Page 47 of King’s Kismet

So, maybe next week. Or maybe three weeks, but he’d caught her attention. At some point, she would circle back around and put her prey in the corner.

Fuck me for getting involved.

I ripped a piece of paper off Hulk’s clipboard at the door, snatched a pen from the cup beside, and scratched Sloane’s phone number across the surface. When I held the offering out to him, he studied it like I handed him a demonic math book.

It wasn’t that fucking complicated.

Gods. I was hangry.

“Thanks,” he replied, tucking the folded paper into his pocket.

“You’re welcome,” I grunted, and shook my head as I walked away from him.

I opened my connection with Lo as I draped my suit jacket over a stool at the bar. Courtney, the cocktail waitress who bugged the shit out of me, was nearly done wiping the tables down. Then Simon and I could lock up and go home.

“Did you hear the fae’s warning about Caplin?”

“He’s got a gun,” Lo informed me.

“Excuse me?” I snapped. “That’s not something you casually drop into a long distance conversation.”

She scoffed. “We’re not that far away.”

“Not the point.”

“I know. The point is, I need you to go watch him for a minute.”

I groaned, and Courtney turned to look at me, biting her lip. She aggravated me to no end. Mostly because she didn’t know what not-my-type meant.

Lo sighed when my thoughts veered. “We were heading back, but I can change and shadow—”

“Fine,” I agreed, rolling my eyes. “I’ll go. But only because it gets me away from Courtney.”

“Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“In the vision…” Lo began, sounding like she was trying to make sense of what she saw. “Taylor wants to shoot him. He suspects Vaughn is something other, but he doesn’t know what. I’ve pulled his files up on my phone. It’s irritating that I can’t find out what the connection is. But I know there’s one somewhere.”

I glanced at my dead phone and frowned. “What if it’s just regular human paranoia?”

“I saw the bullets, the box they came from,” she admitted, and I knew she was shaking her head. “They’re iron. He has silver too. I don’t know much about the fae, but there’s a rumor that iron will kill them.”

“How would he know that?” I asked. “And who the fuck ever said silver kills werewolves? That’s such B-Movie bullshit. Lycans are the fucking worst—”

“Jack. Focus,” she demanded. “I can’t figure out how or why or when… But Taylor says he’s been trying to push Vaughn into a reaction, so he has definite proof that he isn’t human. He wants to run tests on him like some lab rat.”

“When did you hear him say that?”

Lo hummed as her thoughts whirled between us at light speed. “Vaughn growled and charged. Taylor pulled the trigger, hitting him in the leg, but he didn’t drop. He dies if he touches Caplin. That’s what I saw, and that’s when he says it.”

“Okay,” I murmured, growing serious. “I’ll watch them. If he growls, I’ll step in.”

“Thank you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, shooing her out of my mind. “I’ll take it out on you in training.”

I closed the connection between us as I unbuttoned my shirt. It was new, and I didn’t want to wear it to a fight on the off chance I got blood on it. My shoes were abandoned just inside the door.