The Tracker's Mate: Sunderverse (Mate Tracker Book 1), Ingrid Seymour [red white royal blue TXT] 📗

sides, creating an empty middle aisle. Cardboard boxes filled the shelves and a hand truck was secured against the back wall.

A wave of scents flowed out through the doors, hitting me with its pungent quality and making me take a step back. My knees weakened as flashes of severed fingers ran through my mind. My stomach flipped. This was exactly the jumble of olfactory stimuli I’d experienced during my trance.

Jake sniffled, wrinkling his nose, taking in the scents. His head snapped in my direction. “Is this it? Is this what you smelled?”

I nodded, fighting the tears that filled my eyes.

Jake turned to Beer Gut. “How many vans like this one are there?”

The man held his hands up again and started backing away toward the shop’s entrance. “Look, man, I don’t know. I just drive the stupid thing and deliver the candles. That’s all.”

In the blink of an eye, Jake jumped on Beer Gut, holding him by the collar and pushing him against Lucciola’s glass-paneled door. A woman who was approaching down the sidewalk gave a yelp, turned on her heel, and ran back the way she’d come.

I approached Jake carefully. His temper could be so volatile at the wrong times. For the most part, he controlled his wolf well, but anger sometimes got the better of him, causing him to shift involuntarily. Maybe in the last year and a half, his mastery had improved, but I didn’t know for sure. He didn’t need a Shifting Under Duress charge. No shifter wanted that on their record, just like no one wanted a DUI.

“Jake,” I stood next to him, so he could see me. “Don’t hurt him. He may be telling the truth.”

His silver eyes flicked toward me, then back to the man. Jake’s jaw unclenched, and his hands around Beer Gut started to relax. I exhaled in relief, but then the shop’s door opened, and both men went tumbling inside.

A towering vampiress, well over six-foot tall, gracefully stepped aside as Jake and Beer Gut thudded to the floor.

“What is going on here?” she demanded, wrinkling her nose at the spectacle before her. She wore a black, gossamer sheath that fell to the floor and could have made a nice curtain. Blond curls spilled over her shoulders, the kind of luscious locks that took hours to get just right. Her skin was smooth and pale like porcelain, and flawless makeup accentuated her large blue eyes. She would have been beautiful if not for her resting bitch face. I swear it would scare the cockroaches from any filthy kitchen.

She took a step back, reached toward a table display piled with candles in a pyramid shape, and came up with a phone, probably getting ready to dial 911.

“Jake,” I snapped, “I think she’s gonna call the cops.”

“Damn right, I am.” She started to dial, but before she could finish, Jake leaped to his feet and snatched the phone from her hand.

“How dare you?!” She wrinkled her nose and gave Jake a disgusted glare. “Your type of werewolf isn’t welcome here.”

Finding himself free, Beer Gut lurched to his feet and stumbled out of the store.

Jake had lost interest in him and was now scanning the vamp up and down, returning her glare. “My type of werewolf?”

“Yes, violent and foul.” She sniffed. “When was the last time you took a shower?”

He hadn’t taken a shower today. I knew that for a fact, but to me, his scent was intoxicating, not repellent. Vampires and werewolves didn’t get along, though. Everybody knew that. But how she could smell anything over the cloying sweetness that filled the store, I didn’t know.

“What that hell is that sweet smell?” I said out loud, without realizing it.

“That is just the best organic beeswax around,” the vamp said.

Beeswax? Of course!

Outside, Beer Gut’s van screeched out of the parking spot.

“When was the last time you saw Stephen Erickson?” Jake demanded.

The vamp’s expression changed. The disgust disappeared and calculated deliberation replaced it. “I don’t get involved in... skirmishes of that nature,” she said at last. “That goes well beyond my pay grade. I will kindly ask you to leave this establishment. We sell candles, if you’re not here to purchase one, you can take your stink elsewhere.”

“I don’t stink,” Jake complained irrationally. The vamp was really getting on his nerves with that one.

Time for a different approach.

“I apologize for this... outburst,” I said, putting on my friendliest smile. “You see, my... partner and I are private investigators, and a clue in our search of Stephen Erickson led us here.”

The blonde retreated, shaking her hands at us and staying away from a shaft of sunlight seeping through the display window. “Nah-ah, I told you already, this goes beyond my pay grade. I sell candles, nothing else.”

I glanced toward a door in the back of the store. “Would you mind if we search the premises?”

“No way. Unless you have some kind of legal paper thingy the only place you’re going is out of here.”

She meant a warrant, I guessed, but nope, we didn’t have one of those—we weren’t even cops—but asking had been worth a try.

“Then maybe you can answer a question for us.” I gave her another smile, but it might as well have been a growl because she rushed behind the counter, putting distance between us.

“I’m not answering any questions.” She reached under the register to do something.

Press an alarm button? That would be bad. Instead, she came up with a telephone receiver, one with a spiraling cord connected to it, and pressed it to her ear. She waited for a connection, her clear blue eyes shifting from Jake to me and back again.

My thoughts raced, trying to figure out how to get any type of useful information from this person. I knew Stephen wasn’t here. Bernadetta wasn’t stupid. She was keeping him on the move. Of that, I was certain, but what could I ask next?

Jake thought of something first. “Five drivers, five delivery vans,” he said. “Where are the rest?”

“You’ve got your facts