Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(47)

“Bind him.”

I looked at Lon. “What?”

“Bind him. He won’t talk unless we make him.”

Peter straightened in his seat, twitchier and twitchier. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Daytime, remember?” I whispered hotly to Lon. I wasn’t Sunchild.

“There’s more than one way.”

Alarm spread over Peter’s face like wildfire. He shot up out of his seat and whipped around the sofa to a low credenza behind it. As he was tugging open a drawer, Lon calmly stood, strode three steps, and slammed the drawer closed. Peter barely got his fingers out of the way in time. The blond man retreated a foot or two. “Stay back or—”

“Peter?”

We all looked toward the back of the living room, through an arch that led to the kitchen. A busty girl in a black bikini top held a white towel around her waist. Another girl peered over her shoulder. “The hot tub is done heating,” she said dumbly.

Peter said nothing.

“He’ll be there in a minute,” I told them. The first girl shrugged and they both retreated into the kitchen. As soon as they were out of sight, I said, “Who’s your dealer, Peter?”

“I don’t have one! I swear to God. I went to a party in Morella a couple weeks back, and everyone was talking about bionic knacks, but nobody knew how it was happening. Some girl invited me into a little side party in a bedroom and they were passing around a drink. She said it would make me luckier, so I took a swig. Everyone did. I didn’t feel anything, but I was already pretty drunk. Things got blurry after that. I didn’t think much about it until I tried to play the lottery. And, you know . . . it worked, I guess.”

“Where was this party at?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere in midtown. A really nice place. Some rich guy with connections to Morella politicians. I don’t keep track of who’s who in city politics anymore, and this was a friend of a friend—they heard about it when we were out at a bar, and someone drove us there. I was really trashed. I wasn’t paying attention.”

I shared a look with Lon, and he gave me a reluctant nod: Peter was telling the truth. Great.

“No one’s offered it to you since?” I asked.

“No.”

“And you went to this party two weeks ago?”

“Yeah. A day before the first lottery win.”

Which meant the potion lasted a hell of lot longer than I’d hoped. Not exactly what I’d wanted to hear, but it told me Telly was still dangerous.

Lon gave Peter a long stare. “If you hear of anything else—someone selling it—we’d appreciate a name.”

Peter glanced at my halo. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”

“We’ll let you get back to your teenage Dream Team,” I said, kicking the purple panties out of my path.

We headed out the way we came in and didn’t talk until we were back inside the glass elevator.

“Why are all your friends creeps?” I asked, a little perturbed.

“He’s not my friend.”

I punched the Lobby button several times, then the CLOSE DOORS button a few more times.

“I have normal friends,” he argued in a calm voice, pulling my hand away from the control panel.

“Like?”

“Mick.”

“The doctor?” I’d only seen him briefly from a distance in the emergency room when Jupe’s tattoo got infected during the chaos around Halloween.

“His wife is real nice. You’d like her. They’ve got two daughters. One’s Jupe’s age, the other’s a couple years older.”

“Hmph.”

The elevator began descending. I crossed my arms over my middle and considered what Peter Little had just told us. “He said the party he went to was swank. Someone connected to politics in Morella. So this bionic elixir is being distributed to rich politicians. I don’t think they’re buying it from homeless gutter punks like Telly.”

“They probably bought it from Telly’s distributor.”

I groaned in frustration. “So much trouble for a stupid punk kid. I just want to get him locked up.”

“What if he just tears down the jail cell?”

“It’s got to wear off eventually.” I hoped.

“But if the elixir stays on the market, there’ll just be another Telly. It’s not safe, Cady.”

Damn him for being right. “Well, I’m meeting Hajo tonight, so we’ll soon see if he knows who’s distributing it.”

Lon scowled. Guess it was his turn to be grumpy now. Because he definitely wasn’t the only one with creepy friends.

I was supposed to meet Hajo at a pub, but he texted me as I was driving into Morella and asked if I’d come to his place instead. I hesitated, until he told me he was having some people over that lived in his high-rise. That sounded safer than meeting him alone, and to be honest, I was a little curious about his fancy apartment.

Hajo owned a condo on the twenty-second floor of one of the tallest buildings in downtown Morella. He’d first told me about the penthouse pad a month or so ago, at which time I accused him of being a showoff—he lived down the hall from a semi-famous professional football player with a five million dollar contract. Hajo claimed the real reason he bought it was because it was so far above all the dead bodies.