Yes. Yes, she was. “And yet I have more pressing concerns. Yesterday we found Corey Morris’s fellow partygoers in the cabin where he left them. Ivy was dead from scratch fever, and Leland Blum was a newly infected stray, stuck in feline form. We kept Blum with us overnight, then dropped him at his dorm before we came to see you this afternoon. Afterward, we went to pick him up and found him dead in his own dorm room.”
“Holy shit, Titus.” Spencer leaned back on his couch, clearly stunned. “You thought I had something to do with all that?”
“Obviously I was wrong, and I apologize. But we’re pretty sure that Blum’s killer is going after my brother next, and I can’t stop that if I can’t find either of them.”
“I might be able to help you there.” Spencer stood and headed into his small kitchen, where he pulled a bottle of water from the fridge. “The stray who came in last night was in pretty good shape. His wound was so fresh it was still bleeding, and he didn’t have much of a fever yet. On our way to your house, he told me about the party where he’d been attacked.”
“The party at the museum. You told us that.” Robyn came out of the bathroom smelling like hand soap.
“But that’s only part of it. It’s Blind Tiger week at Millsaps.”
I shook my head, uncomprehending. “Blind Tiger?”
“As in, an underground bar?” Robyn frowned. “From the prohibition era?”
Spencer frowned at her. “How the hell do you know things like that?”
“History major. House arrest. Documentaries. We’ve been over this.” She gave us both a cryptic smile. “You do not want to play Trivial Pursuit with me.”
“I don’t want to play Trivial Pursuit with anyone,” Spencer said. “Anyway, Blind Tiger week is a series of underground parties, presumably serving alcohol to underage students. Each night is hosted by a different club, fraternity, or sorority trying to outdo all the others.” He turned to me and held my gaze. “Both Corey Morris and this new stray, Elliott Belcher, were infected during or after attending Blind Tiger parties.”
I closed my eyes, letting that sink in. A festival of unauthorized parties. Presumably hundreds of drunk, underage college students. And four new strays—two survivors—in the span of a week.
“Justus was infected a week before this Blind Tiger thing, right?” Robyn said.
“Yeah.” Spencer cracked open his bottle of water. “But—”
“But if Justus ran across all four of his victims at Blind Tiger parties, chances are good that he’ll be at the next party too,” I finished for him.
“It’s just a theory, but tonight’s the last night.” Spencer drained a third of his water in one gulp.
Robyn sank onto the couch, rubbing her wrist, where the cuff had chafed it. I wanted to kiss her wrist in apology, but I was pretty sure she’d punch me if I tried. “Please tell me you know where that party is, Spence,” she said.
“I don’t. But I know of two newly infected strays who might.”
“Corey Morris and Elliott Belcher.” I pulled my phone from my pocket.
“Let me do it,” Robyn said. “They’re more likely to talk to me than to you right now. Especially if Elliott Belcher has shifted and smells like you.”
“Fine.”
To my surprise, she selected Brandt from her contacts list, rather than one of the actual enforcers. “I think we have a connection,” she explained as she pressed SEND to make the call.
Brandt answered before I even heard the phone ring. “Hello? Is this Robyn?”
“Yes.” She smiled at me with the phone held to her ear. “How did you know?”
“Drew gave us your number and told us to answer if you called.” He hesitated. “In case you need anything.”
Translation: In case Titus turns out to be the monster we all now suspect he is.
“Well, that was nice of him. And I do need something.”
“Happy to help.” Brandt sounded as eager as a puppy with a bone. “What can I do for you?”
“I need you to put me on the phone with one of the new strays,” Robyn said. “Preferably Corey Morris.” With whom she’d already bonded.
“Oh…” Brandt hedged. “I don’t think that’s what Drew had in mind.”
“I didn’t call Drew. I called you, because I knew I could count on you. I’m trying to help Corey and Elliott. You and I have both been where they are, so I know you can sympathize. I need to talk to Corey for one minute. Do you think you can get into the basement without bothering Drew?”
“Yeah. He’s out running an errand. Just a second.”
Robyn made a scrawling gesture with her right hand, and Spencer dug a pen and a notepad from a kitchen drawer, while we listened to the familiar echo of Brandt’s footsteps clomping down the basement steps.
“Corey?” he said, and the minor reverberation of his voice confirmed that he was in the basement. “You have a phone call. It’s Robyn.” In the pause, I heard the familiar squeal of mattress springs, as Corey sat up on his basement bed. “You wanna talk to her?”
There was no reply, but a second later Corey Morris was on the line. “Robyn?”
“Yes, it’s me.” She gave Spencer and me a silent “shh” gesture. “I have a couple of questions for you, if you don’t mind.”
“Okay…” But he sounded hesitant.
“The party you went to the night you were infected? Was it one of the Blind Tiger parties?”
“Um…yeah.” He sounded…guilty. “But I wasn’t drinking.” There was a beat of silence. “How did you know about that?”
She gave me a wide-eyed, panicked look for a second. Then she shrugged and improvised. “There are posters all over campus, but they’re surprisingly vague.”
“They do that on purpose. The locations are spread through word of mouth. Which is texting, basically.”
“The last party’s tonight, right? Do you know where?”
“Um…maybe. Let me check my messages.”
“Thanks.” Robyn’s voice betrayed none of the tension and anticipation I saw in the death grip she had on Spencer’s pen.
“Oh! It’s at the zoo,” Morris said a minute later. “In the reptile house.”
“Seriously?” Robyn frowned. “That’s crazy!”
“That’s the whole point.” Despite the circumstances, Morris sounded disappointed by the prospect of missing the party. “The hosting organization has to figure out how to get the security guards out of the way by midnight—without hurting anyone—and how to get food, drinks, and people in. All without getting caught. And everything has to be cleared out by five in the morning. There’s no way they’ll pull all that off at the zoo. But if they do, that party will go down in history.”
I had a feeling Morris was right, about the last bit, anyway.
“Thanks, Corey,” Robyn said. “How are you, by the way?”
“Better. But I can’t wait until they let me out of here. I need to sleep in a place that doesn’t smell like him.”
Like me.
Like Justus.
Morris would never be able to escape that scent—it was a permanent part of him. But before long, he’d be so used to it that he wouldn’t even notice it anymore. I knew that from experience.
“Hey, Robyn, why are you asking about the party?” Morris asked, “Are you going?”
Robyn hesitated. “Maybe,” she said after a second. “I haven’t had any fun since I had to drop out of school, and I saw the posters, so I thought I might check it out.”
“If you do, get a picture for me, okay?”
She nodded, though Morris couldn’t see her over the phone. “I will.”
A second later, Brandt was back. “You’re going to a party?”
“Maybe…” Robyn hedged. “Thanks again, Brandt. I appreciate the help!” Then she hung up before he could ask any more questions.
“Well done!” Spencer said. “So, if you guys find Justus tonight, this whole thing’ll be over, right? You can tell everyone the truth?”
“That’s the hope, yes.” I stood. “I have to find him before the council finds out about any of this, to keep them from taking him into custody or executing him on sight. I’m sorry about your front door. And I’m even sorrier about the favor I’m going to ask for next,” I added as I retrieved my steering wheel from his end table.
“Let me guess. You want my car.”
“I hate to ask, but…”
“Fine. If it’ll get you out of here, so I can sleep. I can get a ride to work.” Spence dug a set of keys from a decorative bowl sitting on his kitchen counter. “Just bring it back in one piece. With a full tank!” he added as I accepted the keys.
“Thank you. Seriously. I owe you.”
“Damn right you do.”
I gave his door an experimental swing, as if the problem were in the hinges. “I’ll have a repairman over to fix this within the hour.”
“No.” He scowled. “I’m going to bed. Send him tonight, around nine. I should be up by then.”
“Done.”
Spencer closed his front door behind us, and a heavy scraping sound came from inside as he pushed something in front of the broken door to hold it closed.
“Wow,” Robyn said as I followed her down the stairs. “I thought I was a natural disaster, but you’re hurricane Titus. You took out his door and his car, in one fell swoop. Not to mention stealing his sleep and accusing him of murder.”
“If you knew he wasn’t the killer, why did you let me accuse him?” I demanded as I stared into the parking lot, looking for a Toyota that Spencer Cole might own.
“I didn’t know for sure,” she admitted. “I was planning to start that conversation with questions, not accusations, but you handcuffed me to a steering wheel!”
“Yeah. Just how mad about that are you?”
“Less so now than I was before I shredded your driver’s seat, kicked in your dashboard, and slashed your tires.”
I thought she was joking until I glanced past her at the space where I’d parked. How the hell was I going to explain that to my insurance guy? “Are you going to be this destructive every time I piss you off?”
“Did you not listen when the council warned you about my impulse control issues?”
“Not closely enough, apparently. Speaking of shocking revelations, why do you know how to pick open handcuffs?”
Robyn took Spencer’s keys and pressed the lock button. A Corolla halfway across the lot beeped and flashed its lights. “Instead of answering that, why don’t I show you how I acquired the skill…?” She pulled the cuffs from her pocket and dangled them in front of me with a wicked smile.
“You think I’m going to wear those?”
“I think we won’t be even until you do.” She backed toward the parking lot, and the sun glinted off the metal cuffs as she swung them. “Why? Is the big bad Alpha afraid to relinquish control?”
“To you?” I snorted and snatched the cuffs from her. “Hell, yes.”
Robyn turned and took off for the Corolla, then called over her shoulder. “You should be…”
TWENTY
Robyn
The plan was to go back to Justus’s place and take a nap before we had to head to the zoo. Titus was exhausted—he couldn’t have gotten much sleep the night before—and he’d hardly eaten a thing all day. And with each mile we drove, he retreated a little more into his own head, until his eyes glazed over and his responses to my questions devolved into distracted grunts.
But the moment we stepped into the apartment, his bearing changed. Every muscle in his body tensed and his jaw clenched.
I glanced around the front rooms, expecting to find an intruder or some other danger that had triggered his internal alarm. The kitchen and living room were still trashed, except for the couch we’d put back in order, but the apartment was unoccupied, as far as I could tell. Titus’s gaze locked on the guest room, which stood open and as empty as we’d left it. And finally I understood.
He wasn’t bracing himself against a new threat. He was still battling the last one. “I failed him. Blum is dead, and I was supposed to protect him. Maybe I should have handcuffed him to something.”
Well, hell. No wonder he’d been so determined to keep me in the car. He blamed himself for Leland’s death, and he couldn’t stand the thought of the same thing happening to me.
I pushed the front door shut and put the chain on the hook, because the deadbolt was still busted from the break-in. “It’s not your fault.”
“Bullshit. I swore to protect them. I accepted oaths of loyalty in exchange for that promise. I told them I would lead them, and teach them, and defend them, and Blum got killed on my watch. Because I left him behind.”
“Titus, we had no idea he was in danger. We took him to his dorm specifically to protect him. You can’t blame yourself for this.”
He sank onto the couch and bent forward with his elbows on his knees, his head cradled in his hands. “There’s no one else to blame.”
“Blame the killer. Tonight we’ll find Justus, and we’ll figure out who infected him. And who’s trying to make sure you go down for the strays he’s infected.” Those had to be the same person.
“Does any of it matter? I’m a liability to the Pride, but without the weight of my position, I might not have the clout to help Justus.” His expression cracked, exposing the pain beneath his anger. “Robyn, I can’t let my brother wind up like Leland Blum. I can’t let some psycho kill him, and I sure as hell can’t let the council execute him.”
“That won’t happen.” I took my new coat off and draped it over the arm of the couch, flinching as my boots crunched over glass ground into the carpet from the shattered coffee table. Then I sank onto his lap, straddling him. “You may not have the clout to make sure of that, but I do.”
His hands settled onto my hips and he met my gaze, and for the first time since we’d left Spencer’s, he seemed to be truly with me in the moment. “What are you talking about?”
“The council wants me back. You said they’d be willing to start a war to make sure that happens. Which means they’re desperate, and desperate people are always eager to negotiate. So I’ll agree to return peacefully—sparing everyone this ‘war’—in exchange for Justus’s clemency and the recognition of your Pride. With you as Alpha. Drew’s doing the best he can, but you are best equipped to lead them.” That much was obvious in the lengths to which he was willing to go to protect his brother.
“Robyn…” The objection was clear in his tortured expression, even if he hadn’t found the words.
“I am the most valuable bargaining chip we have. I know you’re willing to do whatever you can to keep me here, but the truth is that that’s beyond your ability right now. Drew’s in charge of the Pride, and he’s too new to risk pissing off the council. But I’m the one whose life is being run by committee. If I have to go back, I might as well get something good out of it.”
“I don’t want you involved in this,” Titus said. “Not any more than you already are,” he amended, with a glance around the destroyed living room.
“Whatever. I brought war to your doorstep.” I leaned down to kiss him, pressing as much of myself against him as I could while his grip on my hips tightened. “I owe you,” I whispered against his stubble-rough cheek when the kiss finally ended.
“No.” Titus’s gaze burned into me. “You don’t owe me anything, Robyn.”
“Including obedience. This is my decision. And I’ve made it.”
I tried to stand, but he held tight to my hips, and I saw myself reflected in his eyes. “You are the most fearless woman I’ve ever met. If it had been up to me, I wouldn’t have locked you up. I would have set you loose upon the world and watched you soar.”
My chest suddenly felt tight. “Before I met you, I was just angry. At the council. At the enforcers. At myself.” I ran one hand down the side of his face, toward his chin, enjoying the rough brush of stubble against my palm. “Meeting you changed the way I feel about sh
ifters. The way I feel about myself. I thought my life—at least as I knew it—was over. I was so obsessed with everything I lost when I was infected that I didn’t take the time to truly realize what I’d gained. You’re a big part of what I’ve gained, Titus. Your vision. What you’re trying to do is more important than anything I’ve ever done in my life. If I can help put you in the position to do that, I will. Even if that means getting out of your way.” Going back to Atlanta. I shrugged. “I got out once. I can do it again. Worst case scenario, I’ll be back when my sentence is up.”
Titus pulled me closer and buried his face in my hair. “I’m not done arguing about this.”
“Okay, but fair warning, I’m not sure I’ve ever lost an argument.”
“There’s a first time for everything.” His breath brushed my ear, and pleasant chills slid along my spine.
“Right now, I’m more interested in our second time.” I slid my hands beneath his shirt, then dragged them up over the hard planes and angles of his chest. “This may be the last chance we get for a while…”
Titus pulled his shirt over his head and dropped it on the glass-littered floor. Then he stood with me still straddling him, and I wrapped my legs around his waist as my arms slid around his neck.
I kissed him all the way into the bedroom.
“The herpetarium.” Titus stood on top of a commercial trash bin, staring over the Jackson Zoo’s eight-foot exterior fence, squinting against the glare of the security light. “Who on earth would want to get drunk with a bunch of snakes and lizards?”
“You’re showing your age, Mr. Alexander. But you’re right. This would be much more awesome in the cat house.”
“There’s no cat house. They’re in outdoor cages.” He turned away from the fence and looked at me. “And even if there were a cat house, the lions and tigers would all lose their minds the moment they smelled us.”
“Why? They’re caged next to each other, and they don’t kill themselves trying to get through the fence.”