“Oh, I doubt that!” I laughed. “What did you give them? Wait, are you the insider?” I lowered my voice to a whisper.

“There was another ceremony at Centennial Park,” Darv sneered. “There were two sacrifices being made. We don’t know which one was the more important one. Maybe they both were.”

“Oh.” I blinked a couple times and then reached for the bottle. Eric handed it off to me with a burping giggle that he tried and failed to cover up with a big mitt of his.

“I love you, Bree. You are like the best. You are amazing. They were going to let me die, and you saved me,” he slurred out as he lay on the floor and went promptly to sleep.

I patted his head and tried to take another swig, but Corb snatched it from me. I pointed at him. “It’s good.”

He sighed and took a quick drink, then made a face. “Never liked whiskey much.”

I kept looking at the ceiling of the vehicle, and then my eyes must have closed because we were picking up Tom and Eammon, both of whom took drinks from the whiskey bottle.

They all seemed a bit cozy to me, but I didn’t care. Of course, maybe they’d known Corb was the insider all along? Possible. Would have been nice if they’d filled me in on it.

Someone picked me up and carried me at one point, and then I had my face buried in my own blankets and pillows. I think a large furry animal might have curled up across my feet, but for the first time in days, I slept like the dead.

Funnier when you didn’t think about what had just happened.

Of course, nothing was funny the next morning when I woke up with a pounding headache, fuzz all over my tongue, and not one but two large animals on top of me.

26

Amber eyes and dog breath filled my vision and my nose as I tried to pull myself out of a funk that was undeniably self-induced. I might love me some whiskey, but it didn’t always love me back. To be fair, I didn’t mind all that much. After all, what was a celebration without at least one person hung over?

“Sarge, get out of here,” I mumbled, pushing the dog breath away.

Sarge.

I jerked backward and would have fallen out of my bed on the far side if not for the bigfoot sleeping across my legs.

Eric muttered something and rolled over so his back was to me, grabbing a blanket and tearing it off me so he could wrap it around himself. Still all furry, he hardly needed the blanket. Then again, he’d been living in a house that he’d had cranked up as hot as he could have it for months.