Once Bitten (Shadow Guild: The Rebel #1) - Linsey Hall Page 0,12

I couldn’t identify. It gave me the strangest sense of déjà vu. I swear I’d felt this before.

Breath held, I slid onto a barstool.

I’d reached my final destination—I just needed to figure out why the victim had a matchbook from this place when he died. It was possible the cops could find a link to this location and show up, but as long as the dead guy hadn’t had two matchbooks on him, I’d have a little while.

From my stool, I had a view into a mirror over the bar. I could see the patrons behind me, and upon closer inspection, a lot of them looked kind of…weird. I swore that one of them had vaguely green skin. Not in an “I’m going to puke” kind of way, but more of an “I’m from Mars” fashion.

Nah.

But another one looked to have tiny horns peeping up from his hair.

Double nah.

Then I spotted the woman with three eyes.

Well, shit.

I blinked a few times, mind racing. The man in my vision—the killer—he’d seemed to have fangs. I’d thought it was crazy at the time, but…

The woman’s third eye, which sat right in the middle of her forehead and was a beautiful lavender color, made contact with mine. She blinked, and it was entirely too realistic.

Quickly, I looked away, my heart pounding.

I spotted a shadowy form near the fire—a dog, curled up on a bed. He was transparent.

Ghost dog.

No way.

The bartender loomed in front of me, and I jumped.

“You all right?” she asked.

“Um, yeah.” I smiled, trying to look normal and knowing that I probably came off as insane.

“You’re not all right.” She said it in the way that a therapist would say it. Or like a really experienced bartender.

“Ah, no.”

“Here.” She set the teacup down in front of me, then added a tiny carafe of milk and a plate of biscuits.

My gaze fell to them, recognizing the golden rounds. “HobNobs.”

“No baking in here, I’m afraid.” She raised slender hands. “I’m shit with it. But you’ll get Tesco’s best.”

I grinned. “I don’t mind supermarket biscuits.”

“Then you’re in luck.”

I went for the biscuit first, crunching into the treat and chowing down like a professional eater.

“Stressed?” she asked.

I looked up, my mouth full of biscuit, and did my best to speak around it. “How could you tell?”

“You’re going at those like a rat in a bin.” She raised her hands. “No judgment. You should see me with the Oreos when I get stressed. I make you look like a novice.”

I couldn’t help but smile at her friendly voice. It’d been a long time since I’d had friends. Like, forever. My life was gray and lonely and lame, but it was by my choice. I shook the thought away and said, “Right. The stress eating. I do that.”

“At least it’s not drinking.”

“Tea, maybe.” I added some milk to the cup and drank, sucking it down despite the heat.

She leaned on the bar, the sinewy muscles in her arms pulling tightly at her thin T-shirt. “Care to share?”

“Ah—” I kept checking out the mirror next to her, and my head spun. I knew how to do an investigation. I’d been trained for it. And that’s what I was doing here.

I just needed to get my head in the game.

Except the woman with the three eyes kept meeting my gaze in the mirror.

“What the hell is this place?” I asked.

“The Haunted Hound.”

“Yeah, I read that on the door. But, like, what is it?”

“A pub?”

“Right. Hidden behind weird bins and filled with people in amazing costumes.”

She frowned. “Costumes?”

“Ah…” Subtly, I tried to point my thumb toward the three-eyed woman behind me.

“Clarissa is a triclops demon.”

“Demon?” Somehow, I knew her words were true. And while I wanted to put my head between my knees and hyperventilate for about six hours, I didn’t have time for that.

The cops could show up here, and I needed to be gone—with my answers—before that happened.

So I did what I’d done when I was a kid and the horror got to be too much.

“Just keep swimming,” I muttered. I focused on the task. I had only the vaguest memories of my shitty childhood with my abusive guardian, but one of them was very clear.

I knew how to shove aside all my panic and go tunnel vision on my goal.

Right now, I needed to solve this murder.

Whatever was happening in this bar could wait until I’d cleared my name.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” the bartender asked.

“No.” I was from London, yes. But that wasn’t what