bass of the dance music in the club thumped in muffled repetition. A call to find his companion for the night. He punched off the monitor and stood just as Nadine appeared in the doorway. A frown pulled at her dark brows and created creases on either side of her wide lips.
“What’s up?”
“Health inspectors are here,” she said, seeming a little confused.
“Health inspectors? Why?”
“Apparently, they got a call stating we have a rat problem.”
“What?” He strode out of the room, heading to see what this was all about.
Wilhelmina made her way through the crowd to where Sebastian stood talking to a man and a woman near the doorway that led to the employee lounge and back storerooms. Both the man and woman wore business suits, and didn’t look remotely like regular patrons of the club. The woman reviewed a paper on the clipboard she held in her hand.
The health inspectors.
That hadn’t taken long. Wilhelmina couldn’t contain the smile that tugged at her lips as the woman wrote something on the paper. Probably the notice saying that the club would have to be closed down until the rat problem was resolved.
She stepped closer, trying to hear the conversation.
“We’re sorry to have to take up your time like this,” the man was saying in a raspy, almost breathless voice. His suit coat barely buttoned around his paunchy middle. The health inspector was hardly the image of good health himself.
Sebastian smiled at the man. “Well, you have to do your job.”
Wilhelmina frowned. He was taking this too well. He had to be furious that his business would be closed indefinitely.
She edged a little closer.
“But it’s unfortunate to waste your time, and ours, when there are obviously no health code violations here,” the woman muttered and scribbled something else on her clipboard.
No violations! Wilhelmina stepped closer to the group. What was the woman talking about? There were a dozen rats roaming the backrooms. How could they have missed that?
“Can I do something for you?”
She startled at Sebastian’s question.
He frowned at her. “Is there something you wanted to ask me?”
Hugging her empty drink tray to her chest, she shook her head. “No. Um, no.” She hurried off to the bar, her mind still trying to wrap around the fact that the health inspectors had found nothing. Nothing. That couldn’t be.
She stopped at the drink pick-up area at the far end of the bar, setting her tray down, still staring at the group. Sebastian spoke to them, another gracious smile on his full lips.
Wilhelmina shook her head, as if she could somehow shake away what she’d heard.
“Do you have an order for me?” Nadine asked, jarring Wilhelmina’s attention from the trio.
“I—um. Yes.” She rummaged in the pocket of her dress for her order pad. She tore off the top sheet and handed it to Nadine.
The bartender scanned the list, then nodded. She hurried away to fill the order.
Wilhelmina looked back over to see Sebastian walking the health inspectors toward the front entrance. She fought the urge to chase after them, to demand they check again, more closely. The rats were there. She knew.
But she couldn’t do that. Not without giving herself away. And she wasn’t prepared to out herself in front of Sebastian. Not even for the cause.
“Long Island Iced Tea, a Screwdriver, and two merlots.” Nadine placed the cocktails on her tray.
“Thanks.” Wilhelmina’s gaze never left Sebastian, who still chatted with the two inspectors. Wilhelmina’s eyes narrowed. She wanted to scream. Was Sebastian Young the most charmed vampire in existence?
“Wondering who the two suits are?” Nadine asked.
Wilhelmina nodded, not wanting to give her any reason to suspect why she was watching them so intently.
“Health inspectors,” she whispered. “They got a call saying that Carfax Abbey was infested with rats. Crazy, huh?”
Wilhelmina nodded again, even though she didn’t think it was crazy at all.
“We’d be the last damned place in New York to have a rat problem,” Nadine murmured.
“Why?” Wilhelmina asked, surprised by the bartender’s certainty.
Nadine leaned closer, so no one could hear. “Everyone knows that rats are terrified of preternaturals. And with the amount of preternaturals in this place, we are more effective than any exterminator. No vermin would come within a mile radius of this place. Not even a damned cockroach.”
The tall woman straightened and grinned like the whole thing was the funniest joke ever.
And Wilhelmina supposed it would have been pretty funny, if she wasn’t the butt of the joke—again.
Chapter 5
“Hey, this isn’t my drink.”
Wilhelmina stopped midstep and turned back to the table surrounded by a mixture of humans and what she suspected, if the men’s sizes were any indication, alpha werewolves. The huge, heavily muscled man who’d spoken to her gestured to his drink. The cocktail on the table in front of him was pink with cherries and a purple umbrella. Definitely not the kind of drink a burly lycanthrope would order.
She quickly picked the glass up and placed it back on her full tray. She frowned at the drinks, guessing his was the pint of porter.
She carefully placed the dark beer before him and waited, hoping she’d guessed right. She had. He nodded and lifted the drink to his mouth, swallowing half the beer in one gulp.
She smiled stiffly and headed off to deliver more drinks, guessing at all of them, because her thoughts were not on her job but on the fact that she had again bungled her sabotage attempt. Why was she so clueless? Of course, if she understood herself and her kind better, she would have known about this.
If you do it right. Suddenly Lizzie’s comment made sense. Lizzie had known how the rats would react. Wilhelmina obviously hadn’t. But she should have guessed that the released rats would just run, leaving the nightclub altogether.
Equally as pathetic as her own ignorance was the fact that rodents had more sense than the humans she was trying to help. But the rats hadn’t been told from birth that things that went bump in the night weren’t real. They functioned solely on instinct. Not a bad thing.
She paused at her next table, trying to recall what the patrons here had ordered. Was it the wines or the beers?
Finally, after much debate, she just asked them. They told her the beers, which she placed before them and then moved along toward
