Ah. The picture was becoming clearer.
“Somebody needed to challenge her. But you just don’t do that to a mating female. She’s like . . . like a temporary queen. Everyone defers to her. But everyone also saves up their grudges and takes them out on the bride’s hide as soon as the honeymoon’s over. Kiana knew how much trouble she was headed for, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.”
“So a challenge from me released the tension.”
“Exactly.” She grinned, showing white, even teeth. “And you did it without spilling a drop of blood. Brilliant.”
“Yeah, it always kinda sucks when a bachelorette party turns into a bloodbath.”
The werewolf grinned again. “Now Kiana can relax and be herself. She’ll still have some fights to face a couple of full moons down the road, but a lot of us will let our grudges slide. We’ve got our friend back.” She got up and danced her way into the middle of the room.
TEN MINUTES LATER, AXEL RETURNED. HE STOPPED AND stared at me, sitting at the bride’s table, wearing her tiara, and holding a bottle of my favorite lite beer, paid for by the bride. He turned to the bar, where Kiana was mixing a cocktail for one of her friends. “The champagne I paid for ran out, so it’s a cash bar now,” she called.
Axel turned back to me and raised a shaggy eyebrow.
“She said she was a bartender in college. I’ve been watching. She’s charging for the drinks.”
He sat down across from me. His eyebrow seemed to have found a permanent home halfway up his forehead.
“I, um, beat her in a challenge. Accidentally, kind of. There was no fighting involved,” I added quickly. “Just champagne.”
Axel surveyed the room. The place stank of spilled champagne, but there was no broken furniture or bleeding patrons. Better than a typical night.
“How’s Juliet?” I asked.
“Safe.” He placed the silver shackle and chain on the table. A nearby werewolf glanced at it, shuddered, and moved away. “She said you’d need this.”
“Can I see her?”
He shook his head. “She’s resting.”
Shit. Axel wasn’t going to let me into his apartment. As Juliet had said earlier, he never let anyone in. He was bending his usual rule to protect her, but his hospitality wouldn’t extend to me. I’d just locked Juliet away even farther out of reach than she’d been with the Goon Squad.
And I still didn’t have any answers.
“Axel—”
He shook his head, and I knew there was no use arguing.
“Okay, then tell her to call me as soon as she’s feeling better, okay? Tomorrow, no later. I really need to talk to her. Can you do that?”
This time I got a nod.
I removed the bride’s tiara and set it on the table, then stood. “Keep me posted about how she’s doing, will you? I’m worried about her leg. And thanks. I know you . . . um, value your privacy. I’ll try to move her to somewhere else that’s safe as soon as I can.”
I wrapped the chain around my waist, picked up my purse, and moved toward the door.
Axel’s big paw shot out and grabbed my arm. “Come back after sunrise.”
I nodded. I didn’t know whether he’d let me see Juliet or whether he merely expected me to help clean up after these rowdy werewolves. Either way, I’d be here. Axel was good people—whatever species he was.
7
WHEN I OPENED THE DOOR TO HIS APARTMENT, KANE looked up from his laptop screen. He sat on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, papers spread all around him. He’d rolled up his sleeves, removed his tie, and even undone the top buttons of his shirt. Mmm. Sexy attorney at work.
But the alarm that leapt into his eyes reminded me I was the polar opposite of sexy right now.
“My God, Vicky. What happened?” He was up in a second, his strong arms around me, pulling me close.
“Careful. Silver,” I said, stepping back and unwrapping the chain from my waist. I coiled it and added it to the arsenal in my purse. I leaned the Old One’s short sword against the wall.
He sniffed. “Are you . . .” Another sniff, his nostrils flaring wide. “ Are you drunk?”
“Of course not.” He knew how little I drank. “I got caught in a little champagne fight at Creature Comforts.”
“Creature Comforts? I thought you were going to see Juliet.”
“I did.”
Kane scowled, staring at my waist. “And that belt you were wearing looked an awful lot like a silver shackle. The kind they use to restrain vampires.”
“Um. There’s a reason for that.”
Kane closed his eyes and shook his head as if clearing it. “Tell me what happened. Start from the beginning.”
“Better sit down.”
“How did I know you were going to say that?” He groped backward to find the sofa and sat on its arm. His eyes took inventory of my appearance. “You’ve got blood on your cheek.”
Oh. That was from fighting the Old Ones. I suddenly realized how long it had been since I’d looked in a mirror—and wasn’t sure I wanted to, ever again.
“All right.” I took a deep breath. “From the beginning.” I told him everything that had happened from the time he’d dropped me off until I walked through his front door. Well, I did gloss over the bachelorette party, saying only that some Creature Comforts customers, fooling around, had started spraying champagne at each other. The party, the bride-bitch, the idiotic dominance contests—somehow, discussing the commitment rituals of werewolves with my lone-wolf boyfriend would feel more than a little awkward. I didn’t want him getting any ideas. Not now. I was comfortable with things as they were.
There are some areas where I’m perfectly happy being a craven coward.
“So Juliet’s safe,” I wrapped up. “I’m worried about her wound, but maybe with some rest she’ll start to heal. I’ll try to convince Axel to let me see her when I go back after sunrise.”
Kane got up and paced in front of the sofa, rubbing his chin. He stopped abruptly and turned to me, his expression troubled. “She asked for me.”
“What?”
“Juliet. She asked for me as her attorney.”
“Yeah, so? You’re a lawyer. You specialize in paranormal cases.” Kane was the most famous paranormal-rights lawyer in the nation, possibly in the world. What vampire in trouble wouldn’t want his counsel?
“Look at the timeline, Vicky. I get a call asking me to meet with her ASAP. Within two hours, these creatures—the same kind that attacked me in Washington the night Justice Frederickson was murdered—show up to bust Juliet out of jail.”
It took me a second to process what he was saying. “You think she was setting you up?”
“Doesn’t it look that way?”
“I can see why it does to you.” Even though you’re wrong, wrong, wrong. “You believe she was involved in Frederickson’s murder, so of course you’d think she’s out to get you. But we don’t know what happened in Washington. What if she went down there to try to help you?”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, she didn’t get a chance to tell me anything. But she did try to tell me, several times over the past month, that she was working against the Old Ones, not with them.” I described the postcards I’d received—the international postmarks, the hints that Juliet was trying to stave off some danger related to the Old Ones.
“You’ve gotten five of those? You never told me.”
“If I had, what would you have done? You’d have wanted me to take them to the police. I wasn’t going to do that.” Juliet had already been running from the Old Ones. I wasn’t going to put the cops on her trail, too.
I set my jaw, expecting to see anger in his face. Instead, what I read there was hurt.