She startled at the torrential downpour. “Wow, that came up quick.”
Laura held out her keys. “You dropped these.”
Surprise and relief crossed the woman’s face. “Thank God, you saw them. I’m lost without my keys.”
“No problem. Have a nice day,” said Laura.
“Everything go all right?” Sinclair asked, as they walked the block to Laura’s car.
“Yes and no. Cress is okay, but things are moving in directions I don’t understand. With any luck, Terryn will be able to clear it up for me. Do you need a ride?”
He shook his head. “I need to get back. I don’t think a limo driver showing up in a tricked-out Guild SUV would be good for my image.”
She chuckled. “Good point. We’ll talk later.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her. “Dinner?”
She twisted her lips into an amused smirk. “Okay, dinner. I’ll call you.”
She leaned toward him on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you, Jono.”
He smiled in surprised. “For what?”
Her hand closed on the notes in her pocket, but she didn’t give them to him. “Just thank you.”
CHAPTER 28
MORGUES WERE ALWAYS in basements, Laura thought as she stepped out of the elevator. The dead didn’t need sunlight. The living didn’t want to be disturbed by their presence. Between the InterSec offices and the local Guild crime-liaison department, the Guildhouse’s morgue was larger than other fey facilities. The Guild and InterSec used separate staff to perform autopsies and forensics. What redundancies the situation created was balanced by less friction over who had priority on research staff.
Laura Blackstone had never had a reason to be seen in the morgue, which made transitioning to Mariel Tate necessary after returning from seeing Cress. Mariel didn’t attract undue attention there by her mere presence. Part of her job was following up on deaths. People did look at her, though. That was one of the points in making the Mariel glamour so attractive—to distract from whatever she was doing. It worked most of the time.
She pushed open the door to the cool room. That late in the day, no one was working, and the lights were dimmed. As she moved toward Sean Carr’s locker, she stopped. Her mnemonic memory worked on several levels, recording body signatures, data, events, and places. Things like places logged themselves into her memory like subroutines, something she didn’t consciously do and didn’t pay attention to most of the time. When she entered the cool room, on a subconscious level, her awareness noted several changes, changes that were filtered as normal and disregarded. Gurneys had been moved. Counters cleared. The lights, of course.
Except one thing flared out in her memory as out of place. In the kick space in front of the cooler sat a small granite plate. To the casual eye, it appeared innocuous, a forgotten piece of discarded stone on the floor and swept out of view. Laura saw it for what it was: a listening ward. Someone was keeping tabs on who entered the room. If that was the case, she didn’t want anyone to know she was looking at the body.
She retraced her steps and texted Sinclair to meet her. As she lingered near the elevators, she used her PDA to catch up on public-relations emails until Sinclair arrived. He made a show of looking up and down the hallway. “Not the dinner spot I was hoping for.”
“I need your help with something,” she said.
He feigned surprise. “My help? Me? If this is about changing a lightbulb because I’m taller than you, I’ll be very disappointed.”
She led him down the hallway. “Not a lightbulb, but I’ll keep that in mind. Follow me.”
“Anywhere,” he said.
Her fear that he was able to mask his truthfulness through some ability she didn’t know warred with her desire to believe him. The desire was winning out over the fear more and more lately. She was starting to think that wasn’t a bad thing. She stopped shy of the door to the examining room. Can you pull out your medallion for me? she sent.
He waggled his eyebrows. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”
Although it wasn’t the time for jokes, she realized that it was the perfect time for Sinclair. His joking was a mask, she decided, a way of glossing over the seriousness of a situation. She, of all people, knew about masks. She glowered playfully and held her fingers to his lips. There’s a listening ward in the room, she sent.
Sinclair threaded his medallion from beneath his shirt. The metal held an odd coolness, unwarmed by his skin. Essence burned both hot and cold depending on how it was used. Laura didn’t understand the spell that suppressed Sinclair’s fey essence, but she had been able to enhance it before. She pushed essence into the medallion. Her skin prickled as the spell expanded to cover her, too.
Sinclair smirked. “You made it bigger.”
Ignoring the comment, she released the medallion. “I need you to stand near the listening ward to dampen it.”
She opened a door in the wall of coolers and rolled out a long metal shelf. Sean Carr lay on the shelf, a thin white sheet covering him to the waist. Cress’s stasis spell surrounded him, already weakening. Laura estimated it would be gone within a day and with it any trace of essence-related evidence.
The spell prevented his wings from curling inward. They lay flat to either side, a tattered hole in the left one near the shoulder. A cratered burn mark on his chest splayed out like a bloody star against his pale skin. Laura lifted her gaze to see Sinclair’s reaction. He leaned against a counter on the opposite side of the table, posture relaxed, arms folded against his chest.
She lifted the shroud, the stark white overhead lamps accentuating Carr’s pale skin. Carr might have been a failed assassin, but Laura still respected the dead. Playful banter with Sinclair could wait. She pulled on latex gloves and handed Sinclair a pair. “Can you hold up a wing for me?”
The thin appendage draped over his fingers as Sinclair lifted the soft folds. Laura scanned the drab mauve surface, searching for anomalies. Fairy wings were resilient to incidental injuries, but essence could damage them.
“What are you looking for?” Sinclair asked.
“Cress wanted me to get body-signature imprints before they faded.”
The dead man’s body signature shone as Inverni a day after his death. Not a surprise for a member of a powerful group, even if he was from a subclan. She gestured for Sinclair to move closer. “Do you sense anything here?”
“Just the guy’s shape. There are layers of other essence on him, but they mean nothing to me.”
She moved her hand along Carr’s body, sensing residual essence. “They’re multiple body signatures, likely contaminants from the way he was brought in.”
“Sounds like poor procedure to me,” said Sinclair.
Laura sensed her own essence on the body. “Agreed. This wing burn is mine. I’m getting a nice strong tag on the kill shot. That will help identify the killer once we have someone in custody.”
As Sinclair released the wing and adjusted it along the rolling slab, Laura started to push the body into the locker but paused. This close to the body, her sensing ability picked up nuances in Carr’s body signature. The strength of the field didn’t surprise her. As an Inverni, that was a given. She leaned closer. Still nothing. “There’s nothing there.”
Laura lifted Carr’s hands and scanned them. “There’s gunshot residue from firing at Draigen, but there’s no residual essence concentration in his hands. Essence-fire pools on the skin surface before it discharges. It leaves a ghost image behind, like gunshot residue. There’s no afterimage in these hands.”
“So?” asked Sinclair.
“He didn’t fire essence at whoever killed him, Jono.”
Sinclair met her gaze. “Which means he was either surrendering or wasn’t expecting to be fired on because he knew the fey who shot him.”
Laura pulled the shroud back over Carr and pushed the slab back into the locker. “Either way, Jono, it means he was murdered.”
CHAPTER 29
THE SMALL RESTAURANT in Alexandria was not far from Laura’s condo. The menu was good enough for repeat visits, but the place had remained under the radar and hadn’t been spoiled by popularity yet. Laura had not once recognized someone from in town when she had been there.
She toyed with the straw in her drink. Sinclair picked up the saltshaker and tapped a few grains into his pilsner glass. She chuckled. “I haven’t seen someone do that in a long, long time.”
Sinclair sipped his beer. “It’s an old habit from my grandfather. He said beer used to be better, and the salt made the swill we drink these days taste better.”
She gave him a lazy smile. “So why order swill?”
Sinclair shrugged. “It’s not. Old habit, like I said. I only do it because it reminds me of him.”
“Were you close?” she asked.
“Are you asking me what else a fire giant might have told me?” he said.
She sighed. “Why is it every time I ask a question, you assume I have ulterior motives, but every time you ask one, you get annoyed if I don’t answer?”
He grinned. “Because we don’t trust each other.”
She picked up false tones in his voice and immediately felt ashamed that she was using a fey ability he didn’t know about. She tamped it down, shutting off her truth sensitivity.
“What did you just do?” he asked.
She startled. “Are you scanning me?”
He blushed. He actually blushed. “No. It was a latent thing. Your essence shape sort of . . . dimmed.”
“I’m trying to relax,” she said.
He held his glass up. “Good. To relaxation.”
She hesitated, then tapped her glass against his. “With everything going on, it feels wrong, though.”
He leaned forward. “Laura, something is always ‘going on,’ isn’t it? There’s nothing you can do right now. Your friends are fine for the night. You need to learn to enjoy yourself, I think.”
She shifted defensively in her chair. “I just got back from a vacation.”
He draped an arm over the back of his chair. “Let me guess: You sat on the beach and read. Got up early, maybe went for a run. Went to bed early. Had room service more than once.”
She smiled into her drink. “Did you follow me?”
“Did you laugh?”
She cocked her head. “Excuse me?”
“You were gone for two weeks. How many times did you laugh?” he asked.
Bemused, she played with some bread crumbs on the table. “Okay, I get your point. But in my defense, it was a decompression vacation.”
He chuckled. “It doesn’t seem to have stuck.”
She found herself smiling. “You’re analyzing me.”
He tilted his head. “A little. When was the last time you went on a date?”
“Does pizza the other night with you count?”
He smiled. “You said it wasn’t a date.”
“If I say it was, can we change the subject?”
He laughed. “Okay, fine. Let’s not talk about work or our pasts. Let’s pretend we’re not supersecret agents saving the world and talk about stuff like normal people.”
She exhaled pleasantly. “I think that’s a fine idea.”
She did let herself relax then, let the conversation run where it would, not throwing out roadblocks. It was easier than she thought. Sinclair made it easy. She liked the way he focused on her when she spoke yet didn’t stare. He seemed to relax, too. It felt comfortable in a way she’d forgotten two people could talk and not have it be concerned about meetings and agendas and threats and, yes, danger. When the check came, it surprised her at how fast the evening had gone.
When they stepped out into the cool evening, Sinclair draped his suit jacket around her shoulders. “That’s rather gallant,” she said.
He made an amused face. “Oh, gallant? I’m gallant?”
She elbowed him as they waited for the valet to bring her Mercedes. “What?”
He chuckled. “That’s a fifty-cent word for a ten-cent guy.”
“Well, it’s a nice gesture. What would you call it?”
He walked her to the driver’s side of the car as it pulled up. “How about a nice gesture?”
She smiled up at him as they stood by the open car door. “It was a nice gesture.”
He grinned. “You’re welcome.”
The moment stretched as they stared at each other. Her heart beat faster as she wondered what to say next. Sinclair turned his head to see if the valet had brought up his car yet. He wrapped his arms around her as he looked back and lowered his face to hers. She closed her eyes as their lips met. His mouth was warm and smooth with a touch of wine. The soft kiss lingered, then he pulled away with a slight tap of his tongue on her lips. “I’m not going to ask you to let me go home with you.”
She giggled, then laughed at the giggle. “That’s not what I expected you to say.”
He brushed her cheek with a gentle hand. “I’m not asking because I don’t want you to say no. I want to end the night on the perfect note.”
“Jono, we had dinner . . .” she said.
He held his finger against his lips. “See? Don’t talk. I want to pretend you didn’t humor me.”
She slipped off his coat and got in her car as the valet brought Sinclair’s car up behind hers. “I didn’t humor you, Jono.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“Now, get in your car and follow me before the valet starts blowing the horn.”
Subtle surprise lit his face. He slid his finger along her jaw. “You’re sure about that?”
She smiled. “No, but is anyone, ever?”
He leaned down and kissed her again, then went to his car. Her heart racing, she waited until the valet cleared the driveway before pulling onto the street.
I’m insane, she thought as she checked to make sure he was following. Inviting him back to her place went against her rules. She had gotten involved with people she worked with in the past, but not someone in the same unit. Jono was different. He wasn’t impressed with her abilities as a druid agent. He didn’t care if she screwed up, and he listened when she explained herself. Gods, he listened when she talked. Alone in the car, she laughed. Maybe she wasn’t so insane.
After parking his car in front of the condo, he met her at the front door. As they entered the living room, he placed a light hand on her back, as if he were afraid she wasn’t there. She glanced over her shoulder, and he kissed her on the cheek. Neither spoke. She slipped her hand into his and led him into the bedroom. They left the lights off, the glow from the living room providing the only illumination.
Laura turned into his arms, and they kissed. His mouth tasted of subtle mint and wine. She slid her hands inside his suit jacket and helped it slide off him to the floor. He reached behind her and unzipped her dress. Not releasing the kiss, she stepped out of the dress and left it next to his coat on the floor. She pulled herself closer as he lowered them both to the bed.
She rolled on top of him and removed her bra. Sinclair sighed and rubbed his hands up her sides. Her essence sparked with the rush of physical desire coursing through her.
“You’re glowing,” he whispered.
She leaned forward with a smile, resting her hands against his shoulders and tickling his face with her hair. His body signature smoldered in shades of amber and gold. “You are, too.”
He chuckled, warm and deep. “This is what I’ve hoped for.”
She sensed truth in his words and in his essence. He wanted her with no subterfuge. “So have I,” she said.
More truth. She pulled him into a seated position as she straddled him and brought her lips to his. He murmured with pleasure, and she let go of any more hesitation.
CHAPTER 30
THE NEXT MORNING, Laura reviewed messages on her PDA in the anteroom to the Guildmaster’s office. The text in front of her didn’t make much impression as images of the previous night flashed through her mind. She had made a choice that even in t
he light of day felt like the right one. Getting involved with someone—with Sinclair—didn’t frighten her anymore. It was a risk, like all relationships, but she wasn’t going to let work take priority over her personal life from now on. Instead, she took the last remaining moments before meeting with Rhys to remember the feel of Sinclair’s arms around her, his face nuzzled into her neck as he slept. Near dawn, he eased out of bed trying not to wake her, but she rolled over and smiled up at him, half-dressed in the faint dawnlight. He kissed her good morning with a promise to meet her later in the day.
Laura glanced at Rhys’s assistant, a young Danann fairy who was typing with speed. She didn’t know the woman’s name and tried not to feel guilty about it. The assistant would probably be gone in a month or so. Rhys burned through his help, but he never lacked for interested applicants. Having his name on a résumé looked good and as a reference even better, provided one didn’t screw up too badly. Everyone screwed up as far as Rhys was concerned.
“He’ll see you now,” the assistant said. She hadn’t stopped typing or diverted her attention from her computer screen. No phone or intercom rang. Still reading her PDA, Laura entered the office. Rhys spoke quietly on the phone, so she sat and texted Saffin a few details she remembered for Draigen’s reception. Rhys hung up as she finished the message. He worked at his computer as if she weren’t there. She closed the PDA and folded her hands on her lap. Rhys continued typing.
“I’d like an explanation,” she said.
He didn’t look up. “Oh, are you ready to see me?”
“Are you?”
He spun slowly in his chair. “I like when you’re annoyed, Laura. It means your job is challenging. It’s what makes you stay.”
She snorted. “Do you want me to leave?”
He smiled. “No, I want you to do what you do best.”
“Which I can’t do if I don’t know what’s going,” she said.
He sighed. “You seem to be spending time angry with me lately.”
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