Into the Tiger's Hour

Chapter Nineteen

Once the shouting, screaming and cursing was over, Betre left his card at the front desk and left the hospital without looking back. He stood beside his pearl grey BMW and hesitated, fiddling with the keys in his hand.

There was no smile on his face and his eyes were a flat grey as he looked back at the building, tilted his head to squint at the seventh floor of Mercy Hospital. He couldn't see the glow of Spider's room from here, but he knew exactly what her suite looked like.

He had, after all, agreed to pay for any treatment she needed.

Arriving at the Ebony Towers to find an ambulance departing, a police cruiser still at the curb and Mariel loudly shouting at a uniformed officer had been extremely vexatious, but not entirely unexpected. Betre had imagined that someone would take it into their head to sneak into the penthouse to see Jonas. Mariel was just the sort of impertinent person to do just that.

He'd been taken aback when she'd begun screaming at him that Jonas had nearly killed Spider. The entire story had spilled out of her right there on the sidewalk and it had taken quite a bit for Betre to get her to stop shrieking. Fortunately, neither she nor the officer were particularly difficult to handle when he'd decided to fix the problem then and there.

Now the official story was simply that Jonas had had an altercation with Spider, she wasn't going to press charges and there would be nothing about it in the police report. Nor would the hospital staff say a word, and when Spider had regained consciousness, she'd only looked at Betre and croaked that he needed to keep Jonas contained.

It was an irritation, having to juggle things much sooner than expected, but that was only because it happened in a way he hadn't planned. He'd need to do a bit of work with Jonas, that much was clear, but the story was already flying through the city's "freaks" and no one would dare come to the penthouse without an express invitation now.

And absolutely no one wanted to see Jonas Foster.

That was the end result, and one he was thoroughly pleased with. It tempered the fact that his evening had been ruined. No quiet post-funeral dinner with Kearna, no chance to relax and lay a little more ground for his eventual conquest. No chance to handle some of the paperwork he needed Jonas's drunken scrawl on.

...but it was a chance to check on a loose end, and that would free up his following evening.

Decided, Betre climbed into the car and left the hospital parking lot. The Waterfront District overlapped it; only a short drive was required to pull onto the street in question. It was close to the industrial warehouses that lined the docks, and certainly a place he wouldn't have chosen for an antiques store, but the owner liked it just where it was.

Knowing what he did, Betre couldn't fault his choice.

Car parked, the demon paused long enough to glance up and down the street, his eyes coal-bright in the darkness. The vampires were safely under the church now, but Fish had taken to doing loops through the city and he didn't want to encounter the shifter at the present time. Her mind was a little too animalistic, too feral for him to rearrange her thoughts to his satisfaction, and her death would've raised considerable questions.

With no sign of the brightly furred wolf, no hint of the insane fae on the rooftops, Betre spun the keys on his index finger and whistled to himself as he strolled down the alley and rapped on the side door surrounded by sand-blasted bricks.

A tiny, pale hand pulled the door open and large, black eyes stared up at Betre. He smiled down at the girl, put a hand out to hold the heavy door open for her, and tucked his keys into his pocket. "I'm here to see Ishmael."