“Ah,” Connor said, stretching out his legs. “Just like being fifteen again.” He slid his glance to me. “Except you aren’t tattling nearly so much this time.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said primly, since he was well aware I’d gotten him in trouble often enough as a teenager. “And because this meeting has degraded into childishness or the reminiscence thereof, let’s wrap it up. Alexei is going to check with the Consolidated Atlantic for information we can use on Clive. My parents are trying to reach Nicole. Connor and I are working on the stalker.” I glanced at the wall clock. Two hours until dawn. When I woke up again, we’d be down to thirty-six. “Let’s find something.”

Connor rose, stretched, glanced at me. “Let’s go sit on the patio.”

I looked at him. “What?”

“The patio outside.” He cleared his throat. “Past the conservatory.”

“With the pipe, Ms. Scarlett?” Lulu asked.

Connor’s brows lifted. “You like Clue?”

“The movie? Of course. It’s genius, and I’m a woman of obvious taste and discernment. I’d say I’m surprised you do, but then, you also like comic books.”

“We all have our pop culture weaknesses,” Connor said and held out a hand to me, as if the warmth in his eyes wasn’t enough of an invitation.

I glanced back at Lulu, who stared out the windows, the sadness in her eyes obvious, and worried that Mateo had compounded her sadness.

“Give me a minute, will you?” I asked quietly and looked back at Connor.

“Of course,” he said, and he pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’ll be outside.”

FIFTEEN

I waited until he was gone, looked over at her. “You want to go past the conservatory, too?”

“I want to not regret having eaten my way through half of China Palace’s menu.”

“Same.” I waited a moment, trying to figure out my strategy, decided to stick with the truth. “Out with it.”

She looked back at me, brows lifted. “What?”

“Out with it. Tell me what’s bothering you—has been bothering you, since Minnesota.”

“Nothing is bothering me.” But she rose, gathered up containers and carried them into the kitchen, began to consolidate rice boxes and toss the empties.

“Yes, I can tell by your relaxed tone and chill manner.”

She looked up, misery in her eyes, and it broke my heart a little. I went to her—taking boxes on the way—and put them on the counter.

“Lulu. Talk to me.”

She looked at me for a minute, then took my hand. “Come with me,” she said and pulled me through the kitchen, the dining room, into the small front parlor with its fireplace and bookshelves. “Look.”

She hadn’t given me the chance to object, but I had no idea what I was looking for, or ought to have seen. “The couch is nice?” It was low and boxy, covered in emerald-green velvet.

Lulu muttered, stalked to the bookshelves, pointed. “Look,” she said again.

Confused, but trusting, I walked closer, looked at the books, the titles. They included The Care and Feeding of Vampires and The Official Guide to Vampire Etiquette.

Connor had been reading about the care and feeding of vampires. And since that had been on his screen, he must have had both electronic and paper copies of the book. While I knew there was no chance in hell he’d willingly follow formal vampire etiquette, that he cared enough to look into it made my heart flutter a little.

But I didn’t think that was the point, so I looked back at her, watched as she settled onto velvet cushions.

“I think Connor might be loaded,” I said quietly, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her.

“Shifter money,” Lulu said. “They’re quiet about it, but they’ve got plenty. They rarely buy anything but beer, bikes, and leather.”

Saving plenty for lush town houses, I thought, but didn’t say it aloud. “So what’s wrong?”

It took a moment of silence, another wiping of tears I knew she didn’t like to shed around people. “I feel like life is just . . . moving around me. I’m scraping by to make a living as an artist, and you’ve got this legitimate OMB job—or did before they put you on leave. Connor, the prince of werewolves, is mad about you, and I just got dumped.”

She crossed her arms. Not petulance, but protection. A shield. Lulu had always been more private than me. More gregarious, but still holding something back. That was, I thought, the reason she cut her hair the way she did. The shoulder-length bob, one side always falling across her face. It was another shield.

“You guys have your own vibe, and I feel very much apart from it.” She held up a hand. “That’s not a complaint about you. It’s fine that you have people, and I know you’d include me more if I wanted to be part of the shenanigans.”

“I would.”

“But I don’t have that kind of group. Growing up, I was too Sup for the humans, not Sup enough for the sorcerers. And Mateo . . . That was new and exciting and I really like him. And he’s part of this cool art collective, and I’m thinking, ‘These are my people!’ And then he dumps me, and there goes my plan for community building and gallery openings.”

I sat with that for a minute. “Is that why you wanted to have the potluck? For community building?”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “It was.”

“It was a good potluck. A good party. I’m glad your artsy friends were gone before the vampires showed up.”

“No shit.”

“As to the rest of it, do you want comfort, commiseration, or contradiction?”

She half laughed, which I thought was better than nothing. “Right now, commiseration.”

“So, when I came back from Paris, I was lost. Everything I was going to be, everything I was supposed to be, was back there. I had to find myself all over again—and still am. You gave me a place to stay—a home,” I amended. “The OMB gave me a job. Connor gave me . . . understanding.”

“And Hot Boy Summer.”

I snorted. “And Hot Boy Summer. And then I got fired and someone tried to kill Connor today. Someone who thinks we’re friends, that I’ve maybe never met, tried to take Connor’s life to win some kind of favor with me.”

“This commiseration is becoming depressing.”

“Yeah, this week has been a lot.” I looked over at her, found her looking back, and offered my hand. “Circumstances are going to be shitty as long as people exist on this planet. But you’ve got family to help you through. You’ve got me.”

She took my hand. Squeezed. “Okay,” she said. “You can move to comfort.”

I smiled. “You’ve given me a home and a devil cat. What do you need to make your dreams come true? How can I help?”

She cleared her throat. “Maybe we could start doing more stuff in the art community? Like, I don’t know, gallery openings or something?”

“Done.”

Lulu looked at me, brows lifted. “Seriously?”

I shrugged. “It’s snacks and champagne on someone else’s dime. If the art’s good, you can enjoy it. If it’s not, you can mock it.”

“A cruelly practical approach.”

“That’s me,” I said. I sat up again, looked at her. “I’m sorry if we don’t spend enough time doing Lulu stuff. There has been a lot of my nonsense since I came back. Not caused by me, but I end up in the middle of it.”

“You put yourself in the middle of it.”

My first instinct was to respond with a sharp, defensive denial. But she was right. “I do. I have to,” I admitted. “I can’t just stand around and let other people do the dirty work.”

“I know. You’re good people, Lis.” She sat up, scrubbed hands over her face, looked at me. “It’s just damned inconvenient sometimes.”

I smiled. “I can’t argue with that. We good?”

She nodded. “We’re good. You think Benji would let us have a party here?”

“No, not if you call him Benji.”

“Lassie?”

“Quit while you’re ahead, Lulu.” I gave her a hug. “Does going to those paint-your-own-pottery places count as artistic? I’ve always wanted to do that.”

“Sure. If your pottery turns out good enough.”

I was getting judged on everything this week.

* * *

* * *

I walked through the conservatory, a narrow room of framed glass with pretty rattan seating, to the stone patio outside, where several chairs fanned around a stone firepit. Connor wasn’t at either, so I took the path along the ivied wall that bounded the yard and found him on a blanket in the middle of the long rectangle of grass.

I’d already pulled off my boots, and the grass was deliciously chill beneath my feet.

Connor lay on his back, hand beneath his head, gaze on the sky—and the few stars he’d be able to see through the haze of Chicago’s lights.

He turned his head to look at me. “She’s okay?”

I nodded. “She will be. She’s getting used to my working for the OMB and dating and then there’s this house. I think she’s feeling . . . left out. She needs to find her people, and thought she had with Mateo.”

“Alexei would be happy to entertain her.”

“I know. And she does, too, believe me. I think she needs more time with me right now. More time on Lulu activities.”

“Which would be?”

“I think I’ll be painting mugs.”

He blinked. “If that’s a euphemism, I don’t know what for.”

I sat cross-legged on the blanket beside him. “Not a euphemism. Artsy stuff.”

“Ah.”

“I saw the books,” I said, when we were nearly eye to eye again.