Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [42]
Five minutes later, I was dressed enough not to get arrested for indecent exposure and my Joan Jett–esque hair had been tamed down to something resembling normal. Anyway, the tousled bed-head look was sexy. Or at least that’s what I told myself as I controlled my tangled mid-back mass into a hair clip.
I took the longer route via the expressway rather than get stuck in lunchtime traffic on the bridge, broke several laws governing moving vehicles, and screeched into the garage of the O’Halloran Group building with two minutes to spare—literally.
“Miss!”
I turned from locking the Fairlane to see a pimply-faced youth in a blue uniform and cap running toward me, waving his arms.
“Miss, you can’t park there!”
I checked the Fairlane—between two white lines, no bodies trapped under the wheels. “This isn’t a parking space?”
“That space is reserved for clients who have business with the O’Hallorans,” he said, with the kind of arrogance only nineteen-year-old boys can muster. As someone who was turning thirty in less than two weeks, I wasn’t inclined to put up with his power trip.
“I have a meeting with Patrick O’Halloran at eleven,” I said. “And you’re making me late.”
“I doubt that, miss.” He sniffed, looking me pointedly up and down. I followed his gaze and knew how my torn Diesels and Dead Kennedys T-shirt must look. Hey, at least my outfit was free of crime-scene blood. He should consider himself lucky.
“Let me put it this way,” I said, pulling my shield out of my jacket—my black canvas jacket, Hex that rat bastard thief—and shoving it under his nose. “This is a police matter and you’re interfering. Stop doing that.”
“That might not be real for all I know,” he said. I wondered how much trouble I’d get in to for locking him in my trunk until the meeting was over.
“Luna!” someone shouted from the garage entrance into the tower. Shelby came barreling over to us, dressed in a gray wool skirt and power blazer.
“Spreading the good word of the Watchtower on the side?” I asked her in greeting.
“Vaughn, Detective Wilder is here to meet my uncle,” Shelby chastised the garage attendant. “Shame on you for delaying us.”
Vaughn swallowed. “Your—your uncle?” I swear to the gods he went stark white under the fluorescent lights, like one of those cartoon characters.
“Uncle Patrick, not Uncle Seamus,” said Shelby, rolling her eyes. “Make sure nothing happens to the detective’s car, Vaughn.”
Vaughn started breathing again and nodded so hard I was amazed his head didn’t pop off and roll away down the garage aisle. “Yes, ma’am, Miss O’Halloran! Sorry, Detective! I thought you’d look more like Miss Shelby here.”
I took his ridiculous peaked cap off his head and threw it in the opposite direction. “You know what they say about assumptions. Go fetch.”
He went scrambling after it and Shelby yanked me into the elevator. She punched the button for the forty-second floor and said, “Be glad it’s Patrick we’re meeting, and not Uncle Seamus.”
“Why, does Seamus have a trapdoor in his office that he uses to send late appointments to the shark tank?”
Shelby cast me a dead-serious look. I spread my hands. “Sorry. I overslept. Concussion will do that to you.” That and a cheating rat bastard ex…
Stop it. Forget it.
“So if Seamus and Patrick are your uncles, who’s your father?” I asked, changing the subject for the sake of my sanity.
“He was Thomas O’Halloran,” said Shelby shortly. “He and my mother are both deceased.”
Hex me. Everyone knew about Tommy O’Halloran and the dramatic, drunken plunge off the Siren Bay Bridge that killed him. “I’m sorry,” I said aloud. Shelby shrugged.
“I was only ten. How well do you know your parents at that age?”
The elevator slowed, blinking down the floors. I noticed a ward mark carved into the wood wall of the car above the indicator light, and another over the door. My skin crawled reflexively. It took powerful magick to permanently ward something, the