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I smiled at him and gave a saucy wink. “My loss.”
“Bossman is upstairs.”
“How’s his mood?”
“That all depends. You here to give him something or take something?”
“Can’t do one without the other.”
He nodded like he knew exactly what I meant. “Taking something then.”
“Yup.”
Jimmy laughed again, only this time it sounded cold and humorless. “Good luck, little lady.”
I loved the sound of that. Nothing like a seven-foot-tall reptile-man looking at you with pity because he knows what you’re up against.
Beau Cain, the proprietor of The Dungeon, was the kind of man people were referring to when they said, I know a guy. He was that ephemeral person in the know, someone who could hook you up or take you out. There wasn’t anything that went on in this town Beau didn’t know about or have his fingers in.
Honestly, I wasn’t sure which of my two problems I wanted his help with more. He could probably point me in the direction of the real killer of the Treme bar incident without batting an eyelash. But if I worked with Detective Perry, I could manage the same thing, just with a little more time and effort.
The demon at Tansy’s sorority house, on the other hand, was well beyond my scope. I was in way over my head and needed someone who knew all about the paranormal if I was going to figure out what the thing was and how I could kill it.
If it could be killed.
I chased that thought out of my mind and ducked under Jimmy’s arm, into the darkness that was The Dungeon. The place was remarkable, really. It looked like a movie set for a BDSM Dracula porno. The walls were covered with salacious Victorian-era etchings, and a casket with bright red lining was propped up at the far wall, just waiting for tourists to pose in front of it.
The place had looked like this long before vampires and werewolves had been made public, and since then a lot of other places had opened trying to capture the same ambiance, but none had succeeded.
What made The Dungeon truly unique was that human patrons could actually rub shoulders with supernatural beasties from time to time. The bar was split into two levels. The main floor housed a regular watering hole where anyone over the age of twenty-one could come in and sip reasonably priced whisky and tequila, and maybe take home a warm body to spend the night with. Or, failing that, there were T-shirts for twenty-five bucks each.
At the back of the bar, though, was a narrow staircase up to the second level, and in order to gain access to the elevated playground, you had to have a little something special in your blood.
Humans weren’t allowed past the guard, with a few very select exceptions.
I waved at the woman lounging at the bottom of the stairs staring at her cell phone screen. Lola, leader of the New Orleans snow leopards, was a long-time personal guard to Cain. I’d been here a couple times to visit my friend Delphine, and Lola now knew me at a glance.
“Hey, Alpha dog,” Lola said. Since she wasn’t a wolf, she wasn’t obligated to be overly respectful of my title. But in Lola’s case I knew she was having fun and not trying to insult me, so I didn’t bristle at the greeting.
She was a big woman. Not in the fat sense, but more like she could probably do a hundred chest presses with me as the weight and not even break a sweat. Her shoulders were broad, and she was muscular enough to make her clothes fit a little too tight. I suspected if she flexed really hard they’d rip right off her Hulk-style.
Lola also looked like a freaking model. She was tall and moved with catlike grace thanks to her leopard blood. Her big frame didn’t seem masculine or bulky. She could kick your ass and stay hot the entire time.
This afternoon her auburn hair was pulled back into its usual high ponytail, which swayed side to side as she came towards me, her arms spread in an offer of a hug. I accepted the warm welcome and was enveloped by her, outmatched in both height and size.
My inner wolf bristled at the closeness of a big cat, but I tamped down my natural urge to growl, because this was someone I liked, and to be perfectly honest I really needed a hug.
“You here to see Del or the big man?” she asked.
Delphine, one of the first friends I’d made when I moved to the city, was Cain’s ladylove. If anyone in the building could rival Lola for a place in Merriam-Webster next to the definition for Amazon, it was Del. She was a magnetic ball of pure happiness who made everyone inside her orbit feel like the center of their own private universe.
I wished I was here to see Del. She’d make me feel like I could handle this and nothing bad would happen to my pack or my friends. I’d leave here with an inflated ego instead of answers. Too bad for me I needed the information more than the pick-me-up.
“Cain,” I told Lola.
She grimaced before she could stop herself. “You sure, hon? Is it something that might be able to wait a couple of days? He’s not very… Well, he’s not in the best mood today.”
I sighed. “Jimmy mentioned something along those lines. If it could wait, I would put it off, but I don’t think it can.” An alarm went off in my head, reminding me there was something about this whole mess Lola might want to know. “Actually, what I’m here about concerns your leap.” I was awfully proud of myself for remembering to use the right leopard word for pack.
