"Yep," Jason said, as he finished dividing the food into three piles. He'd pushed some of it in front of both of us, but the lion's share was in front of him.
"How can you eat this early in the morning?"
"I'm always hungry," he said. He looked at me sort of expectantly.
I let it slide. It was too easy.
"Come on, I fed you that one," he said.
"You don't seem particularly worried," I said.
He shrugged, and slid onto a bar stool. "What do you want me to say? I've seen some weird shit since I became a werewolf. If I got hysterical every time something went wrong, every time someone I knew died, I'd be in the loony bin by now."
"I thought fights for dominance in the pack, except for pack leader, weren't to the death," I said.
"People forget," he said.
"I'll have to talk to Richard when I get back in town. He hasn't been mentioning any of this."
"Nothing to mention," Jason said. "Just business as usual."
Great. "Did anybody see who took the coffin?"
Larry answered, his voice sluggish even with the caffeine and sugar. There's only so much you can do on no sleep at all. "No one saw anybody take it. In fact, the only guy left from the night shift said, 'I just turned away for a second, and it wasn't there. Just the luggage standing there by itself.'"
"Shit," I said.
"Why take the coffin?" he asked. He drank most of his coffee. His Egg McMuffin sat untouched in front of him. They'd put hotcakes in front of me with a little tub of syrup beside it.
"Your breakfast is getting cold," Jason said.
He was enjoying himself too much. I frowned at him, but I opened my coffee. I didn't want the food. "I think the master is flexing a little muscle. What do you think, Jason?" I kept my voice casual.
He smiled at me around a mouthful of food, swallowed, and said, "I think whatever Jean-Claude wants me to think."
Maybe my voice had been too casual. I should really give up on subtlety; I just wasn't good enough at it. "Did he tell you not to talk to me?"
"No, just to be careful what I said."
"He says jump, and you say how high; is that it?"
"That's it." He ate a bite of scrambled egg, his face peaceful.
"Doesn't that bother you?"
"I don't make the rules, Anita. I'm not an alpha anything."
"And it doesn't bother you?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Sometimes, but there's nothing I can do about it. Why fight it?"
"I don't understand that at all," Larry said.
"Me either."
"You don't have to understand it," he said. He couldn't have been more than twenty, but the look in his eyes wasn't young. It was the look of someone who'd seen a lot, done a lot, and not all of it nice. It was the look I was dreading to see on Larry's face someday. They were nearly the same age; what had people been doing to Jason to give him such jaded eyes?
"What do we do now?" Larry asked.