Grave Matters: A Night Owls Novel Read Online Free PDF

up with, even though Cavale had been standing in the wrong section for that. Then he saw the covers and the titles, and his inner asshole went and put itself in time-out.
    Cooking for Beginners
.
101 Easy Meals for Kitchen Newbies
.
    “. . . uh. Are you trying to pick?” It was a terrible save, and Chaz knew it. He’d heard the smarm fade from his own voice; no way in hell had Cavale missed it.
    Cavale took a deep breath, like Elly did when they were in the middle of Sunday dinner at Sunny and Lia’s, the same calming maneuver that, presumably, kept her from shoving back from the table and hiding behind the couch for the rest of the night.
Or going to the knife drawer and finding the perfect cutlery for stabbing us all.
It was mean, and Chaz knew it, but sometimes Elly was like a half-feral cat. He forgot sometimes that Cavale had been raised by the same man, that they considered themselves brother and sister even though they weren’t siblings by blood.
    To his credit, Cavale recovered faster than his sister did. “Yeah,” he said. “I figure maybe I ought to know something more than ‘dump can of soup in pot, heat.’”
    “Shit, man, that’s an advanced technique right there. I eat my Chef Boyardee right from the can.”
    It earned him the ghost of a smile, there then gone. “Elly deserves better, though. It was fine when it was just me, you know? But don’t think I haven’t noticed how all the leftovers end up coming home with us on Sundays.”
    “Huh.” That was as close as Chaz would get to admitting
he
hadn’t noticed it, but that wasn’t a big surprise. Not only could Sunny and Lia outmother most bears; they could be damned discreet about it while they were doing it, too. He tapped the cover of
Cooking for Beginners
. “We sell a lot of that one to the kids moving into the student apartments. It actually forgives you for using frozen veggies and shit. The other one gets a little, uh. Snobby.”
    Cavale put
Cooking for Beginners
atop the other. “Beginners it is, then. I’ll put the other one back.” He took a step back, paused. “Hey. Uh. Thanks.” The word had a weight to it, more than just
thanks for the help
. Could’ve meant a lot of things, but Chaz figured it was, quite likely,
thanks for not being a shithead about this
.
    Chaz gave him what he hoped was a decent bro-nod. “Sure thing.”
    He probably could have walked Cavale up to the register and told Kate to give him the friends-and-family discount, but that might seem outright friendly. He wasn’t quite ready to take that step.
    *   *   *
    V AL HAD BEEN up and about for half an hour before Justin came plodding down the stairs. He smoothed the corkscrews out of his dark hair with one hand, rubbed the sleep-sand out of his eyes with the other. Not for the first time, Val was struck by how his tawny irises caught the low light. A month ago, they’d been liquid brown.
    A month ago, Justin had been human.
    He’d adjusted fairly well to the whole “becoming a vampire” thing, partly out of necessity, she supposed. If he hadn’t accepted the offer when Elly suggested Val turn him, he’d have joined the ranks of the Jackals—and that would have lasted about as long as it took for Elly to stake him with her silver spike. Then he’d just have been dust.
    He’d dropped most of his classes for the semester, since attending during the day was no longer an option. He’d kept the one night class that had already been on his schedule, and a couple of his professors—the ones in the English department who’d also known and loved Henry Clearwater—had agreed to let him complete his courses as independent studies. Not because they knew what he’d become, of course, but because they’d received a call from his counselor suggesting he was too grief-stricken to function at his full academic capacity just now.
    Val had been particularly proud of those calls, as guilty as they made her feel—neither she nor Justin liked using the