Chapter 2
CASSIE
This side of the Orpheum was quieter.
And darker.
Empty theaters lurked on either side of the hallway, desolate until I came to a door with two familiar figures standing outside.
They glanced lazily at me, then suddenly stood straighter, looking flustered.
“Hey Titus,” I said to the bigger one. His black hair was long and his biceps bulged under a black T-shirt, a Barbarians tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve. I looked at the tall skinny guy with the Blades tattoo standing next to Titus. “Goose.”
I didn’t know either of them well, but I’d run into almost everyone who worked for Bram at one point or another, mostly when Daisy, Sarai, and I ventured into Southside for one of the Grady’s famous subs or a milkshake from Junior’s.
“Uh… hey Cassie.” Goose looked away, like he was afraid to be struck down just for speaking to me.
“What’s up, Cass?” Titus’ demeanor was cool, almost professional. He didn’t even glance at my tits, on display in a fairly low-cut lavender T-shirt.
Typical.
And it wasn’t like I had the hots for Titus. But I was twenty-three years old, and while I was no great beauty, I was passably attractive, attractive enough that at least one man in Blackwell Falls should have wanted to fuck me.
But they didn’t. Because they were all terrified of Bram.
See my aforementioned cumbersome virginity.
“Here for the Hunt,” I said, as casually as I could muster.
Titus looked at me like I had two heads and six arms. “Cass… no. I can’t let you in there.”
“Why?”
“Because Bram would fucking pull my limbs off — slowly — and then he’d knock every tooth out of my mouth with a hammer and feed them to me one at a time like fucking Tic Tacs.”
“I’m an adult. It’s not Bram’s decision.”
It was a refrain I heard in my fucking sleep.
“Except everything in Blackwell Falls is Bram’s decision,” Titus said. “You know that.”
“But he’s not even running the Hunt anymore.” Okay, that was a stab in the dark. Bram didn’t talk to me about the Hunt. It was his game, his dark and private fun.
He probably didn’t even think I knew about it.
But he had Maeve now. She’d lost the Hunt to Bram, Remy, and Poe, and after a whole lot of danger and drama, she now lived with them in the loft at the end of Main Street, where Southside ran into the train tracks and the more isolated parts of the Blackwell Preserve.
Bram wouldn’t be hunting now, I knew that because I knew he was stupidly in love with Maeve Haver, and half the fun of the Hunt for the men who hunted was fucking with — figuratively and literally — their prey.
Goose frowned. “Yeah, but he’s still…”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Still…?”
“He’s still Bram,” Titus said. “Fuck.”
“Who’s in charge of the Hunt now?” I asked.
Titus shook his head. “Cassie…”
“Who. Is. In. Charge?”
He sighed. “The Hawks.”
I had no idea who the Hawks were. The masked Hunt teams had names — Bram, Remy, and Poe were the Butchers, in and out of the Hunt — but I had no way of knowing who the Hawks were behind their name.
“So go ask them,” I said.
I knew Titus couldn’t ask Bram because Bram was in Bali. He’d taken Maeve there with Poe and Remy, which was why I’d decided to pull the trigger on this particular Hunt: no one could get a permission slip from my big brother.
For once.
Goose shook his head. “You’re asking for trouble, Cassie.”
“That’s my problem. Go ask the Hawks.”
Titus swore. “You’re not leaving until I ask them, are you?”
I shook my head. “Nope.”
“Fucking fine.” Titus looked at Goose. “Stay here. And for fuck’s sake don’t let anything happen to her on our watch.”