gates and down the narrow, winding road toward the clubhouse. Halfway down there was a dark, splattered stain on the road where something had died. It might have passed for an animal, but whoever it was had left a handprint smeared across the concrete.
Careless. That was the sort of thing that ended up on Google Earth.
