Chapter 9
WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK WAS THAT?
LEVI
When I shuffled into the Flying Rowan Café a few minutes later, I wondered what the fuck I was doing.
I should go straight home. My eyes were gritty from lack of sleep.
My muscles ached after a night of staying alert and poised to act at a moment’s notice.
And my head felt like it was being squished under a giant’s foot.
What could I say? I was a creature of habit, and my body responded viciously to any deviation in my routine. It always had.
When I got to the front of the line, which wasn’t all that long considering I’d missed the morning rush, I handed Parker my travel mug.
It had a black bull with a speech balloon that said, “I like my coffee bull ack!” It’d been a gag gift from Carter.
He gave me a different bull or minotaur inspired mug every year.
Of course, Parker had picked up on the trend and thought I had a thing for cows, so he’d started getting me cow-related gifts, too.
Except Parker didn’t understand the context, or that Carter focused on either bulls or minotaurs.
So, now I had a herd of heifer and calf figurines, ornaments, and T-shirts that I didn’t know what to do with.
And that made Carter laugh even harder than he did at the look on my face when I opened his gifts.
“Morning,” I said gruffly. Despite how late it was, my voice wasn’t ready for conversation yet.
“Morning,” Parker said around a yawn as he handed me back my mug filled with coffee.
Our fingers brushed, and a shiver rolled over me.
I hated how I reacted to him when I knew I could never have him.
But my body was a slave to my attraction and refused to be swayed by reasonable arguments.
I held out my money, but he waved it away. “It’s on the house.”
I grunted. With the dark circles under his eyes, he looked as tired as I felt. A strange urge to throw him over my shoulder and carry him home so we could both get some rest swept over me. I clenched my hands around my mug so I wouldn’t reach for him.
Kidnapping a human was a sure way to get the hunters to come after me. I shuddered. They would never believe I only wanted what was best for him. Hell, Parker might not even listen to my explanation. Hauling people away without their express consent tended to be frowned upon.
“Thanks again, Levi, for helping me last night.” Parker clenched a dishtowel in his hand.
He shuffled along on the other side of the counter as if following me as I headed for the door.
One of his staff seemed confused as Parker stepped away, but the employee quickly took his place behind the cash register to take the next order.
I understood their confusion. Parker didn’t usually leave the counter.
He liked dealing with people, even first thing in the morning.
I didn’t understand it, but that was who he was.
So why was he acting out of character? I went on alert. My ears strained for wayward sounds. My eyes scanned the area for threats. Was someone back there, behind the counter, holding him at gunpoint?
“Is everything okay?” Then I mouthed, “Blink twice if you need help.”
“What? No. I’m fine.”
I relaxed a little at his quick assurance, but I didn’t let my guard down completely. Something was wrong, and I needed to fix it. I needed Parker to be safe and happy, like he always was. He wasn’t mine, but that didn’t matter. His happiness was what I cared about.
“So, what’s wrong?”
“Are you around later?” Pink stole over Parker’s cheeks as his gaze flitted to mine before darting away again.
I was wrong last night when I thought I’d been able to see the color of his blush in the shadows of the car. This was so much more intense. Would his skin be hot? I almost reached over the counter to find out.
His gaze darted to the corner of the café. I glanced over my shoulder to see what had caught his attention. Finley and Edith were huddled up at the far table in the corner. The old woman’s sharp eyes narrowed when she spotted me looking. I turned away quickly.
“Oh? ”
“I’ve been thinking about Nana,” Parker whispered, “and I think I might need some help. So, uh, can we talk?”
This might be the way in I’d been looking for. If Parker could shed some light on what was going on, we could develop a plan to get his cousin and his entourage to leave town and make sure they never came back. All without me having to get any closer to the hunters. Perfect.
“Uh, yeah. Come by the motel after you’re finished up here.”
Parker smiled, and I swore everything seemed brighter and lighter. “Thanks, Levi. I’ll be there around two.”
I grunted again, unable to find any words when faced with that smile.
Normally I’d retreat at this point, but Finley and Edith were here.
I was going to have to sit at one of those tables so I could watch them.
And then what? Would people come up and talk to me?
Would Parker? I wasn’t sure if that made the idea more appealing or less.
Then I saw Dillon. The hellhound was our town’s newest rookie cop, although he wasn’t in his uniform at the moment. He also sat on his own, which was strange. When he wasn’t working, he was rarely without his fire mage mate, Ash. So… Was he working or not?
Dillon’s plate was filled with spicy breakfast tacos—I could see the heaps of jalapenos from where I was standing.
There were a lot of them. When Parker had put that dish on the menu, I hadn’t expected anyone to order it.
But I should have known better. The hellhounds and the fire mage loved things that burned through a normal person’s stomach lining.
My insides ached just looking at all those peppers.
My gaze met the hellhound’s. He nodded at me and the flames of his beast flashed over his eyes. He lifted his eyebrow. There was meaning in his actions. Then I pieced it all together. It shouldn’t have taken me that long.
He was working. He was watching Fin and Edith.
Thank Magic.
Man, I must be really tired for it to have taken me that long to figure that out.
“Levi? Is something wrong?” Parker asked.
It was a fair question. I didn’t usually linger. It seemed we were all acting strangely today.
“Nope.” I charged for the door. I had to get out of there before I did something else that’d draw everyone’s attention.
I trudged home, finishing my coffee on the short walk to my century-old two story. On paper, the place seemed like a lot of space for one person, but that was exactly what I’d wanted.
I opened the front door. I hadn’t moved more than a few steps inside when the hairs on the back of my neck quivered.
Something was out of place.
I cast my gaze over the corridor leading from my front door into the living room. From here, I couldn’t see more than a few feet into my house because the maze-like configuration of my many, many shelves turned to the left beyond the threshold. But something was definitely wrong .
I inched forward to glance around the first corner.
A few years ago, a kid came to my door to sell cookies.
As soon as I’d opened the door, she’d peered in—like she was a thief-in-training and had been tasked with casing the place—and immediately labeled me a hoarder.
She regaled me with a thorough description based on some show she’d seen on TV until I forked over money for a box of cookies.
I wasn’t a hoarder. Not exactly. But I was a minotaur, and mazes made us feel safe.
My cousin had bought a whole warehouse to convert into a maze with his living spaces safely tucked away in the center.
My house didn’t offer quite that much room, but I worked with what I had.
And what I had were shelving units. Lots and lots of custom-built shelving units.
Some held books. Some held my miniatures.
And, most recently, I’d dedicated an area to my collection of minotaur and bull mugs from Carter and the cow-themed giftware I’d received from Parker.
At first glance, the floor-to-ceiling shelves appeared correct, but my gut said something was wrong. I scanned the shelves again. This area was dedicated to my first miniature pieces, where I tried to emulate scenes from famous paintings.
My gaze trailed over each piece. Wait. The edge of that one wasn’t quite parallel with the shelf.
It was a minor discrepancy, but when you dealt with miniatures, everything was minor.
If you weren’t paying attention, any not-quite-right addition to a project triggered something else to be out of sync, until the cumulation of minor problems had major impacts on whether a piece worked or not.
I studied the diorama that had caught my attention. Now that I was looking, I saw more problems. The paintings on the wall in my tiny version of Van Gogh’s The Bedroom were askew. One of the pillows on the bed was at the wrong angle. And a shutter was open ever so slightly more than it should be.
How had all that happened?
I considered the implications. It was almost as if someone had slid it out of place to see what was behind it and put it back without realizing the chaos they’d created. I slowly slid the scene from the shelf and peered behind it.
Everything was as it should be. Was I imagining this? No. I knew I wasn’t. I started to push the diorama back into place when a thin black rectangle about the size of my fingernail resting on the top of the box caught my eye.
What the?—?
It wasn’t mine, which meant someone had been in my house. Someone had touched my things. Someone had left something behind. It had to be a listening device.
Was this where Tammy and Kyle were last night? Or—I gulped—were the intruders still here? I couldn’t risk confronting them if they were.
I retreated as quietly as I could to the door. As soon as I was outside, I galloped to my car. I dove into the front seat. In the next minute, I was gunning it to the police station.