by Hannah Jayne
“Sorry, of course—executive assistant. So, how’d you decide on pushing papers in the demon underground?” he asked.
“It’s amazing what you can find in the want ads,” I said, averting my eyes and tearing my napkin to shreds.
Hayes continued to eye me, and I breathed a little harder, pinned under his steady gaze.
“Well, first of all, I could get down there.”
Hayes sipped his coffee and shrugged. “So what does that mean? Lots of people can use elevators.”
“Nice. Theoretically, you can only get into the Underworld if you’ve got”—I bit my lip and glanced out the window, trying to choose my words carefully—“some supernatural in you.”
“What?” Hayes snorted. “You’re some kind of demon, too? I never would have thought….”
“Keep your voice down!” I hissed,
“Sorry. It’s just that you look so regular.”
“Awesome,” I said dryly, “regular. That’s what every woman wants to hear about herself. And no, I’m not a demon. Well, yes, I guess I am—sort of. I think.”
Our waitress came back, a large white plate balanced in each hand. She eyed me as she slid my salad in front of me, and I got a big whiff of grape-scented Hubba Bubba as she snapped a bubble.
“Can I get y’all something else?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” I said, smiling politely.
Hayes popped a French fry in his mouth with one hand and shook a bottle of ketchup with the other. “So what are you? A leprechaun?”
Anger roiled in my stomach, and I could feel my usually creamy white skin turning red. I dropped my fork. “I am not a leprechaun.”
“So? What are you then?” He cocked his head, looking me up and down.
“My grandmother was a mystic—a seer. But then she lost it.”
“Her power?”
“Her mind.”
Hayes chuckled, settling back into the booth. “How very Psychic Friends Network. You know, I’ve always thought that if those people really were psychic, they’d call me when I had a problem.” He grinned, enjoying his joke.
“She would have called you.”
Hayes pursed his lips.
“The palm reading, fortune telling—that was kind of her day job. But she had real powers. She was pretty well known in the Underworld for it. She could really see things.”
Hayes nodded but looked entirely unconvinced. “So, can you do it too, then? See the future and stuff?” He raised one eyebrow. “Can you read minds?”
I glared back at him. “I think I might be able to read yours.”
He laughed, shoveled another handful of fries into his mouth. “There’s that leprechaun spunk I like so much.”
I felt my lips go thin and tight. “I. Am. Not. A. Leprechaun. And no”—I wrapped my hands around my water glass and stared at the ice cubes bobbing inside—“I don’t have any powers. Yet. Or, maybe I never will. It’s kind of hard to tell. I’m working on it, though. I mean, there might be something; it just hasn’t happened yet. Anyway, after I graduated—USF”—I smiled, proud—“the only jobs open for an English major were paper boy or barista.”
Hayes leaned back in the booth and smiled kindly. “I think you’d make a great paper boy.”
I rolled my eyes, continuing. “My grandmother kind of talked me into the job initially—introduced me to Mr. Sampson and all. I thought it would be a quick thing, like a summer internship. You know, until I could write the great American novel or start teaching English in Spain. But as it turns out”—I shrugged—“I fit in really well down there, and I really like it.”
“Well, score one for the leprechaun.”
I resisted the urge to slug the smug grin off Hayes’s face.
“So where’s your grandma now? Pleased as punch you leash a dog like Sampson for a living, I’ll bet.”
I felt my muscles tighten, my arms going leaden under the anger. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, you know? Sampson is a werewolf, not a dog,” I said, working hard to keep my voice low and even. “And my grandmother passed away, thank you very much.” I blinked furiously, feeling the hot tears well, the growing lump choking my throat.
Sophie Lawson: tough chick or emotional invalid?
“Oh, hey.” Hayes handed me a napkin. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you …” He shifted uncomfortably. “What about your parents?”
I shrugged again. “My mom was a seer, too, but she hated what she could do. Sometimes—I’ve been told—it can get really hard to live with. Seeing all the things that people work so hard to keep hidden. It can take a lot out of you. All Mom wanted was a little normalcy. So, one day she met my father, a very normal professor of mythological anthropology at Berkeley. Nine months later I was here and dear old Dad was realizing that he wasn’t exactly cut out for fatherhood.”
“That’s rough,” Hayes said.
“Oh, he gave it the old college try, though.” I wiggled four fingers. “He stayed for four whole days after I was born.”
“Wow. Four?”
“My grandmother said he left because after four days, I didn’t show any signs of magical ability. I guess that’s what he was looking for in a spawn.”
Hayes stopped chewing. “Do you really believe that?”
“I believe that after four days I didn’t show any signs of the ability to change my own diaper. I think that was more bothersome. So, he took off. A little less than a year later my mother died.” I smiled wistfully. “Grandmother, again, went to the magical extreme: my mother died of a black heart—a love spell gone wrong. I tend to lean toward the slightly less magical explanation of a steady diet of Chicken Mc-Nuggets and a pretty solid family history of heart disease. But there isn’t any way of convincing Gram of that. Or there wasn’t.”
“I’m really sorry,” Hayes said softly. “But your grandmother raised you? That must have been good, right? She sounds like she really cared about you.”
“She did, and living with Gram was okay.” I gritted my teeth, my mind working: Every child should be raised in a house with a giant neon hand, palm highlighted with stars and hearts, in the living room window and a crystal ball in the dining room. Kids flock to children who are different and odd … and then beat them up.
“Sophie?” Hayes’s head was cocked.
“Oh.” I blinked. “Sorry.” I stabbed at a piece of chicken and popped it in my mouth. “This place is great,” I said, chewing absently, not tasting my food. “So, I spilled. Your turn. What’s your story?”
Hayes’s blue eyes touched mine, then flitted across my forehead, avoiding my gaze. “Nothing as interesting as your life,” he said. “I’m just a local guy, been around this city for … forever, pretty much. I’m just your basic, run-of-the-mill cop. Boring.”
I nodded, but he didn’t continue. “Oh.”
Hayes had a handful of French fries in his mouth before he stopped chewing and stared at me, panic in his wide, cobalt eyes. He swallowed slowly, little bits of salt glistening on his lips.
“You know when you said you could get down to the Underworld?”
I nodded, sipping my water.
“Well,” Hayes continued, “if you have to be … you know, to get down to the Underworld … how come I was able to?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just assumed you were dead.”
Hayes gasped. “You think I’m dead?”
The waitress’s head snapped up as she passed again, and I smiled politely, watching until she was out of earshot.
“You think I’m dead?” he repeated in a desperate whisper.
“Okay, undead, whatever.”
“I’m not!” Hayes was indignant. “Feel this.” He wrapped his palm around my wrist. “See? Flesh and blood.”
“Okay.” I pushed a crouton off my plate and stabbed a piece of lettuce. “Sure.”
“No, seriously.” Hayes was standing up and pushing me aside, sliding next to me in the booth. “Feel.” He grabbed my hand and slid it between the buttons of hi
s navy blue shirt, so my fingers rested against the soft cotton of his undershirt. He pushed my palm flat, his hand over mine.
I resisted the urge to ogle. His chest was firm and taut and wonderful, and his heart thumped underneath my palm—warm—and very much alive.
“So you’re not dead,” I said, trying to squelch down my giddy goose bumps and control the tone of my voice.
Hayes’s voice was thin, his eyes big, terrified. “Then what am I?”
“A big girl.”
Hayes’s eyes flashed and I sighed. “You can get down as a normal person—Nina calls ‘em breathers—if someone who can go down sends you down. They’re able to temporarily loosen the veil on the breathers.” I went back to stabbing at my salad, and glanced through my lowered lashes to see a look of utter relief flood across Hayes’s face—and then he panicked again.
“The chief is a demon?” he asked. “Is that how he knows Sampson?”
“I don’t know if the chief is a demon,” I said, mouth full of salad. “He and Sampson met in college, just before Sampson was bitten. They were college roommates.”
Hayes’s eyebrows rose expectantly.
“Sampson was bitten and changed into a werewolf in college. Now, can we just have lunch and then get to work? The sooner we crack this case, the sooner you can be done with the Underworld and go back to believing that the things that go bump in the night are just harmless human rapists, sadists, and murderers.”
“That’s all I ask,” Hayes said, sipping his coffee again.
Chapter Five
After lunch at the diner, we headed back to the police station. Hayes handed me a Styrofoam cup filled with horrible coffee, drank his down in one gulp, and told me to hold steady.
“I’m going to go grab our files from downstairs. Can I get you another cup?” He gestured toward my still-full cup, and I wagged my head, forced a small gulp just to be polite. When he left I dropped the greasy mess into the trash can and shuddered.
I was making myself comfortable in a cracked pleather chair in the police department conference room when Hayes came in, carrying a groaning cardboard box packed with file folders.
“This is all we’ve got on the case so far,” he said, dropping the box with a thud.
“Looks like a lot.”
“Looks like a haystack.” Hayes nudged the box. “It’s our job to go through here and figure out what’s pertinent and what’s not, what’s part of the case, what’s helpful, etcetera, etcetera. But”—he reached into the box and extracted a grease-soaked white pastry bag—“I did bring dessert.” He shook the bag with a grin.
I smiled. A man with a heartbeat, a chiseled chest, and a penchant for sweets? Sophie Lawson hits the jackpot.
“Well, aren’t you the gentleman?” I said in my best attempt at sultry.
“I am. But the jelly-filled one is mine.”
Hayes reached into the bag, extracted a sticky, glazed concoction, and stuffed the entire donut into his mouth, chomping down. I quickly shoved the file box aside, just in time to avoid a splat of blueberry jam as it dribbled from his chin and dropped onto the table.
“Be still my heart,” I said, feeling instantly sticky.
Hayes sat down next to me. “Try your best not to fall in love with me.” He pushed the bag toward me as he chewed. “Donut?”
I picked out a pink-sprinkled one and tried my best to nibble daintily.
“Pink sprinkles. I totally had you pegged,” Hayes said, smiling down at the table.
I rolled my eyes, shoved the rest of the donut into my mouth, and dug into the file box.
“Interesting,” was the only thing I could think of to say as I sifted through the first overstuffed folder. I pulled out a few yellowed newspaper clippings, some crime-scene photos, a Starbucks receipt, and a GO WITH GAVIN bumper sticker. “Don’t you guys have any organizational system?”
“Yeah,” Hayes said, gesturing toward the ragged box. “Put. In. Box.” He dipped his pincher fingers into the pastry bag. “Do you mind if I have another?”
I shook my head. “It’s no wonder you can’t find this guy,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I pulled out a folder covered in grease and coffee stains.
I’d struck a nerve. “Look, lady, we do the best we can. It’s not like we’ve got people lounging around the office, just waiting to file the latest. We’ve got a community to protect. A very large metropolitan community. What have you got? A couple of witches? The bogeyman? A vampire here and there?”
I pushed a neatly organized stack of UDA files toward Hayes and fished a few more out of my shoulder bag.
“I have just over twelve thousand actives. Twelve thousand and seventy-one, to be exact. Demons, vampires, witches, goblins …” I couldn’t help but feel a little smug as Hayes’s eyes went wide at the orderly stack I presented.
“Don’t worry; I didn’t bring in all our files. I’m pretty sure whatever is out there”—I suppressed the smallest shudder—“isn’t the work of any centaur, gargoyle, or troll. Those are generally our less volatile groups.”
“Wow,” he said, wiping donut grease on a nearby file. “You guys really are organized. That’s impressive.”
“Forms up the wazoo,” I said, shrugging. I eyed the stack, then picked out all the ones marked with a bright red flag. “These ones are the active vamps. Everything we need should be there—original birth dates, sires, crossovers—”
“Crossovers?” Hayes’s dark brows rose a millimeter.
“When a breather goes vamp,” I explained.
“Vampires remember that kind of stuff?”
“Initially, yeah. Five hundred years into their afterlife, the ‘rebirth’ details can get a little foggy. But at first it’s pretty easily traceable. You wake up one morning with no breath and bellbottoms on? You were crossed over in the seventies. Ditto if you’ve got go-go boots or love beads.”
“I see.”
“There is information on current residences, jobs, skill sets, languages spoken, etcetera. Everything should be listed in the file.”
Hayes swallowed thickly. “They work up here?”
I shrugged. “They work everywhere. The short order cook over at Fog City is a werevamp.”
Hayes’s eyes bulged. “Tiny? I thought he was a drag queen.”
“He’s that, too.”
Hayes paled a little bit, and I blew out a long sigh and cocked my head, eyeing him. “Listen,” I said, “there are a lot more magically inclined people out there than you think.”
“Oh no,” Hayes started. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things in this city—Elvis, the Easter Bunny on the Fulton 5, Mrs. Claus walking down the Haight with Santa in a dog collar in the middle of July. Even with that veil thing, I don’t think I would miss seeing a vampire on Market. Or a troll.”
“And what would you think if you did?”
“I’d think that I’ve definitely been working too hard.”
I smiled. “Well, there you go. You’re not expecting to see them, so you don’t see them. That’s how the veils work for the most part. It’s not really that big of a deal.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but Hayes’s complexion went a few shades lighter. I rested my hand on his. “They’re just like you and me.”
He opened his mouth to protest, and I held up one silencing finger. “Okay, maybe not just like. But the people of the Underworld want to live their afterlives just like anybody else—steady job, comfortable den with a white picket fence, minivan …”
“And two-point-five demonic kids?”
I ignored him. “The majority really doesn’t want any trouble.”
“Except for the small minority that wants to rip out people’s throats, gobble up their eyeballs, and suck out all their blood.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Kind of like the small minority of the human population, right?”
“Touché. Okay,” Hayes said, a little bit of the color returning to his chiseled cheeks. “Where do we start, then?”
“Here,” I said, handing him a thick stack of files. “Red flags are vampires. Yellow, zombies; blue, hobgoblins; green, witches; pink, other. We’re not too sure what we’re looking for, so I brought the most likely candidates. Vampires, obviously. But the zombies and hobgoblins can cause similar destruction and the witches—well, you generally want to stay on their good sides.”
Hayes licked his lips and grinned. “What about mermaids? Do mermaids exist?”
I raised one annoyed eyebrow. “Why don’t you jump into the ocean and find out?”
Hayes stifled a grin, taking the files. “Note to self,” he said under his breath, “Lawson is anti-mermaid.”
I shifted my eyes to Hayes, who ignored me. He was shuffling through the first set of documents. “I can’t believe that demons adhere to this kind of structure.”
“Well, vampires are very rule oriented,” I said, rolling my hair into a loose bun.
Hayes looked skeptical. “I find that hard to believe. Soulless bloodsuckers, rule oriented?”
“Soulless bloodsuckers who won’t come into your home unless invited. They are also compulsive counters, obsessively neat, and very polite.” I rearranged my files, feeling a heat creep up the back of my neck as Hayes’s knee brushed mine. “That kind of adherence to etiquette is quite endearing.”
Hayes didn’t look at me. “I suppose,” he muttered.
I frowned at the UDA files. “If we don’t find what we’re looking for in here, I can send out a satellite request for files from the other offices.”
Hayes blinked. “There are other UDA offices?”
“Of course. UDA is worldwide. You should see our Transylvania office.”
“And are all the other offices”—Hayes’s eyes shifted—“underground?”
“No. The one in Spokane is in the back of a Wal-Mart.” I grinned when Hayes raised his dark brows. “Most of the offices are underground. It just makes our clientele feel more … comfortable. More able to be themselves, I guess. They don’t have to worry about keeping up veils or shielding when they’re underground. Not a lot of breather counterparts stumbling into the underground offices, asking to use the restroom.” I offered a reassuring look.