Pure Blood_ A Nocturne City Novel - Caitlin Kittredge [93]
“No,” I said, stepping in. “I wanted to ask you something, and—wasn’t there a lot more furniture in here before?”
Shelby blinked. “You came to ask me about my furniture?”
“No, no, something else,” I said. Her apartment wasn’t just sparse, it was damn near empty.
“Uncle Seamus cut me off,” said Shelby. “I’m losing my lease at the end of the month. Sold off some things for a deposit on a new place.”
Oh gods. If I had ever felt worse about a decision I’d made, I was hard-pressed to find it. She was sitting here in the dark like the little match girl and I was about to ask her to participate in something even more egregious.
“I’m sorry,” I said lamely. “If there’s anything—”
“Forget it.” Shelby tilted her chin up. “You make the same salary I do, so please don’t try to salve your guilt by offering to help me.” She hobbled back to the chaise and flopped down. “This was a long time coming, anyway. Ever since my father died. Seamus was devastated, did you know that? He loved Daddy. Big brother watching out for littlest brother and all that.”
“Shelby, Seamus is not who you think he is,” I said carefully, trying not to let any of what had happened to me at Seamus’s behest creep into my voice.
“He never got over me letting him down,” Shelby mused. “Figured it was my mother’s fault. Did you know I spent a month in a hospital when I was fifteen? I tried to swallow a bunch of Percodans. Seamus made me so miserable.”
“My father was an alcoholic auto mechanic,” I offered. “And not even a good one either.”
Shelby laughed, once. “I’m named after a car. The 1967 Shelby Mustang. Hardtop. Baby blue. My father was driving it the night he died.”
I stayed silent, and Shelby sighed, braiding and un-braiding the end of her long blond waterfall of hair. She looked up at me and stared, as if she’d just woken up. “What happened to your face?”
“Seamus,” I said. “And his hired pit bull, Joshua.”
“What did you do?” said Shelby, with no surprise. “Must have been something that shook him pretty badly, if he risked beating on a cop that way.”
I took a breath. I didn’t want to, had no right to ask Shelby what I was about to ask, but if I didn’t the deaths would keep piling up. The blood of O’Hallorans and Blackburns, blood witches and caster witches, would run in the streets if I didn’t put the Skull back where it belonged.
“I went to him and told him I knew that he’d killed Vincent Blackburn. And I know about the Skull too, Shelby. Everything your uncle has been…” I left out the part about the evidence being in a crumpled little ball on Seamus’s floor last time I’d seen it.
Shelby nodded. “That’d do it.” She rubbed her leg. “You got away though. He won’t like that.”
“Well, he’ll like this even less,” I said. “I’m going back to the tower, and I’m going to steal the Skull.” I fixed Shelby with my most severe stare. “And I need you to help me.”
She sat in silence for a long time, still as a store mannequin. “I should hate him,” she said finally. “He doesn’t love me. He’s made my life hell. He lied to the whole family, about keeping that filthy blood witch relic under our roof.” Shelby sighed. “You realize that trying to swim with Seamus is like dousing yourself in blood and jumping in a pool with Jaws.”
“He’s not the worst thing I’ve ever come across,” I said honestly. Definitely second worst. A close second. But she didn’t need to know that.
“I wish everything were so black and white for me,” said Shelby. “You have it really easy, Luna, you know that? Good, bad, and no in between.”
If only she knew just how in between I was. I’d kill to have Shelby’s clean conscience.
“What do you need from me?” she asked. I breathed out a quick thank-you to the bright lady.
“I need to know where Seamus keeps the Skull,” I said. “How to get into the tower after hours, and I can handle whatever else crops up.” I hoped it was Joshua. One electric shock to the testicles wasn’t enough for that jerkoff.
Shelby nodded slowly.