Silver Kiss (19 page)

Her amber eyes flicked over me and rested on
Shannon. “Ms Ryan?” she asked.

Shannon stood to shake her hand. “Ms
Clayton. Nice to meet you.”

“
Moira, please.” Moira
turned to me. “And you must be Ayla.” She offered me her hand and I
shook it, wary without knowing why.

“
Well.” Eddie clapped.
“Formalities done. Let’s get down to business. Shannon, you spoke
to Molly Brady today, I gather?”

She nodded and sat down again, opening her
file and pulling out a sheet of paper covered with her illegible
notes. “I spent most of the morning with her and Tina. Molly still
claims to have no memory of what happened to her and she certainly
didn’t say anything that we can tie to the feral Ayla met.”

Met. Nice way of putting
it
. I stood behind Shannon to peer over her
shoulder, years of practice enabling me to decipher her scrawl.
“But she did give up the name of her dealer?”

Shannon nodded. “A wolf called Sly. No
surname. I expect whoever he is, he deals to all the wolves.”

“
And unless he’s going by
an alias, he’s not one of our Pack,” Moira said. “I’d assume an
alias, however, especially for a drug dealer. He’s probably got a
record already.” She bit her thumbnail, a meditative expression on
her sharp face. “Any clues as to where we can find this
Sly?”

“
Molly always met him in a
place called Happy Jack’s.” Shannon looked at the alphas. “Any
ideas?”

“
It’s a nightclub. Trashy,
nasty little cesspit. I’m not surprised Molly was hanging out
there.” Eddie scowled. His cat jumped back on his lap and mewled
shrilly, as if in agreement. “Well, that’s your starting place
then.”

“
You want Shannon and Moira
to go after this Sly?” I asked, gripping the back of Shannon’s
chair so hard the wood creaked under my fingers. “A werewolf drug
dealer?”

“
I’m not proposing they go
and corner him and shake him down, no.” Eddie stroked the cat until
it settled on his lap and started purring loudly. “But we need to
know who’s selling this Silver Kiss and it sounds like Happy Jack’s
is a good place to start.”

I shifted my weight, trying to control the
tide of irritation and worry rising in me. “Shouldn’t we send the
police in? I can’t see them appreciating us busting drug dealers on
their behalf.”

“
We’re not busting anyone,”
Eddie said with heavy patience, as if I was being deliberately
dense. “We’re…investigating. Shannon is a private investigator,
after all.”

“
And she’ll be perfectly
safe with me,” Moira added. She smiled. “I handled my fair share of
dealers in my time.”

Shannon twisted round in the chair to pat my
hand reassuringly. “I’ll be fine.”

“
Of course she will,” Eddie
agreed. “And you’ll be too busy to worry about her
anyway.”

“
Why?” I looked up from
Shannon’s sweet smile—the first real smile she’d given me
since
the argument
—to meet Eddie’s cool, calculating gaze. “What will I be
doing?”

“
Showing me where you
fought the feral.”

My stomach lurched. “You want me to take you
there?”

He nodded. “Me and a couple of other
alphas.” He wagged a finger at me. “You should have told us
immediately when you saw him in the city, Ayla. Especially when he
was bullying one of our cubs.”

I flushed. “I know.”

“
And after what happened to
you the other night—”

“
Who told you that?” I
demanded, clutching the chair again.
Pack
grapevine
. There was no bloody privacy in
this city.

“
Word gets around,” Eddie
replied. “Glenn couldn’t wait to tell Joel and Joel told his
parents, who told me.”

For a moment I wanted to throttle Glory,
even though Eddie’s source was no surprise. Glory and Joel told
each other everything and Joel’s parents were thick with the city
alphas. Still, it annoyed me that Glory had turned our fight with
the feral into some juicy anecdote for Joel’s entertainment.
“Great,” I said through gritted teeth. “When?”

“
Tomorrow night,” Eddie
said. “You remember the way, don’t you?”

The route was tattooed on my memory. “And
when are Moira and Shannon going after Sly?”

They exchanged looks. “I’d like to get
moving as soon as possible,” Moira said.

“
No time like the present,”
Shannon agreed. She looked to Eddie. “Will this place be open on a
Sunday night?”

Eddie shrugged. “Most places are these days.
Twenty-four hour drinking and everything.”

“
We’ll go,” Moira decided.
“Even if it’s quiet, we might find something.”

“
Can’t hurt,” Eddie agreed.
“We want this dealt with quickly. No more Molly Bradys.”

“
How was Molly?” I asked
Shannon as she stood, pulling on her coat.

“
She’s doing okay,” she
replied. “Tina’s smothering her a little, but she’s
okay.”

“
Do you think she’s telling
the truth about not remembering what happened?” Moira asked. “Or is
she lying?”

Shannon pursed her lips, considering.
“Honestly, I think she’s lying, but she was being very cagey
anyway, with Tina hovering over her. She didn’t want to say too
much in front of her mum. That’s the impression I got.”

“
Probably knows how fast it
would get around town if she did open her mouth,” I
muttered.

Eddie’s weather beaten face creased in
disapproval at my words. “Can I have a quick word in private,
Ayla?” he asked.

My spine stiffened. A private word with an
alpha was akin to being sent to the headmaster’s office. I was in
for a caning. Metaphorically speaking, I hoped. “Go on,” I told
Shannon when she lingered in the doorway, waiting for me. “I won’t
be long.”

She gave me a nervous smile and left the
cozy warmth of the living room, Moira behind her. The front door
slammed a few seconds later and Eddie sighed heavily. “I was really
pleased when you attended Lupercali, Ayla. It meant so much to your
parents to have you take that step, make your homecoming
official.”

“
It meant a lot to me too,”
I said, unsure where this was going, but not liking any of the
directions I could imagine. “I’m happy to be home
again.”

“
But I don’t get the
feeling you’re happy to be Pack again.” He scratched his cat’s head
and it closed its eyes in pleasure, drool dripping from its
whiskers. “You miss being a lone wolf?”

I chewed my lip, thinking over my answer. My
hesitation in itself was enough answer for Eddie. He nodded
knowingly. “Hard coming home, when you’re used to your freedom,
making your own rules,” he said. “I know. I wasn’t always old, you
know. I was young like you once, headstrong and sure I knew it all.
Knew better than my alphas.”

I opened my mouth to object to that, but he
waved me silent. “I know Pack life can seem stifling, Ayla,
especially after you’ve been out on your own. But you’ve only been
back five minutes and it would break your folks’ hearts if you took
off again.”

“
I know.” I did.
But…
“Shannon isn’t happy
here.”

“
I see.” He sounded like he
really did. He stared into the fireplace, watching the flames leap
and flicker around the kindling. “Well, you’ll either work it out
or you won’t. Go on, get off to this club with her.” He clucked his
tongue. “You won’t believe she’s safe unless you’re glued to her
side, will you?”

I ducked my head and
hurried out without a backwards glance. Eddie made it sound so
simple, like there was nothing to lose.
You’ll either work it out or you won’t
. Easy for him to say, with his quaint little cottage and fat,
drooling cat.

Shannon and Moira were waiting in our car;
Moira in the passenger seat, leaving me to slide in the back. I had
an odd sense of playing gooseberry, which I stomped on quickly.
Shannon met my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Everything okay?” she
asked.

“
Yeah, fine.” Even if Moira
hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have felt like discussing Eddie’s
homespun wisdom with Shannon just then. “So we’re off to Happy
Jack’s?”

“
If you’re okay with that,”
Shannon said. She wet her lips so they gleamed in the darkness. I
imagined pressing mine to them like I might have done if I wasn’t
worried she’d push me away. “I’d like you to come,” she
added.

“
Might make us look a bit
less suspicious,” Moira agreed. “From what I hear, Jack’s doesn’t
really cater to women my age.” She smiled ruefully.

I strapped on my seatbelt. “Let’s hit the
town then.”

***

Even for a Sunday, Happy Jack’s was busy, people and wolves packed
in at the bar, yelling to be heard over the offensively loud music.
The place was dark and dank, only a few wild strobe lights piercing
the gloom, illuminating the customers in dizzying flashes of red
and green. It was a pretty even mix of humans and wolves from what
I could tell, the earthy scent of Pack almost lost under the miasma
of body odor and cigarettes. The stink of Silver Kiss mixed with
stale beer and spirits hit me the second we stepped inside. I felt
dirty just stepping inside and the blend of overpowering scents
made my head spin and my eyes water.

I had to shriek at the dead-eyed barmaid to
get her attention over the thumping bass of the sound system.
Through a frustrating combination of hand gestures and more
screaming, I managed to get us three beers. By the time I had them
in hand, I just wanted to throw them at the woman. Moira took one
sniff of hers and growled in disgust.

“
Smells like cat piss,” she
muttered, pushing her glass away. I sipped mine cautiously and
decided she was probably right. Shannon didn’t even touch hers,
just sat on the sticky leather barstool, scanning the room
carefully.

“
Seen any clues?” I
bellowed in her ear.

“
No chance. This really is
a cesspit.”

Moira leaned across Shannon to ask me, “can
you smell that?”

No need to ask what she was talking about.
The scent of Silver Kiss was as familiar to me as Shannon’s perfume
by now, the smoke tangling around me like a net, clouding my senses
and making my head pound. I nodded, a keen sense of irritation
riding me. Why the hell had I agreed to come to this hole?

“
Mingle,” Moira ordered me.
“See if you can track down anyone who might be selling based on
their scent.”

Her brusque tone set my teeth on edge,
challenged my wolf. “And what will you be doing?” I asked
archly.

She glared at me, her own wolf rising up
behind her eyes. “Looking for clues,” she said coolly.
“Obviously.”

I itched to snap at her, show her I wasn’t
subordinate to her, even if she was an alpha and a bloody
ex-Scotland Yard detective. My wolf wouldn’t be submissive to her,
not when I knew full well I could take her in a fight, the old
mutt. I inhaled deeply, sucking in a lung full of tainted air,
heavy with Silver Kiss and alcohol fumes, and let Moira see I
wasn’t intimidated. I bared my teeth, the wolf in me close to the
surface and alive with the toxic emotions that had been eating at
me for the past two days.

Moira snarled back, eyes snapping with her
own anger. It was such a sudden shift in her mood that it threw me.
I’d been spoiling for a fight all day, but Moira had seemed so in
control just moments ago, unruffled and unfazed. I inhaled again,
doubting my own rage and its sudden intensity.

Shannon rested her hand on my knee. “Calm
down,” she warned me. “We’re all friends here, remember.”

I blinked, my vision suddenly hazy.
Shannon’s voice was a balm, soothing my irrational anger. I pushed
the wolf down with an effort. She wanted to be free, wanted to run
riot. I looked at Moira and saw the same internal struggle going
on. She shook her head, the fire leaving her eyes, and she laughed
sharply. “God, did we just get a contact high?”

“
Did we?” I scanned the
bar, picking out a few wolves who were smoking Silver Kiss. The
place was rank with it—the air heavy with the fumes. If anyone in
here was smoking the aconite mix, it was filtering into mine and
Moira’s lungs with every breath we took. How long did it take to
get addicted to a drug? Maybe coming here wasn’t such a good
idea.

I tugged at my lip ring, trying to breathe
through my mouth. Shannon laughed at me and nudged me in the ribs.
“You look like a fish.”

And just like that, I was pissed off again.
I jumped off my bar stool. “I’m going to mingle,” I said shortly
and left her with Moira.

Moving deeper into the morass of smokers
probably wasn’t a good idea either. If inhaling Silver Kiss smoke
had me and Moira at each other’s throats, mixing with the smokers
might have me ripping their throats out. The idea chilled me and
excited the wolf at the same time. Our last hunt had been thwarted
and there was a small, but growing sense of bloodlust in me that I
needed to satisfy. A full moon was usually the time for that, the
time when wolves gave in completely to their animal nature and went
out to rip and tear into their prey, tasting the sweet gush of hot
blood and savoring the snap of fragile bones.

But full moon was weeks away. And I was not
an animal tonight. I chanted it to myself as I elbowed aside the
other customers, no idea where I was going, just knowing I had to
move, had to burn off the crazy mix of emotions swelling inside
me.