When Temptation Burns: A Shadow Keepers Novel (Shadow Keepers 6) (11 page)

Kevin
.

Finally! She’d called and texted him more than once over the last hour. His message didn’t say what was up, but it did say he’d meet her at the Center. Good. She had no idea why he’d been so persistent about trying to reach her and yet so reluctant about leaving a message. But she supposed she’d know soon. Considering that this was Kevin, the reason could be either grave or ridiculous; there really was no sense speculating.

She tucked her phone back into her pocket, then pulled a generic soda—the only kind that was covered by the Center’s budget—from the ancient fridge. She popped the top and leaned on the counter, looking out over the pass-through bar at the kids who were mingling around. She knew most of them—could even guess what they were thinking. Alicia was studying in the corner, determined to ace her next test. Jerry was strutting around, trying to look cool despite his swollen and bloody nose. Seventeen-year-old Kurt had just finished up a game of chess with eleven-year-old Martin, and he was being a good sport about the fact that the genius kid had whipped him in only eight moves.

And then there was CeeCee. Quiet CeeCee who spent most of her time on the couch reading—and when her eyes weren’t on a book, they were focused on Kurt.

She was looking at him now.

Andy tried to figure out how long the girl had been watching the handsome young teen. At least a couple of
weeks. Probably going on a month now. And although Andy spent a great deal of her spare time at the Center, she’d never seen the two of them have an actual conversation despite the fact that CeeCee was obviously seriously crushing on the boy.

Most days, CeeCee would come in and read and watch Kurt up until the time her guardian came for her. He was a huge man with a scar on his right cheek, and he always arrived in a car with darkly tinted windows. Andy had asked CeeCee if the man was her father, and the girl had hesitated. “I think of him that way, but technically he’s my guardian.”

Andy didn’t know anyone who had a guardian rather than a parent or stepparent. “What do you call him?”

“His name,” CeeCee had said, as if it were the most absurd question ever. “Luke Dragos.”

The sun had recently set, signaling the time when Luke usually picked the girl up. But he wasn’t here tonight. Andy wandered over and sat down next to her. “No ride tonight?”

“Luke texted that he has to work. I can walk home, though. It’s not far.”

Andy nodded. “You know you all fill out forms when you join the Center.”

CeeCee looked at her sideways. “Yeah? So?”

“Kurt doesn’t live far, either. Maybe you two could walk home together.”

CeeCee’s throat moved so dramatically that it was all Andy could do not to laugh.

“Or not,” she said.

“Don’t talk so loud!” CeeCee’s voice came out as a blasting stage whisper that undoubtedly carried farther than Andy’s normal speaking voice.

“He’s outside on the court,” Andy said. “Martin whooped him on the chessboard again, so he’s taking it out on the hoops. Why don’t you go watch. I bet he’d like a cheerleader.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

The girl only shrugged.

“Everyone’s shy at sixteen, CeeCee. But if you like him …”

“It’s not that.”

“No?” Andy waited, giving CeeCee a chance to rethink that whole “shy” thing. She’d noticed how the girl tended to keep to herself. That had to be the reason, and if it was, Andy was happy to step in and play matchmaker. “CeeCee?” she prompted when the girl stayed silent. “Do you want me to say something to him?”

“God, no!”

She looked so mortified that Andy had to laugh. “Not that you like him. Just that you look bored. Maybe he’d ask you to play chess.”

“And then what?”

“And then he’d realize what a cool kid you are and ask you to play chess again. Then he’d offer to walk you home, and maybe take you to a movie.”

CeeCee almost smiled. “That sounds nice. Really normal.”

“So …?”

“I don’t think so.”

Andy sat back, examining the girl’s face, trying to get into her teenage head. “All right. I give up. Do you want to tell me why?”

“Because there’s no point. We’re too different.”

“Different isn’t necessarily bad.”

CeeCee shrugged.

“Lots of people are different. That doesn’t mean they can’t be friends. Or more.”

“Look, I appreciate it. I mean, I really like you. Of all the adults here, you’re definitely the coolest.”

“Thanks.”

“But you just don’t get it. It wouldn’t work. It
couldn’t
work.”

“If it’s important to you,” Andy said, “you can make it work.”

“Nothing personal, Andy, but that’s pretty naïve.” The girl stood up. “It sucks, but that’s just the way it is. And I need to learn to deal with that.”

“CeeCee—”

But the girl just waved and headed out the back door. Andy was debating what to do next when she heard Kevin calling her name. She turned and saw her cousin waving at her from across the room.

She glanced in CeeCee’s direction one more time, but she didn’t try to follow her. She didn’t understand what the trouble was, but she knew that CeeCee wasn’t going to talk about it right now. Andy would give her space and try again later.

“What’s been going on with you?” she asked as she crossed the room toward her cousin in long strides. “Why didn’t you just leave me a message? Why all the cryptic stuff?”

He took her arm and pulled her into one of the small rooms that opened off of the main area. They’d been intended as study halls, but the kids rarely used them, choosing instead to crack open their books in the open area if they felt inclined to study.

Kevin shut the door. Then he locked it.

“Oh my God, Andy, you won’t believe it. You absolutely won’t believe it.” He paced behind the big formica table, shifting directions so quickly he was making Andy’s head spin. If she’d met him on the street, she would have assumed he was high on coke. As it was, she knew that this was just Kevin.

“FUBAR,” he said. “You know what that is, right? The situation is completely FUBAR. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.”

“Thanks for the translation, I’m familiar with the term.”

“But FUBAR in a good way. Or, a freaky way. Oh, shit, Andy, it was wild.”

“Are you going to tell me what happened, or do I have to guess?”

“Guess—no, you’d never guess. Oh, shit, Andy. I saw one. Hell, I helped kill one.”

“Kill one?” She leaned forward, her skin prickly with concern. “One what?”

“A werewolf.”

“Oh my God, Kevin. Are you telling me you killed somebody?” She realized that she was clutching the back of one of the plastic chairs, and her fingers were tight and sore from pressing so hard. “Did you call the police? A lawyer?”

“You’re not listening to me. I didn’t kill some
one
. I killed
something
. And actually, I only fought him. And then he ran and we lost him.” He frowned. “Maybe he’s not dead.” The frown deepened. “If he’s not dead, he’ll probably come after me. Oh my God, Andy. I need some wolfsbane and a lot of silver knives.”

Andy’s head was spinning, which wasn’t unusual when she talked with Kevin, but this conversation was worse than normal. At least it was starting to sound like
he hadn’t actually killed someone. But something bad had happened, and she wanted to get every last detail. “Start over, and this time start at the beginning. And go slow, Kevin, okay? As a personal favor, slow it down to about a hundred miles per hour.”

“Very funny,” he said, but he complied. “You remember Wes and Stu? You met them at that first meet-up.”

She nodded. Kevin had found out about a group of guys in his class at Cal State Northridge who were knee-deep in a meet-up group that centered around the members’ shared belief that vampires and werewolves and the like lived among us.

That, of course, wasn’t a fact worthy of her reporting skills. Los Angeles was a crazy town, after all—but then Wes and Stu had befriended Kevin and he’d learned that the meet-up group was a sort of testing ground. There was, in fact, a more powerful group—a secret group. It went by the name of the Dark Warriors, and apparently it included at least one local politician, though Kevin didn’t know who.

That
was a story. Possibly only
National Enquirer
worthy, but it had the potential to be huge. After all, no one wanted a nutjob running the country.

It wasn’t a story Andy was willing to pass up, and she got Kevin to bring her in on the meet-up. Without a Wes and Stu of her own, though, she was pretty much stuck there, spending Saturday afternoons sipping cappuccinos with the same guys who thought that the science in
Star Trek
was real and that vampires really did sparkle and tended to congregate in the Pacific Northwest. In other words, even though she knew a story was just over the mountain, she didn’t have a sherpa to get her there.

“So you’re telling me that Wes and Stu dragged you
into a fight with a werewolf? Come on, Kevin. You know it had to be some sort of fraternity prank. Some guy in heavy makeup working with Wes and Stu to make you look like a fool.”

“No. No, you weren’t there. It was real. I mean, it was down-and-dirty real.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then decided that it wouldn’t get her anywhere. She needed to hear the whole story first, so she just nodded. “Okay. Tell me what happened.”

“Well, turns out that they’ve been more, well,
in
for months.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Dark Warriors. Wes and Stu have been hanging with the leader—the guy I told you about? Paul Vassalo?”

“Right?”

“Apparently they met this guy, Jordan, and they started feeling each other out, talking. And they hit it off, and Jordan starts hinting that he wants to do more. So they think they’ll introduce him to Paul, right?”

“Go on.”

Kevin lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Turns out that things didn’t add up.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know.” Kevin’s voice took on a whiny tone. “They didn’t tell me. Can I please just finish the story?”

“Sorry. Go on.”

“So we go out with the guy. And we have drinks and stuff, and he seems pretty normal, but then he starts to change.” His eyes cut away from her as he said that last part.

“Starts to change? What does that mean?”

“Haven’t you been listening? It means he was a werewolf. And I saw it. With my own eyes.”

“I—” She closed her mouth, not sure what to say.

“You don’t believe me. Uncle Andrew would. And Aunt Gretchen would have, too.”

“Kev—”

“She
would
,” he said. “I remember her stories.”

“Yeah,
stories
. About pixies and fairies. Not exactly the same thing.”

“She used to say there was dark stuff, too. I remember. One time right before she died we were sitting on the back porch watching fireflies, and she started talking about how you couldn’t tell if someone was bad just by looking at them.”

Andy felt herself relax and she realized that for just a minute she’d wondered if he was right, if her mother had actually believed in werewolves and the like. But she remembered that night. “She was speaking metaphorically, Kevin. Just like in Daddy’s sermons.”

Kevin shook his head. “She wasn’t,” he said petulantly. “But that’s not even the point. I’m not talking about when we were kids, I’m talking about last night.”

She wanted to argue more about her mother—wanted to set the record straight. But Kevin was agitated and right now it was her cousin she had to worry about, not her memories. “Look,” she said gently. “I believe you that something happened last night.” She just wasn’t sure what, except that she was sure it wasn’t a werewolf.

“Hell, yes, something happened. Fur. And this weird shifting in his bones. That’s what happened. And the silver. It really messed him up.”

“Silver?”

“They laced his drink with colloidal silver. And, well, there were knives.”

“Jesus, Kevin. You stabbed somebody?”

“Why are you not listening? I told you that at the beginning. And the whole point is that He. Was. A. Werewolf.”

“Even if I believed that—and I’m not saying I do—from what you’ve told me, he was hanging out and having drinks with you until your friends laced his drink and got him messed up. Then they chased him and hurt him and maybe even killed him. That sum it up?”

Kevin dropped down into a chair opposite hers looking absolutely miserable. “I didn’t know what they were going to do, I swear. And the rest of it’s absolutely true. He wasn’t human, Andy.”

Her mind was whirring at a million miles an hour, and some deep, pathetic, embarrassing part of her actually wanted to believe him. Because wouldn’t that be the most amazing story?

And maybe the tooth fairy drives a Harley
.

“Were you smoking anything?”

“God no!” he said. “Dammit, I thought you’d believe me. I thought you’d help.”

“I am going to help. Even if this kid was a werewolf—” She forced her voice to stay firm and serious. “Even if he was, you need to find out what happened to him. I mean, come on, Kevin, if you really did kill someone, you need to turn yourself in. Turn yourself in and cut a deal. Tell them about Wes and Stu.”

He looked positively horrified at the thought. “But maybe he didn’t really die. There was a lot of blood, sure, but werewolves can survive a lot of trauma.”

“How on earth would you know that?” Her voice
rose with impatience and she tamped her temper down. Was she really arguing about how much abuse a werewolf could survive?

He bit his lower lip. “If he didn’t die, he’s gonna come after me, Andy. I’m sure of it.”

“Hang on.” She rummaged in her purse for her phone, determined to put an end to this. “Give me an address. Now.”

He did, telling her the name of the bar they’d started at and the club where they’d ended up. Someplace called the Club Rouge. She called one of her sources at the LAPD. A dead kid ought to be easy enough to confirm, but after fifteen minutes on the phone, all she knew was that nothing out of the ordinary had been reported in the area.

Confused, she ended the call, sat back, and looked at her cousin. “Nothing. No one in the area reported being attacked or even called in a report of strange activity. Are you sure you gave me the right address?”