Just needed something for my hands to do.
Getting images of last night out of my mind was going to be impossible. And my heart ached so much I thought it would burst.
“If Rodán would have let me come last night—” Olivia started.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference.” I stared at the folder I had picked up. “Caprice was dead before we got to her.”
“I’m sorry, Nyx,” Olivia said quietly.
I took in a deep breath, and it seemed like every part of my body ached. “Let’s focus on this damned master Demon. He’s got to be the reason Jon and Caprice were taken so fast.”
Olivia nodded. “On it.”
“A beast with a man’s head, warhorse body, and fish tail?” I set the folder down. “Along with a dirt-cyclone-looking thing and a scale or shingle.” Kali hopped onto my desk and sat right on my handbag, next to the stack of Demonology research books. “What the hell kind of clues are those?”
Just great—Olivia opened a large bag of Lays barbeque chips, which she immediately dug into.
“Really”—crunch, crunch—”stupid clues.” Olivia held out the bag, offering me some.
“You know better.” The sound of my own crunching was enough to give me the shudders.
Olivia shrugged and dug into her chips again. Crunch.
I winced and searched for a bottle of Excedrin in the top drawer of my desk. Ow. So there were my scissors, next to a strip of staples. Sticky notes, pens, several pennies, markers, thumbtacks, Wite-
Out, a ruler ... Victory! Found the bottle of headache medicine.
Crunch.
Shudder.
Olivia set the bag of chips down. “Maybe I’ll get lucky with a Google search on the Net.” She grabbed another chip.
All of Olivia’s continuous crunching and munching jacked up the headache that pushed at the back of my eyes. I took two Excedrin tablets without water, and nearly choked on them as they went down my dry throat. When my throat was clear, I said, “I need to get this sample to James.”
She tilted her head and looked at me. Her tone was completely serious when she said, “I wonder if James and Derek get it on as gorillas.”
I swear, if I had been drinking my Starbucks today it would have gone up my nose. Working with Olivia was dangerous to my latte habit.
Dark-haired, blue-eyed James was a Doppler whose animal form was a gorilla. A blue-eyed gorilla is a pretty interesting sight. His husband, blond, green-eyed Derek, was half human and half Shifter.
He shifted into a gorilla when he was together with James as a couple, but Derek preferred a jungle cat at other times.
I tried to keep a straight face as I said, “I doubt they do it when Derek is a leopard.”
“Would make for some interesting sex.” Olivia looked thoughtful, as if she was serious. Maybe she was. She smiled and the spark of mischief was in her eyes again. “We’ll just ask James how he and Derek have sex the next time we see him.”
My brows narrowed. “Don’t you dare.”
Olivia grinned.
I nearly groaned again. She probably would anyway.
Focus on solving the puzzle, Nyx. “This Demon is playing some kind of game and it’s really pissing me off.”
“No shit.” Olivia pulled a huge chip out of the bag. “We need to take down this fucker, and soon.”
Crunch.
“What do you think?” I asked Kali, as if she would meow an answer. Kali gave the equivalent of a shrug by delicately picking up her forepaw and starting to lick it.
“A whole lot of help you are.” I gave her a nudge to get her off of my Dolce & Gabbana handbag.
“This purse is worth more than you are. One of these days you could earn your Fancy Feast and give us a little assistance.”
The look Kali gave could have skewered me on one of my own blades. She stuck her pug nose in the air as she rose on all fours, turned, and gave me the tail-in-my-mouth, butt-in-my-face treatment.
I sputtered, shoving her furry behind away from me. “Ick.”
With grace only a cat could have when she’s mad, Kali leapt off my desk, stalked away, and disappeared near one of our packed file drawers. No doubt headed upstairs in her secret way to shred my laciest things.
“After I take whatever this thing is to James,” I said to a bunch of crunching, “I’ll hit Victoria’s. Last I checked Kali only left me two pairs of lace thongs and a satin bra.”
Olivia was moving her fingers over her gel pad, staring at the computer and not paying attention to me. She could care less about underwear that you couldn’t buy at Wal-Mart.
Victoria’s would be a worthwhile trip. Since I had lunch scheduled with Adam on Friday I definitely needed something sexy to wear—just for the feel of it against my skin when I saw him.
He wouldn’t run the moment I told him the whole truth, right? No, I wasn’t going to go the negative route in my thinking.
With my elbow on the hard, smooth Dryad wood, I ignored Olivia’s crunching, braced my chin in my palm, and looked out at the rain-drenched late morning. The scent of rain was still strong from the wind that had blown through the door when we walked in.
At least the handbag that I’d stuffed my weapons into had remained dry because I’d used a little air spell to cocoon it. The rest of me—didn’t matter and I hadn’t wanted to waste the power. But my Dolce & Gabbana? I don’t think so.
The Demon was what I should have been thinking about when Olivia and I started doing our research, but it was Adam who I couldn’t get out of my mind. Maybe because it was a distraction from thoughts too painful to dwell on.
In a sort of daydream, I continued to watch the rain come down outside of the picture window. I wiggled my toes under my desk and slid off my Burberry heels. They joined the Morrisons, Pradas, and Tory Burch that I’d kicked off on other days and hadn’t gotten around to retrieving yet.
Adam once said I was the only PI he knew who looked gorgeous, could navigate a crime scene in three-inch designer heels, and smelled good.
What a sweet-talker.
Okay stop daydreaming, Nyx.
Even though I’d rather daydream about Adam, I forced my mind back to what I was supposed to be working on before I took the sample to James.
I reached into my handbag, which had blue Kali hair stuck to it now. and drew out my XPhone. I pressed the uplink option and began uploading the info, my notes, the photographs, and my drawing into my computer’s database.
Of course, of course, the photos hadn’t come out, and I hadn’t done such a hot job drawing the man/
horse/fish tail. That was the strangest-looking fish tail.
I stared at my computer screen that now showed my hand-drawn images and I arranged them side by side.
Swirly cone-shaped thing like a dirt tornado.
Man/horse/fish tail.
Scale.
Damn.
Yep, had to get this sample analyzed right away. I called James, who happened to be home for the afternoon, and he said to come on over.
Crumpling sounds and something hitting the metal waste can told me Olivia had finished her chips.
Thank the Goddess. One of these days I was going to outlaw chip crunching in our office. That and bubblegum popping. Oh, and soup slurping.
“Hippocampus is the closest thing that comes up on the Internet.” Olivia wiped her hands on a paper napkin she’d pulled out of her desk before tossing the napkin into the waste can. “In some references it’s exactly what we’re looking for—a man’s head, horse’s body, fish tail.”
I rubbed my eyes with my thumb and forefinger. “No self-respecting Demon is going to present himself as a hippocampus.”
Olivia gave me the look before she said, “You consider a Demon as being self-respecting?”
I managed to hold back a laugh but not a grin. “Um, no. What else have you got?”
She rolled her eyes, not at me but at the results of her search. I think. She moved her fingers over her gel
pad. “Quite a number of sea monsters with some variation of a fish tail. But nothing else remotely close to the drawing.”
I sighed.
With a grin she looked at me. “There’s a cockfish.”
The snort that rose up in me almost made me choke. “A cockfish?”
“That would be one interesting Demon.” Olivia chucked a pencil eraser at me and caught me off guard. The eraser bounced from my forehead to the desk and she laughed. “Score one for me.”
I flung the eraser back at her and it pinged off the end of her nose. “Heh. I think mine was worth at least two points.”
“Speaking of cock.” Olivia pushed the eraser across her desk to join her pile of ammunition.
“Haven’t had any of that in way too long. I need to get laid.”
“As long as you don’t fall for some Vamp.” I swiveled in my chair and grabbed my purse before looking back at her. “Or a Metamorph.”
Olivia gave me one of her wickedest grins. “We’ll see.”
I returned her grin with one of my best “Don’t mess with me” glares. “I’ll be watching you.”
“Like I’m worried.”
“I’m heading to James’s to have him check out this scale thing.” I patted my purse, where I’d stuffed the plastic bag with the whatever-it-was.
“See you at the Pit,” Olivia said “And after Rodán and I have our face-to-face I’m going out with you.”
Oh, crap. Well, maybe Rodán wouldn’t agree to let her hunt the Demons. I opened the door, and the bells tinkled as I walked through. “No Vamps,” I yelled over my shoulder instead of acknowledging the possibility of another friend being in danger.
And murdered.
CHAPTER 18
The rain had finally let up, and the air smelled rain-washed and clean as I headed toward James’s “pad with a lab.” As he called it, not me.
James Gifford lived in Morningside Heights, near the border of Harlem. He was a professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University by day. By evening he practically lived in the high-tech lab he’d built in his “pad,” a first-floor apartment with absolutely no view.
When I arrived, James opened the door after I knocked twice. Instantly the scent of brownies and what smelled like stew hit me, and I realized I hadn’t eaten since ... I wasn’t sure.
“Haven’t been graced with your presence for quite a while, beautiful.” James smiled as he stepped back to let me into a nice but small living room that totally masked what was behind those walls.
James adjusted his trendy wire-framed glasses after he shut the door, then gave me a quick hug. He put his hands on his trim hips. “What’s up?”
“Can’t remember.” My stomach rumbled. “I think it’s to eat whatever Derek is whipping up.”
“Let me set your purse on the couch and we’ll go see if he’ll let us sneak an early dinner.” He took my handbag. “Oooh. Dolce & Gabbana.” He looked at me over his rims. “This is so unfair. If i showed up at Columbia with something like this—”
“They’d kick your ass out.” Derek was wiping his hands on a dish towel as he came from the kitchen. He grinned at me, teeth white against tanned skin and golden eyes flashing. After a quick hug, he ushered me to the kitchen, where the smells were even stronger. “So, fill us in on what’s going on.”
“Maybe we should eat first,” I said as they seated me at the dining room table. Derek started serving up prime rib and steamed vegetables on fine porcelain that had sprigs of wildflowers around its rim.
James poured three glasses of merlot. “That bad?”
“That bad.”
Derek was a half-human Shifter, but had been raised with his human father and human stepfamily.
He’d met James at a gay nightclub a couple of years ago and they’d been together ever since.
We had normal chatter while Derek, a chef at one of the finer restaurants in the city, served up a chocolate mousse that was like dying and going to Summerland. I swear.
When we were finished eating and I was relaxed from a couple of glasses of wine, I told them everything that had happened. Including how Caprice had been murdered.
“Sweetheart.” Derek came over from his side of the dining table and took my hand so that I was standing and he could give me a hug. It felt good to be held again, and to breathe in the hint of a male Shifter’s scent of amber. When he drew away there were tears in his eyes. “Caprice was such a doll.” He wiped the corners of his eyes with his fingers. “I just can’t believe it.”
James hugged me next, and kissed my cheek. “Let me see what I can do to help so that you can stop the Demons from hurting anyone else.”
Derek insisted on cleaning the dinner dishes himself and shooed us out of the dining room. James and I went alone into his amazing lab, filled with microscopes, test tubes, beakers, a centrifuge, and all that stuff he used to do whatever it was he did as a hobby.
James pulled on a pair of rubber gloves and a long-sleeved lab coat. He set his glasses on a long examination table, then put on safety eyewear. “Stand by the door in case this breaks and goes flying. Better yet, do your air cocoon thing.”
I nodded and used a little air power between me and the shell. My elemental strength was still recharging and I hoped I’d have my full abilities back by the time I headed out to track Demons tonight.
James took the scale-thing out of the bag with a pair of tweezers, then held it up and stared at it under the incandescent lighting in his lab. He made a few “hmmm” sounds before he used a tool of some sort and broke off a small piece of the egg-sized shell. A loud crack came with the action, but nothing else happened. Thank the Goddess.
He put the piece under the microscope and took off the goggles to peer at the piece of whatever it was.
“What is it?” I asked, practically bouncing on the balls of my feet.
“Definitely an arthropod.” James raised his head from the microscope and picked up his wirerimmed glasses from beside it. “It’s a piece of an exoskeleton.”
“Huh?” So I wasn’t up on arthropods or exo-skeletons—whatever they were. They didn’t teach that in the Drow realm. “And this means?”
James cleaned the lenses of his eyeglasses with a soft cloth. “Best guess is that it’s from a scorpion the size of a rhino.”
“A scorpion?” A chill made me rub my arms with both hands. “How could it be so big?”
“Honey, I have no clue.” He slipped his glasses back on as he frowned.
“What would a Demon have to do with a scorpion?” I said out loud without meaning to as my thoughts drifted in that direction. I pulled my XPhone out and used the stylus to bring up the drawings. “This is a symbol we found today, near where I found that scorpion shell. A man’s head, horse’s body, fish tail.”
James looked at it and shook his head. “That’s a scorpion’s tail.”
A strange sensation crept over me, as if scorpions were actually climbing my skin. “Are you sure?”
James pointed to the drawing. “See the sections? Those aren’t scales. Those are part of an exoskeleton.” He traced the tail with his fingertip. “And the way it curves? That’s definitely a scorpion’s tail.”
“We’ve been looking for the wrong thing.” I pulled up the picture of the tornado-like image. “Did you or Derek come up with anything that will tell us what this is?”
James frowned. “No.” He gestured toward the piece of shell. “But that definitely is another clue, and it will help me in my research.”
“Thanks so much.” I gave James a quick hug and a kiss on his cheek.
“No messing around with my man,” came Derek’s voice from behind me.
“I love you guys.” I turned and hugged Derek again, and kissed his cheek, too. “I have to run. Now we’ve got something to go on.”
CHAPTER 19
It was early evening as I stood on the corner terrace of my apartment and stared toward the foggy sunset, mostly obscured by rain clouds.
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I had just returned home from James and Derek’s place, and hadn’t had a chance to tell Olivia the shell-thing was a piece of a scale from a monstrous scorpion, I didn’t know what it meant, yet, but it had to be bad. It was late, and we could start working on it tomorrow.
The rain had halted for now and the cool dampness of the air felt good on my skin. I sifted out the various smells until only the scents of a rain-fresh evening and the abundance of nature in Central Park filled my senses. I drank in the perfume of flowers, scents of trees and bushes, and the smell of water from the lakes.
My bottle of green tea chilled my palm as I took a long drink. The liquid was cold and I felt it all the way to my empty stomach. My skin started to tingle as the sun lowered, and I took another drink of tea, I had a few moments yet.
It felt like my mind was twisting and bending, and I couldn’t follow along. Like everything that had happened over the past forty-eight hours was too much and I barely held onto a thread of reality.
“Hi, Kali,” I said as my Persian walked toward me on the terrace’s balustrade, and she gave a “meow” in response.
She rubbed against my arm as I gripped the railing. I let go of the balustrade and began petting her, rubbing her favorite places at her neck and behind her ears.
Kali purred as I slid my palm over her soft blue hair while I took a final drink of my tea.
One thing I was sure of—I couldn’t take Olivia tonight. 1 didn’t even want T tagging along. I just needed to be by myself. Searching my territory and keeping it safe.
Alone.
With my thoughts.
My incisors dropped as the sun slipped away and darkness started setting in. I licked the tip of each incisor, feeling their sharpness against my tongue. My hair was almost blue when I walked through the French doors to my bedroom and shut them behind me.
I tossed the tea bottle into the wastebasket and. instead of enjoying the transformation by stretching or dancing. I looked at my hand and watched it change from white to amethyst.
Purple, green-horned Demon came into my mind as I remembered what Adam had said.
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