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CHAPTER7
The restaurant was dark, and I left the lights off as I hurried up the steps to the apartment. Surprisingly, my leg had stopped aching since Billy Bob’s kiss. Now that I thought about it, I’d had fewer aches after our morning make-out session as well. I knew lycanthrope saliva had healing properties, but I’d never had it orally before. I smiled and then cursed myself for being a stupid, crushy girl.
Right now, Billy Bob was comforting Bethany Hilliard. She absolutely threw off the “mine” vibes when she’d joined us, and Billy Bob had done nothing to discourage her. Did I really want to be on his list of women pining for him? Nope. Not even a little bit. So why did my hoo-ha jump for joy every time I thought about him. It was a goddamn betrayal!
Someone knocked at the apartment door, and I pretty near peed myself. Had I left the restaurant unlocked when I came in? I thought I’d locked the door. How could I be so dumb? Had I left it unlocked last night? What the hell was wrong with me? It was like my brain had moved and hadn’t bothered to leave a forwarding address.
The knock sounded again. “Chavvah?”
A wash of relief flooded me as I recognized Babe’s voice. I opened the door. “How did you get into the restaurant?”
He tucked his chin, surprised at my greeting. He held up his keys. “I used these.”
“Oh, thank heavens. The door was locked. I thought I was losing my mind for a moment.”
He walked past me into the living room. “Too late for that.”
I backhanded his shoulder. “Don’t be such a pain in the ass.”
“It’s my official job as the youngest Trimmel.” He brought me in for a brotherly hug and then gave me a smacking kiss on the cheek. “You all right?”
“Nope. But I’m dealing.”
Babe nodded. “Sheriff Taylor released the crime scene, and Roger Messer is doing the cleanup for us.”
“He’s good people.” Roger was Blondina’s husband. Before coming to Peculiar, he and Blondina had owned a cleaning company. They’d been integrators at the time. When she got pregnant with Selena, they’d decided to raise her in a therian community. They’d wanted her to be proud of her heritage. Totally the opposite of my parents.
Babe wore a tailored blue suit, and his normally messy hair had been styled neatly. Also, he’d managed a shave. This Babe was a stark contrast to the Babe I’d grown up with. I was absurdly proud that my baby bro was the mayor, and I marveled at how much he’d matured over the past year.
I examined his expression with the experience of an older sister. “What is it?”
He hemmed and hawed for a couple of seconds, toed the shag carpet with his fancy shoes, then chewed the inside of his cheek before finally meeting my gaze. “I think you should think about going to Kansas City for a couple of days.”
My hackles rose. “No.” There was no way I would give Mom and Dad the satisfaction by running to them in a crisis.
“You are just as stubborn as Sunny.”
“Did you ask her to go stay with our parents, too?”
His ears turned red, and he managed chagrinned. “Yes.”
“And yet, you’re still breathing.”
“Barely.” Babel sat down on the chocolate brown couch, a new purchase since I’d moved in. The cushions were big, like clouds of pillows, and so much better than the ugly old 70s furniture my older brother Judah had settled on. Though, if I could have Judah back, I’d have gladly lived with his poor taste in couches. “Sunny’s psychic ability hasn’t been right since Jude was born, and with all these strangers in town, it would be dangerous for people to find out she’s human.” He slanted a look at me. “The last thing I need is for my two favorite women to get any more involved in these murders.”
“Hey! It’s not my fault someone put a corpse out back of the restaurant.”
“I know that. But it wasn’t an accident, either.”
Sudden realization flooded me. “You think someone was trying to send a message to us? That maybe someone knows Sunny isn’t a therian?”
“I don’t know. It’s unlikely. But I want to keep my wife and my sister as far away from this investigation as possible.”
I plopped next to him on the couch and took his hand. “You won’t get any argument from me. But I don’t need Mommy and Daddy to protect me, either.”
“Well, at least stay with us. I have to spend a lot of time in town, and it would make me feel better if you are with Sunny and Jude when I can’t be,” he told me. “The Tri-Council just had an emergency meeting because of the deaths.” He shook his head. “It’s too late to move the Jubilee to another town, but they are considering closing off the bridge to keep more folks from coming in—or from leaving. And they want an accounting for everyone in town and our surrounding territory. That’s over a thousand of our citizens, and probably another three or four hundred therians from the surrounding states. It’s going to be a logistics nightmare.”
He looked tired. Babe was in his mid-twenties, but the responsibility of being mayor of our town was taking a weighty toll. I still couldn’t believe that my die-hard integrator brother was in charge of a shifter community. If someone had told me two years ago that we both would have made our homes in Peculiar, and that he would be married to my best friend, I’d have laughed until I cried.
