Fangs and Fennel (The Venom Trilogy #2)(20)

“Here we are. Do you want me to wait?” He parked the cruiser at the curb in front of Vanilla and Honey.

“No, I see my grandmother’s car. We can carpool.” I opened the door, paused, and looked back. “Thanks, Officer Jensen. I mean, Ben.”

He tipped his hat and winked at me. “Ma’am.”

Laughing, I stepped out and shut the door behind me. He was a nice guy; I liked him, and after the initial awkward tension, he was easy to be around. A thought flashed through my mind. He didn’t seem to mind the monsters . . . maybe I should introduce him to Beth? As the thought took root, I nodded to myself.

There was no chemistry between Jensen and I; there never had been. Whatever he felt was only because I’d used my siren abilities on him in a desperate situation. If I gave him a push toward Beth . . . I could totally see it working.

I could picture the group of us hanging out, visiting. With his arm around Beth, Remo’s around me, Tad’s around Dahlia. I smiled to myself; yeah, I was about to play matchmaker. I couldn’t wait to tell Beth.

My thoughts skittered sideways. Jensen was a good guy, and he didn’t do a thing for me. So apparently I liked the bad boys now that I was a monster. But was that chemistry fabricated on Remo’s part? Could Ben be right about Remo and the way he used women? The problem was that I could see the possibility hidden there, and it bothered me.

I shook my head. “What has happened to the good girl I was?”

The door of my bakery opened, and my yaya peered out. “Good girl? Good girls get run over in life; you need to be a bit of a badass to make it in this world.”

“Yaya!” I gasped. “That isn’t true. And how did you get into my bakery anyway?”

“Really? I think it is.” She shrugged. “Come on, I need help with my recipe. It’s not turning out the way I’d hoped.” She winked back at me. “As to getting in, I still have a few tricks up my sleeve. I’m old, not dead, you know.”

In other words, she wasn’t going to tell me a thing.

I took the edge of the door and stepped into the glowing warmth of the bakery. Though I wasn’t affected by the cold, I couldn’t deny I liked the feeling of heat coursing over my skin.

Kind of like the feeling I got when Remo looked at me.

“Dang it,” I muttered under my breath.

Yaya laughed. “Talking to yourself? Oh dear, you must be getting old.”

“Ha-ha, very funny.” I walked in and went right to the phone. “I need a locksmith before I do anything else . . . I might have taken the deed from Roger without asking.” I grabbed the phone book and flipped through the pages as Yaya nodded in agreement, muttering that Roger deserved nothing, until I found a local guy who said he could come at all hours. Good enough. I dialed him up and explained the situation. “Can you come now?”

“Yeah, sure. Going to be double, four hundred,” he said with a yawn.

“That’s robbery!” I spit out.

Yaya touched my arm. “It’s on me. Just get him to come.”

“Three fifty,” I said, “and some fresh baked goods.”

“Done.”

I gave him the address, and he arrived in under ten minutes. I showed him the two doors, and he got to work. I went into the kitchen, to see Yaya over a big bowl.

“What did you really want to talk to me about, Yaya? You’re a better baker than me, and we both know it.”

Her fluffy white hair barely came up to my chin as she took each of my hands in hers. “The hearing, did it go well?”

I groaned. “I don’t think it could have gone worse.”

She grimaced. “Come on, take a look at what I’m doing and tell me about your day.”

The smell of spices and caramelizing sugar filled the air as I approached the work table. She showed me the recipe for a caramel-topped, chocolate-filled monkey bread she was trying to make, and I took a look at what she had going on the stovetop.

“Here, just too much heat on the caramel, I think; you’re going to burn it.” I turned it down and leaned back, took a breath, and told her all about the hearing, the vampires, shifting, and then getting all the way back to the Wall before Hermes caught up with me. I deliberately left out the piece about Remo and me making out, or how I’d turned him off with a single question about his past.

Maybe Jensen was right. Maybe Remo was using me. I mean, if he really liked me, wouldn’t he want me to know things about his past? I’d shared everything about myself with Roger when we’d started dating. I didn’t think there was a childhood story he’d not suffered through at least once. Now that I thought about it, Roger hadn’t bothered to do the same.

The thought of Remo and Roger having any similarities made me ill, and I had to take slow breaths to ease the quick onslaught of nausea.

“Are you okay, Lena?” Yaya touched her hand to my cheeks. “You went a bit green there, avocado in color.”

I waved her off. “Just a bad thought.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Keeping secrets from your yaya?”

I snorted. “I learned from the best, didn’t I?” Yaya had been keeping secrets my whole life, and we—Tad and I—had only just found out. One, Yaya was a priestess of Zeus. Two, she’d had a fling with the god of thunder and lightning that resulted in a curse being laid on our family. Three, well, I didn’t know what three might be, but I had no doubt there were more secrets rolling around in that fluffy white head of hair.