“I can’t kill him. I won’t be that person. He’s going to go through the proper channels. There will be a trial. I just…I need more evidence.” Though Maddox tried to preach restraint, I saw the way he practically vibrated.
His beast wanted out. It wanted vengeance, and Maddox was trying his damnedest to deny it. I couldn’t let him shift and lose control to a beast that wanted to kill. While Maddox likely didn’t have enough energy left in him for another shift despite eating, I didn’t want to risk it.
I took ahold of the arcana that he’d been steadily pulling from me and yanked it back. His eyes shot open wide.
“You can feel that?” he whispered.
I nodded.
He licked his lips, as if buying time. “I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Why? What does it change?”
“Never mind, then. We have a killer to catch.” Maddox pushed past me.
I spun on my heel and chased him before he could get far. “You can’t go in there like this. You’re angry. It’s going to lead you to do something stupid.”
“Of course, I’m angry!” His brow crashed together into a deep furrow. He spun towards me. “This is someone inmyterritory. Someone who should have been upholding peace and protecting people was, in fact, killing people right under my own damn nose. I was too slow to catch on, but not anymore.”
I grabbed ahold of his coat to try to pull him to a stop. My arcana reached for him. If I wanted, I could tell him to stop, and he would have to listen. I refused and yanked my arcana away from him.
It was like a physical blow. Maddox stumbled and clutched his chest. He acted as though I’d stolen the very air from his lungs. Gasping, he straightened and turned a cold glare towards me.
I could work with this. Lowering my voice as people passed us by on the sidewalk, I said, “I won’t let you have any more of my arcana until you tell me how you know it’s someone from your precinct.”
Maddox’s glare dropped to the paper clutched in his hand. “It smells like the killer. It’s…familiar. I haven’t been back to the office since I was changed, so I don’t recognize everyone’s scents. Something about it rings a bell to me, though.”
“You’re telling me there’s no way a suspect could have come through and stolen a pad of paper?” I was grasping for straws here, but I needed to do something before an angry wolf shifter stormed into a police station.
All hell would break loose, and neither of us needed that.
While I was working hard to keep Maddox from having a meltdown, the ghosts on the street were reading me. They could feel the power fluctuating between Maddox and me. I had no way to cover my head. Their voices, a whisper from afar, grew into a deafening mess as they closed in around me.
I fought to keep from covering my ears. It would give me away. So long as I ignored them and kept my attention on Maddox, they might think they’d misunderstood the power in the air. I couldn’t keep my focus when they were creeping in around me.
My breath shuddered as a ghost stalked closer. It was the man from the station, the one that had been killed by his dominatrix. He leaned in close, his incorporeal nose nearly brushing my cheek.
He knew. We’d spoken before. There was no ignoring him.
“She can hear you,” he said to the others closing in. “She just doesn’t want to help anyone. Selfish bitch.”
A primal scream gathered in my throat. There was too much happening all at once. My frustration crackled like a storm. Slowly, I craned my neck to look the man in the eye. We were nose to nose, and I refused to flinch.
Cold crept up along my skin. The frigid hand of death cloaked me.
“I am too tired to deal with needy ghosts telling me what to do with my life. Back off or I will wipe you from existence.”
Maddox grabbed my arm and yanked me away from the ghost. He spun me so that we were eye to eye.
“Excuse me?” he growled.
My skull throbbed from all the voices. They pushed closer. I could feel the ghosts raking their cold fingers down my spine while they screamed for my attention. The man wanted his body recovered. A woman demanded to know what happened to her child. Another person begged me to find their body on the mountain.
I couldn’t handle it all. My stomach lurched.
I wasn’t going to let it crush me. I shoved my stomach back down before its contents came back up. Ripping my arm out of Maddox’s grip, I put space between us. My jaw was tight as I stared him down. His expression remained just as cold.
Find me!