She pursed her lips with a puzzled expression. She really was quite attractive, in an "I might kill you in bed accidentally" sort of way, like if they had sex he'd have a great time, but it might not be something he'd survive. He couldn't put his finger on what it was about her that gave off such an unusual vibe. "Why come here? You're a big name in Hollywood. Surely, you don't have to come down here to find some detectives to do your work."
Ah, the moment. The moment where everyone else had stopped believing him. "I believe I was attacked by a Gifted. A werewolf, to be precise."
That caught her attention. Her eyes lit up and a new energy appeared in her movements. She casually leaned against the oak desk like it was no big deal, but underneath, he could tell that it had excited her. "And what makes you think that, Mr. Pierce?"
Most of the time when he'd said that, people had given him a stupid glance and wrote him off as some big-time actor trying to stir up rumors. Someone had even gone so far as to say that if he had been attacked by a Gifted, he wouldn't be standing there. They'd be watching his funeral. He was a human, and humans tended to lose the battle with the supernatural time and time again. Besides, it wasn't like Gifted were common. They weren't precisely around every street corner. Even more importantly, it took a specialized detective to find Gifted. Theoretically, if it was a Gifted, humans were terribly equipped to try to track down the criminal. There were shrouds of magic that kept humans from being able to see Gifted in their true form most of the time. Gifted screwed with technology and made trying to capture them on camera virtually impossible, and they were incredibly dangerous to go after. Enter Adina. But, as far as his experience had gone, everyone he'd told his theory to wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, were ill-equipped to do anything about it, or just didn't believe him. The very few people that he'd successfully convinced to help him, and that were capable of helping him, basically laughed when he shared with them the truth: something bizarre was happening to him. Maybe it was PTSD, or maybe he was just paranoid, but he swore he smelled his attacker everywhere. Every now and then, he'd catch a whiff of the scent. He'd never had a good sense of smell. Most people thought he was being dramatic. Some people thought he was just going for the attention. A few of them thought he was utterly insane. Part of him was starting to wonder the same thing. He smelled everything so much more now, especially people. Maybe they were right, and the pressure had finally gotten to him. He was imagining smelling the person who'd attacked him all over the place: the set, outside his house, at random restaurants. It was disturbing. It had too much power in his mind now. He had to take care of it before he lost control of the rest of his life, too.
The way Adina looked at him was completely different. He didn't get the feeling he had to convince her of anything. She believed that he thought he'd been attacked by a Gifted, and if anyone could successfully find the culprit, it was supposed to be her and her cohorts. They'd garnered quite a bit of frustration from the P.D. The agency kept mostly to itself, but it solved the cases that normal humans were just utterly unprepared to solve. Normal humans could do most things, but against Gifted, it was like sending a squad of Girl Scouts armed with Nerf guns out to arrest a bank robber. It simply wasn't going to work, ninety-five percent of the time. The only time that humans won that fight was if they were heavily armed, but the problem was that any Gifted could be just as armed, thus defeating the edge.
He explained what had happened in as much detail as he could. He left out a few things, things that didn't matter, like the whole “Coke vs. sparkling water” debate, but short of that, he gave her the entire story from start to finish. Truthfully, he couldn't remember much past walking to his car. It had been a blur. Whatever had attacked him had been big, strong, and fast. It had overwhelmed him in no time, given him some injuries, scared the ever-living hell out of him, and knocked him out. When he'd come to, he was in the hospital with people asked him tons of questions, almost none of them he knew the answer to. As far as he knew, he hadn't gotten on anyone's bad side enough that they'd want to beat him up. Worse, if he was right and it was a werewolf, it meant that finding the culprit would be incredibly challenging, especially so long after the fact. He didn't have the faintest idea what the actual person looked like, smelled like, spoke like, moved like, or anything. He could've been attacked by absolutely anyone, from his manager to a sweet old lady. Werewolves weren't easy to distinguish, and even then, he remembered virtually nothing of the tiny shred of the attacker that he'd seen. It was like walking up to a private detective and saying, "I want you to track this person down, but all I have is that they were biologically male." With this, he knew even less. No face. No name. No voice. No gender. Nothing.
His explanation was clearly intriguing Adina. Every word that he said made her perk up more and more. What she was planning to do with that interest was a mystery, but at least she was listening and paying attention. After he'd gone through everything he remembered, he finished by admitting the terrible truth: he was partially worried that the assailant would come back and finish the job. They'd hurt him already, but if a werewolf came back to kill him... he'd be dead, no ifs, ands, or buts. He could have all the money in the world, but as long as he was still a human and there was a werewolf after him, he was in a bad way. It wasn't like it had come back to finish the job yet. He hadn't even seen it since the incident, at least in its werewolf form, but he couldn't shake the feeling that it was still out there, watching him, waiting for something. Now that he'd gone to a Gifted private detective to get help, there was a serious chance that it would try to silence him. But what else was he supposed to do? Just sit around, forget it ever happened, and hope it never happened again? That wasn't how he was going to do things. He might be an actor, but he grew up on a ranch with a down-to-earth life, and his parents always told him to stand up to the things that frightened him or they'd just get more powerful. Of course, they were talking about bullies and the current frightening thing was a giant werewolf capable of tearing a car door off a sedan without breaking a sweat, but the same principle theoretically applied.
He'd been in protective custody for a while. A sickeningly large portion of the people he'd talked to simply didn't believe him. It was clear that he had been injured, but all sorts of rumors had popped up: he was out drinking and crashed his car, so he came up with the dramatic story of being attacked by an unknown assailant to cover up the story. Problem with that was that his car was just fine, but logic wasn't something that those kinds of morons liked to consider. Or the rumor that he was having an affair (even though he wasn't in a relationship at the time) and it somehow backfired, or that he was getting into the party scene and someone wanted him to pay for drugs but he said no, blah blah blah. The stories, each more absurd and unsubstantiated than the last, were leaking out in a hurry, but they were crushing his image. People liked him as the "clean, no-drama" actor. He had a perfectly clean name. He contributed and volunteered, donating a lot of his money to various charities. He drove a midrange car and lived in a modest condo. He was supposed to be the normal guy who just happened to work in Hollywood, one of the few that hadn't gone crazy. That's why people were so eager to eat up all the rumors—they were quick to believe that Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes was not what he pretended to be. The longer this mess went on, the more stories would get around. He had to put an end to it, fast. He needed his name back, his sense of safety back, and he needed whoever did that senseless act of violence to get punished for their crimes.
That's why he was so put off when Adina said no.
4
Second-Guessing
"What?" Marcus's tone was shocked. He seemed to really not believe that Adina would decline his offer to help. "Why not? I need help, and you may be the only ones who can help me."
Adina, on the other hand, wouldn't want to take his case if he paid her in solid gold. There were a few things that she liked to steer clear of in her line of work. The agency had been around for a number of years, and she'd tried 'em
all. Actors were, without fail, a magnificent pain in the ass to work with... especially someone like Marcus, who was a relatively unknown actor who had skyrocketed to fame overnight. She was willing to bet that under all that was an enormous, hostile ego that thought everyone should bow down and worship him. It wasn't his fault. It was like people who won the lottery and blew the money and ended up broke a year later. People weren't meant to have that kind of money all at once, and they weren't meant to have that kind of fame all at once. It screwed with people, making them do stupid and frustrating things that inevitably made them a nightmare to work with. She'd tried something similar before and swore off Hollywood forever after the actor in question refused to do the dumbest things. He insisted on having only certain colored M&Ms because it "helped his muse", so his unfortunate assistants got to weed through the bag of M&Ms to find only the permitted varieties.
No. No more Hollywood. She might make an exception if the case was interesting enough, but this case sounded like an absolute nightmare. They had no leads, they would be heavily broadcasted across Hollywood when word inevitably got out, and if they never caught the culprit, the agency would probably end up a laughingstock. It was a lose-lose situation. She'd be sacrificing the potential future fate of the company she'd worked so hard for, and that was not going to happen. Without logic and reasoning, though... the case was an appealing one. She'd be lying if she said she didn't want to take it, but when it came down to simple practicality, she couldn't justify it. There was so much to lose, and so little to gain. She'd have to work with an actor (painful), risk her reputation (terrible), get wrapped up in a nearly unsolvable case (futile), and end up on the front page as a failure of a detective agency. They had all worked damn hard for the agency to get a great reputation for solving cases in a hurry. She wasn't going to let it all go down the drain for this, no matter how tempting it was to give it a chance.
She pursed her lips and tried to come up with how to explain it to Marcus. “I don't want to potentially look like an idiot” was not the best way to go, but “you're an actor and I automatically hate everything you choose to be” was potentially just as bad. This was all tact. Unfortunately, that was not her strong suit. Some people had a way with words that was just magnificent. If Alex was in there with her, he'd somehow tie it all up in a nice little bow that would make everyone happy. Not her. It was a shame, too. She disliked Marcus's character, but Marcus in person seemed like a decent enough fellow. She met his eyes firmly and explained the bad news as best as she could. "It sounds like a virtually unsolvable case. There's nothing to go on. We might as well be going down a random list of names and picking one. I could agree to the job, charge you through the nose, and then solve nothing, but I want to be frank with you. This isn't a case that we can get involved in, not with so little information. We don't have a motive, a name, an address..." she ticked off each reason on a finger. "A suspect, a video, a picture, or anything other than that you believe it was a werewolf. It very well might have been, but we aren't going to be able to find anyone based on so little. We're magic, but we're not that magic."
Most people took such a rejection poorly. They assumed that just because it was a detective agency, Adina and her crew would be champing at the bit for every little job. No, they were far more careful about the sorts of jobs that they selected. They were nitpicky, which was probably why they were still around and all their competitors were slowly dying off, one by one. There was no use wasting valuable time, manpower, and effort on a stupid job. That being said, your average Joe walking in from the outside didn't know that, so most of the time, having Adina decline their job resulted in some petty anger and complaining, sometimes with a threat to call some government agency and report them. (For what, she never knew. They had a license to practice and other than the occasional destroyed lobby, they stuck to the law pretty well.)
Marcus didn't do that. He stared at her with a funny look for a few moments, obviously thinking through something, before biting his lip and standing up curtly. "I appreciate you hearing me out." He gave her a stiff handshake and made his way out of the office, around the busted furniture, and out the door without saying another word.
She'd made a mistake. Wham! Like a sledgehammer, the immediate sensation of regret came crashing into her the second he was out of sight. On paper, she was making the right decision, or at least she thought she was making the right decision. Even in her heart, she was doing the best thing for the company and for her people. Taking on jobs with psychopathic, unknown werewolf killers was a great way to get you and your staff killed. There were lots of reasons to decline the job, but now that she'd done it, instead of feeling proud and satisfied with her decision, she felt a gaping hole, a little voice that whispered, you made a mistake. She prided herself, right or wrong, on being business savvy. She'd built the company up from scratch and there was no indication of it going anywhere anytime soon. It was a hard, rough, dangerous market, but she'd done it and she'd done a damn good job. She didn't get the feeling that she'd screwed up too often, but in the case of this decision, something irritated her.
She couldn't cross off the potential list of reasons for the fact that Marcus Pierce was involved. Maybe a little part of her wanted to spend some more time with him. He was good-looking, seemed smart enough even if he was an actor... and maybe getting to know an actor wasn't too bad if it wasn't related to business. Maybe having one as a friend would be cool. And there was the part about him being a really stand-up guy. She'd heard some of the charity work he'd done. It wasn't like slamming the door in a defenseless old person's face, but it felt like it. She owed nothing to Marcus and she was of the opinion that his profession was idiotic and corrupt as a whole. That being said, she also had heard great things about him and having to see his disappointment had left a strong, unpleasant taste in her mouth. If he was your run-of-the-mill dumbass actor, she would've been delighted to kick him to the curb. He had some flaws, of course, but she didn't get a hugely negative reading off him. It was like those commercials: “If you or a loved one have experienced moderate to severe *enter disease here*, you may be suffering from...” and so forth, except with Adina, it was more like “If you or a loved one have experienced moderate to severe ability to read minds, you may be suffering from an overwhelming distaste and discomfort around everyone.” It wasn't like she got "mind-reading powers" like some old Star Trek episode, but she tended to catch snippets. Pieces. Nothing in particular. People didn't really think in terms of sentences like in every ridiculous sci-fi, mind-reading book ever. Thoughts and minds were like a galaxy, and maybe she was able to fly around the galaxy a little, but she wasn't able to make sense of most things. Every now and again, something really big popped up: If someone was infuriated, or horny beyond belief, or exhilarated, or feeling basically anything with a lot of hormone activity, she got a view into it. It was almost like she was able to see through people, to know if they were lying most of the time, living one life and pretending the other. She'd met some people that staggered her with their aura. There was this sweet old guy who lived down the street from her old apartment, seemed like a jolly enough fellow until one day she made the mistake of talking to him and got a face-full of overwhelming darkness. Whatever that guy did, whatever he thought about in his mind... it was not the friendly exterior he put off. Everyone had some darkness in them. Everyone. Some people had less than others, and those were generally the good people. Marcus seemed to fall into that category more than most, even if she could probably find some deep dark secrets in there if she looked hard enough. She didn't want to. There was something unpleasant and inherently disturbing about knowing those sorts of details about someone.
What if he was right? That was another huge component of it. If he was right, and if he had been attacked by a werewolf, he could have been bitten. If so, Mr. Marcus Pierce would have lots of problems: the usual, of course (it was like getting attacked by an animal, so there was the risk of infection and some stuff like that), but mor
e importantly... he might be evolving. Might be becoming more than human. All the stuff he was saying about his sense of smell getting stronger pointed to him becoming a werewolf, and she had learned her lesson to stay the ever-living hell away from anyone who might have been bitten after Jackie. Jackie was a sweet lady, seemed friendly enough. She was a schoolteacher that got bitten and wanted help finding the attacker. She transformed from human into a werewolf, too, but she freaked the hell out and somehow blamed Adina for it like it was her fault, causing a lawsuit and a magnificent pain in the ass for the agency and Adina to boot. That was one lousy schoolteacher. If someone like Marcus Pierce did the same thing? The agency would be in the news and in the worst way possible. The punishment for biting someone and transforming them was an absolutely enormous prison sentence (50 years minimum to life, easy); it wasn't an everyday occurrence by any means. It was literally rewriting someone's DNA, changing them forever without their permission. Besides, the transformations were violent and sometimes the body didn't accept it and serious health problems would follow. Only a few lucky people were able to accept it. Marcus, if he had indeed been bitten, would start feeling the side effects very soon. If he hadn't, maybe there was more of a possibility of her getting involved. That wasn't a risk she was willing to take. That would turn it from an investigation into a transformation, and if that happened... big problems.
Had she made a mistake? No, she told herself, she'd made the logical business choice and that was that. She needed to trust her mind more sometimes. She had a slight habit of being a little soft towards pity parties. She'd every now and again do a job just to help someone out, but those were mostly charity cases, like for a young single mom or a sweet old couple, things like that. She never got that feeling towards highly successful actors who could pay out the wazoo for her services. She closed her mind to it and told herself that there was certainly no way that she was doing the wrong thing. She was frustrated, that was all. The moron earlier, mixed with the fact that she'd now have to find someone to repair the building, had thrown her off her game. Surely, once she got home, she'd be over it. She convinced herself that she would be fine once she drove home, put some nice music on in the background, drew herself a bath, got all cozy and soapy, made some decaf coffee... and things would be better.
Marcus - Precinct 12 Page 3
