“I’m just asking a question,” I said, tilting my head and smiling sweetly.
The man wrinkled his nose at me, glowering, then looked back at Gil. “It’s your funeral. Back room.”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, shaking his head as he walked back to his table. If people were staring at me before, they were watching like hawks now. Or more appropriately, wolves. Starving ones. I wish I could tell you that it made me afraid. Frankly, I adored the attention.
Gil dragged me by the back of the jacket towards the back room, which was really just a regular empty doorway covered in those beads that hippies loved so much. I elbowed him off, shrugging my jacket back into place.
“Watch the goods,” I said, frowning. “You don’t want me exploding here, of all places, do you?”
Gil frowned back harder. “You wore that jacket? Here, of all places?”
I lifted my nose proudly. “I love this jacket. I wear it everywhere. You should know that.”
He muttered obscenities under his breath as he led the way through the curtain. The beads parted in a clicking, multicolored wave. Not just plastic, I noticed, catching glimpses of chips of turquoise, Apache tears, vibrant layered shades of agate. The gemstones ran cold across my cheek, like little drops of ice. There was possibly some low-level magic at work here, something like the Twilight Tavern’s nullification, certainly something meant to protect whatever was waiting in the back room.
And that, as it turned out, was just a mostly empty black box with a number of chairs and couches spread around a central coffee table. A single man sat sprawled across the largest sofa. The rock music from outside didn’t penetrate all the way there. It made it extremely easy to hear the man’s annoyed, perhaps borderline disgusted clucking of the tongue. He cocked one thick eyebrow, bisected from an old scar.
“Seriously, Gilberto? I don’t see you for months, and then you show up with this shit?”
“You know I wouldn’t just show up under normal circumstances,” Gil said. “We need to talk, Damien.”
Damien looked me up and down, clearly unimpressed. “I don’t know that I want to talk with him in the room.”
His voice was gruff. Everything else about Damien was gruff, too: the thick black beard, the slicked-back hair, the coarse down running up his forearms. You could tell he was the Blood of Garm’s alpha from a mile away. He wore a weathered denim vest over equally weathered, though extremely sturdy-looking jeans, the kind you’d find on a biker. I wondered if this was the uniform for all werewolves. Even Gil liked to dress similarly, albeit with a little less tear and tatter.
“His presence is important,” Gil said, his tone firm, but respectful. “Sterling is my colleague, and my friend. We’ve worked together forever, and we’re going to continue working together on this string of murders.”
Damien wagged his finger at Gil, his smile and his tone dripping with sarcasm. “See, this is why our people don’t like you, Gil. Not just the fact that you force the transformation like you know better than the moon herself. It’s these types you hang around with.”
“These types?” I chuckled, pushing back my hair. “You mean lean, handsome, and suave?”
Damien leaned forward, gripping his knees as he glared at me. “Watch it, bloodsucker. You already know you aren’t wanted around here. Don’t make things worse for yourself.”
That brief, tiny lull in the conversation? That little pause? The only thing less appropriate than filling it with an insubordinate wisecrack was to answer it with a taunt. Every muscle in my body told me to shut the fuck up. But the most dominant one, my tongue, won the battle.
“Or else what?”
Gil slapped himself in the forehead. Damien brooded as he studied me, the line of his mouth deciding between a scowl and a sadistic smile. He rubbed his beard, then nodded.
“Blood trial.”
“Sounds fun,” I said.
“Will you shut the fuck up already?” Gil snarled.
“Blood trial,” Damien repeated.
He got up from the sofa, which was when I finally noticed how big and burly he really was, standing a foot tall over me. He was much beefier, too, at least twice my weight. The man could probably benchpress a grizzly bear.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been so cocky.
When Damien cracked his knuckles, it seemed like a warning, of what my bones might sound like when his fists collided with them.
“Parking lot,” he said. “Ten minutes.”
9
“What the fuck is a blood trial?”