That made me wonder if that was what happened to my mother. Was that why she never came back to teach me from beyond the grave? I had too many questions and not enough answers.
“I think I’m already knee deep in the supernatural community,” Maddox said, gesturing to himself as his eyes flared with white light. “But if you want to take me neck-deep, then lead the way.”
“This will be boring. I promise. I just need someone with super strength to do some heavy lifting for me.”
Maddox’s upper lip curled as he narrowed his eyes at me. While we both acknowledged that I was going to use him, neither of us pointed it out. Maddox likely wanted to see this through to the end, so he could get some sort of revenge for what he’d become.
There was also the fact that catching killers was his job. He wasn’t here for me, even if I wanted to believe so.
Maddox
I calledthe station to update the captain on my progress. The old man was asleep at his desk. I wondered when he would lose his job, but it didn’t seem like it would happen any time soon. The precinct ran on passion and fumes. We did our best to look out for one another and keep each other in line.
So, I called Bastien on Addie’s phone. The least I could do was pass on what I knew, so Bastien could fill the old man in when he woke up. It took Bastien a while to answer his phone. When he finally spoke, he was out of breath.
I pulled the phone away from my ear and checked the time. It was late in the evening, pushing almost two AM by this point. So much of my day had vanished when I leapt into that portal, but now wasn’t the time to bemoan the lost hours.
“Did you run to the phone?” I asked with a laugh. “Maybe you should lay off the donuts, dude.”
I expected Bastien to come back with a witty quip, but he grumbled something under his breath.
“You’re not the one getting chased by bugs.”
Bugs?At this time of night? It was too early in the year for mosquitos, and I doubted someone would sound like that after swatting away a few gnat-sized bugs. Bastien sounded like he’d been running from an angry wasps’ nest.
“Everything all right over there?” I asked my friend.
He cleared his throat. “Ah, yeah. Yeah, things are good. Don’t worry. Can I call you back later, though? I have a few things I need to finish up right now.”
At two in the morning?
“Uh, sure.”
“Good. Good.” Bastien hung up without saying anything else.
I stared at the phone in disbelief. There wasn’t time to figure out why Bastien was out of breath. I shook myself. Later, I would ask my friend what was going on. Right now, I turned my attention over to Addie in the driver’s seat.
Lips twisted to the side, she stared out the windshield at the city street beyond, which was illuminated by streetlights that flooded the world with a burnt orange glow. There was one in the distance that was broken. I wondered, absentmindedly, if someone had shot it and broken the bulb. That was the kind of thing that happened here.
Not in my town, though. My town was so much quieter. I almost wished I’d transferred to Syracuse just to keep myself busier. That way, my mind wouldn’t wander back to the guilt that still lingered deep in my gut. At least, I would be doing something to make up for how badly I’d failed as a husband.
“Okay. So…I don’t know Luca all that well. He’s Vi’s friend, if that tells you anything.” Addie drummed her fingers along the steering wheel.
Vi. I thought back to Addie’s friends and recalled the athletic blonde with a challenge in her eyes. She’d had the look of a killer, but all of Addie’s friends had that look. I was starting to realize why at this point. This was a dangerous world, far more frightening than I’d ever known.
“Luca is…well, I don’t know how to say this tactfully, so I’ll just rip the bandage off. Luca is a vampire. To talk to him, we have to go through his club, which will be full of vampires. I’ve…tried to stay away from them because I have no idea how my arcana will react to the undead. Vampires won’t take too kindly to someone who can control them.”
I sighed. “What I’m hearing from this is that you’re about to enter forbidden territory. Will Luca react to you the way that alien woman reacted to your other friend?”
“Beryl isnotan alien. You should stop calling her that before she hears you and sends a bunch of small fae to make your life miserable. I’ve heard that they can drive a person to insanity. That’s not something anyone should wish upon themselves.” Addie’s gaze slid towards me.
Her pale eyes pulled me in. I could have fallen into her. My beast roused itself and pushed me to lean into the woman that smelled of fresh earth and herbs. That alone was enough to help me understand how the vampires felt about her.
I would have to stay close to her side and play the role of the faithful servant in here. Hopefully, this meeting would go by quickly so I wouldn’t get too lost in the role. I was afraid I might forget the line between an act and reality.
“We shouldn’t be here. We should be tracking down the killer,” I said.
I was pretty sure that I caught the killer’s scent. There was something oddly familiar about it, but that familiarity got lost in the new complexity of smells. My nose could pick up on more than just an individual scent now. Smells were like music, made up of tone layers that worked together to create something larger.