Instead, her throat swelled with grief. “Danny?” she whispered. It was stupid, she knew it, Nikolai would not have lied and her own eyes had told her the truth. But still, she had hoped. Hope, that great human drug.
Jack’s face turned milk-pale. He was thin and stooped, except for his potbelly straining at his dingy white shirt. His lean hound-dog face under its gray buzzcut was almost always mournful, now it was actively sad. “Lena…Jesus, I’m sorry. Nikolai was supposed to keep you from seeing…any of that.”
I have a right to see what happened to my brother, Jack. Selene slid her legs out of the car. She had to catch her breath as the material of her jeans rasped against swollen tissues. She needed, and there was no way to fill that need tonight.
“Nikolai can go to hell,” she rasped around the obstruction in her throat. That helped—it sounded like the old Selene, the tough Selene. “I’m sure it’s where he’s bound sooner or later.”
She twisted her hands together. Her palms slid against each other, damp with sweat. The image of Danny’s apartment, framed by a shattered blood-painted doorway, rose up again. Numb disbelief rose with it.
Her jeans were uncomfortably wet, and she was starting to sweat under her arms. Her neck prickled, and she was suddenly aware of empty hunger. She was starving.
How can I think of food at a time like this? Jesus.
“I’ll do your report up for you. Come by, sign it in the morning. Look, Selene—” He offered her his hand and she took it, nervous sweat slicking her palm. He pulled her to her feet. The car’s windows were frosted with vapor. How long was I in there?
He also firmly took his hand away from her, tearing her fingers free.
Selene would have kept his hand, run her thumb along the crease on the inside of his wrist, wet her lips with her tongue. Her eyes met his. She needed, and he was male. Women were also good for what she needed, but there weren’t any around.
God. Look at me. Look at what I almost did. I’m a whore, and my brother is dead.
“I’m sorry,” Jack continued awkwardly. He was starting to sweat now, too, looking down until he realized he was looking at her chest, then staring up over her shoulder at the circus of lights and people in uniforms milling around. “Christ, I’m sorry. Lena…I’m so sorry.”
Selene crossed her arms, cupped her elbows in her hands. Jack took her upper arm, kicked the cruiser’s door shut, and steered her away from the hive of activity the street had become. People were starting to peek through their windows, lights were coming on. The cops were too busy to pay much attention to one lone woman being led away by Detective Pepper—especially when some of them recognized her as his tame spook, the woman that had broken the Bowan case last month. Just how she did it nobody knew—but then again, nobody wanted to know. The girl was just too weird. And Pepper was starting to look a little weird himself. The joke was that he’d apply for the new Spook Squad soon, just as soon as he could get his head out of a bottle and quit working hopeless freezer-cold homicide cases.
Selene shivered, hugging herself, their easy dismissal of her roaring through the open wound she was becoming. I’ve got to get home before I start to scream. I’m in bad shape.
“You’re pretty worn out,” Jack said, diffidently. “Look, go home. I’m sorry, Lena. I’m glad you called me. I wish you wouldn’t have gone up there.” He stopped near a pool of convenient shadow, and Selene looked up.
Of course.
Nikolai was there. Part of the darkness itself, his long black coat melding with the gloom that filled an alley’s entrance.
Jack faced her. Here, numb and shocked, with her shields thin and the aftermath of the Power she’d jacked and the magick she’d worked pounding in her pulse with insistent need, she drowned in what he was feeling.
Agonizing pain. Nausea. Sick aching in his chest, the heartburn that wouldn’t go away—she shouldn’t have to see this, shouldn’t have seen it.
Jack sighed, his shoulders slumping. “It’s bad, Selene. Something I ain’t never seen before. And Nikolai says it’s not human. Which means…” His brown eyes were almost black in the uncertain light. “Christ,” he finished, when she just stared at him, her mouth slightly open. Her breath rasped in the chill rainwashed air. “Just go home. Come by the station tomorrow to sign your statement. I’m sorry.”
Selene shrugged. “Great. Just go home, he says.” She heard the funny breathless tone in her own voice. She was close to the edge, so close—did Jack think she was numb and grieving? Or did he guess that she wouldn’t be able to grieve until the need pounding in her blood was blotted out?
Grieve, hell. There was something sharp as a broken bone in her chest. I’m going to get whoever did this.
Nikolai stepped forward. His eyes were depthless. “I will take her, Jack. Thank you.”
Jack nodded. “Go with—”
“Like a good little girl, right?” Her voice sounded shrill even to herself, it bounced off the alley’s walls and came back to her through a layer of cotton wool. “What I’m hearing is that you’re not going to work too hard, because it’s a P-fucking-C. Right?”
Jack’s shoulders hunched as if she’d hit him. “Paranormal cases are technically not the jurisdiction of the Saint City police force, until the new laws go into effect. They’re the jurisdiction of—”
“Of the reigning prime paranormal Power in the city.” She stepped away from Jack and his hand fell down to his side, releasing her. “Which means Nikolai. Which means I can kiss any hope of finding out who did this to my brother goodbye.”
“Not necessarily.” Nikolai’s eyes never left her. He moved closer, not precisely crowding her, but stepping past Jack without so much as glancing at the detective. “Cooperate with me, Selene, and I will see the killer brought to you, for your revenge. Will you take that bargain?”
Jack coughed, uncomfortably. “I’ve got to go. Sorry, Selene.”
You son of a bitch. Both of you. “Are you really,” she said, flatly, and turned on her heel. She put her head down, started to walk. At least she wasn’t staggering. Oh, God. Danny. What happened to you? Who did this to you?
Nikolai murmured something behind her—no doubt talking to Jack, something along the lines of women, irrational, what can you do, she’ll see reason in the morning.
It was too much. Rage and something like a sob made flesh draw tighter and tighter under her breastbone, and the tension snapped.
Selene ran.
CHAPTER 4
BY THE TIME SHE REACHED CLIFF STREET, SHE WAS stumbling. She’d fallen once, scraping her palms on pavement, and scrambled to her feet, looking up to see a shadow flitting over a rooftop above her. He didn’t even have the decency to try and conceal himself.
Her hands jittered. Her keys jangled, her scraped palms singing in pain. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest. Sweat rolled down her spine, soaked into the waistband of her jeans.
She checked the street behind her, deserted under the orange streetlamps. It took her three tries to unlock the door to her apartment building, her breath coming high and harsh and fast, expecting to feel a hand closing on her shoulder at any moment.
The run up her own stairs took on a nightmarish quality, moving too slowly while something chased her from behind. Those had been the worst dreams when she was little, running through syrup while the monster snarled behind, gaining on her.
Doors. Her own door. She fumbled out her keys, tried to unlock it, made a short sound of agonized frustration when her fingers slipped.