There was more than one way to skin a cat. “Let me talk to Sam. Maybe I can work something out.”
Blair beamed, and I felt a little guilty.
I gave Sam a call, and he said he would move the schedule around. One of the other bartenders had asked for some extra shifts, and he said she would gladly fill in for me. When I hung up, I went back to Blair.
“Sam says I can have Saturday off. So, what’s the plan?”
“I’ll pick you up at your place about five. We’ll go to dinner, and then to the ballet.”
“Sounds good,” I said. But my mind was already swirling with things I would have to do.
For the second morning in a row, someone knocked on my door. I was already awake, however, although just barely. I was in the kitchen making a cup of tea and went to the door to see who it was. I saw Jolene’s face through the peephole and opened the door.
I didn’t expect the shocked expression on her face, and then I realized I was nude except for my panties.
“Put on some clothes,” she said with some urgency. “We have a bunch of guys with us.” I noticed that she had a chair sitting on the floor next to her.
I hurried to my bedroom and pulled on a t-shirt and jeans. When I came out, I discovered Josh and another guy who I didn’t know maneuvering a sofa through my door. Behind them, Trevor and a fourth guy carried an overstuffed chair. And behind them came Lizzy, carrying another chair, a match for the one Jolene had already put in my kitchen.
The men all trooped out and down the stairs. I walked to the end of the hall and looked through the window overlooking the parking lot. A pickup truck was parked in my space, the back of it filled with furniture.
By the time the truck was empty, I had a sofa and a chair in the living room that didn’t match, a coffee table and a side table that didn’t match, along with two lamps that didn’t match. The dinette set in the kitchen did match, but the night stand and the bureau in my bedroom didn’t. I stared at all of it with my mouth hanging open.
“And here’s a housewarming present,” Lizzy said with a huge smile, handing me a ceramic teapot with an infuser. “Now you can properly entertain guests.”
“What—where—?”
“We called around and asked people if they had any old furniture they would like us to haul away for free,” Jolene said. “Welcome to Westport.”
I looked at the men, who all looked very pleased with themselves, and felt very awkward.
Lizzy whispered in my ear, “Give each of them a hug and a kiss on the cheek.”
So I did. It felt kind of weird, but it seemed to please them. In spite of the Hunter and all the other problems I had encountered in Westport, I realized I had friends, for the first time since I was thirteen years old, and it felt pretty damned good.
After brushing my hair and my teeth, I took them all to Rosie’s and bought them breakfast with some of the money I was saving for furniture.
Chapter 22
After breakfast, I took the bus to a clothing store and spent the money I had planned to buy a dinette set with on a nice cocktail dress, a pair of pantyhose, a lacy demi bra, a pair of high heels, some make up, a new purse, some curlers, and a couple of pieces of costume jewelry. The bill came to more than I could afford, but I decided I could eat a little less until my next paycheck.
While I wasn’t supermodel material, I knew how to present what I had in the best possible way. A good portion of my training had been aimed at placing me in high society settings where I might meet and engage with wealthy and influential men. High society girls weren’t all movie-star beautiful—even with expensive surgery—and a lot of what I had learned was attitude, poise, and witty banter. I could fit into upscale social circles and flirt with the best of them when I wanted to. Of course, the Illuminati supplied me with all the necessary money for that, and money wasn’t something I could magically conjure. Unfortunately.
There were some things a female Hunter could do that a man couldn’t, and the Illuminati never let such petty concerns as ethics and morality interfere with reaching their goals. When it came to staying alive, I wasn’t going to let such things get in my way, either.
Daniel Nava, the District Attorney and Frankie’s boss, had been a successful prosecutor, gone into private practice and made a bundle, then run for office. Nava was a widower, and his two daughters were at university. Nothing I could find in my or Trevor’s research indicated he had a lover or a steady girlfriend, but I did find several pictures on the internet of him with beautiful young women at society events. Never the same woman more than twice.
Charles Mietzner, the mayor’s chief of staff, was also single. I couldn’t find any evidence he had ever been married, and that added to my suspicions that he might be an Illuminati. His career was as a political operative, and it certainly appeared that he was positioning the mayor for a run for governor in the next election. As with Nava, he rarely appeared at public functions alone and had been linked romantically to several wealthy women, models, and movie starlets over the years, always younger than he was.
When Saturday rolled around, I washed and curled my hair, applied makeup, and dressed. Blair buzzed my apartment promptly at five. I went downstairs, wondering for the first time how Jolene and Lizzy got to the third floor without me letting them in the building.
I opened the door to find Blair dressed in a tailored black suit. He looked very dashing, and I wondered if the suit was bought specifically to attend such events as the opera and ballet.
“Good evening, Lieutenant.”
“Whoa!”
I gave him a coy smile. “Is that a good whoa, or a bad whoa?”
“You’re beautiful.”
“And you’re a liar, but a very sweet one. Shall we go?”
He was driving a different car than I’d seen before, a sporty Japanese sedan that appeared to be two or three years old. Not as racy as Frankie’s poor destroyed car, nor the kind of flashy German car that men trying to impress women tended to buy.
We drove to a parking garage downtown and walked two blocks to a restaurant called La Maison. The maître d seated us quickly, and a waiter greeted Monsieur Blair by name. I glanced at the menu, and the prices.
“Do you come here often?” I asked.
He gave me a disarming grin. “Whenever I attend a performance. It puts me in the mood to mingle with people who spend more on shoes than I make in a month.”
“I must admit, Lieutenant, that you are full of surprises.”
“Jordan. I’m off duty. And may I call you Erin?”
I grinned. “I’m off duty, too, Jordan.”
He ordered wine as we perused the menu. The prices were way above anything I could afford but nowhere near what I had seen in restaurants in New York, Washington, and London. I raised my eyes from the menu, and he caught me looking at him.
“If I couldn’t afford this, I would have chosen a cheaper restaurant,” he said with a smile. I returned his smile and focused on the halibut, the description of which made my mouth water.
After we ordered, he raised his wine glass. “To the most beautiful woman in Westport.”
I felt my face ignite. Refusing to meet his eyes, I said, “That’s really not fair.” I bit my lip, trying to hold it together. What I wanted to do was jump up and run, but I reminded myself of why I was there.
Blair reached across the table and laid his hand on mine. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. I guess what I should have said was that I’m very glad to spend some time alone with you.”
His expression was very earnest, and I relaxed a little. I had thought about such a situation while I was getting ready that afternoon. “You don’t have to flatter me,” I said. “This is very nice, and I’m really looking forward to the ballet. I’d be much more comfortable if we could just think of us as friends—or comrades in arms, perhaps. And let’s just see how things work out. Okay?”
“I think I can do that,” he said.
“You don’t get out enough,” I said. “Dealing with corpses all day has to cloud your perspective. You’re just excited to see a woman who’s still breathing.”
He grinned. “You’re probably right.”
We had a nice dinner, and I was able to steer the conversation away from me and toward him. He had a sailboard and liked to sail on the river on his days off. He also had interests in travel and art. “Although I don’t get to travel as much as I’d like to,” he said.
After dinner, we strolled down the street to the opera house, which was a couple of blocks away. He led me to seats on the front row of the mezzanine.
“These are incredible seats,” I told him when we were seated.
“I was able to get the same seats I have for the opera. With a season subscription, I get first choice for other shows here.”
“Two seats? What would you have done if I couldn’t come?”
He laughed. “Asked my sister. She never turns me down.”
“Then she probably hates me.”
“No, she’s always telling me I should date more.”
His face was calm, relaxed, without the tension I always associated with him.
“Do you always find your dates from the list of current murder suspects?” I asked.
He blushed. “No. And you’re not a suspect.”
“But I was.” And I would never tell him his suspicions were correct as far as that vamp near the bus station.
Blair didn’t answer, but his blush deepened.
A few minutes later, just before the performance began, another couple came and sat down beside us. The man who sat next to me was Charles Mietzner, and his companion was a stunning blonde, maybe ten years older than I was.
Mietzner appeared to be around fifty years old, with brown hair and brown eyes. He stood a little short of six feet tall and seemed to be in good shape. He wore a bespoke suit, a diamond tie stud, and a Rolex watch. Everything about him exuded wealth and class.
His magic was palpable. Most mages could feel magic in someone else, but what kind of magic, and how strong, was a difficult thing to determine. In the same way, whether a mage was malevolent or not was impossible to tell. I had my own access to the ley lines choked down to an absolute minimum so as to seal my magic off from detection. Depending on how well he could do that, Mietzner might be very powerful and partially concealing it, or I could be feeling all of his power.