by Gina LaManna
“You’re full of it. There was no interest anywhere; he was just protecting the pack. It’s their natural instinct—and you, my friend, know all about natural instincts.”
Matthew hesitated, a look of horror and sadness winding across his face. He looked as if he wanted to apologize, then couldn’t find the words.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “That was out of line.”
“No. You’re right; I acted like an idiot back there. It’s just sometimes...”
“I know,” I said softly. I’d felt it too. “I think we have to keep our personal interests and history out of this if we’re going to be successful working together.”
Matthew gave a nod, and that ended the conversation.
We got Joey into Detox by the time three a.m. rolled around. Matthew and I combined efforts to fill in the paperwork and left instructions for the clerk to hold Joey until someone could return the next day and interview him for an alibi.
If Joey had been dazzled all evening, that was as good an alibi as any. Matthew and I watched him from behind bars. The bars on the detox cell were magical, created from bright beams of electrical current that hummed with the constant effort of restraint. As I watched Joey, I felt something resembling pity. The man couldn’t have formed a sentence, let alone murdered two people with complex runes and dumped their bodies in a Motel Sixth room.
I sighed. “We’re no closer than when we started.”
Matthew turned away from the clank and gestured for me to move outside before discussing the case. We stopped at the bottom of the stairs outside the station under the clear night sky, moonlight piercing through the blackness with sharp little stabs.
“That can’t be further from the truth,” Matthew said as he turned his gaze on me. Even though he was attempting to be casual, not a thing in the world could dim the intensity of his gaze. “We know that the bodies were staged, or at least dumped at the Motel Sixth—not killed there. We know Joey and Lucas are unlikely to have moved the bodies, but that they might resemble the man called Charlie Bone.” To himself, he muttered, “Need to get Donny with a HoloHex artist.”
“It’s fine, Matthew. You don’t have to cheer me up. I just wish I could’ve been more assistance on the Residuals. If we don’t find the crime scene by tomorrow, I’ll be no help whatsoever.”
Matthew watched me with lidded eyes, his expression severe. “They didn’t recruit you solely for your Reserve skills. You’re a damn good investigator, Detective. Don’t sell yourself short.” He cleared his throat, seemed to declare the pep talk portion of the evening over, and continued. “If you’re disappointed about The Hex Files, don’t be. So long as you offer your help on the case to the best of your abilities, I owe them to you whether we close it or not. That’s not on you, DeMarco.”
My anger flared. “This isn’t about the files—this is about doing the job I was hired to do.”
“Danielle—”
“Detective DeMarco,” I snapped. “Where to next?”
“Get some rest. I’ll meet you at the station in the morning.”
“Captain.” I raised a hand in a ‘stop’ gesture. Matthew froze, standing as still as only vampires can. “Convenience. Proximity.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What if that specific hotel room was used because it was close to the actual crime scene?” My head jerked upward to meet his gaze, which finally wasn’t prying into my soul and was instead focused on the case. “What if the runes were used in one of the adjoining rooms, and then the bodies moved a short distance?”
Matthew looked conflicted. I could tell he didn’t want to ask me to scour the rooms. It was the middle of the night, and he’d already torn me away from the grand opening of my pizzeria. Now he was stealing my sleep, too.
“Let’s go back,” I said. “It won’t take long to pop into each of the rooms, but we will probably annoy a ton of guests.”
“We can go in the morning,” Matthew ventured weakly. “There are plenty of officers scouring every room and making certain there’s nothing else relevant to the crime scene. The guests will have already been disrupted.”
“Then let’s disrupt them again, King. Tick, tock.”
Chapter 7
The sun was rising as Matthew watched Dani let herself into the front door of the pizzeria. He imagined that one of her brothers had restored the wood from shards with the help of magic while Dani had been away. Considering the mood she was in, it was a wonder she didn’t crack the panel in half all over again.
Even from across the street, Matthew’s perceptive hearing picked up the angry click of the lock as she slipped it into place. Matthew still didn’t move once she was safely inside. He stood, perfectly still, waiting until the light clicked on in the second-floor apartment above her shop.
He watched for another hour maybe—time felt elusive just before dawn, as if it was neither early in the morning nor late at night. He had nowhere to be at times like this, so he merely waited: thinking, processing, considering. It helped him to feel less alone.
When an acceptable hour rolled around, he headed to the station. Matthew was seated at his desk by five thirty waiting for the chief to arrive. Though Chief Newton’s office was three floors up, Matthew picked up the unique sound of the chief’s gait a few minutes later. With a heavy sigh, King stood. Newton would be bellowing for him in minutes, so he might as well get a head start. Better if Matthew beat him to the punch.
At the office, Matthew didn’t bother to keep his intense speed under wraps. Whispered about, admired, hated—he was many things within the walls of this building, but the only one he cared about was being a damn good captain for the Homicide Unit.
“Kin—” the chief got out the first sounds before Matthew opened the door and stepped inside. The chief looked up, impressed. “Not bad, King.”
“Sir,” Matthew said. “Good morning.”
“Doesn’t feel like morning. Feels like the middle of the goddamn night. Didn’t sleep a wink, not that you know anything about it.” The orc looked up at Matthew. “What do you have for me?”
Matthew stared into the face of his superior. He had nothing but respect for his boss. After all, the two had many things in common. Both were the only one of their kind on the force, and both had shattered glass ceilings as they rose through the ranks. However, to call them friendly would be overly generous. The chief hadn’t gotten to the big corner office by making buddies.
“Sir, we have—”
“You’re stalling, King. Don’t bullshit me.”
Matthew blinked again—another imposed human trait that had become a natural habit. Mostly because Dani had told him it “freaking creeped her out” when he stared at her without blinking for long periods of time.
“We’ve got nothing, sir,” Matthew said honestly. “We’ve got a dead mayor whose body was tossed out with a young Goblin Girl. No obvious reason the two are—or should be—connected.”
The chief looked down his long, crooked nose at Matthew. “Sex?”
“Not that we can tell, sir,” Matthew said blandly. “Though we can’t rule out the possibility. They were dumped at the motel, not murdered there, and they were fully clothed. We’ll get the reports back from Sienna soon enough that will confirm one way or another.”
“The Goblin Girl—do we know anything about her?”
“I have officers running down leads, but you know the nature of the business.” Matthew gave a disheartened shrug. “Mostly street girls looking for a way to get on their feet. Fake names, families who disowned them—it’s not easy to chase down any meaningful identities among them.”
“That’s why I hired you, King, so you would do the hard work.”
“I understand, chief.”
Matthew took the note of disappointment to heart because at the bottom of it, the chief had a point. Though Matthew’s status as captain had been earned and well deserved, not every chief would have trusted a vampire on the homicide team. After all, he wa
s still a vampire, and his nature had a way of rearing its ugly head. Homicide often involved blood. Nothing more needed to be said.
“What else?” The orc turned back to some paperwork on his desk, mostly disinterested. “It’s an election year, King. We’ve gotta work fast on this. It’s a relief you don’t need sleep. I hope you don’t plan on taking a breath until this case has been wrapped.”
“We have recruited Detective DeMarco to work as a special consultant on the case.” Matthew ventured into the territory lightly. “I’d like to request that Felix grant her a temporary badge with all her credentials and access reinstated.”
“Dani DeMarco agreed to come back?” The chief looked up briefly from his paperwork. When Matthew confirmed with a nod, he gave an amused smile. “The badge ain’t happening.”
“But sir—”
“I’ll grant her a pass alright, but access to anything confidential outside of this case is denied. In the buildings, she’ll need an escort. The pass is only for conducting business and assignments from you.”
“Thank you, sir.” Matthew withheld the smile. He’d discovered long ago that the chief always needed to have the final say on any idea that wasn’t his. So Matthew made a habit of asking for more than he needed—such as the all-access badge—in order to get what he wanted, which was merely a pass.
“You’re the babysitter. Shit hits the fan with DeMarco, and you’re biting the official bullet, got it?” Newton reached into his desk and pulled out a cigar. He flicked on a lighter and started puffing away. “Can you handle it?”
The question was layered with meaning. It hadn’t been a secret that Matthew and Dani had a history. A ripe, colorful history that had been both beautiful and terrible, light and dark, warm and cold. Ice cold.
“Yes, sir. I think she’ll be imperative to the success of the case. She’s already cleared the Residuals from the Motel Sixth, and it was Dani who determined the murders were merely staged in Room 309. We followed up on a few leads together, and she’ll be returning to continue this morning. I’ll have the full report on your desk by seven a.m.”
The chief nodded. “Find the crime scene, King. And the connection. I’ve got reporters breathing down my neck, and if you can’t wrap this up in a nice tidy bow, heads will roll. You know what happens if you cut a vampire’s head off, don’t you?”
“Noted, sir.”
Matthew managed to swallow without his fangs descending, though he felt the pull of them as a natural reaction to the threat. He could only hope the chief didn’t notice. The orc wouldn’t take kindly to being hunted in his own office, even if Matthew didn’t intend to act on his instincts.
Matthew turned instead, let himself out of the office, and reappeared downstairs seconds later. “Helena!” He yelled for his assistant in the front office. The poor, haggard old ogre responded with a squeak. “Yes, Captain King?”
“I’m going to give you my notes. Write them down, will you?” He stood, paced back and forth. “Has the new shipment of synthetics come in yet?”
Helena looked down at her notepad. “No, sir—the blood is scheduled to arrive this afternoon.”
“Thank you. Now, I’ll start at the beginning.”
Chapter 8
I woke a few hours after I’d tumbled into bed to the sound of my door breaking in half.
Seconds later, my eyes flew open to find New York’s most ineligible vampire standing over my bed, his fangs descended.
“What the hell, Matthew?” I scrambled from bed, but the sheets twisted over my legs and I ended up flopping halfway over the edge of the bed in a most ungraceful way. I overcompensated for my awkwardness by pulling my Stunner on him by the time my feet hit the ground. Thankfully, not all my training had been forgotten.
Matthew raised his hands slowly, a grim smile on his face. The fact that his fangs hadn’t yet ascended only made his smile darker and more intense. “At least your reaction time hasn’t suffered—much.”
“What are you doing in my apartment?” Now that I was semi awake, I lapsed back to my detective days. My fingers rested steady on the gun, my eyes leveled on his, and I mostly pushed away the pull of attraction that seethed in my gut at the sight of him. “I don’t recall you getting a warrant.”
Matthew gave one of his rare laughs. Then he looked around, gestured for me to drop the gun, and sat on the edge of my bed. “Your security around here is abysmal.”
“Um, yeah. The door is supposed to need a key...” I crossed my arms. “But wood is hardly a match for stone.”
Matthew stiffened. Though accurate, he tended to not appreciate references to stone. It reminded both of us that he was both superhuman, and not quite human. It had always bothered Matthew to know his heart no longer beat. As if somehow that made him less than the rest of us.
“Sorry, Matthew, but come on—you can’t put a fist through my door and think that’s okay. What are you doing here, anyway?”
“Apologies, Detective.” Matthew stood, his arms stiffly by his side as an air of professionalism returned. “I simply came to deliver this.”
I glanced at the proffered temporary badge. “Special Consultant?”
He shrugged. “It was the best I could get. You want your detective title back? Talk to the chief.”
“No, of course not.” The sight of a badge without its familiar detective label on it stung, though I couldn’t admit it aloud. I’d voluntarily stepped down from my job. “It’s not an all access pass.”
“We both knew that wasn’t happening. Take what you can get.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dani—you quit on the precinct. They didn’t quit on you,” he said. “You want full access, you want the detective title back, you know what you have to do.”
“I don’t, I can’t—”
“It’s not your fault.” Matthew was at my side in a second, his dark eyes roving over my sleep-streaked face. “You couldn’t have known. I hated him for other reasons, for personal reasons, but even I had no idea what that man was capable of.”
“I should have known,” I said fiercely. “There’s no excuse.”
“Love is blind,” he said, and the word seemed to pain him. He gritted it between his retracting fangs as if every syllable tasted like sand. “That’s why we don’t take personal cases.”
My hand shook, descended slowly, the Stunner dropping from my fingers onto the bed. I watched as Matthew turned on a heel and strode for the empty doorway.
“Matthew,” I called after him as he stepped across the rubble. “Wait.”
He hesitated, glanced down at the debris. “I’m sorry about the mess. When you didn’t answer my knock, I feared...”
“Matthew,” I repeated, my voice barely audible across the silent apartment. “He’s not coming back.”
He watched me, his eyes indiscernible as they processed. Without another word, he turned and stalked away, disappearing into the chill of morning.
I stood perfectly still for some time—not as still as Matthew, but as still as a living, breathing witch could be. Only when the downstairs front door shut and the sight of Matthew’s long, loping stride disappeared down the dusty road, did I move.
I first cleaned up the door with a quick repairing spell, righting the wood properly in its frame. There was a bit of a lopsided tilt to it because of my frustration, but seeing as it closed and locked, I’d focus on the aesthetics later. Then, I faced my furniture.
“What’s wrong with you guys, anyway?” I shouted toward an empty apartment. “I thought you were supposed to help me!”
When nobody responded, I walked toward the kitchen and flicked on the coffee pot. “I’m talking to you, Mrs. Coffee. And you—” I kicked the door of the fridge. “What are you good for, huh, Fred? And Carl—” I spiraled over to the sofa and gave it a nudge with my foot. “I thought you were supposed to be my friends!”
I felt rightfully crazy for a full minute when none of my furniture or appliances responded. I even preheated my oven, O
wen, to five hundred degrees to get him all hot and bothered before I got a response from any of them.
“You didn’t let us get to bed until this morning!” whined Mrs. Coffee. “We were exhausted!”
“Your skinny ass fell asleep on me,” Carl, my couch, said with acidity. “I was sleeping here peacefully when you flopped down at an ungodly hour this morning. You know I get crabby if my REM cycles are interrupted.”
“You’re a freaking couch,” I said, sitting on Carl with a huff just for revenge. “We had an intruder in the apartment, and none of you even blinked an eye.”
“I might have,” chimed in Fred, my fridge, “but you open and close me so damn much I have to conserve every bit of energy I have. And anyway, Matthew isn’t an intruder.”
“He broke down the door!” I gestured to the splinters of wood in the gaping hole of a doorway. “Anyone who doesn’t have a key, you may consider an intruder.”
“Oh, darling...” Marla, my coat rack, purred in her luxurious, French-tipped voice, “Matthew is certainly not an intruder. I think I speak for the rest of the inanimates when I say we’ve seen very intimate details of the captain.”
Carl grunted from beneath my folded legs. “Don’t remind me.”
“Oh, shut up. Shut up.” I waved my hands at the mess of furniture that had come to life after a spell gone horribly wrong years ago—and wished for the millionth time that it was a reversible one. Unfortunately, I’d never figured out exactly how to reverse it, and therefore, I was left with a lusty coatrack, a bitter fridge that cursed like a sailor, and the laziest couch known to humanity. “I told you not to repeat any of that.”
“I don’t need to repeat it,” Carl quipped. “The horrors I’ve seen between the two of you—right here on top of me—let’s just say I can’t wash my eyes of them.”
I leapt off Carl and gave his cushions a violent plump before I stomped to the kitchen and threw open Fred’s door. “What do you have?”
“Same damn things you had last night,” he said. “It’s like you think things will magically appear every time you open me. Spoiler alert: I’m not magic.”
