Page 13 of Villains Never Die

“We?”

“Two people are dead—one with no connections and one with every connection, which means whoever killed them has left pretty much no one untouchable, and maybe that’s what he wanted everyone to know. If neither of us is safe, I want in.”

“I don’t need your help. I have more resources than you do.”

“It’s not always about having more, England. Sometimes you just have to have the right resources.” I halted my thoughts from spiraling around what he could have that I didn’t. There wasn’t time to dwell on it. A body was going to turn up sooner rather than later. Anyway, I knew where to start.

“If I text you an address, can you meet me there at five o’clock tomorrow evening?” I asked.

“Sure. Fights don’t start until eleven. See you soon, England.”

“Stop calling me that.” I hung up, texted Rook the address, and did not go back to sleep.

Chapter Six

At ten past five, I texted Rook a third time, which he ignored like the first two. Bloody hell, when I saw that bastard, I would—

“Chill the fuck out,” said his voice behind me. I turned around and forgot what vengeful thing I was plotting to do. He looked different tonight. He’d combed his hair back, and the autumn wind rustled the open button-up thrown over a black t-shirt. His jeans, tight and ripped at the knees, stretched over his muscular legs. He smirked when he saw me notice.

I blinked and glared at him. “Do you not own a clock?”

“Do we have an appointment?”

“No.”

“That’s what I thought. Whoever we’re about to pound the shit out of will wait another five minutes.” He strolled over to me with no hurry and waited.

“We aren’t ‘pounding the shit out of him,’ you caveman. He’ll talk to us.”

“Who is he?”

I sighed and started to walk, then found myself even more annoyed when Rook’s steps fell in perfect time with mine. “Hisname is Charles. He’s an errand boy for the Council, human and insignificant. He’s acted as an informant for me before when Blackwell started looking too closely at my business.”

We stopped at a red front door in a connected row of brick townhouses. I lifted one hand and knocked, and for once, Rook didn’t jabber in my ear. The door opened a crack, just wide enough for me to see the man’s round face go white at the sight of me and his eyes bulge behind his glasses before he tried to slam the door in my face. Rook’s boot crashed into it before it closed, so hard the wood cracked at the edge.

“You broke my door!” Charles stammered, backing up into his couch and falling onto it as Rook let us both in and closed the door behind us. He turned and waved his hand over the crack, which sealed itself back together with nothing but a small scar that ruined the paint.

“Fixed it,” Rook said with a shrug.

“Austin,” Charles said, sounding like he was trying to gulp the name back down rather than say it. He was a tall, gangly man with the baby face of a twelve-year-old, but he might have really been nineteen or twenty. “I know why you’re here. I don’t—I don’t know anything! Everyone on the Council is just as clueless as you.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Did you just call me clueless?”

“N-no! That’s not—” He pushed himself up on one elbow and tried to sit properly before he slid back down and landed on the floor, curling his knees against his chest. “I don’t know anything.”

I traced my finger along a dusty bookshelf cluttered with knickknacks, binoculars, and books on birdwatching. I would have thought a seventy-year-old lived here, not someone barely out of their teenage years. “I haven’t asked you any questions yet, so neither of us knows that you don’t knowanything. Now,you can sit up properly and answer my questions or my…friend,” my nose wrinkled at the word, “can help you sit.”

Charles took one look at Rook standing like a wall between him and the door, and scampered onto the couch, trembling.

“What does the Council know about the recent murders?” This is always how I worked an interrogation. Start broad, put pressure on them, and drill it down to the fine details once they’re ready to talk.

“Why would I know that? I file papers and take coffee orders. They don't tell me anything!”

“Yes, but you’re a good listener, aren’t you, Charles? You hear things when you’re filing those papers.”

He swallowed so hard his skinny throat moved. “Sometimes,” he admitted.

“So what’s the office gossip?” In my peripheral vision, I saw Rook roll his eyes and lean against the wall, looking bored with this conversation.