Page 19 of Incubus with Benefits
It felt like I’d reviewed hours and hours of footage, even though I’d only been in here for twenty minutes. So far, I’d confirmed that no one touched my drink, so the idea that someone had drugged me was out. That left a magic spell.
I stretched and rubbed my eyes before scrolling the video feed back to the hallway to the bathrooms again. I hadn’t left the VIP area much last night, and somehow, I doubted a spell could’ve hit me while I’d been surrounded by my friends. With three witches and an incubus, I was sure one of us would’ve noticed.
So I focused on the times I’d gone to the bar or the bathroom.
A pair of witches walked past the camera, laughing, their magic trailing behind them like glitter. Then for a long time… nothing. Just an empty hallway. I checked the time stamp again, but time kept passing. About two minutes later, Penny and I stepped into the hallway.
I followed us all the way to the bathroom.
Then because something felt off, call it intuition, I checked some of the other angles. Sure enough, a man in nondescript black clothes had walked into the hallway before we had. I went back to the other view and rewound the footage.
It was hard to ignore the giant bear breathing down my neck. Nathan was supposed to be watching the rest of the screens which played the current footage, while I reviewed the videos from yesterday on one of the monitors, but I kept feeling his eyes on me. But then again, I might’ve rubbed him the wrong way when we first met.
Julian had assured me that if there was anything in the feeds from yesterday, Nathan would have found it, but I insisted on checking myself. That probably hadn’t sat well with the bear shifter. But I hadn’t meant to imply that he’d done a bad job. I just wanted to see things with my own eyes.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as I rewatched the two minutes again, Stopping every few seconds to check frozen screen for any residual artifacts.
“I think some of the footage is missing.”
Nathan leaned in, his shoulder brushing mine. “That camera’s been glitchy lately.”
I frowned. “Glitchy? How?”
“Static bursts. Lag. Sometimes it skips a few seconds.” He shrugged. “We’ve been meaning to replace it. We have another one pointed at the entrance just in case.”
He brought up the same camera I’d found with the guy walking into the hallway. But all it got was the back of the man’s head.
I scrolled through the feeds again, wondering if I could catch the guy’s face from another angle either before or after he’d gone into the hallway.
“What are you looking for?” Nathan asked. “I can help you.” He leaned, took my mouse, and started fast-forwarding through the footage. “You don’t have to watch it second by second,” he said. “Just skip ahead until something interesting pops up.”
A blur of black flickered across the screen. I blinked. “Wait. Go back. What was that?”
He clicked over to a screen of a man in a dark gray uniform. “That’s just the janitor. He’s here every night.”
“Even the nights the other two witches went missing?” I knew I sounded unfairly suspicious, but I wasn’t leaving any stone unturned.
Nathan’s eyes narrowed, his posture stiffening. “Listen. We had nothing to do with that,” he said, voice edged with defensiveness. “I thought you were on our side. Julian said you were here to figure out what happened last night. Does he know you’re prying into shit you know nothing about?”
I raised both hands. “I don’t think Delerium or Julian’s involved,” I clarified. “I’m just trying to make sense of everything, that’s all.”
“Did the cops put you up to this?” He adjusted his headset like it was suddenly too tight.
“What? No!” Crap. I really shouldn’t have brought up the other witches. I considered using my talent to calm him down, but if there were any enchantments in this room that flagged magic use, it’d only make things worse. He’d think I was trying to control him.
“Are you from Starling’s coven?” he snapped. “Did her father put you up to this? Fake a spell, seduce Julian with your magic, and get access to the videos so you can pin all this on me?”
Starling? Her coven? Her father. And pin it on him? Starling must be one of the missing witches. The name didn’t ring any bells though, so it must be a nickname. Did that mean Nathan had been close to one of the missing women?
“I don’t—”
He crossed his arms again. “Go ahead. Comb through the feed. You won’t find anything. Because I had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m not sent by anyone,” I finally managed to say.
Nathan was still glaring at me when the door creaked open and Julian stepped in. His eyes swept the room, landing on me with that hungry look that made my stomach flip. But it disappeared the moment he sensed the tension in the room.
Julian raised a brow. “Everything okay, Nate? I came the moment you called.”
