“What?” she asked, when he stepped out.
“Look, don’t take this wrong. I didn’t mean to make you mad. They played me when I was the new guy. You’re just newerer.”
She glared at him, then laughed. “I hope you’re drunk and don’t think that’s a word.”
He had the good grace to hang his head in embarrassment. Laura wasn’t buying it yet. “You okay to drive?” he asked.
She gave him a cocky look. “I’m a police officer with a badge. I’m always okay to drive.”
She tucked her chin down as she walked away so that he could not see her smiling. His concern about her driving was genuine. She surprised herself by feeling flattered but didn’t want Sinclair to see her looking pleased. He might get the wrong impression. Or the right one. Despite her suspicions, she liked him. He had a refreshing honesty in a city seldom known for truth. He wasn’t telling her everything-either about himself or what he knew about the raid-but at least he wasn’t lying. Yet. She allowed herself to enjoy the attraction. It had been a long time since she noticed a man. Surrounded as she was by beautiful fey people in the Guildhouse, physical attractiveness had almost become a given in what passed for her social life. Finding someone attractive wasn’t the problem. Finding someone attractive in the right way was.
She decided to stay the night at the Guildhouse. It was closer than her apartment, and she wanted to get an early start in the morning. She parked her SUV in its usual spot, shifted out of the Janice glamour in the elevator lobby, and rode the elevator to her Blackstone office.
Without pausing, she went to the closet behind her desk and pushed aside the coat and extra outfit she stored there. To the casual observer, the closet was two feet deep. However, the back wall didn’t exist in the conventional sense. A masking spell created the illusion of a wall, tactilely and visually. The spell was keyed to her body signature, and it tingled over her skin like cobwebs. It allowed her to pass through to an office on the opposite side of the floor. InterSec had requisitioned the space for her. The people who worked in the nearby department thought the hall door on their side accessed an electrical closet.
A double clothing rack along one side held a variety of outfits. Beneath, dozens of shoes sat toes to the wall, everything from work boots to ballet slippers. An unmade bed took up most of the next wall. Two worktables, a bureau, and a desk filled the rest of the space. The room was cluttered and messy, the stale, filtered air tinged with the faint burnt odor of the herbs that she used for healing and meditation.
Laura slept in the room more often than she liked to admit. As the years went on, she spent more time in it, even thought of it as a home. There was no pretense about the room, no artifice. It represented a world of hidden agendas, but the room itself contained none. It was the one place where she didn’t have to be anyone. The problem was, she wasn’t quite sure what that meant anymore. Her life had become the room, closed off, contained, and hidden.
She stripped off her clothing. In the cramped bathroom, she examined herself in the mirror as she waited for the hot water to come up. The bruise from the gunshot hit was already fading, a testament to her fey constitution. Despite whatever Cress had done to boost her essence, she looked drawn and pale. She didn’t spend much time in the tiny, claustrophobic shower, staying just long enough to get the odor of the bar off her.
In the main room, her gaze fell on a vodka bottle next to the hot plate. Even as her hand reached for the bottle, she changed her mind, picked up the teapot, and filled it from the bathroom tap. A small burn ignited in her chest. After decades on the job watching colleagues disintegrate in an alcoholic rage, she was not going to slide into the trap now. It bothered her that she had reminded herself about it twice in two days. Instead, she made chamomile tea and added healing herbs.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wove a chant into the aroma from the tea. It flickered with healing essence as she sipped. Warmth spread in her chest and stomach, and she used her body essence to nudge the spell to her sore shoulder and head. The ache in both places lessened, as though under a mild anesthetic.
Turning off the lights, she stared into the darkness. She had spent too many moments gazing too long at Sinclair. She needed to pull herself together, remember her job, and not get distracted. Not by drinking and not by flirting with Jonathan Sinclair.
She sighed and rolled on her side. The only explanation she had for her behavior was exhaustion. Why else would she be almost actively slipping up? She needed a break, that much she was sure of. As she drifted into sleep, the image of Sinclair’s amber eyes floated through her mind. He was handsome. He was intriguing. He was interested. She reminded herself that none of those things were worth getting killed over.
CHAPTER 8
LAURA PLACED HER hand on a granite panel beside the locked door to the InterSec unit. Her body signature-Janice Crawford’s body signature-interacted with the ward spell, tickling static across her palm. The spell recognized the glamour’s persona and the lock released. Over the years, she had taken pains to avoid connecting Laura Blackstone with InterSec. Whenever she worked on anything other than public relations at the Guildhouse, she wore the appropriate glamour. That way Laura Blackstone didn’t have to answer any questions about her presence in an area that had nothing to do with her day job.
Inside the secure area, Cress appeared in the hallway and smiled when she saw Laura. “Feeling better?” she asked.
Laura nodded. “Yeah. Sleeping did me a world of good.”
Little feathers of essence flickered over her body essence like small tongues as Cress examined her discreetly. Laura dealt with several different species of fey healers, but the way Cress touched her essence felt overly intimate and intrusive. Always behind it was the hunger of a leanansidhe, the palpable desire to drain essence, which Cress kept in check only by her own willpower. “The bruising from the concussion is gone. Are you remembering anything from the raid?”
Laura glanced at her palm, recalling the blood and Sanchez’s hand. “I think I had a flash of something, but it’s too vague to mean anything.”
Cress withdrew a notepad from her white coat and made a brief note. “It will come. Keep thinking about the people involved. Sometimes that rebuilds connections.”
“Rebuilds? Is something broken?”
Cress smiled. “You had a concussion, Laura. Brain cells died. Don’t worry about it.”
Laura poked her in the arm. “Oh, thanks. ‘Brain cells died.’ That doesn’t make me worry.”
Cress’s smile turned crooked. “Sorry. I’ll keep monitoring. Just get as much rest as you can.”
Laura sighed. “Yeah, right, Cress. Look at my calendar. Better yet, look at this face. I’m living two lives at the moment. Is Terryn in?”
Cress nodded. “In his office. He’s in a bit of a mood.”
Laura adjusted her jacket. “I’ll try not to provoke him.”
Cress patted her on the shoulder as she walked away. “Oh, please do. Dinner tonight will go more smoothly if he lets off some steam before he gets home.”
Laura shook her head as she continued down the hall. For all her conflicted feelings about Cress’s nature, she was still a person, still more than her nature. At the end of the day-literally in this case-even the leanansidhe sometimes had to deal with a cranky boyfriend like anybody else.
True to Cress’s word, Terryn was in a foul mood when Laura entered his office. He didn’t look up right away but frowned at something he was reading. “We need more info on what was going on at that apartment building.”
“Have you seen the case files yet?” she asked.
He gave her a small smile. “About an hour after the raid. All standard op. Several tips on drug manufacturing leading to surveillance to planning the raid and its timing. Nothing to indicate it was other than a straightforward raid.”