Death and Relaxation (Ordinary Magic #1)(5)

Then he blinked, breaking our contact, and his cocky grin was back.

Jerk. He’d known I was looking at them, had probably felt my attraction to their fight, to their connection, and couldn’t help but tease the new police chief. So he’d given me a little peek of my own desire, just for kicks.

Vampires had a strange sense of fun.

He swung up into the driver’s seat, fluid and fast. I thought I saw a scuffle in the cab, then Ben ducked down and there was a moment of intense stillness. When he popped back into view he ran one thumb over his lower lip, wiping away a smile and maybe a drop of blood before he started the engine and sent the truck rumbling down the road.





Chapter 2


I LEFT Myra to finish up and deal with Dan, who wouldn’t run out of righteous steam for a couple hours at least, and headed to Jump Off Jack Brewery. It was four a.m. straight up when I got there, but I knew Chris wouldn’t mind me dropping in.

The brewery crouched on the edge of the working bay just south of city limits in what used to be a crab-packing plant. Chris had taken over the property fifty years ago. Half of it was still a packing plant, though it catered to tourists and locals now instead of international shipping.

What had started as a hobby—microbrewing—had landed Jump Off Jack’s smack dab in the top-ten-rated beers in the Pacific Northwest, something that still seemed to surprise and amuse Chris.

I crossed the parking lot and knocked on the big red metal door of the warehouse. Waited. I knew Chris would hear that, even if he was in the far side of the building or upstairs. He had excellent hearing.

Sure enough, the latch turned and Chris pulled open the door.

“Chief Reed,” he said in that lilt that always brought to mind New Orleans. His paperwork, filed back when my grandfather was in charge of such things, said he was from Louisiana but that his family originated from the Amazon. “What brings you out tonight?”

Chris was a creature. The polite term was gill-man, and if he had a few beers in him, he went to great lengths to explain the difference between his type and the other aquatics, such as mers and selkies.

Dark skin and hair, long, muscular build under jeans and tank top. When he was out of the water, the main physical difference between him and a human was his deeply set, heavily lidded brown eyes, which gave him a lazy smolder.

The scaling along his neck and back of his hands had been enhanced by a tattoo artist who knew how to keep his mouth shut. The scales looked like they were tattooed on, and Chris just looked like he was a man who was really into ink.

That Hollywood movie with the guy in the rubber creature suit had really sold Chris short in the looks department.

“There was an explosion,” I said.

He nodded and stepped aside, letting me walk into the building. It was a working brewery and I inhaled the nutty yeast fragrance as I followed him down the roped-off pathway between huge metal tanks. “I heard. Up north of here?”

“Dan Perkin’s place.”

He chuckled. “Idiot. Always thought high blood pressure would be how he went out.”

“He’s not dead.”

“Oh.” Chris paused at the bottom of the narrow wooden stairs that led to the bar and restaurant on the second floor. “Well, good. Wouldn’t want to lose such a valuable member of our community.”

I snorted and took out the notebook, clicking the pen. “So where were you tonight? Exactly.”

He clomped up the stairs and into the main room. Unfinished wood and timbers racked the ceiling and walls. Decoration was limited to giant chalkboards that listed the brew options, flags, and photos of the place when it was first being restored into a brewery. The rolling metal garage door at the far end was closed. I knew it just opened to the catwalk that let tours stare at the vats and machinery from above.

Large windows that looked over the fishing boats in the bay took up the length of the building and at the end opposite the garage door was the bar.

Chris glanced that way, toward the bar, and the little door in there that was easy to mistake as a cleaning closet. I knew that door contained a private set of stairs that led down to his boat.

“I was here tonight. In bed.”

A little too much hesitation in that statement.

“All night?”

He caught the edge of my tone and gave me a very steady stare. “All night. Listen, Dan Perkin doesn’t like me. Something about the Rhubarb Rally contest? But I don’t care if I win—I’m brewing up that rhubarb cranberry lager as a marketing stunt. Speaking of which, how about an opinion on what to call it. Do you like the sound of Rhuberry Lager or Cranbarb Beer?”

“I like the sound of you getting on with telling me what happened between you and Dan.”

He shook his head, each thumb slowly dragging across the back of his index knuckle. It was a nervous habit I rarely saw out of him.

“Nothing happened. I’ve won a lot of other awards—important awards. I don’t care enough about a local festival to actually try to kill someone for it.”

“Not even Dan Perkin?”

“Tempting.” He flashed a smile. “But not even him. I know the rules. I listened the first time when your grandfather was chief of police. I would rather outlive Perkin than risk being thrown out of town.”

“Things change. So do people.”

“Maybe. But I’m not exactly people.”