Page 53 of My Fallen Saint

Since he’s dead now, I’m assuming nobody’s going to bother.

I grab a seat at the counter near the package and mutter, “Coffee?”

Brandy laughs, then taps the side of her mug. “Herbal tea.”

I groan. “Remind me how we’re friends?”

“Because I’m going to start boiling water for your coffee. What’s in the package?”

“I called Roger before the gala and had him get in my apartment and send me my mom’s diaries.”

Her brow furrows. “Nostalgia?”

“Uncle Peter,” I say, and she tilts her head, looking at me sympathetically.

“You think he really might have been dealing.” She says it as a fact, not a question. “And for a long time.”

“Wow. It’s like you’re my best friend or something. You know me so well.”

I’d brought her up to speed after the gala. Well, up to speed about Peter. I hadn’t known what to say about Alex. I still don’t.

She points a batter-smeared spatula at me. “And don’t you forget it. What are you wearing for your trip to Vegas?” She moves to the sink, drops the spatula, and starts to fill the kettle. “Have you decided?”

“I told you yesterday. It’s not a date. It’s work.”

“Are you sure?” She waggles her eyebrows. “He followed you to the bar, remember?”

I sigh, wishing I’d bit the bullet and told Brandy about Alex when we’d talked Friday night. But I didn’t know how to start, and it had seemed like too much drama on top of the Peter revelation.

And even though I’d resolved to tell her last night after he invited me on this trip, I’d stayed late in the Research Room long after Doyle had gone. Brandy’d been wiped by the time I got home, and so I only told her about the Vegas jaunt.

Or, hell, maybe I’d just been making excuses.

No time like the present…

“Listen,” I say, as I circle the island, aiming for the instant coffee jar. “This is kind of—ah!”

I jump back at the same time I realize that the form lying headless on the floor is Lamar.

He slides out from under the sink his brow furrowing as he looks me up and down. “Where are you going? And do I even have to guess who supposedly isn’t a date?”

“Objection, your honor. Badgering the witness.”

He scowls, but I turn away, busying myself with pouring boiling water onto coffee crystals as I breathe a sigh of relief that I hadn’t blurted out the truth about Devlin to Brandy.

I frown at Brandy. “Why didn’t you tell me he was here?”

“I did. I called out to you when he got here. What’s the big deal? It’s not like you came prancing out of your room naked.”

“More’s the pity,” Lamar says, and I shoot him a scowl as I load the coffee up with cream—always in the first cup of the day so that I can ingest it as quickly as possible—and take a long, delicious swallow of the magical elixir.

“What are you doing on the floor, anyway?” I ask, once that first hit has my brain cells firing.

“The disposal’s not working,” Brandy says. “I asked him to refer a plumber, and he’s who showed up.”

“Very chivalrous of you,” I tell Lamar, turning and glancing down to where he’s now sitting upright on the ground.

“You haven’t answered my question.”