Page 50 of Bitter Spirits

She was up on a step stool, arranging bottles on one of the cooler’s top shelves, when she thought she heard something over the music. She set down the bottle she held, climbed down, and stepped out of the reinforced-metal-walled walk-in. The instant temperature change between the cooler and the kitchen pebbled her skin.

“Lower volume.”

The music took a step back. Rubbing her arms, she crossed the kitchen and caught a glimpse of a steadily flashing orange near the elevator. Isa winced. Des is going to kill me. She had forgotten to reset the security ward after the delivery, and it was still in standby mode.

A muffled thump came from the main floor.

The endless warnings from Des and Locke returned, rattling her nerves. Her gaze skittered to the clock set on the wall as she noted the time. It was probably Locke. He’d said thirty minutes, and it was now closer to thirty-five.

“Locke?” she called out.

No one answered.

Unnerved, she moved to one of the last cartons sitting open on the counter and pulled out a thick bottle of gin. Maybe she was overreacting, but better safe than sorry. She adjusted her grip until she was holding the bottle like a makeshift hammer. Her magic pooled under skin, wanting to be let out to play. She held it back as she moved toward the door.

“Locke, is that you?”

She took a second to hit Pause on her phone, which lay on the counter. The music cut out abruptly, heavy silence taking its place. She waited a heartbeat then two. Everything remained quiet, almost too quiet. Instead of calming, her breath sped up, and she could feel her skull light up with tension. She set her back to the door and, with her free hand and shoulder, pressed it open, bottle held at the ready. She had a momentary regret at not turning on more than the light above the bar, because the faint glow from the sigils buried in the mural along the back wall wasn’t enough to beat back the varied shadows filling the floor. She stared into the murkiness, wanting to call Locke’s name but unable to get it out past her tight throat. She swallowed hard and stepped fully through the door.

Something moved to her left. She turned, swinging out with the bottle. It hit something, the impact rattling up her arm, and a pained grunt sounded. She went to swing again but was too late. Magic punched her, searing across her senses. She stumbled back. Somewhere far off, glass shattered, but she was gone, swallowed by the sudden dark.

Chapter 16

Locke

“I’m so glad we took your car, because odds are she’s going to puke any minute now.”

Locke grimaced at Zev’s dry but potentially accurate comment. Through his rearview mirror, he checked on the moaning girl slumped in his back seat. Not that he could see much from this angle, just a tangle of brown shoulder-length hair matted around a wan, green-tinged face, bruised eyes barely slitted open as she rolled her head against the seat.

“You hurl in my car, Paisley, you’ll be cleaning it up.”

Her response was another whimpered groan.

“Mari says she’s got medical on standby, so once we get to the clinic, we can hand her off,” Zev said. “You know, it’s going to take a few hours before you can get anything out of her.”

“Yeah, I know. Hopefully, she’ll be more useful than Beto.”

Zev gave an annoyed grunt. “Yeah, that was kind of a bust.”

The financier hadn’t known jack shit about the drug, other than that his assistant had inconveniently overdosed on it, which threatened to expose his double life to his wife. He was not happy to discover that despite paying Angel for his “discretionary silence,” his plan to quietly sweep Owen’s death under the rug was in jeopardy. Zev and Locke banked on that paranoia to get Beto admit that his relationship with Angel was a fairly new development. They also got him to agree, reluctantly, to keeping them informed of his future dealings with Angel.

“At least we know it was Angel that reached out to him and not the other way around.”

“I’ll have Roxy shift her focus, see if she can figure out how someone like him came into money like that.” Another groan came from the back seat, and Zev did a quick visual check then shook his head as he turned back to face forward. “If Mari finds her parents, you might get stonewalled.”

Locke gave a disgusted snort. “Maybe, maybe not.” They’d found Paisley dressed in club wear and passed out in an apartment that appeared to serve as a crash pad for free-roaming teens, so he wondered just how concerned her parents could really be. “If they do try to block me, I’ll sic Mari on them. I’m sure she can find plenty of ways to encourage them to let me talk to her.” He checked the time and winced. “Dammit.”

“What?”

“I was supposed to be at Wonderland, like, five minutes ago.”

The call that linked Paisley to Isaiah had come in as they finished up with Beto, along with Isa’s text that the meeting with the lawyer was running long. It made his decision to run down the fresh lead on Isaiah fairly simple. Finding Paisley had been easy. Unfortunately, getting her to talk coherently—not so much.

“Need me to text Isa?” Zev asked.

“Yeah. Let her know I’m running late.”

Zev grabbed his phone, held it up so it could read Locke’s face, then quickly shot off a text.