I dipped into a low bow. “Chief Maki, a pleasure.”
The older man’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Is that any way to greet family?”
“Uncle Hiroto.” I met him halfway around the desk for a hug. Technically, he was my great-uncle, Grandmother’s youngest brother. I hadn’t seen him since her funeral when I was fifteen. She’d been the lone mortal in a family of ravens, adopted into the Maki clan when she was a child. That connection introduced her to my jiisan in her late teens. They’d fallen in love, she became Emi Fujimoto, and my dad was born.
“And who is this lovely young woman?” Like he didn’t already know her name. If gossip about Skylar didn’t reach Uncle Hiroto through the family grapevine, he’d have picked it up on the Sentinel Bulletin when we slew Monica. A pair of students solo-killing a darkling was always Very Big News in the paranormal community.
For the sake of manners, I introduced her with a smile. “This is Skylar Corazzi, my partner. We thought we’d enjoy some of our summer here before heading to Texas.”
“An honor to meet you, Skylar. I’m sorry you had to see the worst our city has to offer.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Chief Maki.”
“Please, call me Hiroto. Everyone else here does.”
Skylar’s smile widened. “Thanks, Hiroto.”
He gestured us to have a seat, Thibodeaux included. Once everyone settled, he got right to the point.
“Look, I know you came for vacation, but we’re short on staff here. This Hidden Court business hasn’t been confined to Chicago. Unapproved vampire turnings have increased exponentially in the past few months, most of them tourists getting snatched.”
“They’re getting that bold?”
Hiroto’s lips pressed together in a thin line. “They are. Thibodeaux has been my lead man on this, one of the best our office has ever turned out.”
“You’re gonna make me blush, Hiroto.” Not that he appeared to be embarrassed; Thibodeaux lounged in his seat, legs outstretched and a cocky grin on his face. I still didn’t know what to make of him. “But he’s right. About the vampires. Used to be we only saw snatches this bad during Mardi Gras. Lots of people, lots of partying, easier for someone to vanish without raising a fuss.”
“That’s awful,” Sky said.
Thibodeaux shrugged. “Fact of life down here. We do what we can to stop them, of course, but there’s only so many of us.”
“But this is something new,” Hiroto continued. “The fact they attacked you two means they’re either getting bolder or desperate.”
“What’s the local baron say about everything?” The King and Queen of the Sanguine Court ruled the vampire community by establishing nobility throughout the major cities of every country, a system of mayors and governors who answered to the chain of command.
“Baroness Aguillard is…unavailable,” Hiroto said.
“He means she’s out getting the D.”
Uncle Hiroto stared at his sentinel.
“What? Let’s be honest. We all know what’s happening when she vanishes. She’ll surface a week or two from now in hot water, claiming she had no idea what was happening, then a lot of ass-kissing will happen to smooth things over in the court.”
“That’s, uh, normal for her?” Sky asked.
“She’s a good baroness, don’t get me wrong, but she has a weakness for drunken party boys.”
Thibodeaux nodded. “About five years ago she disappeared on us. After following a few rumors, we found her participating in a blood-orgy in Costa Rica with ten of the strongest guys from her harem.”
“Harem?” Sky squeaked out.
“Oh yeah. There’s guys lining up around the block for a spot. But that’s beside the point. I imagine she’s off with them on a summer getaway on an island away from all forms of technology. In the meantime, we need this handled. Latest victim to go missing was Senator Monette’s daughter.”
Hiroto nodded. “He’s been ringing my phone off the hook for two days. If she’s been turned, we need to find her before she goes nos. That seems to be our only pattern so far.”
“We don’t have enough men in the field to investigate this or search the usual vampire havens.”
“And we could use your help, Gabriel. I wouldn’t ask this of you if we weren’t in dire straits. The situation’s dangerous for everyone.”
“Uh…” Crap. Working during our vacation hadn’t been in my plans. I’d looked forward to having the time off to recharge before officially reporting for duty at PNRU this fall as one of the campus officers. At the same time, I didn’t want to start my sentinel career by turning down a personal call for aid from family.
Skylar set her hand on my arm. The visit to New Orleans was as much her vacation as it was mine, and I didn’t feel comfortable speaking for both of us. One look at her face assured me it was safe to accept the request. She understood, and I loved her all the more for it.
Loved her? Yeah. Double confirmed.
“Is this a request for both of us?”
“Of course. I’d be a fool to overlook Skylar’s talent.” Uncle Hiroto’s friendly smile didn’t betray any prejudice toward Skylar. I had the best family a guy could ask for when it came to that kind of thing.
“Sure. We’d be glad to help.”
“Fantastic. Now, as Skylar hasn’t yet received her license and remains a junior sentinel, I’ll make a call to PNRU to get her cleared for a summer exercise.”
Skylar’s eyes lit up. “What’s that mean?”
My uncle grinned at her. “Means you’re looking at acquiring some field hours before the semester even begins.”
“Huh?” Her brows notched. “Field hours?”
“Field hours don’t begin to accrue until junior year. On top of passing your exams, you need to work three hundred hours in the field before you’re eligible to take the Sentinel Licensure Board,” I explained, relieved my connections with the NOLA SBA didn’t get my girlfriend dragged into days of thankless work.
“As for you,” Uncle Hiroto said, “I actually made the call an hour ago when I heard you were passing through the city. PNRU has graciously loaned you to our department. That means you should get paid the same as their entry-level officers, but since you’re my nephew and you are on vacation, I’m willing to bend a rule and authorize a small travel bonus. How’s ninety-five dollars an hour sound?”
I did not pump a fist in victory. “It sounds glorious.” What else could I say to receiving an additional sweet twenty bucks over the hourly pay promised to me in Chicago?
“Maybe I need a transfer to the north if that’s starting pay,” Thibodeaux muttered.
“As I said, that includes a travel bonus. Besides, you hate the snow,” Hiroto chided. “Remember?”
Sensing an end to our part of this conversation, I rose from my seat. “And the cost of living is steep enough the extra doesn’t really feel like extra. You don’t want to know what I spend on gas every week.”
“Damn.”
Hiroto chuckled. “Head down to HR and fill out the paperwork. Once you’re done with that, we’ll outfit you with gear and duty weapons then take it from there.”
“Got a weapon already, Uncle, but I don’t mind using your ammo and sparing mine.”
Skylar’s eyes lit up again, practically sparkling green. “Do I also get a firearm?”
“You certainly do, young lady,” Thibodeaux said, grinning. “And whatever you do with those bullets is Gabriel’s responsibility.”
Her expression turned solemn. “I won’t let him down.”
Another thing I loved about Sky was that when she gave her word, she wasn’t just spouting bullshit. We meandered out of the chief’s office with my arm around her waist.
Thibodeaux’s words reached me just as I shut the door. “You should have seen what she did in that alley, Hiroto. The girl is a living sun. I think we have another Kane and Bostwick in the making.”
Goddamn. There wasn’t a better compliment than that.
Sebastian Kane and Simon Bostwick were the sentinel pair everyone aspired to be when we graduated from the program. They’d taken down over a hundred nosferatu hives in their twenty-two-year career together as partners, and that was the least of their successes.
If Sky and I had just a fraction of their fortune over the years, that’d be enough for me.
4
There’s Nothing Like Family
It took me an hour to write the incident report. Thibodeaux said they went by faster and easier with practice, once you learned to cut the bullshit we learned in school down to the basics. Afterward, a vampire named Martina from the administrative office piled a thick stack of paperwork in front of us on identical clipboards, and we devoted the next two hours to filling out all the applicable employment forms.
Sky had just as much to write as me. Her stuff had to be faxed to PNRU to be authorized by Sebastian Kane, head shifter sentinel at the college.
Since I carried an authorized weapon, I filled out a couple forms to use my personal firearm as a duty weapon. I’d bought it for the job anyway.
Then Martina assigned another SIG to Skylar, who gaped over it and caressed the barrel before slipping it into the holster. “It’s so shiny. Why does it look like the one you bought, though?”
“Same maker. These are standard issue. Mine’s a Legion.”
“Still nice.”
“Yeah, they are.” I tucked her hair behind one ear. “You sure you’re okay with this? Working, I mean.”
“It’s fine, Gabe. Really. I mean, we still have weeks left before we have to head back to campus, so it’s not like we won’t have time for fun.” Her smile brightened. “Besides, this is your first real case.”
“I’ve been on cases, or have you forgotten when Carmilla nearly tore apart Chicago to bring back her dead lover? Or getting rid of the Scary Godmother?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “But you weren’t licensed. Those weren’t assigned jobs. This is your first real case for money.”
“Point. Compensation sure is nice.”
Using all of that glamour to shine like a diamond must have exhausted Sky. She’d lost some of her natural glow despite the buzz of excitement lingering around her. Promising to order inner in, I took her back to our hotel, let her shower first, and ordered dinner up to our room.
We both slept like the dead that night.
To make it up to her, I ordered breakfast the next morning while she showered, pretending all these room service bills wouldn’t rip a hole through my savings. Damn, it still hurt even with the traditional raven clan discount.
“Nnngh, where’s the coffee?”
Sweet steam that smelled like soap and Sky spilled out of the open bathroom door. Only a towel covered her slender body, and if she turned, the edge of it would probably skim the curve of her ass and—
Whoa, dude. I told little Gabriel to chill, even if he wasn’t quite so little at the moment. My dick stiffened until it strained against my boxers and became the approximate hardness of a steel spike. Cotton wasn’t the best shield for a spontaneous, girlfriend-induced erection, so I eased a pillow onto my lap.
“I poured you a cup already. Cream and three sugars, right?”
“Yup.” She pranced over to the cart bearing our breakfast and plucked up the cup with the golden-brown brew. When she moved, the towel rose, shifting higher, riding on her thighs, one inch from showing what I was ravenous and desperate to see. Skylar wasn’t just a snack—this girl was a full meal.
I tore my gaze away and shoveled food in my mouth, cleaning the whole plate within seconds.
“Bathroom’s all yours. I’ll just dress out here since you fussed so hard at me yesterday for taking my time.”
That’s it. This torture was her getting back at me for daring to call her out for taking an hour in front of the bathroom’s magnifying mirror to apply her makeup while I waited for a shower. She didn’t even need makeup.
Two could play at this game.
Once I set my empty plate aside on the bedside table, I removed the pillow from my lap. Sky’s gaze fell exactly where it was meant to.
Not bragging, but I had a lot to be proud of. I let her take it all in, adjusted so I didn’t spring out of the front slit, and rose from the bed. “I’ll be out in a few.”
Sky didn’t respond.
Had my dick broken my girlfriend before I even got it into her? “Sky?”
“Uh.” She snapped out of it. “Yeah. Um, take your time,” she mumbled before jerking away to serve herself French toast from our breakfast selection.
Feeling smug as hell for beating a faerie at her own game, I strutted into the bathroom and shut the door behind me.
* * *
Since we didn’t have to report to the sentinel office until dusk to help with the ongoing vampire menace, Sky and I toured New Orleans during the day.
As much as I tried not to compare her with my ex, I couldn’t help but appreciate that she didn’t bitch whenever I stopped to take photographs of the architecture. In fact, Sky asked me questions about the different lenses, using the natural lighting, and other tips I’d learned through photography classes and years of practice. I ended up teaching her a lot.
Which wasn’t a bad idea since she’d signed on to be my assistant when we returned to Chicago. I ran a side hustle as a photographer in the city, shooting weddings, birthdays, and the occasional unfaithful spouse.
In the early afternoon, we returned to the hotel room for naps, also granting poor Ama some time outside the cage.
At least, I’d hoped to grant her some outside time. She turned her back on me and refused to budge from the perch.
“Ama, come on. I love you. You know you’re my first lady.” Didn’t she understand that I’d loved her first, ever since we were little kids together?
I reached in to pet her yellow-topped head. She twisted around and bit the fuck out of my finger, some true anger and aggression in it. She didn’t release me, holding on while I grimaced and refused to jerk back. I pressed my thumb against the side of her beak and forced her to let go.
“Bad, Ama. I don’t know why you’re being a bad girl on this trip.” I shut the damned door and growled under my breath. She’d bitten me so hard blood ran down my hand and a few drops splattered on the floor.
“Sorry,” Sky murmured from where she sprawled across her bed. “Maybe we should have gotten separate rooms. She wasn’t like this to you at my house.”
“Hell no.” I maneuvered around my bed and into the bathroom to wash the blood off my fingers, aware of Skylar watching me. “Too much money for a second room, and she has to accept that you’re part of my life.”
“She was in your life first.”
I sighed. “I know.”
Since I couldn’t trust Ama not to finish where she left off while we slept, I left her cage secured and joined Sky on her bed, one arm around her. We napped that way until seven, washed our tired faces, geared up, and then flew to the station. Tomorrow, I’d find a babysitter for my parrot, loathing the idea of keeping her locked in a cage, no matter its generous size, all day while I worked.
“I need a gallon of coffee,” I muttered as we reached the front desk to announce our arrival.
“Coffee?” The werewolf sentinel on front desk duty peered at us, ears perking like a dog’s. “Employee lounge is upstairs. Uh, actually, you’re…” She glanced down at something. “Fujimoto and Corazzi?”
“That’s us. Sorry, meant to introduce us.”
“Need for coffee will do that. You’re the chief’s nephew, huh?”
“Yeah, I am. No special treatment required. I just want to help.”
“Trust me, you won’t get it here. Anyway, nice to meet you both. I’m Leona. Martina left these with me this morning in case you arrived before she showed up tonight.” She passed us both access cards and offered Skylar a badge to clip to her belt that said JUNIOR.
The girl glowed with happiness. Literally.
“Head upsta
irs to the third floor and hang a right to the lounge across from the field agent office. Someone there is waiting for you.”
“Thanks.”
We took the stairs instead of the elevator, appreciating the real marble and bits of history along the way.
Parched from all the time in the summer sun—and completely aware that coffee was a poor way of hydrating my exhausted body—I stepped into the breakroom and paused. The smell of raven and a sweet whiff of something acutely familiar reached my nose above the Folgers brew.
Green tea and peach blossoms. “Aya?”
A Japanese woman with a sleek, chin-length bob turned from the coffee pot and a warm smile spread across her face. She set aside her half-filled mug and crossed over to me. “Gabriel, I almost didn’t recognize you. You were not so tall the last time.”
I tried to remember the last time. It must have been Christmas two, no, three years ago. “Yeah, I’ve got an inch on Dad now. Anyway, what are you doing here? I had no idea you’d returned to the States.”
“I only arrived last month, when our uncle put in the request for more staff. NOLA was already at an all-time low before the vampire trouble peaked.”
“Well, it’s good to see you. This is Skylar. Sky, my cousin, Aya.”
The two women shook hands and exchanged greetings. If Aya thought poorly of Sky for being a faerie, she concealed it as well as Uncle Hiroto. Bless this side of the family.
“Pleasure to finally meet you. I heard good things.”
“Really?”
“Of course. It is not every day that a faerie joins the Sentinel Bureau of Affairs. It is an honorable choice to make.”
And I knew from that moment that Aya wasn’t bullshitting her. My dad’s side of the family took honor seriously enough to make every stereotypical Japanese samurai movie look legit. The steel fist around my heart eased, and I relaxed.
Birds of a Feather: The Paranormal University Files: Skylar, Year 2, Summer Page 3
