Wu leaned closer. “Yes?”
“It’s almost like someone is using Famine’s MO to commit crimes, like they’re trying to convince us she’s already breached, and they’re wiping out any evidence that links those acts to the true perpetrator in the process.” And they were doing a damn fine job of it. The scope of destruction was truly worthy of Famine and her coterie. “It’s War. It has to be.” I could even guess how she’d managed the trick. “Her coterie has to bargain for skin suits. They could have infiltrated those farms at any time through employees with desires big enough to gamble on a demon’s ability to deliver.”
“Skin suits.” He chuckled. “Talking to you is endlessly fascinating.” His amusement tapered. “You should be aware ‘demon’ is derogatory. I figured an upstanding citizen such as yourself would want to know.”
“I can’t get the word out of my head,” I admitted without throwing Santiago under the bus for making the comparison in the first place. “I mean to say charun, but my brain clashes with my tongue sometimes.”
While he was graciously accepting my apology for my political incorrectness, our server arrived to take our order. Wu reached across the table and closed the folio, but he didn’t draw it back to his side. That might have had something to do with my death grip on the leather, but I liked to think he would have afforded me the courtesy of reviewing the material had we not been interrupted.
“How is the infant?” he asked once our waitress bustled away to put in our ticket.
“She’s a baby.” Had a member of the coterie asked me that, I would have whipped out my cell and started scrolling through the digital equivalent of a wallet full of pictures. But I remembered the flash of his teeth so near Nettie’s tender skin and nixed that idea. “She sleeps, drinks, and fills up diapers.”
“In that,” he mused, “all young are the same.”
Something in his tone set my cop senses tingling. “Do you have kids?”
His lips parted before he moistened them. “I have friends with young children.”
That was not a no. Interesting. There should have been zero hesitation given the prohibition on charun breeding, and yet…
Maybe Wu had sired offspring before joining the taskforce.
“How did you come to work for the NSB?” I meant to be smoother, but I was too curious. “How long have you been with them?”
“I followed in my father’s footsteps.” His lips twisted. “You and I have that much in common.” He tipped back his head, staring at the ceiling. “I can’t remember when I joined. Several decades ago. Six or seven. I was a freelance consultant before that. Not much has changed in how I operate except now I have an office and benefits.”
“You’re talking sixty or seventy plus years of service.” I slow-blinked at him. “How old are you?”
I had gotten used to thinking of my coterie and me as contemporaries, even though deep down I was aware they were as timeworn as Conquest. But they had traveled so far. It made sense they were ancients. Wu talked like he had been born here. For whatever reason, that made my head throb.
“I lost count.”
For a second, I thought someone had tripped the fire alarm, but no. Based on the calmness of our fellow diners, the ringing was in my ears. “What does your father do for the NSB?”
“That information is classified.”
Smashing into that brick wall didn’t bother me much, considering how disoriented his admission had left me.
“Not everyone is as fortunate as you.” Wu chased condensation down the side of his glass with a fingertip. “Not all fathers are as worthy of a child’s trust as yours.”
All of a sudden, his soft spot for kids was starting to make a whole lot more sense.
“I did get lucky,” I acknowledged, “but I didn’t have to rely on genetics. My dad chose me. I have an unfair advantage. I wasn’t an amorphous life about to pop into existence. I was a scraggly girl with big eyes and an even bigger stomach. He took one look at me and knew I was his little girl.” A flush tingled in my cheeks. “That’s what he says, anyway.”
Wu crossed his arms over his chest and plucked at his fuller, upper lip while staring at me.
“What?” I hated mirrors, but I almost wished for one now. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re really you.” He rubbed his jaw. “I wasn’t convinced before, I can see the echoes of Conquest in you, but you’re Luce too.”
“How can you tell?” I hated the wounded throb in my voice, the need to be reaffirmed as my own person.
“The cadre don’t love the way humans do. Charun don’t love that way, not with our whole hearts. It’s biology, instinctual, to mate and to procreate. It’s hardwired into some to mate for life and others to mate for a season, for some to raise their offspring and for others to abandon them to fend for themselves, but you feel beyond depths I thought possible for your kind.”
Like a top spun, my thoughts whirled back to Cole, to our connection. And I wondered if he cared, if he could care, or if lust was the extent of his emotional range where I was concerned. That and his deep-seated hatred of Conquest.
“You’re thinking about Heaton.” Wu sounded disappointed in me. “Thinking about him always changes your scent.”
“Uh, let’s not go there.” I cringed. “I’m well aware of the scent I throw off around Cole.”
“Sadness.” His nostrils flared the slightest bit. “Thinking about him makes you sad.”
Relief swept through me, but on the heels of that came regret. That was what he scented on me. Not sadness. Unhappiness maybe. Grief. A wish that things could have been different between him and me, that I wasn’t standing so deep in another woman’s shadow he couldn’t see me through the gloom.
“We can’t have it all, right?” That was the closest I had ever come to acknowledging I wanted Cole out loud, and it stunned me that Wu, of all people, had coaxed that truth from me when I did my best to avoid thinking it, let alone admitting it. “What about you?”
He sat back, palms braced on the table. “What about me?”
“I assume, based on our fraternization talk, that you’re single.” Though the idea charun wouldn’t seek out emotional ties when reproduction was off the table struck me as sadder than my unrequited whatever it was. “No lucky charuness has caught your eye?”
“No,” he said, and for no good reason whatsoever, I was convinced he had just told me his first lie. “As I said, without the urge to mate, the other urges fade away too.”
And that was his second.
Interesting.
Maybe dinner had been a good idea after all. The longer I spent with him, the easier I read him. An open book he was not, but I could make do with flipping a few pages of frontmatter for one night.
Our food arrived before I got to the good stuff, but my stomach couldn’t care less about his past when I could practically hear the hushpuppies barking on my plate. I stole one before the waitress set my plate before me and popped it into my mouth. Judging by Wu’s quiet astonishment as I demolished my meal, he’d had no inkling his future partner was three-quarters stomach, but he didn’t seem to mind. Even if he couldn’t keep up.
Dessert was served as the main course vanished, and we didn’t get a say in the matter as we were each handed a swirl of gray ice cream served in a black cone. Twisting it in my hand, I took a delicate sniff. “Do I want to know what flavors make these color combinations?”
“The cones are made with almond charcoal, and the soft serve is made with black sesame seeds.”
“You are a peculiar man with peculiar tastes.” I gave a tentative lick, and my eyes rolled closed at the savory avouri. Nutty, toasty, with a slight crunch thanks to the seeds sprinkled on top. “Lucky for me, I seem to share them.”
Wu’s grin was cut short by my phone ringing. “You can answer it. I don’t mind.”
“Thanks.” I brought it to my ear. “What’s up?”
“Jones scheduled a press conference in
a half hour if you want to tune in. Should be on all the local channels. Word is she’s going to address the fires and ask the public to step forward with information if they’ve got any.”
“The tip line will be lighting up like a Christmas tree.” Too bad asshats with more time on their hands than sense made half those calls. “I don’t envy whoever lands phone detail.” And the unenviable task of weeding out the genuine tips from the crank calls. “This will be the first time Jones steps up to the podium as interim chief.”
“Jones is good people. She’s not going to lose her cool or go glory hog on us.”
Roberta Jones resembled everyone’s favourite auntie, the persona one she had cultivated during her years on the force, but she had been known to chop the legs from under a suspect with the sharp edge of her bright smile, and she had never once raised her voice to be heard. Respect did that for a person.
“Yeah.” I gave myself an internal shake. “You’re probably right.”
“Bou-Bou, one thing you ought to know about me by now is that I’m always right.”
I snorted so hard I almost choked on the lick of ice cream melting on my tongue. “You’re something all right.”
Rixton hesitated. “What’s with the music?”
“Music?” I played dumb. “You must hear the TV.”
“Unless you’re watching Food Network for a change, then no. I’m not. You’re out somewhere. I can hear the conversation around you and the clink of dishware.” Glee rang through our connection. “You’re on a date. Hot damn. A second date. Or wait – the drive was this morning. Does that make this part two of the first one?” He gasped. “Will this be a trilogy?”
“Keep this up, and I’m going to get a complex.” My eyes met Wu’s briefly. “I’m not on a date. I wasn’t on a date earlier. I will never be on a date at the rate you and Uncle Harold are going.”
That didn’t begin to touch on Dad and his free tours for prospective suitors of his sprawling acreage and his shovel collection.
“Tell you what. You supply me with a list of candidates, and we’ll handle the rest. I’ll perform background checks on them, Trudeau can interrogate them, and then your dad can compile the data and select the best man for the job.”
A groan eased past my lips. “You three are not in charge of finding me a man. Ever. Even if I wanted one, and I don’t, no. Forever no. Infinity no.”
“You never let me have any fun,” he pouted. “Now that I have a daughter, I understand the requirements better than ever.”
Oh God.
“A stable job, a fat bank account, a clean psych eval, a nice house in a good neighbourhood —” he ticked off his requirements with gusto “— no chemistry, no touching, no kissing, no sex, no procreation without a surrogate…”
“As Nettie’s godmother, I’m using my veto powers on at least half those items. Mostly the second half.”
“Godmother veto powers are not a thing.”
“We’ll pick this up tomorrow, okay?” I shot Wu an apologetic glance. “I gotta go.”
“’Cause you’re on a daaaaate,” he sing-songed.
I ended the call with a jab of my thumb and muted the ringer to block his redial, which… Yep. Right on time. Vibrating, my phone buzzed its way across the table. Ignoring Rixton, I gave up on my ice cream and placed it on an empty dish. “I would apologize for my partner since I’m sure you heard every word of that, but once I started, I would never stop.”
Wu watched my ice cream melt for the longest time. “I can see I have even bigger shoes to fill than I first thought.”
“Honestly, it’s best if you don’t try.” The sentiment flashed his eyes up to mine, and I winced. “What I mean is Rixton is Rixton. I’ve already bought stock in him. What you have to do is sell me on you.”
“I can do that.”
He sounded so very certain he could that I questioned the sanity of offering him the advice at all. Maybe that’s why I pressed harder. “What do you want from this partnership?”
“I want to break the cycle of violence that plagues this world,” he said with such earnestness I had no choice but to believe him. “I think you and I can do that. Together.”
A month ago, world peace would have sounded like a beauty pageant answer. Now it sounded pretty damn good if you asked me.
“Can we get the check now?” I stole one last scoop of melting ice cream with my spoon. “I hate to rush, but I need to go face the music. I didn’t exactly tell my uncle I was going out again, and he’s likely to be cleaning his shotgun on the porch when we get back.”
“I’ve already paid.” He tossed his napkin on the table and rose. “We’re free to leave.”
“I might have spaced out while I was on the phone, but the waitress didn’t bring our ticket. I would have noticed.”
“They have my card information on file. They’ll add the usual tip and charge me accordingly.”
I pulled a fifty from my purse. “That ought to cover me.”
Wu accepted the bill, wrinkled his forehead, and then folded it into a paper ring he slid onto my pinky. “I invited you out. This was my treat. You can pay next time.”
“I’ll hold you to that.” I should have taken the ring off, but it was such a cool trick I left it on my finger.
During the return trip, I read the ubaste file from front to back, having no illusions about Wu letting me take the information with me. I was on my third re-read when he glided to a stop at the curb in front of the Trudeau home and came around to open my door. I let him, because it was kind of nice, and it sent the right message to the man waiting on the welcome mat for me wearing a Canton PD shirt over his faded flannel pajama bottoms and #1 Dad house shoes.
“Wait a minute,” Dad called as Wu attempted to make his escape. “I’d like to have a word with the man who took out my daughter.”
“Oh boy,” I muttered then escorted Wu to his interrogation.
CHAPTER TEN
The dad who spent a solid ninety minutes extracting a fascinating – if totally fabricated – life story from Wu was absent at breakfast the next day. His clarity lasted a few hours after my undate ended, and we spent them on the couch watching a documentary on Torres Strait Islanders while munching popcorn and skimming SportsCenter in the hopes of catching the final score on the game he had slept through.
Glued to his side, I kept him company until cloudy-eyed exhaustion dragged him under before climbing in my own bed. The spaced-out look hadn’t left him when I sought him out and found him staring at the same spot on the wall as usual.
Around the time I noticed I was gazing off too, a text came through from Miller assuring me that he and Santiago had vetted the clients with missing pets to ensure they were human. That didn’t eliminate the charun element from the equation, given someone had riled up the ubaste, but it meant the clients had been victims and not cohorts. Now we just had to determine whether the same could be said for the arsonists.
Today was my last day off, and I had no plans. I ought to be working at the house, but I was hesitant to return until we received the lab results on the plant samples and isolated the cause of our episodes. The arson cases would keep another day. The ubaste situation was handled. Miller had a bead on War, so I wasn’t needed there either.
A month ago, faced with a clear schedule and a surplus of energy, I would have dropped hints until Maggie declared a girls’ day out and kidnapped me for lunch and an early movie. She would have paper, rock, scissored me into watching her choice, and I would have sucked it up and lost myself in the latest dramedy to hit the big screen.
One thing would have led to another, and she would have ended up calling her fiancé, Justin, and inviting him to join us in town for a late dinner. He would pass, and we would hang out until dawn or exhaustion drove us back to our homes.
But my best friend was in isolation, in an unknown location, while Portia attempted to bargain with Maggie for the use of her body. That was assuming Portia had already healed the multitude of
life-threatening wounds that led to her offering to merge with Mags in the first place.
Maggie returning with a dual personality was daunting enough. Factor in the possibility Portia might return in control of my best friend’s body while there was no spark of her consciousness behind those bright, hazel eyes? I wasn’t sure I could handle looking at her, talking to her, without a hint of Mags in her body language.
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