Free The Dark Side by M. J. Scott

gaze came back to me. “You thought it was me,” he said, sounding hurt. “That’s why you’ve been calling. Ash, you know I would never...”
    “I know,” I said, gripping his hand tighter. I knew. Jase wouldn’t leave me that way. We’d been friends before he turned and I hadn’t been able to push him out of my life afterward. I was the one who’d flirted with suicide after I’d been infected.
    I shivered. Too much death. Jase was right. Life was something to cling to. Fighting Tate—knowing I might die at his hands—had taught me that. “I know. But Dan was worried because of the location.” No need to tell Jase just yet that Dan was maybe a little spooked because of Esteban. One set of bad news at a time. “And then I couldn’t get hold of you.”
    Gray-green eyes studied me for a moment and then he smiled. “Next time have a little faith.”
    “Let’s hope there isn’t a next time,” I said with another shiver. If random vampires wanted to start frying themselves in Seattle, they could do it far away from me. The lingering cold feeling stroking my spine reminded me that maybe it wasn’t so random. Maybe Dan was right.
    God. When was my life going to get back to normal?
    We sat in silence a little longer while I finished my coffee. But procrastination wasn’t going to help anything. I couldn’t help investigate vampire suicides but I could do my job. “If we’re here, we might as well get to work.”
    “Call Bug,” Jase called after me as I headed into my office. I stashed my bag and turned on my computer, ignoring the red message light on my phone.
    After everything that had happened at Maelstrom and afterward, I wasn’t sure I was up to Bug right now. Not when I was going to have to tell Jase we’d acquired Lord Esteban as a client and ask him about how I might fend off vampire sex mojo. I needed more coffee before I faced any of it.
    Coffee rebooted, I fired up my email. More messages. Including one from Rhianna Anders. Bug I could ignore for a little while but Rhi? Tate had killed my family and her big sister, Julie. My best friend. Rhi and I had bonded in grief. She was, after Bug, the closest thing to a relative I had.
    And I hadn’t talked to her since before Dan had turned up in my office a few months back.
    Great. More guilt. Plus, no doubt, she was emailing to nag about the memorial too.
    I opened the message. Yep. She wanted to know if I’d be there. So I fired off a quick ‘sure, can’t wait, see you then, how’s life?’ response then stared at the phone. The red ‘message waiting’ light shone accusingly.
    I sighed. Might as well get it over with. If I didn’t call back, Bug would just keep calling. So deal with her, then with telling Jase about our new client. “No time like the present,” I muttered and dialed her number.
    “Hello, Aunt B,” I said after she answered with a crisp “Good afternoon.”
    “I need to know when you’re arriving on Friday.”
    Bug didn’t believe in beating around the bush. “I’m not sure,” I hedged. Mainly because I was actually planning to go down Saturday morning, attend the memorial service and then get the hell back to Seattle before anything could go wrong.
    “It makes it hard for me to plan, if you don’t tell me.”
    She sounded tired and I pulled a face as guilt pinged. I wasn’t the only one who’d lost someone in the massacre. My family was her family after all. And she’d lived in Caldwell all her life. She’d known every single victim. Half of them had been her students at Caldwell High.
    But that was another part of the reason why attending the service was so hard—I hated seeing Bug sad instead of fiery.
    “I’ll try,” I said. “But I’ve picked up a couple of new clients recently, so I might not be able to finish early enough to make it on Friday.” No way was I telling her that one of those clients was Lord Esteban. She already gave me enough grief about the fact I was still working on the Tate