Lips pursed, she looked me over. “I know enough about you and your kind.Brat.”
“That word doesn’t do the damage you think it does. But good try.”
Irritated magic rolled across the room.
The door opened behind me, and she looked over my shoulder at someone who’d entered.
“Connor,” she said, “you have a visitor. The vampire’s here again.”
“I see that,” Connor said, walking toward us. He wore jeans and a gray Little Red T-shirt that snugged against his sculpted abdomen. “Give us a few minutes.”
“She wants to talk about Riley. He’s important to me, too.”
“Miranda.”
Anger boiled in her eyes, but she kept her mouth closed. She walked to the bar door, music spilling into the room like a cresting wave when she opened it, then slammed it behind her again.
“She doesn’t much like me,” I said.
“No, she doesn’t. You’re not her type.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning Miranda’s a good Pack member. You’re not Pack. And like many shifters and vampires, she has very specific ideas about loyalty.” Connor kept his gaze on the closed door. “She’s also worried about Riley.”
“Were they together?”
“No,” he said.
He looked back at me, eyebrows furrowed, dark slashes over his blue eyes. Like a man who had things to say but wasn’t ready to say them. It wasn’t hard to guess what he was thinking. “We don’t need more vampire involvement where Riley is concerned.”
“What happened to friendship?”
He gave me a flat look. “He was arrested at Cadogan House.”
“Not by vampires. You know why they had to arrest him. The evidence was there, Connor.”
“He’s in a cage.”
“I know. I went to see him.”
Connor wasn’t the type to show surprise. He generally rolledwith the current, whatever it might have been. That was the upside, I guess, of not being too focused on rules. But he definitely looked surprised now.
“You went to see him?”
“I’m not your enemy, and I’m not his enemy. I don’t know how or why he ended up holding a knife, but I know he didn’t kill Tomas. So I went to talk to him, and to find out if he knew anything else.”
“What happened to the deal with the mayor’s office? The ban against Cadogan involvement? I thought you stuck to the rules.”
“I do. But I’m not a Cadogan vampire.”
He blinked. Whatever he’d expected me to say, it wasn’t that. “What does that mean?”
I offered my theory, watched confusion change to disbelief, then appreciation. “You think the Ombudsman will buy that? Or your father?”
“Fifty-fifty on the Ombudsman. And if I have to use it, it’s going to hurt my father. But my father’s not being framed for a crime he didn’t commit.”
Connor watched me again for a long moment, then nodded. “All right. What did you learn by talking to him?”