Harvest stands in front of Quinn’s room and hesitates, only for a second, before bringing her fist up to knock on the door. She’s fairly certain he’s in there with the bartender. She heard two male voices come up the stairs a couple of minutes ago.
Yet the frantic phone call she had just received from Kipp keeps replaying in her mind. “Ronan was shot, and he won’t let me call the police.”
Kipp said that Harvest’s number was first on his call log, so she tapped the name in panic. It took some seconds to get the full story from Kipp and understand that it was Locke who had come into the diner and shot Ronan. Kipp wasn’t sure why. She couldn’t hear much from where she was hiding in the back office, but she had seen one of them attack Ronan and, later, heard the gunshot. “Oh god, he’s lost consciousness now. He’s so pale. He wants me to dig the bullet out, but I can’t.”
Quinn is shirtless when he opens the door. He smirks, bracing himself against the doorframe. A lock of hair falls over his forehead as he leans forward. “Care to join, little witch?” he says at first, but when he notices her distress, he straightens up, frowning. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s Ronan.” She looks beyond him and to the bartender, half-dressed and sprawled on the bed, before whispering, “Locke attacked him.”
That’s all he needs to hear before he grabs a shirt and tells his guest that he’ll be right back. In Harvest’s room, Quinn curses at his phone, jabbing uselessly at the dark screen as if he can charge his dead battery with willpower. Harvest hands him the charger, and he thanks her, plugging his phone in and waiting for it to boot up. “What exactly happened? Is Ronan okay?”
“I don’t know,” she says, a slight jolt in her voice. “Kipp couldn’t tell me much. She said that Ronan was shot with a silver bullet.”
Quinn’s phone finally turns on, and he makes two phone calls: the first to the Bureau, requesting a medic team be sent to Tabitha’s Diner, and the second to Wild. “I want a full statement,” he tells Wild. “And take Angel with you.” He moves to hang up but then barks into the phone, “Call me after.”
He tosses the phone down on the bed and runs a hand through his hair. His shirt is only half-buttoned, yet he doesn’t seem to notice. “He’ll be fine,” he says, giving Harvest a gentle look. “He’s a wolf. Once they get the bullet out, he’ll heal in no time.”
She nods, sitting on the bed. “I know. Why would Locke go after Ronan, though?”
“I don’t know. Wild and Angel will take a statement and file a report. They’ll call when they have answers.”
“I won’t be able to sleep until then.” She looks hesitantly over at the shared wall between their rooms. “I’m sorry I interrupted you.”
He shrugs, sitting down on the bed next to her, his hand absentmindedly going to the small of her back. “It’s okay. He’s sleeping now anyway. I’ll wait here until Wild calls back.”
“Thanks.” She gives him a watery smile.
----------------------------------------
The medic frowns as she stitches up the bullet wound. “Are you feeling your healing abilities at all?”
Ronan shakes his head. “Not yet. But I’ll be okay.”
The medic’s mouth straightens into a line, and Ronan knows she doesn’t believe him. He knows there’s something wrong, too. The bullet wound was still bleeding when the medics arrived, and it’s barely stopped now, even though it’s been two hours.
But he’s tired and annoyed by the presence of the two Bureau agents who are waiting patiently for the medic to finish, and he’s anxious to get this over. He longs for a cold beer and his bed.
Ronan looks over at the agents again, accidentally making eye contact with the tall fae, who gives him an obnoxiously hopeful smile. The other agent, the witch with purple hair, stands with arms crossed, barely hiding a yawn.
“Are we done yet?” asks Ronan.
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The medic applies some white gauze to cover the stitches. “For now. But you should see a doctor tomorrow about getting the stitches out. Your healing abilities should be taking over by then.”
“Sure,” he says, shrugging on an old shirt he had stashed in the office. “First thing in the morning.”
Finally, Ronan extracts himself from the medic and makes his way over to the table, where Kipp is watching him anxiously. He slides into the booth next to her and nods hello as the Bureau agents introduce themselves, showing their badges. “I remember. You were at the Lighthouse the other night when I picked up Harvey.”
“Can I get you a glass of water?” Angel is looking at Kipp apprehensively, and Ronan can understand why. Her greenish skin is greener than normal, and her eyes dart around the diner as her leg jiggles nervously.
Kipp looks panicked for a brief moment. “Oh, gosh,” she says, her hands twisted in her apron. “I should be doing that.” She looks around, lost without her pitcher of water and order pad.
Angel smiles. “It’s okay. I think the boss can give you a night off.”
Kipp laughs shakily and looks up at Ronan, who nods encouragingly. He squeezes her knee under the table if only to get her to stop jiggling her leg. When Angel returns with a glass of cold water, Kipp sips it gratefully.
Angel slides into the booth opposite Kipp, removing a notebook from the inside pocket of their jean jacket, while Wild pulls over a stool. “Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
Kipp tells them that she just returned from her break, only to feel a shift in air pressure as Locke and his security came into the diner. “I’m a seer. I can usually tell when something bad is going to happen, though I don’t always know what will happen exactly.”
“Does the diner have any protection charms in place?”
“No, only a good luck charm. Everyone is welcome here, and protection charms can be finicky. The owners, the Rosenblooms, didn’t want to accidentally discriminate against someone, you know?”
“So, you felt something shift, and then what did you do?”
Kipp hesitates. “I locked myself in the office. I know I should have…helped him.”
“You did the right thing,” Ronan interrupts. “You made the right call.”
“Indeed,” says Angel delicately. “If that silver bullet stayed in there any longer, you wouldn’t be standing.”
Ronan shrugs, then winces with pain. Still, he gives them a dimpled smile, saying, “When it’s my time, it won’t be a silver bullet that takes me down.”
Angel narrows their eyes at Ronan as if trying to decide how much of his casualness is bravado in the face of trauma and how much of it is willful stupidity. They seem to land on the notion that it is a mix of both. “Be that as it may, we need to know what happened here.”
“It was a vampire named Locke,” says Kipp. “I heard him when I walked in before I locked myself in the office.”
“He wanted to send a message,” says Ronan, with a reluctant sigh. He looks down at his arm and flexes his fingers, wondering if he will be able to hold a spatula tomorrow. The cook who works the morning shift called out, and he already decided to cover the shift himself. Then again, there is a pool of his blood by the door. Maybe Tabitha’s will open later than normal. “He thinks I can get in touch with Hazel.”
“And can you?” asks Angel.
“No, like I told him. I haven’t spoken to Hazel in years. Not since the day she skipped town and stopped answering her phone.”
“And why did he want to get in touch with Hazel?”
“She stole something.”
“Did he say what?”
“Product.” And, then, at Angel’s raised eyebrow, he adds, more defensively than he means to, “I don’t know what he was talking about.”
Angel pulls up a photo of Amy on their phone and asks Ronan if he recognizes her.
“Is the woman who was…?” He picks up the phone and looks closer at the screen. He’s struck with the notion that she looks an awful lot like Hazel, though younger, all bones and angles with a sharper chin and none of Hazel’s rosy, round cheeks and warm-toned skin. Still, the smile is the same—wide and authentic. He can almost hear the laughter trickling from her mouth.
“Her name was Amethyst Whitmore, and she lived on Ilton. We’re wondering if there is any connection to Hazel. Were they friends?”
He hands the phone back to Angel. “I don’t recognize her,” he says with a shake of his head.
Angel drops the phone back into their pocket and then extracts a business card from their bag. “We’ll let you get some rest for now, though we may have some follow-up questions tomorrow. Here’s my number. Call me if you think of anything else in the meantime.”
The silence that follows their departure is deafening.
Ronan’s sudden sense of exhaustion is heavy in his chest, and he takes a deep breath, leaning his uninjured arm on the table to rest his forehead in the palm of his hand.
Kipp nervously twists her apron in her hands again and looks cautiously at him. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Ronan’s smile is soft, and he reaches out to cover her hands with his own. “It’s okay. You did the right thing. I’m sorry you had to go through that.” He sighs, looking around the diner. The smell of blood sits in his nostrils, coppery with a hint of damp night air. “We can clean up in the morning. Can I give you a ride home?”
Kipp accepts gratefully and goes to grab her bag and turn out the lights.
Ronan watches her as she turns the corner to the kitchen, making sure she is out of sight before reaching for his phone. He navigates to his contacts and scrolls until he finds the name he’s looking for. The number he calls goes to voicemail, as he knew it would. As it always does. He leaves a message, his words quiet yet rushed.
“Hazel, call me back when you get this.”