“Ow!” he cried, clapping a hand to his nose. “What was that for?”
“Where to begin?” Sophie replied.
“That was a good start,” Sinclair said, “but start in the groin area next time. And use knives instead of your hands.”
Betsy shuddered. “Ick. Though if anybody deserves it, it’s this punk. So, what? Do we arrest him? Can we do that?”
“Can this wait until after Theresa kills herself?” the killer asked nasally. “I was leaving to go watch, but—”
“You mean you’re doing it again? Right now? But Shawna’s barely a week in her grave!”
“Yeah, well, I thought it’d be fun to do a two-fer, you know, play them off each other, but Shawna was a little more fragile than I thought, she kind of jumped the gun on me—” Then he stopped, because Sinclair had picked him up by the throat.
“Where does Theresa live?” Silence, followed by Sinclair adding, “Oh, good, I can beat it out of you. Several times.”
“Sinclair, he can’t talk, you’re squishing his vocal cords,” Betsy pointed out. “Not that we want you to stop or anything.”
Sinclair let go, and the killer fell to the lawn and gurgled a street address. “We’ll tend to the girl,” the king said, grabbing Betsy’s hand and pulling her toward the car. She yelped, but let herself be dragged away. “You two take care of him. Frankly, if I have to look at him for another ten seconds…. you two deal with it.”
“What’s that mean?” Liam asked as Sinclair tore out of the small driveway.
“Drown him, stab him, choke him, slice him, squeeze him, starve him, burn him,” Sophie suggested.
“What is everybody’s problem tonight?” the killer bitched, standing and trying to brush grass stains off his pants. “You’d think this was about something important.”
“Oh, boy,” Sophie said. “You’re a disgrace to all of us, you wretched horrible thing, and it will be the greatest pleasure of my life to kill you.”
“The greatest?” Liam asked.
“Not now, Liam.”
“If you saw Shawna’s mother,” he told the killer, “you might not be so, what’s the word?”
“Cavalier,” Sophie suggested.
“Asshole. You might not be such an asshole about it.”
“I don’t have to talk to you, sheep.”
“Don’t you call him that.”
“Don’t sweat it, darlin’,” Liam said. “I’ve kind of changed my mind about a couple of things in the last five minutes. I thought you had a thing. Well, you don’t. This guy does. Whatever problems you and I have, we can work it out.”
“That’s really touching,” the killer said. “I haven’t puked in eighty years, but I might right now.”
“Oh, Liam, really?” Try to stay focused, you silly cow, she told herself, but it was impossible to deny how incredibly happy those words had made her. “You don’t think I’m some vampire snob who can’t relate to a mortal because she’s seen too much?”
“I do still think that,” he admitted, “but, like I said, we can work it out. Doncha think?”
“I do think,” she admitted. “I agree, comparably speaking, our troubles don’t seem so insurmountable now, do they?”
“I’m still here, you know,” the killer reminded them. “Shit, this is why I’m up here in the first place. Decades of being the go-to guy, the guy who can get you what you need, but nobody ever saw me. I was just one of Nostro’s stooges.”
“I’m sorry for the mean things I said,” Sophie said, looking up into Liam’s blue, blue eyes. “I was angry, and I was afaid.”
He smiled down at her. “That’s okay. I said some things, too. Mostly because I was mad.”
“Will you guys pay some attention to me? Don’t you remember? I’m the guy everybody’s mad at?”