I woke up to about ten messages from Kendra. Urgent messages. Call her immediately messages. Gotta talk ASAP messages. I dialed her back and waited for her to answer.
“Oh, my God. I’ve been calling you since sundown.”
I overslept. It wasn’t like I’d spent the whole night sleeping. I had a couple of other things going on. And one of those things was still nestled against my back.
“Sorry. I just woke up.”
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “I know, but Howard is chomping at the bit. He has been trying to call you since dawn. He’s all itchy about not being able to get ahold of you while he’s working on this skip.” The words came at about eighty miles an hour and I was still on ten miles an hour comprehension. “What should I tell him?” she asked.
I took a second and tried to figure out what to do. “I don’t know. It isn’t like I can just tell him about my new lifestyle.” I didn’t even want to imagine how that conversation would go. Howard, I’m a vampire. And he would turn to me, wide-eyed and gaping mouthed, and then he would keel over trying to figure out how it worked, how he could make it work for him. We would both lose the skip and make no money.
She blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know, Hails. But you’re going to have to tell him something. He’s freaking out. This skip is huge, and he’s like a wind-up toy repeating himself about all the ways you’re being irresponsible. We need this skip.”
We didn’t, not really. We already had money. Cars. She even had a Prada purse and Louboutin shoes. But when it came to hauling the bad guys back to the cop shop, Kendra had turned into an addict. She liked the adventure, the excitement, even the danger.
“Okay. Just tell him I only work nights because that’s when criminals come out of their holes, so I sleep all day.” It was easy enough and the same thing I’d told him the night before.
“All right.” And she hung up.
I set the phone back onto the table and smiled when Jax kissed my shoulder. “You know, you can tell him if you think you can trust him with it.”
Could I trust Howard? The news would probably kill him, which would solve the problem one way or the other. “I’ll think about it.”
“I trust your judgment.” Good news. “I know you wouldn’t compromise our safety.” He smiled, and I could’ve swooned.
I held it together because there was another matter at hand—whether or not to tell Howard. Plus, it kind of seemed like he was ready to start a thing with Kendra, who would have to tell him about her special skills. Which could in all likelihood would shed light on mine, which meant the decision was essentially out of my hands.
I sighed because that was what one did when one was facing a crisis of vampirism. Which this definitely was. To tell or not to tell. That was the question, and Shakespearean or not, I had to figure out the answer.
If I made a pro-con list, my friendship with Howie would have been on the pro side. Him being a bounty hunter on the con because he would be like a dog with a bone. He would want to research. Would want to know everything, and I didn’t even have all the details yet.
He would do the research though, and that was a pro. I wouldn’t just be able to turn to Jax. Howie could give me the legends and the lore, too.
I dialed Kendra. “I think we have to tell him.” I didn’t bother with hello. “I think he’ll take it well.”
She breathed a couple of quick bursts through the phone line. “Yeah. But are you taking it well?”
“Taking what well?” I trusted Howie. Howard was nothing if not reliable, sensible, decent. He was also tenacious, stubborn, tireless in his determination to gather facts.
“You know, that I’m attracted to Howard.” She was tentative and for a minute, just one split second, I considered teasing her, making a big deal of it, but I thought it was possible that could backfire in the worst way.
“Call him. Tell him to meet me at my place in an hour.” There was only so much reassurance I could give until I saw how he handled everything. I had no doubt he and Kendra would be good together, but whether or not we could tell him was the issue.
In any case, it was decided and we were going to try. If it went south, Jax could do the compulsion not to remember thing. Hopefully, that wouldn’t be necessary.
I took a quick shower, did my hair and then walked across the street to my place and made a cheese plate. Howard was a cheese connoisseur. And even though I didn’t eat anymore, I kept snack food on hand in case Ollie checked the fridge again.
Jax arrived first. Then Kendra. Howard came last, and he sat beside Kendra. She did the nervous giggle, adjusted her position, smoothed her shirt, and fidgeted. Gone was my uber smooth best friend. She was like a nervous teenage girl.
“Hi, Howie. Cheese plate?” I gave the platter a little nudge toward him and he smiled, settling in to use the small knife to spread some garlic cheese onto his cracker. As he sat back to enjoy his snack, Kendra made a hiccupping sound I ignored. “We have to talk.”
He set his cracker on a napkin and leaned forward. “About what?”
I was distracted by a chunk of cracker sitting on the chest of his cardigan. I couldn’t form a single word while that tiny chunk was staring up at me, growing by the second until I pictured it as a boulder on his chest. I leaned forward and brushed it away.
Beside me, Jax growled low in his chest. Oh-ho, Mr. Mate. I couldn’t even touch Howie? Turning while still leaning forward, I shot Jax a warning look, then remembered I could just say it in my head. Back off, Kujo.
I sat back more because the boulder was gone and because of Jax, but he relaxed. “Howard, do you believe that things exist that cannot be explained? Magic and the like?” I sounded stiff, not at all like myself, but telling Howard this wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought.
“Like Houdini?” He cocked a brow and stared at me like he was daring me to contradict him.
I glanced at Kendra. “More like Gandolf or Sabrina.”
She blew out a breath through her puffy cheeks then cracked her neck with a tilt to one side then the other. It took her a second, but she flicked her fingers out and a couple of small sparks lit the air. Then she made a flame appear in the candle on the table in front of him.
“Nice.”
I expected surprise from Howard, but he only nodded, then looked at me and whatever he saw on my face wiped the smile from his. He pulled his head back as if he thought I might assault him and rolled his eyes. “Am I supposed to be surprised?”
“A little, maybe.” He’d been more surprised on our wedding night when he’d discovered the hundred or so little buttons on the back of my dress had been functional and not decorative.
Howard screwed up his lips. “Look. You can’t be a bond agent in this town, or any other, for that matter, and not be aware that witches and shifters exist. You’re going to have to work a lot harder to surprise me.” His body language was arrogant and cocky. It was part of his charm, usually. Right now I wanted to thump him. “There are even rumors that young Mr. Redford over there”—he nodded toward Jax—“is running his own coven of super witches.”
I chuckled then looked at Jax. This was either a hold my beer moment in terms of the surprise I was about to deliver or a pack up my toys and send Howie packing situation while I kept my secret to myself.
Jax nodded at me. Apparently, we were going with hold my beer.
I glanced at Howard. He had a particularly sweet smell, and it didn’t take much effort at all to let my fangs drop. “Not witches, Howard. Vampires.”
For as well as he took the reality of the supernatural, this wasn’t the same. His eyes went wide, and he backed up, propelling himself back until he fell off the end of the sofa. Somehow, the arm of the damned thing was no obstacle for his terror to overcome.
He scooted across the floor backward on his ass.
“No! No, no. Vampires?” He looked at me again, shrieked another, “No!”
“Howie. Calm down, Howard.” I used my stern voice, but when it came down to it, the only thing that calmed him was compulsion. By Jax. I sat back and waited for my new mate-to-be to calm my ex-husband down.
Once Howard was over his terror, with a lot of help from Jax, he looked at me, tilted his head and reached out a finger he tried to stick into my mouth.
I jerked back. “The hell are you doing?”
He drew his hand back to his side. “Just, you know, checking.”
“They’re sharp. Trust me.” And he was looking more and more like a T-bone. I was getting hangry.
“Sharp enough to bite me?” He had a glimmer in his eyes. A dare. He wagged his eyebrows, and I gave him a little shove.
The shove wasn’t much. Playful even, but Howie reeled backward and through the drywall. Not completely through it, but there was a Howard shaped dent in the wall now. “Crap,” I muttered.
When he was dusted off and standing again, he looked at me. “I imagine that helps when hauling a skip to the cop shop.”
I shrugged. “We each have our own skills.” I meant the Bond Girls.
He blew out a breath. “Yeah.”
Kendra stepped forward. “Maybe we should talk about the skip?” She laid a hand on Howie’s arm and then pulled it back, tentative. “Sorry.”
But he smiled at her and her cheeks flushed red. She ducked her head. There was something to be said for a new attraction. It was pure before all the real-world concerns set it off.
“Do you have anything that belongs to the skip?” I asked the question because Kendra was busy silently gushing over Howie’s smile at her. I knew her well enough to recognize when she was off the deep end.
Howard nodded. “I have a shirt with a few spots of his blood on it.”
I didn’t ask how he’d come by such a thing because it didn’t matter. “You’re sure it’s his?”
“Yeah. It was bagged and tagged from the crime scene and DNA tested.” He nodded and walked to the messenger bag he’d walked in carrying, pulled out a plastic bag sealed with a red piece of tape with the word evidence in bold black letters.
“Are you supposed to have that?” The note of reproach in my voice elicited a familiar narrow-eyed look from Howie.
“Not my fault if the police had it messengered to my place by accident.”
Fault no, but it certainly was about to work to his benefit.
Kendra picked up the bag and stared at it.
Howie looked at me, confused. “What’s she doing?”
“Watch.” I shook my head at him and moved him back so Kendra could work. She spread her map on the table and began to scry. It took about three seconds before we had a location.
She pointed at the map. “There.”
“Wow.” He smiled at her, his charming, ingratiating smile. She gobbled it up, cheeks flushed, her own smile almost shy. I’d never seen her like this before. “You ever get tired of this Bond Girl thing with Hailey, give me a call. I’ll put you right to work.”
She grinned at me and shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t even think about it, Kendra,” I growled.
We had a location, and that was enough for now. I had my own romantic issues to solve. I couldn’t get involved in theirs. “Oh, I hate to break up all this mutual admiration and eye-flirting, but we should go get our skip.” I cocked an eyebrow at Kendra and she flushed again.
“Yep.” She had an extra spring in her step, a sashay, and I was happy for her. I wouldn’t have put her and Howie together as a couple but seeing it up close was convincing.
When we arrived at the apartment her scrying led us to—one of the swanky condo complexes with marble foyers and a doorman—Paige and I went to the fourth floor and Kendra and Howard waited in the lobby.
We came back a few minutes later with the skip in his cuffs. Easy-peasy. This had gone off without any curve or bend in the plan. And when we brought him to the police station to collect the bond ticket, I handed it to Howie. “What is this?” he asked, confused.
I winked at him. “On the house. Least we can do for an old friend.”
Beside me, Paige snorted. “I’m not his friend.”
But she winked. She knew what I knew. Now Howie would be back with his big money skips, and we would all benefit. Other than that one complaint, she kept quiet and we went home.