Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The Library Was Alarmingly Tense
Gideon
I hadn’t planned on attending the brewers’ panel, but it was the perfect opportunity to have all the brewmasters in one place so I could ask them some questions.
The panel was set up in the library’s meeting room.
It was normally used for hosting book clubs and community meetings, but this was the first event since the pipes had burst and they had to close it for repairs.
It looked nice, but it still smelled like fresh paint.
Most of the people attending probably wouldn’t even notice.
For this event, the room was set up with rows of folding chairs facing a long table at the front.
A banner that said Get Hopped Up: Meet the Brewers! hung on the wall over the table.
I arrived twenty minutes early. Not because I was eager to hear Roy Pruitt discuss the merits of cold fermentation, but because I wanted to see who else arrived early, and why, and how they arranged themselves in the room.
The chairs were already maybe a third full.
Festival-goers, mostly—a few couples, some older men who looked like they knew what they were talking about, and a woman in the back row with a notebook already open.
I noted her without looking at her directly.
She was probably a journalist or maybe a blogger. They had the same energy.
I found a spot along the side wall where I could see both the entrance and the panel table. I wasn’t going to sit.
“You look like a bodyguard.” Azar materialized beside me with a glass of water.
“You’re supposed to be at your bookstore,” I said. Most of the stores in town were staying open later than usual this week, hoping to capitalize on the festival crowd. Besides, it wasn’t like Az to attend something like this, so I wondered what he was doing here.
“Sandy is watching the bookstore.” He took a leisurely sip of water. “Sandy’s very responsible.”
“Sandy was trying to convince a tourist that the history section was ‘basically the same as fantasy’ just a few days ago.”
“And he wasn’t wrong.” Az tilted his head toward the crowd. “How is our winner this evening?”
“He’s here,” I said, pointing over to where Nadia and Roy were standing over in the corner.
They were having a pretty intense conversation.
She was doing all the talking while she adjusted his collar, getting him all ready for his big moment.
He nodded and blew out a long breath. He turned and took his spot at the table in front of the room.
Az studied Roy for a moment, looking at something only he could see. “He’s worried about something.”
I’d thought the same thing. Roy was normally good at putting on an affable performance, back slapping, telling jokes, and laughing in all the right places, but there was something different today. He was still smiling and laughing, but none of the smiles reached his eyes.
“The Beckett situation,” I said.
“Mm.” Az didn’t disagree. “Or something else entirely. Worry has a specific scent. His is layered.”
That was the thing about demons. They didn’t just smell emotions. They read them in ways I didn’t understand but for sure appreciated.
Tessa Morland took her seat at the table next and seemed completely unbothered. She had her silver-streaked hair pinned up against the heat. She looked more relaxed than Roy did, which made sense. Third place with a clean conscience sat easier than first place with a complicated one.
Ivan entered from the side door. I should’ve known he wouldn’t be able to stay away, but I’d hoped.
He took a seat right in the front row, looking furious.
I wasn’t sure why he was here. He’d promised Declan and Elwood that he’d give them time to investigate, and hopefully, he would keep his word.
It couldn’t have been easy for him, knowing there was something wrong with the contest results and not saying anything.
Hopefully, Declan would know more when he and Elwood finished with the growlers.
Az finished his water and set the glass on the nearest empty chair. He looked at me sideways. “Something else is bothering you.”
“This whole situation is bothering me.”
“No, something specific.” He tilted his head. “Something you haven’t said out loud yet.”
The thing about having a demon for a best friend was that lying to him was technically possible but not particularly efficient.
“What makes this community work is that we all follow the rules. We all treat each other respectfully, even if we aren’t the same type of supe, and here we are just a few weeks after a vamp was murdered and some rogue witch is out there hexing people. I just don’t like it.”
“I hear you on that.” He accepted that in the easy way he accepted most things. He looked around and then said, “I figured Arthur would be here. First big event in the meeting room and all.”
I might not be a demon and have his spooky ability to read people, but even I could tell that wasn’t as casual a comment as it sounded.
I shrugged. “He was here when I got here. I think I heard him tell Leon he would be back in the children’s area if he needed anything.”
Az rolled his eyes. “I’m sure he is. That’s where bad habits start, you know. The other day, one of those little rugrats actually said he preferred the library to my store, if you can believe that. Said the librarian encouraged them to touch the books, of all things.”
I held back a chuckle. The feud of sorts between my best friend and our local librarian had been going on for a while now. Truth was, I didn’t think Az disliked the human as much as he insisted he did.
He let out a little huff and straightened up off the wall. “I should probably go relieve Sandy before he sells someone a ghost tour that doesn’t exist.” He paused. “Although, given what lives in this town, it could.”
Once he left, I turned my attention back to the panel table.
The moderator was one of the librarians, Luella Quayle. She thanked everyone for coming and introduced the brewers in order of placement, which meant she introduced Roy last and with the most enthusiasm.
Ivan didn’t react. He just took a drink of his water, but I had a feeling his calm demeanor was a mask for what was coming later.
The questions from the crowd were what you’d expect. How long have you been brewing? Do you use local ingredients? How long does it take you to make a batch?
As a pub owner, I found the questions interesting and was actually enjoying them when movement off to the left caught my attention.
A tiny little shadow detective was sticking his head out from behind the open door.
I rolled my eyes and bit back a laugh. It appeared Eugene was really getting into his new role.
The panel was going pretty smoothly until someone asked, “What inspired your recipe?”
Roy glanced nervously at where Beckett was sitting in the crowd.
He was obviously prepared for his former apprentice to cause trouble, but all Beckett did was scoff loudly before muttering, “What inspired them? Nothing did. They’re mine,” under his breath so that no one with normal hearing would’ve made out the words, but I did.
Roy looked at Nadia, and she gave him a reassuring nod, then he gave what sounded like a practiced answer about the aroma and some ale he’d bought in the city that he’d thought was missing something.
After that, Malcolm asked him what he was going to do with the prize money, which wasn’t a surprise since Malcolm had mentioned needing the money.
“I’m going to expand Black Feather Brewery. I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time, but the money just wasn’t there. Thanks to this distribution deal from Kettlebrook, it is. It’ll take most of the prize money, but it’ll be worth it. I believe in my brewery, and I believe in Ravenstone.”
Everyone applauded at that. Well, not everyone.
Roy’s friend Fletcher, the one who’d been trying to get his attention the day of the competition, stood up from the back row and stalked out the door.
My wolf went on alert at the anger that was rolling off him as he stormed by us.
Most of the time, he wouldn’t even notice, or if he did, I wouldn’t be able to tell.
But we were getting close to the full moon, and for some frustrating reason, I could always feel him closer to the surface at that time.
Wolf shifters weren’t like werewolves of lore. We shifted at will, not at the moon, or at least those who could shift did. Yet it was almost like the pull of the moon called to my dormant wolf.
"Sounds like you have big plans.” Ivan’s tone pulled me out of my musing and brought my attention back to the panel. I could tell by his posture and his stance that there was no congratulations coming. “So tell us. Just what are the lengths you'd go to win?"
And yep. There it was. I sighed. I knew he wouldn’t be able to just sit there.
Roy got an outraged look on his face, and I was afraid the whole event was going to blow up, but Luella stepped forward. She was used to dealing with rowdy teens, so she wasn’t about to let a couple of grown men get out of control.
“That’s all of the time we have for our winner. We want to give time to our other fabulous brewers, as well. Does anyone have any questions for our second-place winner, Mr. Donny Pace?”
Donny Pace was polished in a different way, like someone who was used to attention. He answered a few questions and managed to say, artisanal process twice in three minutes.
Tessa was the most straightforward. She talked about her blackberry wheat with the same directness she probably used explaining glazing techniques, and the crowd liked her for it.
I listened with half my attention and used the other half to watch the room.
That was when Sandy appeared at my elbow wearing one of his festival t-shirts. This one said Beer Necessities and had a picture of a bear drinking a beer.
He was slightly out of breath and holding two paper cups of something that smelled aggressively of cinnamon. His turquoise hair was doing something complicated on one side that suggested he’d been moving quickly through a crowd.
“Where’s Declan? I brought him a coffee,” he announced.
“That isn’t coffee.”
“It has coffee in it.” He held out one of the cups like that settled the matter.
“I’m trying to convince Rue to branch out now that she’s the only place in town that serves coffee.
She agreed to try a cinnamon cardamom thing, but before she puts it on the menu, she wanted opinions from people with sophisticated palates. ”
“Well, he’s tied up in a project with Elwood. He’ll be here when they’re done.”
“Oh.” His face fell. Then it brightened again. “You can try it. It won’t be hot if I wait to give it to him, so it won’t be an accurate test.”
I took the cup and looked at it. “At least it isn’t one of those weird concoctions Lily used to make when she had the Witch’s Brew. I don’t miss those at all.” I sighed and took a sip. It was actually not bad. “I bet Declan would like this.”
“I’ll get him one later.” He grinned and sipped his own. “Az said you’re doing the watching thing.”
“I’m always doing the watching thing.”
“Yeah, but he said you’re doing the serious version.” Sandy positioned himself beside me and looked at the panel with the studied concentration of someone who’d decided to be helpful and was going to commit to it entirely. “Which one is the one that matters?”
“Define matters.”
“The one that feels off.”
I looked around the room, starting with our panel. Roy, eating up the attention. Donny, polished. Tessa, genuine. Then I glanced at the audience where Nadia, Malcolm, Ivan, and Beckett sat. “All of them, in different ways.”
Sandy nodded sagely, like this confirmed something. “Ivan hasn’t blinked very much. He looks like someone who’s been storing something up.”
“He’s had a difficult few days,” I said.
“Mm.” Sandy sipped his coffee. “The thing with his growler.”
“Exactly.”
The panel wrapped up with polite applause and the moderator’s reminder that the brewers would be available for the mix and mingle afterward. The crowd began shifting, some people moving toward the brewers, while others drifted toward the exit.
“I need to go talk to them,” I said.
“Separately or together?”
“Separately. And I need you to do something for me first.”
Sandy straightened slightly. “Yes.”
“I have most of the brewers in here that I need to talk to, but can you scope things out and see if there’s anything else I need to be aware of?
” I wanted to ask the brewers if they noticed anything unusual about the contest, but we might get lucky and find some new clues about the hex bag found at Ivan’s.
He was already scanning the room. “On it.”