“Then you understand that absorbing these sorts of things is a steady diet for me and my friends.”
“Okay, I get the paranormal bit. I do. I get the accident bit, too. But the other-realm thing—Shamalot? A prince? An ogre? Fairies? A castle?”
Her lovely face turned sour when she wrinkled her nose at him. “Is that really any more difficult to believe than you being accidentally bitten and turned into a bear? A bear? Please, Cormac. Surely you’re past the stage of disbelief if you’ve been living with this for three years.”
He rubbed the spot where his finger had once been and grimaced. “Point taken. Look, I know I’m being pretty ornery here, but I’ve been on guard day and night since this whole thing with Toni’s ex-thug of a boyfriend went down. How am I supposed to just trust that you people even know Toni, let alone can help me when no one else will? Not the police, not anyone? I think it’s only fair that if I have to see your side of things, you should have to at least take mine into consideration.”
She slapped her thigh and finally smiled, lightening the vibe of the room in an instant. “Fair enough. But I do have proof we know Toni.”
He sat up straight, wary but all ears. “Via a crystal ball straight from Castle Nantucket?”
Wanda pursed her lips, very clearly not enjoying the joke as she scooped Lenny up and rubbed her nose against his white head. “Castle Beckett, Funny Man. I’ll let that slide for now and just tell you, I know something no one else but you and Toni and one other person in the world knows.”
Now she had his attention—but… “How do I know you didn’t beat it out of her? Maybe hack off her finger the way Stas and his goons hacked off mine to get her to talk?”
Wanda got that eye of the tiger again when she looked at him. “You don’t. There’s a modicum of trust we’re going to have to lend each other here. Once you get to know me—know us—you’ll see how utterly absurd that statement is regarding my two yappy friends and myself. But I also think you’re going to have to take a stab at logic here. Why, if we wanted to kill you, aren’t you already dead? That, you can either take or leave.” She smoothed her hand over her snow pants and re-crossed her legs, cool as a cucumber, and waited.
According to some of those ebooks he’d read, he should at least be able to sense whether she was being truthful. But that’s what he got for putting stock in romance novels because they were the only pseudo guide on the web with anything even remotely like his own very real-life trauma. His choices had turned out to be very slim.
Leaning back, now Cormac crossed his feet at his ankles as Lenny wound his tail around them and said, “Okay, show me your proof.”
“You have a tattoo.”
Cormac lifted an eyebrow, keeping his face passive. “Do I?”
“You do. Toni told us she only knows about it because your best friend Damon never lets you live down that night of infamy and takes every opportunity to razz you about it.”
Shit. Maureen. Aka Mo. His first love. The first love he’d lost, and after seven or eight beers, he’d drunkenly memorialized his love for her with a tattoo. With all sorts of declarations about how he’d never love anyone the way he loved Mo, he’d demanded his friend, Damon, take him to a tattoo parlor where he had her name glorified in ink.
On his left ass cheek.
“And what do you know about Damon and this tattoo?”
“I know it’s your ex-girlfriend’s name on your left butt cheek and you got it in a drunken tattoo parlor run after Mo broke up with you.”
That still didn’t prove anything. “How do I know you didn’t force Toni to tell you something so personal?”
“Are you denying Mo’s name is on your ass?”
He squirmed in his chair at the memory of that damn night when he was just twenty-one and drunk on what he was sure was love. “I can neither confirm nor deny.”
“Then I believe we’re done. Now, do you want help catching Stas and having him thrown in jail, where he can rot for eternity, so you can see your sister again? Or would you prefer we take our leave?”
Suddenly, he didn’t know. He was so busy keeping his guard up, so used to being alone, aside from the fact that he was unsure they were telling the truth, he didn’t know if he could even accept help anymore. Besides, how could these women help him catch someone who had the entire Jersey police department in his pocket?
“Surely, as those wheels in your mind turn, you’re not doubting our ability to help you, are you? It was you I took down like a tree in the forest, wasn’t it?”
Now he gave her a sheepish grin. “You’re pretty tough. I’ll let you have that.”
“Times two if you include Marty. Add in the other forces we have at work for us, and we’re a pretty damn good team to have on your side. I wish Nina could help as well, but like I said…” She sighed forlornly. “Marty wasn’t joking when she was taunting Nina about chewing her face off. Nina was a formidable foe.”