…
It was weird. This was so huge, she should be screaming or breaking down or…she didn’t know what. But something. Maybe she was too tired to react. Or maybe all the whiskey she had drunk was clouding her mind from the realities of what she was hearing. What she was seeing.
She’d probably have the screaming heebie-jeebies at a later date. Right now, there was something she wanted to know and she was guessing Ryan had all the answers.
“So tell me about Julie Foster.”
Ryan shoved his hands in his pockets. “What about her?”
“Come on, Ryan. Spill.”
Ryan glanced toward Christian who gave a small, almost imperceptible, nod. So Ryan had permission to tell her. A little flicker of anticipation woke inside her piercing the shroud of numbness encompassing her mind. But also a stab of disappointment. From the start, solving Julie’s murder had been the one thing that kept her going, allowed her to push her other worries to the back of her mind and do her job.
Now, she was about to learn the answers. What would she have to sustain herself then? She risked another quick glance at Ash. The anger seemed to have left him, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking, his expression impassive.
But at least Ash wasn’t a vampire. She knew that because of all the times he’d met her in the daytime. So he couldn’t be. He was Christian Roth’s father-in-law that must be his connection to this place. Though he must have been young when he had Tara. She’d thought him in his late thirties, but he had to be older than that.
“It was a vampire called Jack,” Ryan said, dragging her from her contemplation of Ash. “Piers killed him as well.”
Piers killed a lot of people. She’d been expecting it. Now she waited for some more, because that was nowhere near enough. Ryan remained silent and she frowned. “That’s it. That’s all I’m getting?”
“There’s not a lot more to get.”
She thought for a moment. “Was it the same person who took Jessica?”
“Yes.”
“And your friend Roz found her?”
“Yes.”
“Roz, the witch.” With a flash of shock, she realized that Roz was in all likelihood a real witch. “So Roz found Jessica and that’s what led you to this Jack character.”
“Not really.”
Christian spoke up. “We were already investigating Jack for another reason.”
“So you didn’t kill him for Julie but for this other thing?” It shouldn’t have mattered, but she wanted him to have died for Julie. She wanted justice for the girl whose life had been taken so callously.
“Both,” Christian said.
“Tell me something?” she asked. “I presume you have to feed. Do you kill your victims, Mr. Roth?”
A smile flickered across his face. “Call me, Christian, Detective. And we don’t need to kill our… food.”
“That didn’t answer my question.”
Christian considered her for a moment. Then the humanity bled from his face, and his silver eyes darkened. “Make no mistake, Faith, we are predators, and you are the prey. But I haven’t killed my food in over a hundred years. Does that answer you?”
She shook her head trying to dispel the image as he relaxed and once again, he was just a spectacularly handsome man. “I suppose.”
She picked up the rest of her sandwich and nibbled. She was feeling better. The painkillers had kicked in, the food had stopped her feeling so wobbly, and the whisky was a pleasant buzz in her brain. Something else occurred to her.
“Hey, wait a minute,” she said. “You’re being very free with your information.” Her eyes narrowed. “Let me guess, it doesn’t matter because you can look me in the eye and it will all vanish.”
Christian didn’t try to deny it. “Yes.”
“I really don’t like that idea,” she muttered.
“The alternative is you come to work with us.”
She’d thought she’d scuppered that idea and they wouldn’t want her after her involvement with Tara’s kidnappers. “So you do employ humans?” Of course they did. They’d employed Ryan and Ash.
“Not many. But we’re recruiting right now.”
“Why? What for? What’s changed?”
“Our role at the Order has always been to police the supernatural world. Occasionally, we do clean up jobs like your mother’s murderer. But our main emphasis has been on keeping the peace between the demons and the fae.”
It was like she’d been dumped in the middle of a fairy tale. “You’re kidding me right? Demons? And fae—you mean like fairies?”
“Yes. Until the Accords there were regular wars between the two and there was a danger that mankind would be destroyed. So the Accords were set up, and demons lived in the Abyss—”
“That’s like hell?”
Christian grinned. “It’s not so bad.”