“I can’t say. An illness perhaps?”
“I have an idea.” I stood and tested everything out to make sure I hadn’t twisted a knee or an ankle during the takedown. Relieved when everything worked as it should, I dusted off my hands. “Are you good here for a minute?”
Thom stood. “Where are you going?”
“I need something from the SUV.”
“Okay.” He retrieved the ubaste’s proboscis. “I’ll get started here.”
Cursing my stubborn refusal to carry the black phone, I jogged to the SUV and thumbed redial on my way back to Thom.
“You’re out of breath,” Wu observed. “What are you doing?”
“Jogging.” Not a total lie. “I hear it’s good for what ails you.”
Wu made a noise too dignified to pass as a real snort. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
I imagined him sitting at his desk, elegant fingers steepled in anticipation, a hungry spider in his silvery web. “I have an ubaste on my hands, and it got me thinking.”
“How can you possibly think past the stench?”
Putting distance between myself and the corpse had done wonders for my cognitive abilities. “Does the NSB catalogue lower demons? Is there any way you could identify this particular one?”
“The NSB maintains records of each charun who is spayed or neutered.” A bitter note flavored his accent. “We all have files in the system. Photos, blood, and tissue samples.”
Ignoring his sharp response, I kept pressing. “So that’s a yes.”
“Yes.”
“Great.” I reached Thom, who eyed the phone with unease. “I’ll owe you a favor.”
He waited the span of a heartbeat. “I’m ready to call in my favor.”
I laughed. He didn’t. “You’re serious?”
“Have dinner with me, and I’ll get the information for you.”
“Dinner,” I echoed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I want to get to know you.” The silk in his voice caressed my ears. “We are partners, after all.”
“Not yet we aren’t.” I pinched my bottom lip in consideration. “Aren’t there fraternization laws in the NSB?”
“Charun are, at their core, primal beasts. Sterilized females no longer experience heats. They no longer throw off the scent to entice males. Without that call to mate, males are far less interested in sexual relationships. The impossibility of creating offspring withers the urge. So, no, there are no fraternization laws. There’s no point to them.”
The relief I expected to cascade through me never manifested. I hadn’t been sterilized. I hadn’t been outfitted with a demon-friendly IUD yet, either. The heat thing… yeah. I wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole.
“Fine.” I avoided eye contact with Thom. “I’ll have dinner with you.”
Wu was a gateway to the information we required. There was nothing for me to do but walk through it.
“Excellent.” His mood audibly improved. “Photograph the body, take hair and blood samples. I’ll text you the address of the lab we use. You can drop off the materials there for processing, and they’ll send them direct to me. I’ll call with the results once I have them.”
He ended the call and left me staring at the screen, wondering what kind of bargain I had just struck, but I couldn’t afford regrets. “What do we do with the ubaste?”
Thom would have overheard my conversation with Wu, so he knew we had to collect samples, but that still left us with a whole lot of butt-ugly demon we couldn’t leave out for humans to find.
“We employ a team for cleanups.” Thom didn’t elaborate on the specifics, and I didn’t ask. We had left the ubaste breathing, but I didn’t kid myself that it would remain in that condition. Any demon drawing attention to its species would be put down before humans got involved. “I’ll place the call once we’ve finished. Where does Wu want the samples taken?”
A text notification pinged, and I swiped my thumb over the icon. I read the address, re-read the address, and then I laughed.
Oh, yes, the NSB knew all about the White Horse lab. Wu had, after all, just directed me to them.
During our second trip to the lab, I let Thom do the honors. To further avoid any awkwardness with Veronica, I ducked low in my seat and used my phone as a shield to deflect her stare. With her nose pressed to the glass front door, she reminded me of a doggy in a pet shop window who just knew she would be chosen if only she performed the right combination of tricks.
Five demons already depended on me, and I wasn’t about to add another into the mix.
Rubbing my face with my hands, I hid in the blessed darkness of my cupped palms for a moment.
I’m a demon. A nightmare given substance. A plague upon humanity.
For the most part, I was adapting. Okay, adapting might be a strong word for putting one foot in front of the other, taking this new life one day at a time. But sometimes reality crept in on mouse feet then lowered the whammy and left me with my ears ringing.
Hunting the ubaste, confronting yet another alien breed, had been one of those times.
Desperate for a breather, I lowered the window, closed my eyes, and sucked in fresh air heavy with the scent of oncoming rain.
“Are you all right?”
A lesser woman might have squeaked at Thom’s voice so near her ear, but not I. I was developing a sixth sense where he was concerned, which maybe should have worried me. I glowered at him. “Keep that up, and I’ll buy a bell for you, mister.”
His left ear gave a decided twitch. “I’m no house cat.”
No, he was the back-alley brawler that kept the neighbors up all night yowling. “Are we done here?”
His eyebrows rose when he noticed my slump. “Are you hiding from Veronica?”
“No.” I hauled myself upright. “I was just getting comfortable.”
“She unsettles you,” he surmised.
“A touch, maybe.” The reverence thing bugged me a surprising amount.
“Most charun you’ll encounter share a similar worldview as their new human neighbors. Earth is their home. They want to protect their families and the lives they’ve carved out in this terrene, and they’re willing to coexist with mortals to do it. Recent events are stirring unrest within the charun populace. Two cadre have been spotted, and they know what that means.” He hesitated. “Those who thrive on chaos and darker things are more inclined to embrace your return.”
“I’m guessing Veronica falls into that category.”
“Yes.” He studied me. “Does knowing that make you see her differently?”
There was no way I was falling into that trap when I had just gotten the taste of foot out of my mouth.
“What she does to get by is her business as long as she doesn’t harm anyone in the process.” I had to imagine there must be a yin and yang happening where she could feed or indulge her desires without drawing the NSB down on her head. “When she crosses the line? That’s when it becomes my business.”
“Do you apply the same values to charun as you do humans? The same worth?”
“Yes.” I reached through the window to ruffle his hair, as shocked by the impulse as the fact I enjoyed the contact. Again, I wondered if the coterie bonds were to blame, if spending time with them had activated some strange magic, or if Thom’s animalistic nature trumped my usual aversion to touch. “I’ve spent enough time around you guys to know not all charun are evil or, you know, bent on world domination. Regardless of species, the vow I made when I pinned on my badge was to protect the innocent.”
For a long time after that, Thom stayed put, letting me pet him. And then he said, with no small promise, “I’m going to find a way to keep you.”
“I am not opposed to being kept.” A cramp in my arm ended the petting session, which, yeah, sounded dirty, but touch appeared to be a platonic requirement for Thom. Plus, he seemed onboard for Operation Luce Is A Real Girl, and I would take all the help I could get holding on to my identity. “
So we’re done?”
All in all, my first day of demon hunting hadn’t been so bad.
“We’re done.” He circled the SUV and got in beside me. “Are you in a hurry to get home?”
Cat he might be, but Thom wasn’t as slick as he thought. “Are you asking me about Wu?”
Demon hearing left zero to the imagination. Thom already had the skinny on the deal I’d brokered with Wu. He just wanted to drag the gory details out of me.
“You deserve any happiness you can find” was his response.
The gnawing pit in my gut kept me chewing over the ramifications of dining with a guy who wouldn’t require quickdraws or rope to scale, but facts were facts. I was bad for Cole. He didn’t want me in a romantic way, I wasn’t sure if he wanted me at all, and not knowing his limits meant he was off the menu. Though crossing out his name hardly penned Wu in. Thankfully, he had spelled out dinner was more of an interview process. No code words, hurt feelings, or unmet expectations required. That alone made the prospect refreshing.
“Wu is working an angle, but I haven’t figured out what it is yet. This dinner is a ploy of some kind. The object is most likely to get in my brain, not my panties.”
Thom made a huffing noise under his breath. “Do you believe everything that male charun tell you?”
“You guys don’t exactly come with instruction manuals.” I snorted out a laugh. “I have to believe that when a guy says he doesn’t want my hands on him, he means it.” Damn it. This was not about Cole. This was about Wu. And boundaries. “For that reason, I’m willing to extend a little faith and believe when a guy says he doesn’t want to put his hands on me, he means that too.”
“You are so young,” he mused. “I forget that sometimes.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I restrained myself from sticking out my tongue at him, but it was a near thing. “The reason I’m in a hurry to get home, if you must know, is because I want to see Dad. We finished up early. I might be able to catch the fourth quarter of the game. I wouldn’t say no to a brat hot off the grill either.”
He made a noncommittal noise.
“Do you have any plans for tonight?”
He rolled his shoulders. “I have to brief Cole and the others.”
The mention of Cole sucked the air out of the cabin, and we cruised the rest of the way to the Trudeaus’ in silence.
I saw smoke curling over the roof and cracked a window to breathe in the smells. Thom parked at the curb, and I gathered my things. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?”
“I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“Uncle Harold won’t interrogate you again. Yelling at the TV will keep him occupied.”
“Thank you, but no.” He shook his head. “It’s Miller’s and my turn to clean the fleet and handle scheduled maintenance.”
All those SUVs… I didn’t envy them the job.
“Tell him I said hello.” Backtracking, I amended to, “Tell everyone I said hi.”
“Enjoy your cookout.” Thom glided away from the curb and rolled down the street at a sedate speed.
After hiking my bag up on my shoulder, I let myself in the house and dashed toward the living room. Dad was asleep on the cushions, and a frayed pink blanket covered his legs. Football played on the TV, but someone had muted the game. I dropped my stuff beside the coffee table then went in search of my uncle. I found him manning the grill with a beer in one hand and tongs in another.
“I see your partner in crime didn’t make it to the fourth quarter.”
“He dropped off around the second.” Uncle Harold lifted the foil covering a pan filled with simmering beer and brats. “He started fading about two hours after you left. He lost interest in the TV before the game started, but I sat with him until I had to start dinner or go hungry.”
“He walked out of the fog once.” For those precious moments, he had been his old self. “He’ll do it again.”
“From your lips to God’s ears.” He plated a thick cut rib-eye charred to perfection, Aunt Nancy’s favorite treat. No doubt an enticement to get her to eat more. “How did the case go?”
“We wrapped up today, actually.” I took the plate to free his hands. “Looks like I get to sleep in tomorrow. And before you ask, no. Cole did not join us. It was just me, Thom, and our —” target “— suspect.”
“Any particular reason why you’re padding your résumé with odd jobs, pumpkin?” Uncle Harold did casual well, but the beer had roughened his usually smooth delivery. “Anything you need to tell us?”
“It’s not my résumé I’m padding. It’s my pockets.” The white lie burned going down, but the truth wasn’t an option. “You should see all the toys White Horse has at its disposal. I found out today they own stock in a private lab. I’ve got to say, it’s an impressive operation. It makes what we have down at the PD look like we’re coloring with crayons while they’re whipping out calligraphy sets.”
He grunted. “That’s the power of money.”
“You ever consider working for the private sector?” I repeated the question Thom had once asked me. “Better pay, better hours, better toys. It’s not a bad gig if you can get it.”
“I’m a cop, Luce. I don’t know how to be anything else.” He sounded okay with that. “Besides, I’m too old to learn new tricks. Branching out is for the young. I’m content to stay right where I am until I retire.”
Retire. Yeah, right. Pretty sure we’d be hauling his corpse out of his cruiser. “When will that be?”
“Depends on Eddie, I guess.” He took another long drink. “I’m not interested in working solo, and I don’t have the patience to train up another partner. He might decide this is it for him, and if he goes, I go too.”
Actual retirement hadn’t crossed my mind. It’s not like Dad had been in any shape to make that call.
“You make it sound so noble,” I teased, “but I know the truth. You can’t stand the idea of working every night while you know he’s out on the water spotlight fishing without you.”
“Pumpkin, you know me too well.” Uncle Harold chortled. “Do me a favor and light that bug candle? The mosquitos are eating me alive out here.”
“Sure thing.” I held out my hand. “Matches?” He dropped a box on my palm, and I crossed to the outdoor dining table. A hodgepodge of white cotton discs, chunks of candle wax, a casserole dish, and a few tiki torch refills cluttered one end along with a weathered crockpot. I had to set down the plate to dig out the candle he mentioned, and then I had to clear a space before lighting it. “What’s going on here?”
“Nancy’s cooking up some of her famous Waxy Wonders.” He grinned with pride. “The guys love them. She makes batches for the fishing club a couple times a year.”
As if hearing her name, Aunt Nancy popped her head through the sliding glass door leading into the backyard. She spotted the steak on the table and waved tinfoil at me before I could think to question him about the Waxy Wonders’ purpose. “Hurry up before it goes cold.”
Scooping up the steak, I pointed at his grill. “Do you need me to grab another plate for the brats?”
“Nah.” He lifted a dish rag to expose two more stacked in his prep area. “I got it covered.”
I hustled into the kitchen and passed over the steak. “What smells so good in here?”
“Bacon wrapped onion rings, green beans with bacon, and my signature baked beans with pork belly.”
Water flooded my mouth. “So… bacon.”
“Don’t sass me, Miss Priss.” She passed me an onion ring snug in its crispy bacon suit. “Go keep Harry company so he doesn’t burn the brats.”
“I like mine charred.” He always set a few on the grill after their beer bath for me.
“You’re the only one.” She hip-bumped me out of her way with a fraction of her usual oomph. “Oh, and your phone’s been ringing.”
I pulled my cell from my back pocket and woke the display. “I’m not showing any missed calls.”
“Th
at’s odd. I could have sworn I heard a phone ringing over here.” She indicated my backpack. “It must be your laptop. Do you use that Internet call app?”
Oh. That explained it. Not my phone, the black phone.
“The app came preinstalled on my new laptop.” That much was true. “It’s probably another prompt to activate the service or something.” That much was… not so true. “I’ll go mute it so it doesn’t bother us again.”
Bone Driven Page 10
