Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,57

see you got home all right after the bar. I was a little worried, the way you took off.”

Ha. Yes, I’d gotten home all right. Getting out of the apartment had been much less okay. “It was no big deal,” I said, feeling as if each new lie was adding to a heavy lump in my stomach. “I wish I could have stayed longer.”

“No news on the tip Jade gave you?”

“Nope, I haven’t had much chance to see what I can make of it yet.”

Ellen left the conversation she and Huyen had been in with one of the older members and headed our way. I made an apologetic gesture to Vivi. “I’ve got to talk to the lady in charge. Grab me some of tonight’s popcorn?”

Vivi hesitated for a second as if balking at the idea of missing what I’d say to Ellen, but then she shot me a smile and a thumbs-up. As she walked away, I hustled to meet Ellen.

Despite her love of flavors, our co-leader was thin as a rail, with frizzy, graying hair that was perpetually escaping from her loose buns. On meeting nights, stains on her fingertips often gave away her latest popcorn ingredients—today’s greenish tint confirmed the mint.

I didn’t have much time before my best friend would return and hear something that would make her even more curious what was going on with me. “Hey, Ellen,” I said, cutting right to the chase. “Do you have a spare badge around? I seem to have misplaced mine.” I wasn’t giving Ruse any more chances to exercise his self-control—or not.

“Sure,” the petite woman said, with a note of surprise. I’d managed not to misplace the first badge she’d given me in the past eleven years, but it could happen to any of us. She dug into her purse—of course Ellen the ever-prepared would have a little stash of those always on hand.

“Is everything else all right?” she asked as she handed it to me.

Maybe my general agitation was showing more than I’d meant it to. I pushed my mouth into a sheepish grin and pocketed the protective badge. “Yeah, I just seem to be having kind of a scattered week. I was also hoping—I wanted to get in touch with the group that monitors talk about the shadowkind for us online, but my computer’s hard drive died.” The whole thing had died a sad, fiery death. “Could I grab his contact info from you again? I knew better than to write it down somewhere not totally secure, but that means I’m out of luck.”

I spread my hands in an attempt to look cluelessly innocent rather than like a lying liar who lied. From the weight in my gut, I might as well have swallowed a boulder. Ellen didn’t appear fazed by the request, thank shimmering seal pups. She gave me a motherly pat on the shoulder.

“I’ll send it to you by a secure link. You’re still at the same email as before?”

“Yeah,” I said with a rush of relief.

“FYI, they’re looking for payment in organic kombucha these days—they take it by the crate.”

Crates of kombucha it was, then.

As Ellen moved on, Vivi came up beside me. She handed me a bag of popcorn and cocked her head with a swish of her hair. “What’d I miss?”

I gave her a smile in thanks. “Nothing.” One more lie to add to the pile.

My best friend’s gaze turned unusually serious. She paused for a second and then said, “No matter what you find out, I’ll be here if you need me. You’ll remember that, right?”

The emphatic plea made my gut twist all over again. “Yeah,” I said. “Of course I’ll remember.” I just wouldn’t be taking her up on the offer, not after I’d seen just how brutal my newfound enemies could be.

Maybe the love the apartment’s true owners had for the ‘60s explained why they hadn’t demanded the landlord replace their kitchen appliances, because the stove certainly behaved like it was several decades old. After an hour of slowly turning up the heat under the frozen stir fry I’d liberated from the freezer and watching the ice crystals barely melt, all at once half of the bits had burned to the pan.

I growled at the meal as if I could intimidate it into uncharring itself. Before I could decide whether to make the best of it or toss it and start over, the shiny new laptop my shadowkind friends had obtained for me chimed with an inbox alert.

Screw