AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A humorless chuckle bubbled out of his throat, and he fought it back in by swallowing the rest of his drink.
“You McQueens have always been quite a handful, you know that?”
I hadn’t been aware he knew anyone else in my family well enough to make that kind of assessment. It made sense he and Callum would have crossed paths, but I knew for a fact he’d never met Secret.
Maybe my aunt Savannah?
Or my mother.
The idea nagged at me for a second, but I shook it off. I was here for something else, and Mercy McQueen was not part of the equation.
“I need—”
“Need. Need.” He waved me off, reached behind the bar to collect the bottle of Glenlivet he’d been drinking from, and refilled his glass. Then he grabbed a second tumbler and filled it, setting it down in front of the seat beside him with a loud thonk. The amber liquid sloshed dangerously inside the glass, but none spilled. “I need you to sit down and drink with me, Eugenia.”
I wasn’t much in the mood to drink, but if Beau Cain wanted to share a whisky with you, then by God you were going to drink that whisky.
Hesitantly I crossed the room and sat on the stool next to him, cupping the glass tumbler between my palms. He watched me with sharp, appraising eyes until I lifted the glass to my lips and drank. The booze burned down my throat and lit my stomach ablaze.
There was a good reason I didn’t like to drink alcohol. My heightened werewolf metabolism processed everything faster. Sure, it was great for stuff like cheeseburgers and cake, but it also meant that within seconds of sipping liquor I had a pretty impressive buzz going.
It would fade within minutes, but all the same, Cain knew exactly what he was doing by offering me the whisky.
My head swam a little, and everything in the room took on a faint, hazy glow. Suddenly I felt more comfortable and relaxed, as if all the events of the day were nothing more than a bad dream and I was finally waking up.
I took another sip, because it was wonderful not to have my belly chewing me up with worry. I could just be, even if it was false comfort.
“I know why you’ve been avoiding me, Miss McQueen.”
Another time I might have feigned surprise and given him my best Who me? expression, but what was the point? Cain would know it was bullshit, and so would I. We’d just be wasting time until I eventually fessed up.
I finished what was in the glass anyway. Liquid courage.
“I’m sorry.” I set my empty tumbler on the counter and looked him right in the eye, though it made me deeply uncomfortable. I wasn’t going to lose a staring contest to a human, no matter how powerful he might be.
“What are you sorry for?” A thin smile turned his whole expression cruel.
So he wanted to hear me say it, did he? Fine.
“I promised you a life, and I didn’t fulfill the bargain.” There. Simple.
Truthfully, my end of the bargain had been satisfied the second Timothy Deerling—psycho church leader and all around shitty dude—had been killed. But Cain hadn’t seen it that way. The thing about Cain was his help came with a price. It could be money, but usually it was goods, or in my case, a favor. I was supposed to bring him Deerling alive, and instead I’d let someone else kill the dude.
Circumstances demanded it at the time.
For a while I’d foolishly believed Cain would be okay with that because Deerling had met his maker. Dead was dead, right?
Not so much.
“And now you’re here, and you want something else from me, dontcha?” He swirled the booze around in his glass, and I watched it spin, almost hypnotized by the motion.
“Yes.”
“Cost is going to go up, you know? Since you still owe me.”
I bit back my urge to laugh in his face. I owed him? He had given me the address of a small town, and I’d damn near died getting out of there. Now he wanted me to simper and scrounge and give him more?
Fucking hell.
