8. Eight
EIGHT
Lex sniffed me when I got back inside, but said nothing.
I searched for a way to separate myself from the others gracefully. I was normally good under pressure. Today, my mind was a total blank. Just as I was about to say something stupid, Lex grabbed the back of my neck.
If I were human, I would have cried out in pain. I was half-vampire, so I just glared at him.
“We’re going to do some research,” he announced. “Right now, I can’t scent a human in here other than the ones who died. That’s strange.”
“Totally strange,” I said dumbly.
“We need to tap some contacts and see what we come up with,” he continued. “Someone should video the entire house, top to bottom, so we have it for a record.”
“We can do that,” Jack offered. “We have the equipment with us.” He paused a beat, his eyes skittering between us. He was suspicious, but he didn’t call us on our sudden departure announcement. Instead, he glanced at Barry, then nodded. “Are you guys okay to get back on your own?”
“No problem,” Lex replied. “It’s probably faster to walk anyway.”
I smiled at Charlie, who didn’t look suspicious in the least — she was far too trusting — and offered a chin bob for Barry’s benefit. Then I let Lex lead me out through the front door.
“You smell like bounty hunter,” Lex hissed when we hit the sidewalk.
I wriggled out of his grip and swung around. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied.
As I said it, Knox detached from a brick wall two houses down and strode to the center of the sidewalk, where he planted his hands on his hips and glared. “Are you going to make me wait all day?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Your timing sucks,” I groused.
Lex looked at Knox, and I could practically hear the gears in his mind working.
“Knox’s mother might know something,” I volunteered, desperate to make sure they didn’t start throwing punches. They were both big and strong. I had no idea which would come out victorious if they came to blows. “She sent him over here to sniff around.”
“Sniff around,” Lex muttered, shaking his head. “Are you going with him?”
I nodded. “I want to talk to his mother. Apparently something similar happened fifty years ago. I want to know more about it.”
Lex did the math in his head. “Your mother would have been a child.”
“She still knows things,” Knox replied. He didn’t move closer, seemingly respecting the invisible boundary Lex had thrown up. “Funny how that works.”
Lex grimaced before looking at me. “Do you think this is smart? What if it’s a trap and he wants to kill you?”
“If that was his goal, my guess is that he would have picked a different way to approach me. Hiding in the backyard of a murder house on the off chance I might stop by doesn’t strike me as a good strategy.”
“What if he takes advantage of his good luck now that he’s getting you alone?”
“I don’t want to kill her,” Knox complained. “I don’t even want to take her with me. She’s the one insisting.”
“If you don’t want to take her, walk away,” Lex shot back.
“I can’t. She threatened to follow me, and my mother will not be happy if she shows up claiming I ditched her. My mother is a real stickler for manners.”
I could see that, and it made me grin.
Lex didn’t smile back at me. “I don’t like it,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. “This guy has a shady reputation.”
“Oh, give me a break,” Knox growled. “How many women have you slept with and dumped this month? Heck, this week?”
“That doesn’t make me shady,” Lex argued. “It makes me virile.”
“Did your mommy tell you that?”
Lex took a menacing step toward Knox, his hands fisted at his sides. I stopped him with a hand on his chest and darted a worried look to the cottage that was still considered an active crime scene.
“Don’t,” I warned in a low voice. “I can take care of myself. If something happens, I know you’ll avenge me. I can always count on you for that, right?”
Lex grew even more morose, if that was possible. “I don’t find that funny.”
“I’m fine.” I meant it. I wasn’t afraid of Knox. Lex was just posturing at this point. “I need to know what his mother has to say. She’s … wise.”
In truth, I really liked Knox’s mother. I’d warmed up to her right away, rare for me. Even if I didn’t like Alice Cullen, however, I’d still make this trip. “We need information,” I reminded him. “This could just be the beginning.”
Lex worked a muscle in his jaw. “I’m going to ask around,” he said. “I’ll go to the congregation and see if anyone has any information.”
Wolf shifters had packs. Shark shifters had shivers. Gator shifters had congregations. They were all packs essentially. No one wanted to share the word for some reason.
“I’ll be in touch,” I promised. “I’ll text you when I get there and when I leave.”
“What if you never leave? What if they decide to keep you forever?”
It was a ludicrous question and yet I grinned all the same. “Then you and Toni will have to find some other glue to hold you together.”
“Please,” Lex snorted. “I’m going to forget her name the second you’re gone.” He seemed to realize what he’d said after the fact. “You need to stay safe.”
“I will,” I promised him, meaning it. “There’s absolutely nothing to worry about.”
KNOX WAS QUIET FOR MOST OF THE ride to his parents’ house in the Lower 9th Ward. No one ever used the “lower” part when referring to it amongst locals. I allowed him to stew until he pulled onto the street where his parents lived.
I didn’t spend a lot of time in the 9th Ward. It had a specific reputation. Not only was it overrun with shifters, there was a criminal element in the neighborhood that made me antsy.
It wasn’t their fault. The people who lived in the 9th Ward didn’t have much money. Tourism never touched the neighborhood. When there was a natural disaster, a hurricane or tornado, they were always the first to lose power and the last to get it back.
Most of the money in the city was funneled into the French Quarter, Uptown, CBD, and the Garden District.
The other neighborhoods snagged their piece of the pie, but on a lower tier.
The 9th Ward and a few other neighborhoods were dead last and got almost nothing.
That created the sort of bitterness that couldn’t be overlooked.
Knox’s parents, Alice and Craig, had a lovely home in the middle of all that bitterness. As far as I could tell, they didn’t have attitude about their neighborhood suffering the way it did. They were the rare type who were determined to help, not just sit around and complain.
What I couldn’t understand was how Knox fit into the family. Alice was a happy woman, one with a unique ability. Knox always seemed sullen.
“Do you do whatever your mother asks?” I said when he killed the engine of his truck.
He gave me a dubious sidelong look. “Don’t you?”
I shook my head. “My parents … after my sister … .” I searched for the best way to explain it.
Knox’s eyes softened. “They changed after your sister went missing,” he guessed.
“In some respects they became more aware of our surroundings and were interested in the things my brother and I were doing,” I explained. “In other respects, the search for Holly consumed them.”
I could draw a line through my life. The disruptive element was Holly’s disappearance. When I explained my childhood, it was always prefaced with “before Holly died” or “after my sister went missing.” I’d never found it weird until I started to think about it as an adult.
“I’m sorry.” Knox looked appropriately contrite.
“I really am. That sucks. I can’t imagine having to grapple with something like that.
” He took a deep breath. “My mother, however, has always been present. She was always involved in the things Dalton and I did growing up. Even when she thought what we were doing was stupid, she was always there. I feel I owe her the same.”
When he talked about his parents, it was with the type of respect I couldn’t muster for mine. I loved them, don’t get me wrong, but I didn’t labor under the delusion that they had done right by me or my brother, Miles, after Holly’s disappearance. We’d all been casualties of that day.
“What stupid things did you and Dalton do to embarrass her?” I asked to lighten the mood.
“I didn’t say we embarrassed her.”
“Oh, come on. We both know what you weren’t saying.”
Heaviness hung between us in the truck, and it reminded me of being pressed so close to him behind the storage building.
“I was always a genius.” He grinned and winked before pushing open his door. “Come on. My mother will give me grief for not bringing you directly inside, where it’s comfortable.”
I smirked as I followed him out of the truck. “She’s got you on a short leash, huh?”
“I don’t know why you’re pretending you don’t like it,” he complained. “You’ve only spent an hour with her and you think she’s the best mother in the world.”
I thought about my mother and how she’d become a different person twenty years ago. “She just might be,” I conceded on a half-smile.
Knox looked momentarily caught, as if he realized he’d said the wrong thing. He opened his mouth, then shut it. “Come on. I have no idea what my mother is about to tell us, but it’s going to be a good story.”
“How do you know if you’re not familiar with the story?”
He shrugged. “That’s one of her gifts. She’s an amazing storyteller.”
Alice bustled around the small kitchen — you could fit the entire Cullen kitchen in my parents’ pantry, which was empty of anything more than snacks for my niece and nephew — when we entered.
“Took you long enough.” She pinned Knox with a stern look before focusing on me. “You’re forgiven because you brought this luscious creature for dinner.”
“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt your barbecue,” I said quickly. “Knox just said you might have some information about the killing today.”
“Nonsense.” Alice shook her head. “We’re having a family barbecue. Of course you’re staying.”
“A family barbecue signifies it’s just for family,” I countered.
“Not here.” She almost looked amused. “A family barbecue is for the entire neighborhood when you live here.”