They didn’t speak as they got into the car; then Marlow tried again before the silence settled.
“Some null parents, if they aren’t Night Shift, they take it hard,” he offered. His experience had been from the other side, the child left behind while the moon stole his family one by one. Maybe that had been better. It hadn’t felt like it at the time. “They spend every full moon focused on keeping their family safe from the wolves, and then suddenly their kid is out there with them. It’s scary.”
Annette swallowed and stared down at her hands. She picked at the dirt under her nails. “They think I’m scary,” she said. “Now. They were okay, but not now.”
Marlow pulled away from the curb. “No one can blame you for what the wolf did,” he reminded her.
She crossed her arms and slouched down in the seat. “I could,” she said. Fear softened her voice for a second, made it tremble, and then denial snapped back in. “Ifit was true. If I did hurt Billie… if the wolf did it? I’d blame myself. But I didn’t. It was a mistake. Night Shift made a mistake. Because I couldn’t live with hurting her.”
Half the petals on the Bloomin’ Onion had already been plucked. Bennett broke another one off with greasy fingers and dipped it in the ranch dressing.
“Well, that’s sad,” she said as she crunched into the fried batter. “Because she’s just going to have to, isn’t she?”
Marlow slouched in his chair, one arm hooked over the back, and wrapped his fingers loosely around the neck of his beer. He should have known better than to bring this up with Bennett, but he’d not been able to shake Annette’s misery over the last couple of days.
“It’s just something that happened,” he said, “not something she did.”
“You would believe that, Kit-cat.”
Marlow shook his head and looked away from Bennett to the pool table. His gaze landed briefly on the sign for the restrooms, and he felt heat flush his temples. He pretended he’d not noticed and watched Franklin harass the rookie for beer money.
When he didn’t take the bait, Bennett made a disgusted noise.
“Whatever. She doesn’t come to terms with what ‘happened,’ then we’ll be out there at the end of the month, and maybe this time I won’t be there to save the baby.”
“You didn’t save her this time,” he pointed out.
“I would have. Probably quicker once my maternal instincts kicked in.”
Marlow laughed. Bennett kicked him under the table. In the shin, not the knee, so she hadn’t taken it to heart.
“I’ve got maternal instincts,” she said. “My pet rat ate my favorite bra, and I didn’t yeet it out the window.”
“Mother of the year,” Marlow drawled. He took a drink of beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “You ever wonder how Piper got started?”
Bennett paused mid-chew and reached for a napkin as she finished off the onion bloom. She wiped her hands on the paper fastidiously.
“Not because he wasn’t sympathetic to doe-eyed mommies who nearly ate their kid alive,” she said. “If that’s what you’re getting at.”
“I wasn’t.” Or maybe he was. Marlow didn’t know anymore. It was just too strange to be here eating bar food and drinking beer with someone who maybe tried to kill him. “Just—”
He shrugged. Bennett studied him a moment longer and then grabbed a limp, tepid fry from the dregs left in the basket. She swabbed it through a puddle of ketchup.
“I heard about the case with that actress,” she said. “It sounded like something out of his playbook, but no one’s bandied his name about since then. I thought it was just some rich bitch who thought her son shouldneverbe blamed for anything, full moon or not.”
There was nearly as much contempt in her voice for Farnham as there had been for Annette. No one got much slack in Bennett’s world.
“Sort of,” Marlow said. He took another drink of beer and tried to work out how much he could share without just… trusting her again. “She was one of Piper’s clients. Or was the go-between for him and a client, anyhow.”
“Fuck,” Bennett said. “So when the shit hit the fan, she just figured if it had worked once…”
“I guess. Just made me think.”
“You’re Night Shift,” Bennett said. “They don’t pay you to think, they pay you to hit stuff… and in your case chauffeur them places when they bat their baby browns. Didn’t think that was your type.”
Franklin dragged a chair over and straddled it, arms folded over the low carved back of it.
“What are we talking about?” he asked as he grabbed the beer he’d left behind. “Marlow befouling the restroom of our sacred brotherhood with paid help?”
