The Space Between

Brendan 3-3

I nodded at him because he was right. That’s how it would happen in most magical cultures. “It’s mostly because we’ve known each other forever. We met at school, bonded because we were both the second son born. It wasn’t his thing, but he followed me into the Guardians of Magic armed services. We protected the different realms on the other side of the gate.” I could tell he looked confused, but I could explain it to him later. “When we got out, I decided I was coming over here. After everything I’d seen in the services, I was done with that realm for a while. You wouldn’t believe the kind of damage magic can do. He could have stayed, his family offered him a comfy position, but he followed me over here too. I don’t know why. He’s perfectly capable of standing on his own two feet, but he won’t.”

I sighed and leaned back, turning my chair with my foot again. Was I missing something? This was starting to be too much. “What have you been doing to find Brittany?”

“Whenever I have time, I go out looking for her. I’ve roamed up to 200 miles from here. It’s a bit more populated here than back home so it’s more difficult to search in wolf form. I can’t smell her anywhere. My alpha and I have been in contact with some of the packs in this area, but no one has seen her.”

I turned back so I was facing him again. “I wish you’d have come to me immediately about your relationship with her. We could have been working together all this time.” Nathan swallowed and dropped his eyes to my desk again. I swore I could see tears in the back of his eyes. I knew how her being gone affected me, I couldn’t imagine how it was affecting him. And he’d more or less been suffering in silence.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, looking up at me again. “I would prefer this stay between us. No offense, but I don’t trust Zak. He could have done something to stop it, to stop her, but he didn’t. I have my suspicions. Any information we gather, or I bring you, does not get to his ears. And I certainly don’t want him to know she’s my mate. That could be damaging information to her if what I suspect is true.”

I stared at Nathan for quite a while, but he never dropped his gaze from mine. Maybe he saw something I didn’t want to. Something I’d been purposefully ignoring for a long time. “Sure,” I finally said. “As far as Zak’s concerned, you just work here.”

We sat in silence for a bit after that, both of us caught in our own thoughts. I didn’t know what else to do to find Brittany. If Nathan had been searching all over and he had other wolf packs searching all over and I had been searching, then I didn’t know what to do anymore. Neither of us had been able to find her.

Maybe it was time to call in some favors that were owed me.

My eyes snapped back at Nathan when I heard his phone go off. He pulled it out of his pocket before he waved at me and stood. “Hey, alpha, what’s the news?” After that, he walked out of my office, listening to whatever the other wolf was saying.

Goddammit. I turned my chair with my foot again. Maybe I should have taken that chick at the gym up on her offer this morning. I could use some forget-reality-between-some-thighs-time right about now.

Instead, I sighed, stood, and pulled out the bookcase next to me to display the door behind. Look, I don’t make the rules, the goblins do, and they liked to do s**t a certain way. And a secret door to get down to their secret office I had built under the club was what they wanted. I don’t know why it mattered, they didn’t even use this door, they had their own gate door in the office.

A lot of the creatures that worked for me didn’t actually live in this realm, they lived in the magical realm, but worked in this one. Some of them didn’t even ask for payment in money. I should say, most of the creatures that worked in the back received payment in non-monetary ways. Like the brownies, their payment was living here, unharmed. Apparently so was getting drunk on my dime.

Goblins liked gold and precious gems for their work. So, three days a week, I let them count and touch all the money that came in like it was their own hoard and converted their pay into gold or diamonds or whatever gems they could afford. I’m guessing they took it all back to their little goblin empire. I opened the door and ducked down into the hallway. I could hear the goblins click-clacking on their calculators. I had three under contract at the moment. I never asked their names and they never provided them, I just called them all Mr. Goblin.

All the noise stopped when I entered their little room and the three of them looked up at me. “Goblins,” I said, nodding my head at them. I should have made this room bigger, I had to bend at a weird angle to be down here. I’d only made it about six feet tall and ten feet by twelve feet. I mean, it was big enough for the goblins, and they spent the most time down here, but still.

Or maybe I was just being bitchy.

I sat at the desk that was down here for me and started going through some of the invoices. Normally, this was Brittany’s job, she dealt with these things a lot better than I did. I started noticing a discrepancy between the bar invoices, it looked like I was paying for more product than was coming in. I furrowed my brows, hadn’t Brittany tried to tell me something about this before? I was concentrating so much on the paperwork that I almost didn’t hear the goblin next to me clear his throat. He held out a zippered bank envelope to me, which I knew would be Friday and Saturday counts and deposits. “Thanks,” I said, “I’ll go through it later.” The goblin grunted at me, f*****g grunted, before the three of them turned and headed to their door. Head goblin waved a hand in front of the door before he opened it to whatever realm they lived in, and they left.

I didn’t want to deal with this right now.

I left the bank deposit on the desk, there wasn’t much I could do about it today anyway. The bank was closed, and I didn’t feel like going through it. I headed back up to my office, making sure to lock the door and bookshelf behind me. The last thing I needed was someone knowing it was there, that would put the goblins in jeopardy. I grabbed the rest of the pizza and left my office, closing and locking that door as well. Along the back wall of the club was a door that said private, which I unlocked. Behind this door was a staircase. If I turned left, I would end up at the door that led to the street, turn right, and up the stairs was my apartment.

It was late afternoon now and part of me just felt like turning in for the day. Lately, things had been too much for me to handle on my own. A few years ago, it was nothing for me to work all night, f**k someone, get a few hours’ sleep, and do it all again the next day. Maybe I was finally getting old but living like that didn’t really appeal to me anymore. Part of me craved one special person. Someone to talk to, share my life with, maybe lean on when I needed it.

I unlocked my apartment door, almost sighing at the knowledge that it was going to be quiet and empty. I even missed Brittany calling me. We had an older brother, Bradley, but he still lived in the magical realms. And, yeah, don’t ask me what our parents were thinking when they gave us all names that started with B.

Not to mention how weird Zak had been acting lately. I’d really noticed it about a year ago. Despite how much I pushed him to stand on his own, he’d always been a follower. I’d caught him staring at me like he hated me a few times the last few months, especially after Brittany had been kidn*pped. Really, he only had himself to blame in that situation. Like I said, if it had been his sister, I would have body slammed her back into the club, especially with that pack of demons outside. They usually only showed up in groups of two or three, never alone, and there had been a half a dozen of them that night. I didn’t want to admit that Nathan had been right, that I shouldn’t have let Zak back in my life much less the club. And I certainly shouldn’t have put him right back in the same position of power as my second in command.

I stowed the few pieces of pizza left in the fridge before sitting on my couch. I thought about turning on the tv but didn’t feel like reaching for the remote. Instead, I decided to lay my head back and close my eyes.