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“Textures,” Lulu said, then sawed at the entire pile to cut it in half, then in quarters. Then she picked up a wedge, bit off the pointed end.
“You still do that.”
She looked at Connor, chewed. “I don’t like putting my face into food. I’d rather bring the food to my face.”
“You’re an odd duck, Bell.”
“At least I’m not literally a duck, Keene.”
“You’re well aware what I am, Bell.”
“True,” she said, winging up her eyebrows.
I hadn’t yet tasted the food, so I grabbed a fry from Connor’s plate, chewed.
He stopped chewing midbite. “What the hell, Sullivan?”
Lulu smiled, shook her head. “You think I’m a weird eater? She prefers to eat other people’s food. Freaking fry thief.”
“Fries from someone else’s plate always taste better,” I said, finishing off the one I’d stolen. “You can have some of mine.”
“That is empirically false,” Connor said. “And I don’t want your fries. I want my own fries.”
I shrugged, reached unapologetically for a fry from Lulu’s plate. She slapped my hand away. “Bad vampire. Eat your own food.”
“Fine.” I gathered up the burger, took a bite. “Not bad,” I said, and took another. “I’m surprised this place doesn’t make the Chicago top-ten list.”
“It does,” Connor said. “Just not the human list. Riley eats four of these at a time.” His smile fell away with the memory.
“Maybe the Ombudsman would let you bring him one?”
“I doubt it,” he said sourly. “Dearborn’s a dick. If he wasn’t, Riley wouldn’t be in prison right now.”
“It’s because he looks big and dangerous,” Lulu said. “He has plenty of muscle and power to back that up. But he has an enormous heart.”
“So why did you break up with him?” Connor asked.
Her gaze lifted. “He didn’t tell you?”
Connor shook his head. “I know it wasn’t what he wanted, but he didn’t talk about it. Riley’s easygoing, but he’s not one for talking about his emotions.”
She looked up at the ceiling, as if wishing for strength to get to it. “We were getting serious. And it was getting harder for me to, I guess,avoidhis magic.”
“To avoid it?” Connor asked.
“I made a conscious decision not to do magic. Dating a shifter is like... being ensconced in it. A lot.” She looked at me. “More than just vampire magic, because with vampires, the magic ismostly driven by emotions. You get nervous or excited or really hungry, and you throw off a little magic. But with shifters, it’s all the time. It’s in the air.”
“And the ground,” Connor said. “It’s part of our connection to the natural world—or the result of it.”
Lulu swirled the beer in the glass, watching the liquid spin. “It was becoming more difficult to be around him and still say no to using my magic. I loved him,” she said. “It just wasn’t right for me.”
“I’m sorry, Lulu,” Connor said, and I saw only compassion in his eyes. Maybe for Lulu, maybe for his friend, maybe for a relationship broken because love hadn’t been enough.
“It’s all right,” she said with a smile she was obviously fighting to keep in place. “It was hard. It sucked. And we both lived through it.”
She looked up at Connor, at me. “Get him out of this. Whether we work together or not, he’s being used, and that’s not fair.”
“Working on it,” I said, and put my hand over hers, squeezed. But when I went to pull away, she didn’t let go.
