Page 5 of Roses and Murder
Yeah, Neco had never been much of a hugger. I think he understood me breaking his nose better than the three of them hugging him. I understood them hugging me most of the time. We were together, and they liked touching. I just didn’t know why they got drunk, left Guttertown, and were hugging us both now.
“Mom had better not be working the tavern alone or I’m taking away your taste tester privileges and no sex.”
“We closed after you left. No one is working the tavern,” Ollie slurred.
“You closed the Whispering Raven all day? What the fuck, Ollie?”
Ollie grabbed me and crushed me to his chest. I could barely breathe.
“We were so scared after we found out you left to meet your father. And then you didn’t come back when you were supposed to with the cure. You wouldn’t have been gone that long unless something bad happened.”
Yeah, I got why they were scared, but they were also raising a big red flag around my mortal enemy. I didn’t need Neco Argent looking into why they panicked so hard.
Then again, I was keeping a pretty big secret for him, too. I still didn’t want him finding out I was a girl.
Lucy would be pissed I shut the tavern down all day. Like angrier than the drunks who were pounding on the door all day because we were drinking and we wouldn’t let them in. Probably madder than Petunia if you tried to hitch her to the cart without bribing her first.
Lucy could probably hit harder than that donkey could kick. Petunia never kicked me, but I’d brawled with Lucy before when I thought I was settling something man to man. If she took five minutes to understand we were all legitimately terrified, she might not beat our arses in the fancy part of town.
Neco was watching this go down like those fancy plays they did in this part of town. I always wanted to see one, but the most entertainment I got was when horny old Edna decided herhusband wasn’t giving it up enough, so she tried her hand at the tavern and then he showed up drunk to fight off anyone who might be desperate enough to take her up on it.
Shit. Lucy didn’t want Neco to know. Neco was always observant even before he started getting away with murder. And something was up with Neco. When he cut someone out, he fully cut them out. He didn’t talk to them and he didn’t even look at them. He mostly avoided Lucy, but even when they were yelling at each other, he barely looked at her.
He was looking now. He was staring right at her, and that was just something he didn’t do. He didn’t look at Ronan either until he drew for Rowena’s birthday. Something happened. Neco’s nose was broken and both his eyes were turning black.
Lucy had a mean right hook, but Neco had been trained by Panas and thought she was a man. Lucy could kick my arse, but she wouldn’t have landed a blow on Neco or Beck unless they let her. They were better trained than the Nestran military, but the Barons looked down on the Jagged Key Isles people, so they thought their culture was inferior. The Jagged Key Isles folks thought the Barons were rich ponces, so they probably wouldn’t have trained their people on anything.
Ronan noticed, too, and the arsehole poked me because he was also drunk. Ronan wanted gossip, and that was my job. Lucy would tell us what happened while she was gone, but only Neco could tell us why he was looking at Lucy now.
Beck told me what happened last time he tried to get Neco to talk about Lucy and yeah, that wouldn’t work with me. Neco might be stabbing people, but he wasn’t really violent, and he’d never been a bully. He never started anything with anyone, but he’d step in to finish it if needed.
Neco wouldn’t spar with me like he did with Beck because it wasn’t a fair fight. I could handle most drunken fights andtossing people, but I couldn’t handle anyone with Jagged Key Isle training.
So, yeah, I was the silver tongue of the group, but Beck spoke Neco’s language, so I was nominating him for that. I was pretty sure my girlfriend was also going to kick my arse for closing the tavern.
No point in also getting it kicked by Neco.
Ihonestly just wanted to go home, give Mom this half remedy, and deal with her utter disappointment at what I did. I had three very drunk boyfriends to deal with. And I couldn’t even get that angry with them when I saw how terrified they were. If I hadn’t been so scared about losing Mom, I might have been more concerned about my own safety.
Because it finally hit me—the reason they were so terrified. It wasn’t against the law to pretend to be a different gender, even outside of Guttertown. It was looked down on outside Guttertown. They’d try to beat it out of you, but there was no law against it.
But no one had ever tried to get out of the Baron’s blackmail by doing that and the Barons overstepped the king all the time.They could make it a law by taking my head for the deception. They liked to pretend they were the smartest men in the realm and they didn’t take kindly to people making them look like fools.
Even though technically forcing me out of a business I owned and was good at, to work at the brothel while giving them most of my earnings made them look much worse.
Fuck.
Neco was being weird, and he had been watching everything. And I knew that look on his stupid face. There was no reason for them to shut down the tavern and get that drunk over me joining the army.
We weren’t at war. The shifters didn’t seem to want another one. At most, I’d be cracking heads when the Barons wanted to bully someone or collect their stupid taxes. I got why they were scared, but if Neco hadn’t been lurking, he never would have seen it.
“Come on. You’re sleeping at my place tonight, so I can sober you up. You owe me, so you get to be my buffer when Mom tries to murder me for going to my father.”
Neco was staring, and he cocked an eyebrow at me. Fuck me. He was going to start digging and I couldn’t avoid him like I usually did. I needed his help to catch the Ghoul. He’d helped by dragging me with him to Trevils so I could find out about the crime scenes, but if I really wanted to understand it, I needed to talk to another killer.
And I hated Neco Argent, but I also missed him. He hated me, too, and there wasn’t much I could do about that.
Ihad so many questions for my old friends. And now that I knew Lance wasn’t my half-brother, I wanted back in. I didn’t feel left out before because it was my choice to walk away. I had a mission, and I didn’t want to put them in danger.
