5
MADDOX
Addie left a note on the table that a friend had come and taken her home. I stared at it and tried to ignore the churning emotions flowing through me. They wouldn’t help me get to the bottom of this mystery. I had to be objective. My concern for the woman wasn’t going to solve anything.
Instead of going home, I returned the key for the room and went to work, so I could comb through old cold-cases. My mind should have been on my current case, but recent events had opened my eyes.
Monsters were real.
And I wasn’t just talking about remorseless killers. No, the world had been hiding a lot more from me, and I was frustrated that I hadn’t noticed it sooner. Monsters lived in my district. They filled the city. There was no escaping them.
I leafed through case file after case file in search of clues, but I didn’t quite know what I was looking for. While I knew that zombies were real, apparently, I didn’t know if werewolves or vampires or witches were real. What clues would they leave behind? Would I notice them if I came across them?
I wouldn’t know unless I asked someone who had more information. The only person I could think of was Addie. While I’d met her friend, the blonde in the warehouse apartment, I knew nothing more than her address. Addie, however, I had reason to visit again.
The door to file storage opened and a large form filled the exit. Bastien Vance took his hat off and rubbed his forehead before fitting the cap back onto his head. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at me.
“What are you doing holed up in here?” he asked, a teasing note in his voice.
Bastien Vance and I had entered the precinct at the same time. While I’d climbed up to detective, he’d been comfortable in his beat-cop position. He had no real desire to climb the ranks. It made him an easy-going friend who I could turn to most of the time.
I couldn’t right now. This new information would make me sound insane, and I already had to fill out paperwork for my discharged weapon. If they caught me talking about monsters living beside us, I would lose my job for sure.
“Just trying to see if this new case connects to some of the unsolved ones. You never know where you’re going to find a new lead.” I packed the files back into their boxes.
Bastien tilted his head and lifted a brow. “That’s not how this usually works. Is it? From what I’ve seen in your career, it’s always a boyfriend. How many times has that happened? About ten, I’d say.”
I grunted in response. This case wasn’t like any other I’d been on. For a moment, several heartbeats passing, I considered telling Bastien what’d happened last night. The words caught in my throat, though. They were trapped there like some sort of spell kept me from spilling the beans.
That was fine. Bastien wouldn’t believe me. He was as normal as they came. We drank beers every Saturday night. We took turns bringing coffee into the office. I knew his burger order like the back of my hand. If I brought magic and monsters into this, I would ruin the last normal thing I had left in my life.
After shoving the cold-case file box back onto the shelf, I shoved past him.
“Where are you headed? Did you think of a lead?” Bastien followed at a leisurely pace as if he had nothing else to do.
At my desk, I paused. “Did that background check on Adeline McCauley come back?”
Bastien, brows lifted, lifted a thick finger for me to wait. He bounced away and returned with his long gait. I rolled my shoulders in an attempt to shake the feeling of all eyes on me. I glanced to the side, but no one was looking at me. Yet, I still felt as though people were waiting for me to break down and start screaming about zombies. Bastien snapped me back to reality when he slapped a manila folder into my outstretched hand.
I lifted it in thanks and fled the office. Bastien called out to me, but I couldn’t stand one more moment trapped in there. The normalcy was too much to bear after last night. I could have shut down and forced myself to push through the day, like I had to a few years ago, but I didn’t want to venture into that level of numb again.
If I shut down, I would be of no use to anyone. As it was, I knew that I’d barely crawled my way out of that dead feeling. I had just enough feeling to do my job, and that was it. If I allowed anything more…
There was a case on my desk that needed to be solved. I didn’t have time to think about my emotional state or the causes behind it.
The background check on Addie gave me exactly what I needed. The drive out to the city was pleasant until the city came into view. It was grimy, nothing like the mountains that I’d escaped to. The crime rates here were wild. Unsolved cases piled up one after another.
Yet, this small café stood out as a shining pearl amongst the grime. I parked at the curb and looked Bad Moon Café up and down. Behind the big glass window, Addie wiped over a narrow counter before disappearing deeper into the café.
I grinned, triumphant. Before I could enter, the front door opened, and a tall woman stepped out. She looked me up and down with hooded eyes. At first, I thought her black hair had been cut short, but when she tilted her head, I noticed the bun tied at the back of it.
While her hair was distracting, it was her eyes that caught me off guard. A cold shiver ran through me, making me take a half step back as my core stiffened defensively. My hand was halfway to the weapon at my hip before I stopped myself.
The woman grinned, a sharp tooth at the corner of her smile. Before long, the smile fell away, and that deadly stare returned. This woman had killed before, and now she was deciding whether or not I needed to die, too.
“Detective Greene,” I introduced myself as a warning.
The woman’s demeanor didn’t change. I expected her behavior to shift into a guise of innocence, but she didn’t bother. She saw no reason to hide her true nature from me, which raised even more questions.