Broken Soul: A Jane Yellowrock Novel Read Online Free Page A

like wine. I grimaced and set the elegant crystal goblet aside. “Got any beer? That stuff is vile. It dries out my mouth.”
    Wrassler pressed a button on the oversized desk. “Ask Quesnel for an assortment of beer, please,” he said. When he stood straight, he studied my posture. “
Taming of the Shrew
? You read Shakespeare?”
    I lifted a leg, holding up a boot—black leather with green leaves and gold mountain lions embossed on the shafts. They were hand-constructed, hand-tooled, hand-stitched, hand-everything Lucchese Classics that sold for around three thousand bucks a pair. But they did not belong on a table. I crossed my ankles and set them back on the table.
    “Past tense.” I chewed a bite of quail that simply exploded in my mouth with spicy, bacony, wild-bird flavor. “Holy crap,” I said around the mouthful of quail and bacon and some tiny little grain. “This is good.” It was also greasy and bony. I pulled a small bone from my mouth and dropped it on the plate with a piercing, crystal tinkle before licking my fingers. “In high school. For a while I thought I might like to go to college. Turned out there wasn’t money in the children’s home’s budget for a kid whose grades were only a little above average. Anyway, before I figured that out, I took some courses. The story’s based on the concept that if you try to please someone, they’ll only turn on you and look down on you. But if you act like a barbarian—”
    “Like the one licking her fingers right now?”
    “—then the fancy schmancy folk won’t know how to act and you’ll win by default of not doing the expected thing.”
    “I don’t think Leo will go for that, Janie.”
    Behind him, the door opened and one of the penguins entered, carrying a tray of cool bottles. Not cold the way we serve them here in the U.S., but cool, the way they serve beer in Europe, the temp of a root cellar.
Ick
. But I popped the topand drank half of an Einbecker Ur-Bock. “He’ll never impress the EuroVamps. He’ll have to kill them all or prove he’s something different—more modern and newer than they are. Whatever. But not better at being what they are. Won’t happen no matter how hard he tries.”
    Wrassler said a low “Hmmm” as I finished off the quail and started on the bison, picking the meat up with my fingers. I had noted the number of chairs in the small but opulent office, and figured that if I didn’t get my fill now, I might not get anything. It looked like a much bigger meeting than usual, and I had to wonder why we weren’t in the security conference room.
    By the time my plate was empty, the men entered, smelling of various colognes and scented soaps and aftershaves. And endorphins. Yeah, they’d gotten happy.
    They stopped in the foyer of the office proper, clustered in a fanghead/blood-meal group, and stared at me in what smelled like shock. I grinned up at them and licked my fingers again.
    “Little Janie has suggested that we act the Petruchio to the Europeans’ Kate Minola,” Wrassler said, his voice toneless but his eyes dancing as he took in their reactions to my lazy sprawl. “American barbarians.”
    Leo tilted his head, studying me, and he did that single-eyebrow-quirk thing that was so classy and that I totally could not do. I’d tried. In that moment he looked completely human, if a bit like he’d stepped out of the pages of a historical novel. He was wearing a shirt with draping sleeves and a round collar that tied at the throat, the ties hanging open. High-heeled leather boots went to his knees, with a pair of nubby silky pants tucked into them. Except for the boots, I’d seen him wear this outfit before. Either he had a dozen of them or he was wearing this one out. I saluted the group with my beer and slurped, watching them.
    Leo chuckled, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. When he laughed, he looked so normal, so human. It was uncanny and kinda scary that one of the most dangerous nonhumans I knew