Don't Hex and Drive (Stay a Spell #2) - Juliette Cross Page 0,10
few seconds. “Come on. Let’s have a drink, and I’ll tell you briefly what I know about this case.” He glanced at his watch, a silver TAG Heuer. “I have a dinner meeting uptown, but I wanted to check in with you.”
He followed me into the kitchen. “I would’ve gone to The Green Light yesterday,” I called over my shoulder, “but I had to wait on the furniture delivery and get it all straight.”
Pulling down a bottle of Maker’s Mark from the cabinet, I then grabbed two rocks glasses.
“You still like everything in order and in its place.” Ruben took a seat on the stool and tapped his fingers along the granite countertop, looking around the kitchen.
I filled both glasses with ice, poured us each a drink to the brim, and then slid his across the granite. “It’s the only way to keep the chaos at bay.”
“As you say.” He lifted his glass. “Welcome to New Orleans.”
We clinked glasses and took a deep gulp of whiskey.
“While I do want to experience the pleasures of the city,” I said, swirling the amber liquid over the ice, “why don’t you give me a brief rundown of where you are?”
“Well said.” He drained the rest of his drink in two more gulps then set it down. That in itself was rather telling. Ruben wasn’t a big drinker. But this case had him on edge. “I didn’t bother to tell you because I knew you were in the middle of the move, but another girl went missing last Saturday.”
After setting down my drink, I crossed my arms and leaned back against the counter opposite him. “That’s, what, four girls total? In four weeks?”
“Right.” His sapphire-blue eyes darkened to the color of his suit, a silvery sheen icing over them. “No bodies yet. All of them rather young.” He clenched his jaw. “College age. And taken from neighborhood bars.”
I flattened a palm on the countertop and began tapping with my index finger, the wide silver band of my ring tinking against the granite. “Their age may only be a by-product. Our predator may feel more comfortable hunting the local bar scene, late at night, where the easiest prey is in the twenty-something age range.”
“True,” Ruben conceded. “And their minds are more malleable at that age. Easily persuaded for even a young vampire.”
“How are you sure it’s a vampire? Could be a werewolf gone rogue.”
His brow pinched into a frown. “I’ve got a guy who says he’s got proof it’s one of our kind.”
“What kind of proof?”
He chuckled lightly. “He wouldn’t tell me.”
“This is one of your men, and he refused to tell you?”
I found that hard to believe. Ruben was a cool, calculated leader, but ruthless when he needed to be. It wouldn’t be wise to hold information from him.
“Not one of my men exactly.” He rolled the base of his tumbler on the rim, the ice clinking in the glass. “He’s on my payroll, but he’s a grim.”
“Ah. I see.”
Grims were notoriously private. Everything to them was on a need-to-know basis, including the most trivial of things like whether they took their coffee black or with cream. Yet, they were founts of knowledge themselves.
“So when is he handing over this information?” I asked, suddenly curious what this grim had as proof.
“Sometime this week. I’d like you there if you don’t mind.”
“Whatever you need.”
“How about dinner tonight?” The tightness around his mouth softened. “Then we can catch up properly. I haven’t seen my oldest friend in more than three years. You’ve been busy.”
I shrugged. “Always some asshole to put in his place. Bring to justice.”
“They never seem to go away, do they?”
“Never.”
He glanced behind me toward my stove. “You’re baking these days? That’s new.”
Taking his glass and mine, I rinsed them both in the sink. “Not baking exactly. You don’t bake penda.”
“A recipe from home, I take it?”
Home. Varanasi, India hadn’t been my home in over two hundred years. To be truthful, no place had. But Ruben was right. I tended to cook dishes that reminded me of the spices and scents of where I’d been born for the first time. And where I’d been reborn as a vampire. Cardamom, nutmeg, and saffron still scented the kitchen even though it was two hours earlier that I’d made the doughy balls of flour, condensed milk, and sugar then topped them with cashews and crushed pistachios.
“Yes.” I dried my hands on a dish towel and leaned back against the sink. “I thought my new neighbors might enjoy