Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) by eden Hudson (ebook reader with highlight function .TXT) 📗

In the kitchen I turned on the faucet, filled a glass, and left the water running while I gulped it down. I hadn’t realized how thirsty I was. It hit my stomach hard and cold, but I had to drain two more glasses before I felt like I could slow down. I scratched my arm. Dried salt built up under my fingernails.

So I’d been drilling and arguing with Ryder—or maybe myself—all night. Thinking that made me feel dizzy. I turned around and leaned against the sink to catch my breath.

Grace was standing by the table watching me. When I caught her eye, she shifted feet and tried hooking her bangs over her ear even though they weren’t long enough.

“I was just wondering— Remember how I told you about my sister, Kathan’s familiar? I wondered whether there was any way to tell if he was hurting her.”

I tried to think of a nice way to say ‘no.’

“Things look different from the outside.” That was the best I could come up with. “From the inside out, she might not even— I mean, hell, just trying to think is—”

“You retard,” Ryder said. “You’re going to make her cry again.”

Grace’s eyes were dry, but she was biting her lips together.

“I’m sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck, felt the calloused skin from the collar. It had been so much easier to think while I was moving. Now everything was piling up and the screaming in my head wouldn’t stop. “Kathan’s different from Mikal. He’s an alpha, so it’s all about power, right? And didn’t you say your sister wanted to be his familiar? He would probably take care of her just because she wanted to be his.”

Grace nodded. She looked so tired.

“Maybe you should get some sleep,” I said.

“You’re the one who stayed up all night,” she said, giving me a fake smile.

“Yeah.” I scratched some more of the sweat-grit off my arm. “I need to get a shower.”

This time Grace’s smile was real and it made her look like someone’s little sister.

“I wasn’t going to say anything, but—” She shrugged. “—you kind of do.”

Desty

Once I could hear the water running in the bathroom, I started searching for something to write a note on and tried to ignore the voice in my head that kept telling me what a jerk I was. I liked Colt. Even crazy, he was like the big brother I’d always wanted—sweet and smart and with that dry sense of humor. It didn’t feel right leaving him out here alone, but I needed to go find Tough and end this joke of a relationship.

I wasn’t proud of it, but I’d spent the night before crying until I made myself sick. Part of me didn’t want to break up with Tough, but all of me knew I couldn’t stay. One fight and I crashed and burned? That was unacceptable. Tempie needed me and I was not going to let some guy send me into self-destruct mode like Mom had. This had to end now, before I was locking myself in my room, trying to down a handful of pills and a bottle of wine.

The plan was pretty simple—go take Kathan and Tempie up on the joint-familiar offer. Sure, Kathan was probably evil and he had definitely destroyed Tough’s family, but if he was hurting Tempie, I couldn’t just leave her alone. Maybe as her joint-familiar I could help her fight back. Or if Tempie had been telling the truth about Kathan treating her well, maybe we could get this last battle thing over with and I could cut some sort of deal with him to release us after he took over. I hated to make a decision based on maybes, but right now maybes were all I had.

So I needed some paper. Colt was having enough trouble keeping straight what was real and what wasn’t. When he got out of the shower, I didn’t want him worrying about where I’d gone or if I’d ever really been there.

There were a few notebooks on the coffee table. I picked up one with a pen hooked in its metal rings and flipped it open. Each page was divided into obsessively neat columns. Epithets or maybe code names in the first column, then a date, another date, the number of days between the two, and the last column looked like cause of death. An entry near the end—Southern Guy—was dated a little less than two months ago. It and the next four entries all ended with GSW.

GSW. Crime procedurals and mysteries weren’t high on my list of favorite books, but I’d read a few. GSW was the acronym coroners used for a gunshot wound.

I flipped through a few pages. If this was a Cause of Death Contest, suicide had been winning until the GSWs started. And not nice, tame razor-to-the-wrists suicides. Chewing through arteries, smothering in a laundromat dryer, and drinking gasoline were a few of the ways these people had chosen to go.

These people. The words from the castoff family support message boards came back to me—U gotta think creatively. NEthing can b a weapon in there hands.

I looked through the columns again. Castoffs did make the most sense. Except why Colt would keep a record of cast-off familiars? To measure how long they had been enthralled before—presumably, because of the short time periods—Mikal had cast them off? So he could estimate how long he would have?

That was a pretty big leap to make and it relied on the assumption that Colt had known he was going to be enthralled, which couldn’t be possible unless he had asked to be. Willow had said Kathan gave Colt to Mikal as a punishment for killing her familiars, a sort of poetic justice thing. Of course, if Colt had known the fallen angels