Moon Sworn (Riley Jenson Guardian 9)

Chapter 9

Murderer. The word seemed to echo around my aching brain with a resonance that was both familiar and frightening.

Was I a murderer?

No, something inside said. Then, frighteningly, yes.

I grabbed my coffee with a hand that was shaking, and wasn't entirely sure whether it was due to the weakness still washing through my body or that whispered revelation. I finished the coffee in one quick gulp that scalded my throat, then pushed to my feet. The room spun violently, and it was only my grip on the table that kept me upright.

"Am I under arrest?" I said, through gritted teeth.

"Not yet." He leaned back in his chair and continued to study me through slightly narrowed eyes. "But you and your brother should consider yourselves to be persons of interest."

"If you do the damn check, you'll discover we shouldn't be." I spun and headed for the front door.

A chair scraped backward, then footsteps followed me up the hall. "One more question," he said, as I flung open the front door.

"What?" I said it without looking back or even stopping.

"There's very little blood on your car and the damage - though extensive - doesn't look recent. Also, if you hit the roo hard enough to roll the car several times, why isn't its body anywhere in the immediate vicinity?"

Interesting observations, both of them. "Can I see the car?"

"No. And don't leave town, Hanna." He said it softly, but his words seemed to echo across the night as I retreated down the street.

I was a suspect.

And the worst of it was, even I wasn't so sure that I shouldn't be. Everything was so screwed up - both this situation and my mind - that right now, anything seemed possible.

I hit the main street and turned to head back to the villa, then paused.

Harris had said that Evin used the phone in the pub. Why would he do that when there was a perfectly usable phone at the villa?

With curiosity stirring, I spun around and headed for the pub. It was easy enough to find. All you had to do was follow the noise. Music and laughter ran riot through the air, and the aromas of wolves, beer, sweat, and humanity overlapped one another - a mix that was both enticing and repellant.

The building reminded me of something you'd see in an old Western. It might have been constructed out of red brick rather than wood, but it was two stories, with wide verandas on both levels and old-fashioned swinging doors.

Obviously, no one was worried about security in this place. But then, if this was a werewolf town, it'd be a brave soul that tried to steal anything.

I pushed through the doors and stepped into the main bar. The place was packed, and it was hard to see the bar let alone Evin or a phone.

I looked around for a moment, then approached a group of women standing to the left of the doorway. Three were wolves, the other two human.

"Excuse me," I said, catching the eye of the tallest woman. She had dark skin, dark hair, and a somewhat broad nose, and she reminded me a little of Harris, except that her eyes were a warm brown. "Can you tell me if there's a public phone here?" I had to raise my voice to be heard above the din.

"At the back," she shouted, pointing with her glass.

I waved her a thanks and headed that way. Everyone was so tightly packed it was difficult to get past anyone without actually touching them, and while the experience wasn't exactly unpleasant, it wasn't really exciting, either. Which was weird. I mean, I was a female werewolf without a mate, and this bar was full of males in the prime - and not so prime - of their lives. Once upon a time, I would have been dancing and flirting, and generally having a good time as I squished past them all. But my soul mate was dead and it felt like a chore. Like something I had to put up with, then escape.

No, that little voice inside whispered, it's not that. Ben lost his soul mate, and he still desires. He can still enjoy sex and the company of others.

I didn't even bother trying to recall who Ben was. My memories were obviously going to take their own sweet time returning.

I eventually found the phones at the rear of the room near the two bathrooms, but Evin wasn't there. Maybe he'd made his call and was somewhere else in this cauldron of humanity and wolves. I couldn't smell him, but that wasn't really surprising given the sheer number of male wolves in the room.

I found a spare chair in the corner and stepped up, looking out over the sea of dark heads in an attempt to find a red-gold one. There were several blonds and the occasional brown, but no redheads. Maybe he'd gone back to the villa.

I stepped down and pushed my way back through the crowd. But I was barely halfway across the room when I ran nose first into a rather solid-looking chest. It felt like I was hitting a brick wall.