Jessup laid Arlo back down. “We need to kill someone.” Heat radiated off him as his Dragon pushed to Catalyze.
“We don’t even know who killed him,” she said. “Let me do some snooping, find out who’s behind this.”
Ryan shook his head. “No, I think we need to kill someone.”
“Stop.” Her own impulsive nature, along with her Dragon, pushed hard to join in. “Give me some time to figure this out. Rash decisions and actions will bite us in the ass. If someone’s got a vendetta against us, I’ll find out who it is. No doubt, he’s been talking, bragging, or bitching down at Ernie’s.”
Jessup’s eyes flared in his bossy, big-brother way. “You’re not going to Ernie’s by yourself. I?—”
She pressed a finger to his collarbone. “You are not coming with me.” She shifted her gaze to Ryan. “You’ll both barge in, banging heads together. And then you’ll end up in the Conference Room, and it won’t even be with Arlo’s murderer. That’s not a risk we can afford to take right now. I can handle myself. Haven’t I had the best teachers?”
“Yeah, but?—”
“Let me approach this logically. Once I get a lead, I’ll let you know. Then?—”
“We kill someone,” Jessup said.
“Yes, we kill them.” Violet met Ryan’s gaze. “We’ll scrape out their eyeballs, cut them up, and feed them to the gators.” The old Violet reared her head and bared her fangs. The one who jumped into a fight without thinking, who’d attacked an officer of the Hidden to defend Arlo, even when he was in the wrong. The Violet who used to be as hot-headed as the rest of her family. She took a breath. “But if you go off half-cocked and kill the wrong person, it’ll start a war again. Dad died because of this damned feud business. So did Grandpa and Great Uncle Hank and… the list goes on. I don’t want to lose you two. I’ll find out who’s behind this. I promise.”
Ryan looked at Jessup. “She is good at ferreting out information. She figured out which of the cousins was stealing our oranges. And the idgits who were digging up the royal palms at the nursery.”
Jessup was still taking in the desperation in her eyes. She let him see all the hurt, just for a second. Any longer and he’d chide her for it. Castanegas didn’t cry; they got revenge. That was their motto. But that motto would get them killed.
Jessup made a grunting sound. “All right, cupcake. You’ve got a day.”
“Give me two.”
“Then we start digging around ourselves.”
Violet knew exactly what kind of digging he meant.
The sign on the roof of the ramshackle building read the fringe. Couldn’t get clearer than that who belonged, at least to the Crescent community. Ernie couldn’t hang a MUNDANES NOT WELCOME sign, because regular humans didn’t know they were called Mundanes by Crescents. They didn’t even know there were Crescents, or a facet of their world called the Hidden that contained people who turned to Dragons, sorcerers called Deuces, and descendants of fallen angels called Caidos. Not to mention demons, Elementals, and other creatures from which nightmares were made.
The bar sat on the outer edge of Florida City, tucked in a grove of oaks dripping with Spanish moss. Only four other vehicles were in the lot, as she’d expect midday.
Ernie had owned the place for a hundred and eighty years. His family hailed from Puerto Rico long ago, and while he was a proud Black Puerto Rican, he and his family didn’t consider themselves one of the Fringe clans, which made them neutral—a status he held on to with calloused hands.
Her boots crunched on peanut shells as she walked into the gloomy interior. The large space was divided up into separate areas to accommodate clutches of clan groups. Though he was tall and thin, he exuded a power that others respected. He demanded civility in the public space, banishing those who participated in fights.
“Violet, a surprise to see you in here.” Ernie, with a face that looked as though he’d been crunched in a vise from top to bottom, set a bowl of peanuts on the bar as she approached. “None of your people are here.”
She’d had to drag home a drunk brother and even her father a time or two. Sometimes they needed assistance not because they’d had too much to drink but due to the activities in the Conference Room, where disagreements were settled in a way that required no civility. All her brothers had fought in there at one time or another, coming out broken and bloody. And that’s when they’d won.
She glanced at the four men playing darts over in the corner and fought not to roll her eyes. Augusts. She clenched her fists at the sight of Bren, who was already giving her a lascivious smile. As he always did, he made a V with his fingers and waggled his tongue suggestively.
She stuffed her disgust, refusing to give him the satisfaction, and turned back to Ernie. “I’m here to see you.”
His wiry eyebrows bobbed in surprise. “You know you’re a bit too young for me.”
“You’re hundreds of years too old for me. Stop flirting and give me a Guinness on draft.”
“You break my heart, you do.” But he wore a smile as he pulled the draft.
Because of their deity essence, Crescents lived longer than Mundanes—and aged slowly. Ernie looked to be in his sixties. At thirty-four, she was a mere babe in Crescent terms. She idly cracked a shell and lined up the peanuts side by side on the bar.
He set the mug with the creamy head on the shellacked bar top. “What’re you after then, if not my buff, brawny body or rapier wit?”
So not in the mood for humor, such as it was, she swallowed back the grief that wanted to bubble out. “Arlo’s been murdered.”
