Page 65 of Blood and Bonbons

“Exactly. If membership is that exclusive, what was Miles doing with coordinates to it? Something is definitely up with that place. I have to get inside to find out.”

I willed my hands to stay on the steering wheel and not strangle my best friend. “Let’s focus on getting the door fixed first. We’ll talk to Cross tomorrow.”

“Did you hear back from the pawnshop guy about his coin?”

“I haven’t looked at my messages.” I pulled out my phone and saw a text waiting. “Looks like the collector is interested. The pawn shop guy isn’t saying how much he’s thinking, only that the collector wants to inspect the coin himself.”

“Wasn’t he supposedly out of town?”

I shrugged. “I’ll text back and see when the collector wants to meet.”

I knew I might not get an answer until the morning. However, the pawn guy responded within minutes.

“He wants to meet up tomorrow morning at the pawn shop. Seven o’clock, before it opens.” I glanced at Vena. “That’s not suspicious at all.”

She nodded, scanning the shadowed street around us.

“It means that coin’s worth a lot more than they’ll want to admit. Too bad there’s no way to contact Lord Fangs-a-lot to confirm the meetup. Don’t answer the text right away. Let’s see how long it takes him to send you another text.”

It took five minutes. Vena whistled a low sound.

“I wonder how many of those coins Cross has,” she said. “I might need to start being nicer to him.”

I kept my doubt she’d be able to manage that to myself and responded to the message that I wouldn’t be able to confirm the time until my friend got back to me.

A truck pulled up behind us a few minutes later. Anchor got out and waved at us. Vena was out of the car before I even opened my door.

“I knew you’d come through for us,” she said, smiling up at him. “What do you have there?”

He held up a plastic package with a new door knob.

“I wasn’t sure how yours was broken, so I figured I’d bring a replacement to be safe.”

“Wow. That’s a big knob. I bet it’ll feel good in my hands when I give it a twist.”

My mouth dropped open, and Anchor, the poor guy, surprised me by looking down at the knob as he blushed. Vena’s grin widened. She loved the bashful ones. According to her, hot and bashful was unicorn level.

“Anchor, thank you so much for helping us out,” I said. “Please ignore everything coming out of Vena’s mouth. Her filter is broken.”

He tugged at his earlobe and glanced at the house. “I’ll look at the door.”

“Please.” I gestured for him to go first and, when his back was turned, elbowed Vena hard.

“Ow,” she whispered.

“Too much,” I whispered back.

“But look at him.”

I glanced at Anchor as he crouched in front of the door.

“All that sexy is begging for my attention,” she whispered.

“Niceattention. Not bend over and hold your ankles so I can molest you without lube attention.”

Vena’s face went completely blank; then she burst out laughing so hard a dog started barking three doors down.

“I can’t believe you just said that,” she wheezed. “That was freaking hilarious.”

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