Addict (Hunter #2)(16)

Liv’s hands fidgeted with the strap of her leather purse. “He wanted Scott to be in charge of the bar. He was supposed to do all the ordering, deal with vendors, liaise with the kitchen staff, and hire the bar staff. He’s done it before.”

I nodded, thinking about the problem. Scott had run bars in restaurants before, but I wouldn’t call him an expert. “Why Scott?”

Hugo glanced up over the book he was reading. “What sort of being is your fiancé, Ms. Carey?”

Liv bit her lip as she turned to the vampire. Nervous. She was actually nervous about being close to the academic. I could have told her Hugo was harmless unless he decided to have an intellectual discussion with her, and then all bets were off. Academics will fight if they have to, but they prefer intellectual pursuits to anything else. Well, almost anything else. Marcus was pretty fond of sex, I’d discovered.

“Scott’s a shapeshifter.” I answered for my reluctant client. “He’s not what I would call powerful though. He doesn’t practice often. He mostly does dogs. It’s easiest for him.”

Hugo’s intelligent eyes narrowed as he considered the problem. “He’s a true shifter, then. That’s rare and fairly innocuous. He wouldn’t have a pack, per se, so he wouldn’t have loyalties to outside forces. In addition, he would be managing people who more than likely do have packs or families. Often shifters and were creatures have prejudices against each other. Your fiancé is an excellent choice if his employer wishes to make all creatures welcome.”

Liv nodded and I could see her start to relax. “That makes sense. The club was supposed to open a month ago. I was going to attend the launch, but the night before Scott told me I wouldn’t be allowed in and I shouldn’t ask questions. He kept going in to work at night but he stopped talking about it. Then last week, he stopped coming home. I tried his cell but I get voice mail every time I call. I went to the address I had but they wouldn’t let me in. They told me to go away if I knew what was good for me.”

Despite my anger with her, I certainly didn’t like the idea of Liv in danger. I wanted her safely miserable. “Liv, you should never have gone there.”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“Talk to your coven leader. Or you could have called Jamie.” Anything but walking in there herself without any backup. Again, I felt the guilt of avoiding her. Anything could have happened if she’d walked into that club.

“I did call Jamie,” Liv admitted. “He put me in touch with someone else.”

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up. Dots I didn’t want connected were on a collision course. There was only one person Jamie would have sent Liv to with me out of the country. “I need that address, Liv.”

She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and slid it across the desk. My heart sank. It was the same address the demon had passed me.

Grayson Sloane was in serious trouble and I had a new client.





Chapter Four



By the time I met my assistant, I had a ton of work for him to do. After Liv left, two more clients had popped up, but their cases seemed fairly inconsequential. One needed me to track down a spouse who’d run out on his child support and the other wanted to know if her boyfriend was cheating on her. The first was solved by a simple skip trace and the other answer was probably yes. She was obnoxious. I would have been cheating on her.

“Hi.” Justin Parker greeted me with a somewhat uncomfortable smile. His eyes looked pretty much everywhere but where I was standing.

“You didn’t want this job.” It didn’t take a lot of detective work to see the kid was anxious and a little intimidated.

“But it’s a cool job,” Lee argued, frowning at the vampire.

“I just got here. How can I already be in trouble?” Justin was a new type of vampire. I like to call them veeks. Geek turned vamp. They like blood and MMORPGs. They can’t dress for shit and are socially awkward. I couldn’t blame them much for the last two parts. Marcus tended to lay out my clothes? and he was forever telling me which fork to use.

Justin Parker was prime veek. He was all arms and legs and big sad eyes. He wore a Halo T-shirt and sweatpants and carried a thermos in his hand.

“Tell me your mom didn’t send you a snack.” I wouldn’t put anything past a veek. The millennial vamps aren’t known for their raging independence.

Justin shook his head. “It was my girlfriend. I get hungry. Do we have a fridge?”

“There’s a kitchen next to the bathroom,” I offered. “Look, I’m sure Quinn pressured you into this. I assure you I can work without an assistant. I did for years.”

Lee looked up at me. “I can help you. You don’t need another assistant.”

“You have to go do homework, buddy.” I’d talked to his mom not five minutes before. She’d known exactly where to find him and, unlike her husband, she hadn’t sent the cavalry in to save him. She’d called and politely requested I send him home for dinner. “Your mom wants you home. If you want to be allowed to come back tomorrow, you need to get your butt upstairs.”

Even Lee could see the sense in that. “Okay. Tell Uncle Marcus I’ll see him tomorrow and to save me some candy.” He stopped at the door and came back to me. He motioned me to kneel down before whispering his question in my ear. “How are you going to get to that club?”