“Fuck, okay, I don’t know what it was, but we got these syringes from this kid. Rat or something.”
I felt my face contort into an ugly frown. “Mouse?”
“Yeah. He brought us these meds a few days ago. Alexandre said we’d need them soon, and sure enough, you show up with the werewolf in tow. Gave him the shot and bam, wolfman was a wolf. God, is that…is that tooth his?”
I smiled coldly. “It’s a shame I didn’t keep the other one I took. They’d make great earrings.”
“What did you do to him?” another vampire asked.
“What I’ll do to all of you if you don’t tell me everything you know. Who told Peyton we were coming?”
“We don’t know anything, I swear,” the young woman said. “He didn’t tell us much. It was very need-to-know.”
“And let me guess, you didn’t need to know?”
“Find that Mouse kid. He has to know where the shot came from.”
The idea of chasing Mouse through the Paris streets for two nights in a row didn’t have any appeal, but if the sneaky little turncoat knew who or what could change Desmond back, I had to give it a try. I’d have sent one of the lackeys to fetch him for me, but if I let them out of my sight again, they’d be in the wind permanently.
Which was probably where Mouse was now, if he’d heard what happened to Peyton.
But there was still a chance he didn’t know yet.
Fucking hell, looked like my hunting wasn’t over for the night.
“Got one more in you?” I asked Desmond.
He didn’t appear any more thrilled with the idea than I was, but what choice did we have? We’d already tracked Mouse down once. It shouldn’t be too hard to do it a second time. After all, we’d told him we could do it the night before. Now I had to prove we were as menacing as we threatened.
“If I find out you’re setting me up, I will add twelve more teeth to this necklace, do you understand?”
They nodded.
“Fucking rogues.”
Trailing Mouse turned out to be easier than expected. The little shit was only human, and humanity had its limitations. Plus, he hadn’t wandered far from where we’d found him the previous night.
He was sitting at an outside table at a twenty-four-hour café, sipping an espresso, when I sat down across from him. His eyes went wide, and he looked around for an escape ro
ute. Desmond rested next to him, cutting off the easiest path.
“We meet again,” I greeted with faux cheer.
“Miss McQueen.”
“Oh, we’re going to play it formal? Isn’t that nice? Want to tell me why you lied to me about who Peyton’s runner was? That this friend of yours was actually you? Hmm? Cat got your tongue, Mouse?”
“No, but I fear the wolf might if you don’t like what I tell you.” He smiled weakly and sipped his drink, settling back in the chair like we were old friends chatting.
“Where did you get the shot?”
“I don’t know precisely who it came from because there was no return name on the parcel, and I don’t make a habit of asking too many questions when a vampire asks me to do something, understand?”
“Tell me what you do know.”
“Peyton had his important mail shipped to my apartment, and I would drop it in the sewers for him. He told me several weeks ago he was expecting a parcel from a dear friend, those were his words. He knew you were coming too. Told me if you found me, I ought to send you his way. Anyway, the postmark on the package was from California, and the note on the box was just signed with the letter A.”
I wasn’t surprised anymore that us finding Peyton had been a setup. It didn’t matter now, since things had gone my way in the end. “What did the note say?”