Maisey bulged her eyes slightly and shook her head. Our conversation about vampires and her desperate attempt to cure me felt like weeks ago, but mentioning it brought it all back to the surface.
"What are you two muttering about?" Riggs asked.
"I was asking if she thought they sold sandwiches here," I said quickly. Stupid. I needed to catch up, and fast. Vampires and werewolves still sounded like silly kid's stories to me. But my reality had rapidly changed, and I needed to shake that reaction as fast as I could. If this guy was who I thought he was—or what I thought he was—then he must not have any idea what my sister was.
God, I still hadn't even had a chance to let that sink in. Maisey said she was a vampire. But if the vampire blood would've supposedly been a dead giveaway to the people in this club, why wouldn't he smell that my sister was a vampire?
Either it was all bogus, or there was some reason. Maybe the smell got stronger with time? Or he thought he was just smelling the blood he hadn't completely cleaned from her? But what would happen when he insisted we get all the way cleaned up?
All that mattered was I needed to start being more careful. Way more careful.
Riggs seemed to light up at my mention of a sandwich. "You're hungry?" he asked.
"Uh," I stammered. "Yeah, actually." As if to confirm I wasn't lying, my stomach let out a pitiful gurgle.
Until that moment, I’d only ever seen Riggs as a stoic, somewhat grumpy beast of a man who looked like he punched holes in walls for fun in his spare time. But the mention of food seemed to light him up. He plucked a menu from the bar and leaned toward me.
He was close enough that his forearm was touching mine. I should’ve been running for the nearest full-body hand sanitizer bath, but all I could think was how exciting it was to be around people. Real people. Even if “people” in this case meant a kidnapping asshole.
“You’ve got to try the burrito. It’s got jalapenos, but they’re not that spicy. I can ask her to go easy on them too, if you aren’t a big fan of the heat.”
“Uh,” I said. “I do like burritos.”
“Of course you do,” he muttered. “What’s not to like?”
“Dammit,” Riggs said. He was looking past me toward the door.
10
Riggs
The small human women beside me both turned to follow my gaze toward the door. I gripped the bar top feeling the wood threatening to crumble beneath my fingertips. Of all the fucking people to show up at this exact moment…
It was Fang.
He was wearing his usual leather getup with random bits of metal dangling in places like he’d tried to put together a motorcycling outfit while on hard drugs.
“Uh,” Sylvie said from beside me. “Friend of yours?”
“He’s under that impression," I said under my breath.
Fang spread his arms when he saw me, approaching with a big, crooked smile. He was short for a werewolf at just under six feet. He wasn’t particularly strong, either. Both the strength and height usually came with the package, but he appeared to have missed out on those benefits, among others. He had dark hair, but he dyed two strips above his ears silver so they ran back and met in a point above the nape of his neck.
He looked young, but apparent age with werewolves was almost as deceptive as with vampires. We didn’t age at normal rates, so a werewolf might be eighty and only look twenty. I happened to know Fang was young—like in his teens, because the dumbass had drunkenly told me. He also had a blog he didn’t think I knew about where he wrote about all things werewolf and tried to pass it off as fiction. I honestly suspected it was why he never left me alone. He just wanted writing material.
“Riggsy,” he said. He went in like I was going to hug him, but I stuck my palm out, stopping him at arm’s length.
Fang smoothly clapped me on the arm like he’d been expecting the gesture.
“I’ve told you not to call me Riggsy,” I said. “And you can fuck off. I’ve got something important going on right now. I don't have time to babysit.”
“Great news. No babies here. Just a man,” he half-growled the last, tilting his chin up at Sylvie like a come on.
“Don’t even look at her,” I gritted through my teeth. “And I don’t have time for you. So I’ll say it again. Fuck. Off.”
"We had time for burritos, apparently," Sylvie noted.
"Anyway," Fang said. There was a hint of southern accent to his voice I wasn't entirely sure was genuine. "Friends don't fuck off when friends need help. They fuck in."
I squinted. "Don't say that again."