Steal the Light (Thieves #1)(33)

For the second time that night, I teared up, but this time Neil was there with cookies and a shoulder to cry on.





Chapter Nine





The next morning, I sat across from Neil at a diner near my apartment. Daniel had seriously underestimated the not so delicate balance between a werewolf’s loyalty and a werewolf’s seemingly endless gut. Neil had been the one to lead the charge out the door the minute we discovered that Daniel’s kitchen was beautiful and elegant and utterly devoid of food.

Neil did not do well without food.

Neil ordered pancakes, bacon, sausage, a Denver omelet, biscuits and gravy, and a cheeseburger. I requested a half a grapefruit and an English muffin, but then I didn’t have that good old werewolf hyper-metabolism. Daniel couldn’t have been thinking straight when he ordered Neil to keep me in all day. Neil couldn’t go more than a couple of hours without a side of beef or he dissolved into a whiny ball of Ralph Lauren sportswear.

I was glad for the sportswear, though. Without Neil’s blazer covering my sadly worn dress, I’m afraid I would have attracted a lot of attention. I’d gotten most of the blood out, but there was still a nice hole where the flying stake had gotten through.

“So what’s the plan?” Neil asked as he dug into his über breakfast.

I didn’t have to ask which plan he was talking about. It was the plan that kept me up most of the night and well into morning.

“I have a few hours until Daniel wakes up. Halfer isn’t answering his phone.”

Neil shook his head. “But aren’t you supposed to be able to contact him?”

That was the million dollar question. “Maybe he knows I want to give him the money back. Maybe if I give back every penny, I can get out of this contract. I’ll even hand over all the plans we’ve made to the next crew he finds.”

“But Daniel already got the uniforms and everything,” Neil whined slightly around an enormous mouth of pancakes.

“And I’m sure the new crew will be thrilled with his hard work. I intend to be as helpful as possible to whoever comes after.” I took a slow sip of my coffee. “But I have to find the f*cker first. I talked to Albert first thing this morning. He thinks he can have a name by this afternoon.”

“So you get Halfer’s real name, you call him to your hand, you give back the cash, and then Daniel won’t shove you into a bomb shelter somewhere.” Neil neatly summed up my plan.

“Yep.” It was a good plan. It was a plan that would probably fail, and I would still end up in said bomb shelter or wherever vampires shoved their troublesome ex-lovers. But I was determined to try.

“I thought I would find you here.” Sarah walked up to our booth. She smiled and sat beside me, pulling me into a slightly awkward half hug. “I tried your apartment, but no one was there.”

“We spent the night at Daniel’s,” Neil said between bites.

Sarah’s eyes went wide. “Seriously? He’s been back for two years, and he’s never invited anyone back to his place. What’s it like?”

“Very clean,” I said.

“Boring,” Neil said at the same time.

Nothing at all like my Daniel. But then he wasn’t mine anymore. “I bet the rest of the apartments in the building look exactly alike. Vamps don’t seem big on individuality.”

Neil’s eyes lit up as he looked at Sarah. “Daniel’s apartment is bland, but our night wasn’t.”

He launched into a recounting of the events from the night before, but my mind was still on Daniel.

I spent a lot of time the night before thinking about that apartment. It was cold and impersonal. It was aesthetically pleasing in an Architectural Digest way, but there was nothing of the owner reflected in the home. The neatness of it bothered me, too. Daniel had been many things, but neat was not one of them. I had no rosy reflections of living with Daniel. He’d been a slob. The corner of the apartment where he had his desk had always been an intricate disaster area.

It was a miracle he’d been able to get out the door with books in hand most mornings. It annoyed me at times. Daniel’s brain was just wired differently. He could take a subject he knew nothing about and become a near expert in a short time. College had been like Disney World for Daniel.

There hadn’t been a single book in his apartment. I guess that bugged me most of all.

“Tell me you didn’t eat the bear.” Sarah, the vegan, shivered at the thought.

Neil simply grinned. “Well, he was trying to kill me at the time.”

Sarah’s voice came out on a huffy little breath. “Do you know how close some bears are to going on the endangered species list?”

Neil snorted, a sound he made elegant. “Sarah, he wasn’t some polar bear. He was a schmo from Jersey from the sound of his accent.”

“Well, I don’t think that gives you the right to eat him,” Sarah said primly. Today she was wearing a vintage Clash T-shirt over a micro-mini and brilliant purple tights. A sassy beret covered her shock of pink hair. She turned her attention to me, and her expression changed. Her dark eyes glittered. “Speaking of horribly murdering people, how was your date with the man I’m going to kill? I hope you enjoyed it because I have a few things to say to him the next time we meet.”