by Sierra Dean
The winter air was cold and laden with the promise of moisture, but it was a promise that was taking forever to come to fruition. I breathed in deeply, enjoying the heady aroma of retail panic mixed with the constant waft of Starbucks Christmas blend drifting in from all corners of the city.
All the makings of a perfect New York Christmas were in play. The windows at Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and Henri Bendel were decorated with such meticulous precision, tourists and locals alike stood outside to drink in the orchestrated merriment. The big tree was up at Rockefeller Plaza and was so burdened with lights it looked like a pixie convention had moved in for the season. Below it, skaters were making the rounds on the cramped rink, while overhead, visitors representing all the waving flags of the plaza took photos of the famous landmark.
Only one thing was missing.
It was December seventeenth, and it had yet to snow.
Usually by my birthday—the sixth of December—the streets were piled high with dirty stacks of the white stuff. It would fall in big, fat flakes so wide and fluffy they looked fake until they hit your cheeks and eyelashes, where they melted. Sidewalks would be peppered with dancing drifts that darted to and fro underfoot at the whim of the wind.
But this year there was nothing. The air was cold enough for it, stinging exposed skin and showing off puffs of breath as people hurried from store to store, but something kept the sky clear and the ground bare.
Back at my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, I wrestled an armload of bags through the front entrance, dumping them in the tiny hallway outside my door. The small space was overpowered by the smell of cinnamon, and for a moment my heart jumped. Part of my soul-bond meant I could taste my partners, and Lucas’s taste was that of cinnamon. But I wasn’t tasting anything; it was only the smell.
My front door was unlocked, and when I opened it my jaw dropped.
My little apartment could have put a department-store window to shame. The small television next to my fireplace had been relocated to make room for an honest-to-God live Christmas tree. The tree was wrapped in broad red ribbon, and multicolored LED lights burned brightly from the boughs. Shiny round ornaments in bold hues were nestled next to kitschy reindeer and snowman decorations. Over the fireplace was a runner of holly, and two brand-new stockings hung from the mantle. My little stereo was playing “Deck the Halls” and my, oh my, were the halls decked.
The smell of cinnamon and sugar wafting out of the kitchen mingled with the scent of pine to create a festive perfume Glade would kill to have in a scented candle. Someone in the kitchen was humming along to the carol. I dragged my parcels inside and closed the door quietly, but there was no level of stealth good enough to escape a werewolf’s hearing.
Desmond came to stand in the kitchen doorway, smiling at me like a lunatic.
“What do you think?” he asked, wiping his hands on a snowman-themed dishtowel.
“The North Pole has exploded in my apartment.” I placed my hands on my hips, trying to look indignant, but it was pretty hard to fake being mad when there was so much happy crap plastered everywhere. I dropped the charade of annoyance and crossed the room to give him a kiss.
His skin smelled like cookie dough, but his kiss tasted like lime.
Thanks to my new winter boots with their four-inch heels, I was able to kiss him without either of us having to contort too much. I was a mere five-foot-four to his six-foot-two. Let it never be said shoes can’t bring lovers together.
I looked into his violet-gray eyes and brushed his dark brown hair off his forehead. Even in the middle of winter, Desmond looked like he had a tan. I, on the other hand, looked as pale as Snow White. One of the many joys of being half-vampire was I never got to set foot in the sunlight. One of the joys of being half-werewolf was getting to smooch a handsome wolf lieutenant in my kitchen. I planted a kiss on his nose before returning to the front door to take off my boots.
“When did you have time to do all this? I haven’t been gone that long.”
“Dom came over for a bit, but he had a date tonight and couldn’t stay.”
“Your brother met someone? Who’s the lucky girl?”
Desmond smiled, but it didn’t linger too long. “You’ll have to ask him.”
I hung my coat in the hall closet and put the knee-high boots on the floor next to a sagging rack of high heels. When I straightened, Desmond was behind me, looping his strong, muscular arms around my waist. He nestled close, finding the exposed band of my neck below my messy blonde ponytail and breathing hotly against it. A pleasant shudder ricocheted through my body, sending up goose bumps all over my skin.
Even after six months living together, we still couldn’t keep our hands off each other, and I for one hoped that never changed. Whenever Desmond touched me I thought I might burst, and with him now licking the column of my neck and capturing my earlobe between his teeth, it would be an explosion of epic proportions.
His hands moved upwards from my waist and under my sweater until my breasts were cupped in his wide palms. I let out a breathy sigh, grinding my hips backwards against him before my gaze fell on the presents littered over the ground. His knee was between my legs when I smacked the hands beneath my shirt and pushed him away.
“You naughty werewolf,” I scolded.
“I could be very naughty,” he promised, scooting closer and attempting to reclaim my breasts. I smacked him playfully again.
“Not now. I need to hide this stuff before you ruin everything.”
Desmond stooped, his lips grazing the curve of my jaw, his warm breath exhaling in my ear. I stopped protesting when he captured my mouth and tilted my head back for a deep, probing kiss. He tasted the inside of my mouth and sighed, his tongue dragging over the sensitive roof. When he withdrew, he sucked my bottom lip, nipping on the delicate skin before kissing my lips gently and laughing at my star-struck face.
In the kitchen the timer buzzed.
“Back to my cookies,” he announced with far too much cheer in his voice.
When he left, I looked up and saw a bundle of mistletoe dangling from the ceiling. Who was I to argue with Christmas tradition?
With my packages stashed in the bottom of our bedroom closet, I returned to the kitchen to watch my man be domestic. The kitchen was too small for me to share the space with him and still be out of the way, so I stayed in the doorway. Desmond moved around the tiny space like he’d been born there. He removed one tray of cookies from the oven and replaced it with another in one fell swoop.
“Where did you learn to bake?” I asked.
He shut the oven door and put the finished cookies on the stove. The smell was incredible, all cinnamon and sugar and the moist perfection of melted butter and flour. Leaning against the edge of the sink, he faced me with a smile.
“My mom taught me and Dominick. Penny is a bit resistant to learn, which Mom doesn’t quite know what to do with. I don’t think any mother in Sunnyside ever had a daughter fight so hard against baking.”
Penelope Alvarez was Desmond’s twelve-year-old sister, and I had only learned about her existence after he moved in. Since she wasn’t a werewolf yet, he liked to keep her distanced from the dangers of his and Dominick’s life. When Penny turned thirteen she’d be able to decide for herself if she wanted to become a wolf, and if she agreed, she would go through the coming-of-age bite ritual called the Awakening.
I suspected Desmond wanted her to refuse the change. As the oldest male werewolf in his family, it would fall to him to bite Penny and change her over. Every time the topic came up, his features got heavy with sorrow and he was moody and quiet for hours.
“Speaking of Penny…” he began, and I stiffened. The evening was going so well. I didn’t want it ruined by discussing his sister’s future.
“Yes?” I tested the waters cautiously.
“Mom is insisting you come over for Christmas Eve dinner.” He returned to baking the instant the words were out of his mouth, removing the cookies from the tray and putti
ng them onto a rack for cooling, as if he hadn’t said anything.
In the doorway, I chewed my lower lip. I guess I’d hoped to avoid the whole awkward meet-the-family ordeal altogether. Desmond had met my mother once, and I figured it might set the precedence for why familial get-togethers should be passed over. When Desmond and Lucas met my mother, Mercy, she was in the process of ripping my face off with her partially changed werewolf claws because I’d murdered her mate.
Ain’t family grand?
“Des…”
Sensing my uncertainty, he left the baking to meet me in the doorway and drew me in for a tight, warm hug. He smelled so damn good I wanted to lick the sugary sweetness off his skin. Instead I tucked my head against his chest, rubbing my cheek on the softness of his sweatshirt. Like Lucas, Desmond’s tastes leaned towards the finer things, and the simple shirt was cashmere.
For the first few months of my acquaintance with the wolves, I’d believed Desmond’s income was provided solely by Lucas. It wasn’t until the week after he’d moved in that I learned he was an architect at a prestigious New York firm. That the firm was owned by Rain Industries and its primary service was to design new concepts for Rain properties meant Lucas did pay Desmond, but not the way I’d figured. Desmond had laughed at my misguided assumptions and pointed out it would be hard to file taxes with the job description of kept man.
He brushed my hair behind my ear and tilted my chin up with his thumb. “I know you don’t want to.”
“I…I’m just not good with families.”
“What are you talking about?” He snuggled me closer. “What do you call this?”
My heart did a flip-flop. “Is it important to you?”
“It would mean a lot to me, and to them, if you came. Plus, Dominick will be there, so it’s not like you won’t have protection if Mom gets nasty.”
I paled, which is an impressive feat given how white my skin is, and Desmond seemed to recognize the foolishness of his word choice. He started to apologize, but I put a finger against his lips.
“I’ll go.”
If I could kill a vampire Tribunal leader, I could handle Momma Alvarez, right? I wonder if he’d let me bring my sword.
Chapter Four
It was just after five o’clock in the evening on December eighteenth and there was still no snow.
In the office I shared with Keaty on the 100 block of West 80th, I sat behind his wide desk, kicked my shoes off and stared at the desk calendar. Someone had a case file open and paperwork spread all over. It hadn’t been me, and it definitely wasn’t Keaty. Only one other person had access to our office and this desk.
I flipped idly through the open file on the desk, trying to glean what Nolan might be working on in Keaty’s absence. Depending on what type of case it was I’d be able to figure out how much faith Mr. Francis Keats had in our young apprentice.
The front page was a generic form we had all clients fill out, with name and address and payment information. The next was an immaculately handwritten collection of notes, outlining an apparent missing-persons case. Teenager, a moody type who the police were convinced was a runaway but the parents believed had been snatched.
Run of the mill, except we didn’t do standard missing persons. Sure, Keaty was a licensed private investigator—he had to be in case anything came back to bite us in the ass if an investigation went wrong, plus it meant he was legal to carry a weapon. I never let the logistics stop me, but I found you got in less trouble when the law was on your side with stuff like that. But even with the license, we didn’t really take on human cases. If someone came knocking on our door, it was for a reason.
I kept flipping through the file until I found that reason.
Were-panthers. The missing boy’s family were shifters, and so they’d come to Keaty—or in this case Nolan—looking for help that the police wouldn’t be able to offer. They needed people who understood the supernatural.
I checked the dates and saw that the boy had gone missing about three weeks earlier, just after the last full moon. It might be coincidental, but it also might mean something. Bad shift? Did someone die accidentally? The file didn’t answer my questions, so I decided to go right to the source.
“Nolan?”
No response.
I moved into the hallway and stood at the base of the stairs, which led to the second-floor bedrooms. Again, I yelled, “Nolan.”
This time there was a response, but it didn’t come from upstairs.
“Secret?” The reply was muffled and came from the direction of the kitchen. Something about the note of panic in his tone made me bolt for the kitchen. I skidded through the swinging door, my socks propelling me across the smooth floor until my hip connected with the low marble counter.
Nolan was standing beside the stove, fanning at a plume of smoke that was billowing out of the oven. He gave me a worried look before returning to the task at hand.
“Turn off the oven,” I instructed.
For a moment he was too surprised to move, until I nudged him aside and turned the oven off, then flicked the switch to turn on the exhaust hood. Smoke was sucked upwards, but enough remained in the kitchen to sting my eyes.
I opened the oven, and inside was a charred tray of black sticks.
“Wanna fry?” Nolan asked, his eyes red and his smile sheepish.
I guess not all of the men in my life could be gifted in the kitchen.
“Let those cool before you throw them out. I’ll call for delivery, and then we can talk about this file you’re working on.”
In Keaty’s office, I was digging around for a phonebook when my cell phone started trilling at me. At first I didn’t recognize it, because my usual ring tone was Tom Petty, but my phone was currently singing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”. Leave it to my sneaky diurnal boyfriend to change my ring tone while I was asleep for the day.
In my haste to answer, I didn’t check caller ID so I opened with a questioning, “Hello?”
“Hey, Secret, it’s Cedes.”
“Hey, lady, what can I do for you? You find Sharon Stone yet?”
There was a long pause, then she cleared her throat. “Keats made you get your PI license, right?”
“Yes,” I replied warily.
“I’m going to need you to come down to the precinct.”
My whole body tensed. When a homicide detective asked you to come in, it usually wasn’t for anything good. “Is something looking less stabby and more vampy? ’Cause I haven’t been on active duty for months, so it wasn’t m—”
“It’s not a vampire I’m worried about.” Her voice was hushed, so she must have been around other officers. Humans, by and large, weren’t big believers in vampires.
“What’s going on?”
“Can you just come, please?”
“Sure.”
The NYPD’s seventy-sixth precinct looked like a high school that might burst into a West Side Story-type gang war at any moment. It was a squat concrete building with no color and no life. I dragged myself up the steps, trying to imagine what might make Mercedes call me in like this.
Behind the front desk was a pretty young receptionist whom I’d had the displeasure of meeting on several previous visits.
“Barbie,” I greeted. No, I wasn’t kidding. And this girl gave me attitude for being named…
“Secret.” Her smile was forced and her voice barely masked her contempt. “Castilla and Novak are expecting you in the conference room.”
Novak? Oh sweet, honorable crap. Detective Tyler Nowakowski was the last person I was prepared to see tonight. For some stupid reason my hands flew up to check my hair, and I was thankful I’d at least done something with it. As for my new personal uniform of tight black leather pants and knee-high boots, I had made a valiant effort to girlie them up by wearing a lilac cardigan over a butter-yellow tank. Still, it’s hard not to look like you’re a member of a biker gang when you’re wearing leather pants. I’d gotten sick of ruining all my best jeans with
bloodstains, and leather was easier to keep clean.
I let out a sigh and took the stairs behind Barbie’s desk up to the main work floor. Along the far wall was a room with more windows than walls, and I could see Mercedes and Tyler sitting next to each other at a table. I weaved my way through the sea of metal desks until I was in the open doorway, tapping at the frame to announce my presence.
“Secret,” Mercedes said with a small smile. “Thanks for coming.”
She and Tyler rose, and both shook my hand. As always, I flushed with pleasure from Tyler’s firm grip.
We’d had an ill-fated blind date. It had gone perfectly until a group of vampire wardens had been forced to wipe his memory so he’d forget how I’d ginsued a trio of rogue vampires on a subway platform.
And you thought your dating life was hard.
Now he thought I’d bailed on our date without rhyme or reason. I was that girl. I gave him my best smile, but he only stared back with detached indifference. I wished I could explain things to him, but now that I was one third of the vampire Tribunal, it was extra impossible to defy the rules.
I took off my cropped motorcycle jacket and eased into the chair across from them. The three of us sat in silence, and I had no intention of being the one to break first. I was part vampire, after all, and I could stay quiet for an irritating length of time.
Tyler cleared his throat and placed a manila folder in the middle of the desk.
“Do you have a queasy stomach, Miss McQueen?”
“It’s Secret. And no.” My werewolf half had a bad habit of needing to win staring contests, and I didn’t look away until he did.
He nudged the folder towards me, but I didn’t bite. Curiosity killed the cat, but I was a wolf. I leaned back in my chair and kept watching them. If they thought I was guilty of something, being too eager to see the evidence would only make me look worse. And since I didn’t know if I actually was guilty or not, I didn’t want to be too rash. I’d killed plenty of people—or at least monsters that looked like people—but none without reason. Try explaining that to the human police, though, and you come across like a psychopath. They didn’t tend to love the they had it coming logic.
