Chapter 20 #2
“No, I don’t know.” Do not freak out, it’s a bad look on you. Damn that voice. “You killed a man, Theo.” I was trying not to freak out, but with every second that passed, the realization sank in. I was an accessory to murder. And on probation. Bet was going to be so mad.
“A bad man,” Theo repeated, then licked his fangs. “Don’t forget that part.”
“Bad because you say so.”
“Bad because I saw so. Killers have an oily tint, and he was a killer. Trust me. And he tasted great on his way out.”
Tasted Sweet.
A little giggle fell out of me. I stared at the body and blinked. “This is not ideal, Theo.”
Theo grinned, fangs catching the moonlight. “That was a rush.”
“What do we do with him?” I asked.
Davis was going to be real pissed.
No, not thinking about Davis. One problem at a time. Dispose of the body.
“Fuck, right . . .” Theo frowned down at the body. “Dead bodies are inconvenient. We could bury him next door?”
“I’m not going to bury a body next door with you.”
“Here, then. In these bushes. I’ll get a shovel.”
“I’m not burying a body anywhere with you.” I lowered my voice. “I’m on probation!”
“Why are you getting prissy with me? You knew what you signed up for.”
“No I didn’t. Oh, hey Owen. I give great head and murder people at parties.”
Theo frowned, then smiled slyly. “Great head, huh?”
“That is the wrong part to focus on.”
I needed to breathe harder because my lungs were shrinking, or I was about to have a seizure, or a heart attack. I’d just watched Theo feed on a guy. I hadn’t stopped him. Hadn’t tried. Wanted Sweet dead. Payback. Revenge. Felt good. Was feeling pretty good right now, in fact.
Karma, baby.
And to top it all off I was hearing voices.
I wobbled on my feet. Theo caught my arm, holding me up. “Easy there. Usually I’m the one who passes out. Actually, can’t think about that, or I will . . .”
I blinked at his paling face and laughed. What a ridiculous pair we made. “Stop,” I wheezed. “We can’t both pass out.”
“You started it.” He chuckled too. “I was doing fine until you reminded me.”
That was how Bentley found us, the pair of us clutching each other and laughing over a dead body.
“Mother said—” He stopped talking and walking. His gaze dropped to the corpse. “He’s definitely not on the guest list.”
“He was threatening Owen,” Theo said, straightening. The change came over him fast. He went from laughing alongside me to all the humor falling off and his smile turning to ice on his face. “Help us deal with it, or I’m telling Mother where you really were last night.”
Bentley shook his head and rolled his eyes. “There’s no need to be so dramatic, brother. Of course I’ll help. In fact, you go on, I’ll deal with this little incident. Don’t worry yourself.”
I side-eyed Theo. Where the heck had Bentley been last night to turn him into the perfect sibling?
Bentley moved in, scooped up the big dead guy, and headed off into the garden as casually as though he was carrying a new suit over his shoulder.
“Can he be trusted?” I asked, watching him disappear into the gloom.
“Not normally, but he really doesn’t want Mother to know where he was.”
“Where was he?”
Theo’s sly grin returned. “Build-A-Bear.”
I blinked. “What?”
“At a build-a-bear workshop. You know, you pick out a bear, dress it, give it a name . . .”
“Oh my god.”
“I know, it’s shocking. Mother would murder him a second time if she knew.”
I pinched a laugh behind my lips, and we headed back into the pockets of crowds around the house.
I smiled at Theo after catching him watching me, then pulled him to one side. We weren’t alone, there were people all around, so I lowered my voice when I asked, “You alright?”
“I should ask you the same thing. I didn’t mean for that back there.
I saw him there, on you, and decided he was dying.
” He leaned in, plastering himself against me.
“I would have hunted him to exhaustion. Nothing could have stopped me. The moment I decided it, the outcome was inevitable.” His fingers skimmed my cheek, then his thumb tugged at my bottom lip, teasing more. “Do I frighten you?” he whispered.
I hooked a leg around his, locking him close. “No, I just needed a minute.”
Theo braced an arm against the wall, beside my head, and leaned in. His lips skimmed mine. “Then did you like it?”
I pinched my mouth closed, because the answer I wanted to say sounded wrong.
His lips twitched. “I’d kiss you, but I just killed a guy with my mouth, so . . . you’re probably not into that.”
I might have been into it, but we didn’t get a chance to find out.
The sound of Geraldine’s heels clip-clopped around the side of the house. “Ugh! Theo!” she snapped. “Take your fangs out of the pool boy and come greet our new neighbors. Hurry, you’re keeping her waiting.”
“New neighbors?” he asked, extracting his body from mine. I instantly missed his firmness.
“Don’t ask stupid questions.”
She turned, and with a whip of her hair, stalked back the way she’d come.
I grabbed Theo’s shirt before he could fully escape. “We’ll come back to this.”
His lips twitched. “I love it when you get bossy. We will definitely come back to more of this.”
His gaze promised all sorts of possibilities between the sheets, or against a wall, or in the pool, if it was behaving. I wanted all of that, one after another, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.
This is what accepting who you are looks like, my dark little voice said. Isn’t it fun?
“You coming?” he asked, backing up toward the path to rejoin the celebrations.
“Isn’t this a family thing?”
“Freckles, you mean more to me than everyone else here, including the psychopaths who are my beloved family.”
“Oh.” Be still my wrecked, hopeless heart. “You met me two weeks ago.”
“That should tell you how little I care about them,” he joked, and pulled me after him. Then he looped an arm over my shoulders, so effortlessly casual with his touching that it swept me up and took my mind right back to the bed with him. Maybe, after the party, we could go back between his sheets?
Him and me, and hours until either of us had to be anywhere.
We moved through the little groups of people, back into the lights and noise, laughter and chinking glasses. It all washed over me, numbing my senses. These last two weeks had been dreamlike, but Theo beside me was very real.
We arrived at the front door and headed outside onto the front steps.
Theo’s arm fell from my shoulders. He stepped ahead of me, which meant I had a front row view of his back straightening and his shoulders going rigid.
The change was obvious. He’d put on his Witherborne mask, the one he hated to wear but couldn’t run from.
I hung back and loitered by the door like a doorman.
A sleek black car waited at the foot of the steps. One of those European things that were small but villainesque.
Geraldine was there, talking to a woman shorter than her. The older woman’s foundation had cracked and caked at the corners of her lips, where her wooden smile tucked into her cheeks. She held out her hand, and Geraldine swept into her long-fingered handshake as though they were old friends.
“Tabitha,” Geraldine greeted, her voice going high. “How long has it been?”
Tabitha . . . Tabitha . . . Where had I heard that name recently?
“Oh, several hundred years, my dear.”
Oh, okay. Supernatural, then. Of course.
“This is my son, Theo.” Geraldine gestured toward Theo. “Theo, meet Tabitha Briar. Our new neighbor.”
Briar?! And we were greeting them now, like old friends?
Theo hesitated. At least he looked as surprised as I felt.
The last Briar we’d known had tried to skewer him with living roots and bleed his insides into a pool in the hopes of opening a gateway to a world that would apparently see more Briars arrive.
Well, here was another one doing the friendly neighbor act.
Tabitha Briar offered Theo her hand, leaving him no choice but to shake.
“Welcome, ma’am,” he said. They shook quickly, and Theo discreetly wiped his hand behind his back.
Geraldine gestured at Bentley on her opposite side. “My other son, the spare . . . Bentley.”
Bentley stepped forward, took the new Briar’s hand, and raised it to his lips, like they do on one of those chivalrous movies.
Tabitha giggled. “Well, aren’t you dashing.”
“They’re a work in progress,” Geraldine sneered. “I’d have preferred a female, they are far more ruthless, frankly, but here we are.”
Geraldine Witherborne. Mother of the year.
Tabitha clicked her fingers, and the door of the car at the bottom of the steps opened. The man who climbed the steps had the same dull-eyed, empty expression as the rest of the staff at the Briar house. He also carried a wicker gift basket, the type with leather straps and buckles.
“A gift,” Tabitha said.
“Oh, how delightful,” Geraldine said, with zero delight. “Theo.”
Theo took the hamper and handed it straight back to me. I took it, because the other option was to stand there like an idiot, which I was already doing, but there was always room to be more of an idiot.
It seemed I probably wasn’t needed, so I took the gift basket inside and set it down on the nearest sideboard in the entrance hall, next to a vase of flowers taller than me. While the Witherbornes chatted with their new neighbor, I flicked open the buckles on the basket and lifted the lid.
Most people put gifts in gift baskets. Or maybe a quiche. Or wine. Packet of cookies, perhaps.
This one had a severed head.
I slammed the lid shut and looked around. Nobody had noticed. A little group of people chatted by the hat stand, drinks in their hands. A few more wandered through the hall, pay me no mind.