Page 79 of Dominion’s Collar

"Got a minute?" Cole says. The question is directed at Sebastien, but his eyes move to me first, assess, and file whatever he sees.

Sebastien's jaw tightens. The frustration is visible for exactly one second before the control reassembles. He normally walks me in. Tonight he can't.

He looks at me. "Go to the bar. I'll come find you."

He goes with Cole. I stand in the corridor with the ruby pendant cool against my collarbone. Whatever Sebastien was about to tell me, I just detonated it with two words.

The lounge is busy with weekday regulars. Renata is behind the bar, and she catches my eye before I've reached the first barstool.

"You look like hell," she says.

"Thank you. I was going for mysterious and sleep-deprived."

"You nailed the second one." She sets a Negroni in front of me without being asked. "What's going on?"

"Research. A source backed out. Records I needed went missing. The book is getting complicated."

Renata tilts her head. She's good at waiting. It's a bartender's skill, and she wields it like a weapon. "Missing how?"

"The kind of missing that doesn't happen by accident."

"Research doesn't put that look on your face, Natalie." She sets both hands on the bar and leans forward. "What's actually going on?"

The directness catches me off guard. Renata has become the first real friend I've made in New Orleans, and the friendship isn't tactical. I cultivated her for access. Then somewhere between her terrible jokes and her refusal to let me drink alone, the cultivation became something I actually need.

"I'm fine," I say. "Just tired."

"Uh-huh." She doesn't believe me. She leans on the bar, close enough that nobody else hears. "You know the man sitting at the end of my bar is a homicide detective, right? A good one. And Margot's brothers run the security firm upstairs. The same men Obsidian has known and trusted for years." She holds my gaze. "You don't have to be fine, Natalie. You just have to be smart enough to ask for help."

She straightens and moves down the bar to Andy before I can answer. He's in his usual spot with a Woodford Reserve. Her posture softens as she reaches him. Her hand brushes his wrist. He glances up with an expression younger and softer than the homicide detective who occupies that stool most nights. They have a language nobody else in this room is fluent in.

Luc Pascal slides onto the stool beside me. I didn't see him approach, which is irritating because Luc is not a small man.

"Natalie." He signals Renata for a bourbon without looking at the menu. "How's the book?"

"Progressing."

"Margot mentioned you're in the interview phase. Finding everyone you need?"

The question is wrapped in charm and delivered with a smile that probably works on most people. Luc Pascal has never failed to get what he wanted from a conversation, and the confidence shows.

"Some of my sources have gone quiet," I say. "It happens."

"Sources going quiet." He takes the bourbon from Renata. "In my experience, people stop talking for two reasons. They've got nothing left to say, or someone told them not to."

He's fishing. The technique is polished enough to be invisible if I weren't trained to see it. He's asking about my sources, which means he's been briefed on something I wasn't copied on.

"Then I'll find out which one it is," I say.

Luc grins. The grin is genuine, and that's the dangerous part. "I like her," he says to nobody in particular, and takes his bourbon down the bar.

Sophie appears at my elbow. "You're composing again."

"I'm always composing. It's an occupational hazard."

"It's a defense mechanism." She says it without judgment, clinical as naming a cloud formation. "Sebastien does the same thing from a different angle. He watches. You compose."

I take a sip of the Negroni. "Are you psychoanalyzing me at a BDSM club?"