bar.
“This is my friend, Wilder Shaw. We’re here to speak with Cain, if he’s amenable.” Demanding an audience wouldn’t get us anywhere, and trying to bend Delphine’s will by telling her how important the mission at hand was wouldn’t help either. She was used to dozens of needy bastards like us coming in every day to beg for Cain’s time. No one got close unless Delphine gave the go-ahead, and just because she liked me didn’t mean anything was guaranteed. Del liked a lot of people, but she wasn’t about to do favors for all of them.
“You in a spot of trouble, baby girl? You don’t come to see him all that often.”
I wondered what kind of desperation would make someone come to Cain more than I had. I’d only asked for his help twice, and it felt like two times too many. Even after paying his price I still considered myself permanently in his pocket.
“Someone tried to kill me earlier today.” Might as well lead with the truth, right? I tried to make it seem like no big deal, but the way her brows lifted suggested she understood the urgency.
“Was it those Church of Morning pricks?” she snarled, her voice raw with unmasked hatred. I’d never heard Delphine sound so enraged about anything in our entire acquaintance, including some of the disgusting, pigheaded bigots I’d witnessed her deal with while we’d been on campus together. “It was, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Those fuckers.” She turned on her heel and prowled back to Cain, and since she hadn’t told us to leave, I took this as invitation to follow.
Cain was a big guy. With his shock of bright white hair and his football-player physique, he reminded me of what I imagined Cable from the X-Men would look like in real life. A huge, imposing wall of muscle. He rose to greet us as we approached, kissing my cheeks as Delphine had, but only offering Wilder a firm handshake.
“Welcome back, Miss McQueen. It’s been a long while since you graced us with your presence. We were starting to worry you didn’t like us anymore.”
“Don’t be silly, Beau. You know how life gets.”
He forced a smile, though I could tell he wasn’t altogether pleased with my response.
“Bebe,” Del said, leaning close to Cain’s ear. “Those hateful church bastards are stirring up trouble for our little wolf cub.”
Del spoke about me in a motherly way, in spite of the fact she was only two years older than me. Didn’t matter to her, she took it upon herself to mother everyone around her.
“Church of Morning?” Cain asked me.
“The one and thankfully only.”
“What kind of nonsense are they bringing your way, lovely?” Cain said, indicating Wilder and I should take the nearby seats facing him.
I gave him the condensed, CliffsNotes version of everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours. God, had it only been a day? Felt more like a million years. Cain bobbed his head along in silent agreement with whatever I said, as though he’d been there and was verifying the truth of each statement.
When I finished, he was quiet for a long while, then said, “What is it I can help you with?”
“We need to find the Church. Hank doesn’t have a lot of time left, and we can’t just hope we luck into it. If they’re still in Louisiana, it’s a big state. Lots of rocks for maggots to crawl underneath.”
The music changed to something more up tempo, and the couples sprawled around the bar started to dance. The new activity was no less sexual than their kissing had been. It was more grinding than dancing, really. I stopped staring and looked back at Cain, hoping he would agree to help us.
“What makes you think I know where they are?”
Oh, good, we were going to play this game? Didn’t he understand me when I’d told him time was of the essence? I managed to keep from sighing audibly and instead gave him my best smile.
“You know why I came to you. You’re the best at what you do, the smartest man south of the Mason-Dixon, and quite frankly, there’s no one else I would trust to help me with this.”
Cain gave me an aw-shucks hand wave. Flattery was only the first half of the transaction.
“I’m willing to pay any price,” I announced. “We both know you know, because you know everything. And it’s worth it to me. So whatever it’ll take for me to get my missing pack mate back, I’ll pay