Eternal by V. Forrest (primary phonics books .TXT) 📕

Glen opened the pub door and music and voices tumbled into the semidarkness of the street. “Come on, stop worrying,” he urged. “Let me buy you a pint.”

Fia drank her single pint, and again Glen had three. But this time, unlike that first night after Bobby’s death, when they walked home, Glen seemed completely in control of his faculties and kept well away from her. They briefly discussed the case and the decision that they would return to their respective offices tomorrow. Both were frustrated by the lack of evidence, but were hoping that once Mahon’s autopsy report and the lab reports from the evidence were back, they’d have some direction to go. There had to be some similarity between Bobby and Mahon’s deaths, beyond the obvious.

As they walked up the sidewalk of the B and B, Fia spotted a form that suddenly morphed into the silhouette of a man. It…he stood on the front porch, watching. Waiting.

Glen spotted him a second later. “I think I’ll head upstairs,” he said, mounting the steps. “See you in the morning.”

Fia waited until Glen closed the door behind him before she turned to the dark figure. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He glanced at the door Glen had just walked through, taking his time before he spoke. “I was wondering the same about you.”

Chapter 12

Fia walked up onto the porch. “You can’t do that around him.”

“Do what?”

“You know very well what.” She slugged him in the arm.

Arlan laughed and draped his arm casually around her shoulder. “I was messin’ with you. He didn’t see me. He didn’t see anything. Humans never do. I don’t know why you waste your time with them.”

She moved toward the railing, but not entirely out of his reach.

“He was assigned to the case. I didn’t have any choice in the matter.”

“I’m not talking about the case and you know it, Fee. I saw you at the Hill. You’re involved.”

“I’m not involved. He’s my partner. On this case,” she clarified. “There’s just no way around the jurisdiction issue, not with another body. Not now.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I haven’t really gotten time to talk to you. To tell you how sorry I am about Mahon.” He paused. “I…I know you were friends.”

Lovers. He knew they had been lovers once, too. But that had been a long time ago.

Fia was surprised by the tears that stung the backs of her eyelids. “Thanks. He was good to me after…” She let her sentence trail into silence.

Arlan’s fingers found the nape of her neck and teased a sensitive spot.

“What do you think’s happening? Slayers, or worse?”

The weight of his arm on her shoulder was comforting, but a part of her wanted to shrug him off. Maybe she didn’t want to be comforted. Maybe she didn’t deserve it. Her family needed her and she wasn’t coming through for them. “Worse? There’s worse?”

“What if it’s one of us?”

“Arlan, that’s a horrible thing to say.”

“You were in the pub. You heard them. Everyone is thinking it, even if they’re not coming out and saying it.”

“I don’t listen in on people’s thoughts, uninvited,” she said, chastising. They were both quiet for a minute. “Besides, it wouldn’t be possible. How could someone keep something like that to themselves? We’d know. One of us would know.”

“I’m just saying, whoever did this knew what they were doing. The first time, coincidence, maybe, but now with Mahon—”

“I can see what’s happening,” she cut in. “Don’t tell me how to do my job, Arlan.”

They watched a bat flutter past the porch. The streetlamp was attracting insects and the bats came to feed on them.

“I wasn’t telling you how to do your job,” he said. “I was just thinking out loud. This makes two of us. We haven’t lost two so close together in a very long time.”

Fia had been thinking the same thing tonight as she watched family members move around her in the pub. It was a strange relationship she had with the Kahills. She despised the sept for what they were, for what they had made her with their warring, and yet she loved them fiercely. Like it or not, she was one of them. Would be, perhaps, for all of eternity and she had no doubt in her mind she was willing to give her life for any one of them, even Victor, even Shannon…even her brother, Regan.

“I’m going to figure this out, Arlan.” She watched as a second bat was drawn toward the swarm of flying insects around the lamp pole. “I’m going to find out who did this to Bobby and Mahon.”

“I know you are.” He drew his finger along the ridge of her collar bone. “So, you want to come back to my place?” He leaned forward and brushed his lips against her neck. “Just for a taste….”

She felt a shiver of pleasure, but she resisted it. With vampires, sex always involved bloodletting, but it didn’t have to be that way. Did it? “I can’t.” She looked back at him, studying his gaze. “I need to keep my eyes on my partner. Shannon was circling him again tonight. I don’t put it past her to climb through his third-story window to get to him.”

Arlan sighed and moved back. Not away, just back a few inches so that while their clothing still touched, skin did not. “He’s not Ian, Fee. He just looks like him. Distant relative or something, maybe, but it’s not him. Ian was mortal and is long in his grave.”

“I know that.” She prodded him with her finger. “What makes you say that? What makes you think I think it’s him?”

He looked down at her, his gaze unwavering. “Because I know you.” He sighed. “Look, good or bad, it’s not him and that human can’t alter the past. You can’t change it. Nothing will bring Ian back and nothing will change