Her Perilous Wolf by Julie Steimle (free e books to read .txt) 📖

“My sister. Come on. Where do you think Audry would go right now?”

Shrugging, Selena looked to Vicky. “I can’t say. I really don’t know her that well. Maybe she went back to NYU. What do you think? She was talking about how she had to rethink her doctorate research. Maybe she is staying with a college friend.”

That made sense. Vincent, Doug, and Vicky exchanged looks.

“Do you know any of her college friends?” Selena asked Vincent, whom they all turned to as the expert in all things Audry.

Sighing, Vincent nodded. “Yeah. Let me think. Um… Jandra Washington, Brooke Himmerman, Neil Garret, Jeremy Deets… most of them are in Green Club. Um… Robert Lafon—”

“Robert?” Selena perked up. “You mean Bobo?”

Doug looked to her, knowing the name also. He colored a little. No one knew he had been to Robert Lafon’s apartment—which was Troy’s apartment. Nobody was to know.

Vincent nodded to Selena. “Yeah… I guess I totally spaced it there. Would she visit him?”

Selena shrugged. But it didn’t seem that likely. They were more acquaintances than buddies.

Tommy raised a hand. “Who is Bobo?”

Grinning back at him, Selena replied, “He was a Gulinger student too, after your time. Bobo came a little later than Rick had. But, I don’t know if Audry would go visit Bobo. It’s more likely she would visit her other friends. However, I bet Bobo would know. We’ll go visit him.”

Doug looked quickly to Vicky, taking in a breath.

Michael noticed. “What is it?”

Cringing, Doug said, “Uh… I happen to know this Bobo lives with Troy.”

They all stared at him.

“And how do you know that?” Vincent asked, eyes widening.

Doug cringed lower. “I was at his apartment two weeks ago.”

Michael stared with a laugh. “You were not supposed to go there—am I right?”

Doug nodded, sheepish. “Yeah…”

Laughing more, Michael backed away. He nodded to Selena as he said, “Doug, don’t worry about it. Selena is excellent protection against vampires—especially Troy.”

“Vampires?” Vicky quickly looked to Selena. “Those are real?”

Selena shrugged, nodding to Michael to urge them to go. She rolled her eyes as she said, “As real as vegans are. Vampirism is a meal choice. Pretty disgusting if you ask me.”

But Vicky looked to Doug. “Is this guy Troy a vampire? Does he drink blood?”

Doug shook his head with a groan. “No. He doesn’t. He just has infected blood.”

Vicky stared at him.

“Don’t worry.” Selena urged her with a pat on her shoulder. “You can’t catch it. Just stick with me, and we’ll talk to Bobo. He’ll help us find Audry.”

With a wink to Tommy, then Vincent, Selena climbed back behind the steering wheel of her car, Vicky taking the passenger side again with a hop. And they were off into the road. Doug did the same, waving as he took off to the Cartwrights.

Michael said to Vincent as they got into their rent-a-car, Vincent once more the driver, “We should be following Selena. We need to speak with Troy to find his friend Randon.”

“Shouldn’t we call ahead first?” Vincent asked, hurrying to get his seatbelt on.

“I don’t know their numbers.” Michael shrugged.

“We should have asked Doug,” Vincent muttered, spotting Selena’s car to follow it. He pulled into the road as hastily as he could.

“I don’t think they kept phone contact,” Tommy muttered with a chuckle, resting in the passenger side seat. “I have a feeling they were doing some kind of subterfuge.”

“We should have asked him more about it,” Michael countered with a nod from the back seat.

As they got closer to Selena’s car, Michael urged Vincent to pull alongside.

Selena noticed them, slowing down. Both sides rolled down their windows, Michael calling out to Vicky who was on their side. “Hey! We need to go to the same place! We don’t have an address or a phone number for the Spades! And we need to talk to Troy.”

Vicky laughed, blushing again. Damn. She liked Michael. Vincent could feel the danger of that rising. First Audry, then Doug, and now Vicky. This was not good.

Selena called across her, “Alright. Tag along.”

Vicky laughed again, shaking her head. She shouted to Vincent. “Hand him your phone! I’ll call you! We can give you the address.”

Nodding as it was the only thing he could so considering the circumstances, Vincent passed back his cellphone to Michael, but Tommy took it. When Vicky called, Tommy handed it to Michael, because apparently she wanted to speak to him—but they all heard the conversation as Vincent kept the volume up.

They got the address—to which Vincent gasped. “That’s Audry’s old place.”

Michael and Tommy exchanged looks. Too many coincidences were piling up.

“You’ve been there before?” Tommy asked.

Nodding. Vincent said, “Sure have. Rick set it up. I had visited once, then later helped her move out of there when she broke up with her last boyfriend.”

“Ok….” Michael relayed the message to Vicky, then he said, “What’s your phone number?”

Vincent’s ears perked.

Vicky giggled and asked him why. 

“So I can call you with my phone,” Michael said, trying not to blush.

Tommy looked away, peeking once to Vincent.

With another giggle, Vicky relayed her number. Michael put it into his cell phone’s contact list. When he finally hung up, Vincent said to him, “Are you flirting with my sister?”

Scratching the back of his head, Michael took a breath and responded, “Does it bother you?”

Inwardly moaning, Vincent sighed. “Kind of. I mean it is none of my business what Vicky does, but if you mess with her…” Something in Vincent made him stop. What could he do to a knife wielding, plane-flying billionaire? Then something came to him. “I’ll let Audry shoot you, and convince Tom Brown to… I don’t know what. Do something to you.”

But Tommy Whitefeather laughed at Michael. “The big guns. Even I can’t cope with Trouble.”

Trouble was Tom Brown’s nickname, given to him by Tommy Whitefeather. Vincent had learned that after learning what Tom Brown really was.

“I got it,” Michael said, hands raised. “You love your sister.”

“And my cousin,” Vincent added.

Michael went silent. Yet after a moment said, “Oh, I’d never mess with Audry. Rick would kill me. Fact is, if anyone messed with her and Rick found out about it, I don’t think that person would see the next day.”

Vincent drew in a breath, trying to keep his eyes on traffic. But he felt sick. “He wouldn’t actually kill—”

“You never know,” Michael murmured. “I like him, but…”

“Ah, I don’t think Rick would be violent—” Tommy protested indignantly, also fond of the werewolf. But as a shapeshifter, it made sense he would be more sympathetic.

“Says you,” Michael retorted. “No one has yet seen him lose it except when it came to his mother. Can you just imagine what would happen if someone harmed the woman he was madly in love with?”

Vincent felt chills. “Do you really think he is in love with my cousin?

Flushing with a hasty peek to him, Michael sighed. “I know he has a thing for her. I can’t lie about that. I don’t know how intense it is, but everybody in the Seven knows he wants her safe, and he is doing everything he knows how to protect her—which in this case means staying far away from her. In fact, I don’t think he is allowing himself to even entertain the idea that he could be with her. However, if it turned out Audry liked him back, well… we’d see something new. And I don’t know if it is my place to interfere.”

“It’d be mine,” Vincent murmured.

“Is it likely that she has feelings for him?” Tommy asked, leaning back to watch Vincent’s reaction.

Gripping the steering wheel, Vincent said, “She likes the wolf.”

Michael raised his eyebrows. Tommy and he exchanged looks.

“But she has mixed feelings about the man,” Vincent muttered.

Tommy whistled low, shaking his head.

“Alright. So who else knows this?” Michael said.

*

Audry had arrived at the Cartwright’s apartment earlier that afternoon, long before Vincent had even landed in the area, and long before her mother had even known she was gone. She had found a dog-friendly rent-a-car place, and had driven the route she knew well. It had been a while, but it was nice to see the quiet neighborhood was mostly unchanged.

When she knocked on the door, Darth on a leash with her, a young woman with licorice black hair and the coloring of a French Noir actress answered it. The lady smiled with pretty bow-shaped lips, the kind women were envious of and got injections to achieve. She was even the right curvature, the sort she expected a girl named Gigi to have.

“Come on in,” the lady said, stepping aside while eying the dog. “Jessica is in the washroom with the baby. She’ll be out in a minute.”

Her voice was more metropolitan American English, so she wasn’t foreign, but Audry could not place which coast she originated from, even though she just had that look of someone from an intense background. This lady simply gave Audry the impression of someone well-traveled, thoroughly experienced, cautious, though not yet jaded—but also haunted. Yes, there was a bit of a macabre about her. But Audry had come to expect that sort of thing by now with this group.

Stepping indoors, with a peek behind her to the road, Audry drew in breath with another assessing glance of this new lady. “Are you the new nanny?”

The woman shrugged, her long dark eyelashes fluttering a little. She had on that wing eyeliner style. “Kind of.” She led Audry into the living room, which for the most part was the same arrangement as it had been a year ago, just a tiny bit more worn. The woman seemed comfortable in it. “It is sort of a mutual exchange. I needed shelter, and she needed extra hands.”

Audry looked around the space. That wolf tee-shirt was still framed and on the wall, same place. Just seeing it sent shivers through Audry. But as she looked around more, the apartment merely had a lived-in look. There were kid toys about now, the kind for toddlers, with a hanging jumping swing in the kitchen doorway, and teething toys. Darth looked to them excitedly.

She tightened her grip on his leash. This was not a place to let him loose.

“I’ll be there in a minute,” Jessica called out from the open bathroom door.

Darth let out a bark.

“Hush!” Audry looked about with a slight panic. She loved dogs, but not all places did. He might startle the baby.

Jessica peeked her head out of the bathroom. “That’s right. You said you were bringing a dog.”

Audry shrugged apologetically. “I couldn’t leave him.”

Laughing, Jessica slipped back into the bathroom. She soon came out, carrying her adorably plump baby girl—who was now a toddler—on her hip, a wide smile on her face. Ivy was in a pink dress with a stained front. It made Audry smile. Jessica was exactly the kind of mother she liked, the one that let kids get dirty. She always found it annoying, those parents that treated their kids like trophies or toys—always perfectly dressed and not allowed to get into scrapes. She pitied kids like that.

“Now you are a sight for sore eyes,” Jessica said walking up to her in a stride, reaching out one arm for her. “Come here and give me a hug.”

“You don’t mind the dog?” Audry asked, holding Darth at bay. He was excited to be in a new place, hopping around, probably wanting to chew on everything.

Jessica laughed with a look to the Belgian Malinois. “I like dogs.” With a peek to her daughter, she added, “And we can teach Ivy to like dogs too. Come on. Hug me. I missed you.”

Audry rushed up, hugging her tight as Darth ran around them happily, leash looser. “I missed you too.”

When they broke apart, tears wet on both of their cheeks, Jessica led them to the living room couches where she set Ivy on her lap. The little girl’s eyes were wide on Darth who was sniffing her. Audry loosened her grip on Darth’s leash only when she was sure he would be ok with the baby. Ivy was now