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“No, it’ll be over someone else’s,” I replied. “Some other newly dead teenager whose only mistake in life was signing up for a shitty minimum-wage job. ”
His mouth formed a tight line, and he looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking again. “I don’t care. You’re not going. ”
“I’m going. Whether or not you come with me is the question. I can take Brigit and be safe with her and Keaty. If this bothers you, you’re welcome to stay here and hang out with the bitchy drunk. ”
“I heard that,” Kellen cut in. Then she started mumbling something about who the real bitch was. Now that I knew she wasn’t dead or on the verge of slitting her wrists, I had a lot less motivation to sit around holding her hand. Especially if she was going to spend the whole night insulting me and suggesting I’d ruined Desmond’s life.
I had figured Kellen for a fun drunk. She was more of a morose, shitty drunk.
There was obviously something going on with her, and I wanted to get to the root of her claims about how she was supposedly in love with the fairy who’d kidnapped her. If she was under a spell, we needed to do something to snap her out of it. We also needed to make sure she didn’t go back to the fae club and do something stupid, like convince Gia she should be allowed back into Aubrey’s realm.
I needed to help Keaty with the murder investigation, but someone had to stick around and ensure Kellen didn’t make a break for it. There was no way in hell Desmond would volunteer to stay, and if I left Brigit behind, Holden would have my head. I thought about risking the vampire’s wrath and asking my ward to hang out with Kellen but changed my mind quickly. I was in legitimate danger, and I needed to play it smart. Two supernatural beasties watching my back was better than one.
Grumbling, I picked up my cell again and paged through the contacts until I found the right number. After a few rings a bored male voice said, “Yup?”
“Jackson, it’s Secret. ” The line was filled with frantic rustling and the sound of fast-food wrappers crinkling. “You know I can’t actually see you, right? You don’t need to clean. ”
“Oh, haha, yeah, I guess that’s true. ” The noise stopped. “What can I do you for?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. Maybe it was just me, but I didn’t think one of my youngest pack members should be so casual in his address. Especially not one who had been welcomed into Lucas’s pack after he participated in a plot against Lucas’s leadership. Jackson had also participated in kidnapping me, so to say I thought he should show more respect was an understatement. But the pack was small and our relationships with each other tended to be more friendly than formal. For now I was willing to let the oversight slide. Besides, right now I wasn’t even half werewolf.
“I need you to do me a favor. ”
“Sure?”
“It’s about Kellen. ”
“Yeah, what about her?” He sounded far too excited by the mention of Kellen’s name. I’d noticed he seemed to have an attachment to her in the past, which was why I’d chosen him to call. If he had a little crush on her, he’d be more likely to pay attention to her. And if she chose to drunkenly bone the handsome young werewolf and get her fairy “lover” out of her head…who was I to question it?
“I need you to come to her apartment and just…sit with her. ”
“Sit with her?”
“She’s drunk. ”
“Uh-huh. ” Was it me or did he sound a bit happy about that?
“And sad. ”
“Oh. ”
“I want to make sure she’s all right. I need someone to stay with her while she sobers up, someone who can make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid and doesn’t leave the building. ”
“You want me to baby-sit. ”
I gnawed on my lip. If I said yes, was he less likely to agree to the job? Then it occurred to me he didn’t need to agree to anything. “Jackson, this isn’t a request. ” I hated using orders, but sometimes having the option was nice. Made it difficult for people to argue with me if I wanted to have the last word.
Of course some people, like Holden, argued anyway, even when I outranked them. Thankfully Jackson wasn’t as ballsy as Holden. “I understand. ” His tone was formal, like he realized who I was finally and how poorly he’d been behaving. “Apologies, my Queen. ”
Ugh. “No apologies necessary. You’ll be doing me a great favor. ” Unlike with the fae, I could easily give Jackson my thanks without him thinking I owed him anything. “Please hurry over. ” I was grateful Jackson had long since moved out of Lucas’s upstate New York home and into a shared loft space in the city. If not, we’d be waiting hours to have someone watch Kellen, and with each passing moment I could picture Keaty getting angrier.
Just further proof a human could be as scary as any monster out there.
I still had a stomach for death.
Keaty and I stood on opposite sides of a metal gurney in the morgue, staring down at a teenaged girl who looked much too young to be dead. The last time I’d been in a morgue, we’d had to enthrall the guard—thanks to Brigit’s skill with vampire mind control—and I had left stinking of death. This time, Keaty’s connections had gotten us through the door, but that didn’t make it any easier to see a dead kid.
“What’s her name?” I asked quietly.
