by Amie Gibbons
I closed my eyes. “Show me.”
He took my hands and I imagined opening my mind to him.
“Shit!” he said a moment later.
“What?” I opened my eyes.
“That fucking block! It goes down so many layers… we’re not going to be able to trace it without diving so far into the astral plane, we’d be putting us in severe danger from that alone… Okay, now I’m frustrated. If we can’t find them, we’re going to finish this.”
“There’s no this, Carvi.” I hated the weakness in my tone. “I’m not a-”
“Cheater,” he cut me off, mirth coloring his tone. “You kissed me back. You did more than that in Miami. You have cheated.”
My face burned and I yanked my hands back. He let me.
“I was allowed to in Miami, so it wasn’t cheatin’. And here… Yeah, fine. I have. Cheating’s not... drugs or something. I’m not going to keep using now that I’ve ‘breached the gateway.’” I shot up and he followed, rising much more gracefully. “And if you haven’t noticed, I’m not relaxed anymore. And you are... are irresponsible.”
He stared at me, and burst out laughing. “Irresponsible. You are near spitting and all you can say is I’m irresponsible?”
Okay, yeah, it was stupid. I couldn’t think of anything else, and it really did fit. “We’re supposed to be lookin’ for people trying to kill me, and you’re going out of your way to distract me.”
“I was attempting to relax you.”
Why wouldn’t he lose that stupid, arrogant smirk?
I stuck my finger in his face. “Listen, you p...”
Bang-bang-bang.
I jumped at the rapid pace pounding, heart pounding nearly as loud.
Wonder what Grant’ll think of my costume?
I mentally pinched myself.
“That’s Grant.” I turned for the door and Carvi blurred around me. By the time I was fully around, he was at the door, checking the peephole.
“I know Grant’s knock,” I said.
Carvi gave me a look over his shoulder before opening the door. “Special Agent Grant, how lovely of you to join us.” He stepped back to let my boss in.
At six-one, Grant had about four inches on Carvi. And his broad shoulders and muscular body dwarfed Carvi’s.
Grant’s sharp, iced-moss eyes took in every detail of the room with a few quick flicks. His strong-jawed face was set with worry lines. Did he have a few more grey hairs at his temples than when I saw him Friday?
“Ryder,” he said, not even looking at me as he picked up my shoes. “Get your bag.”
“Yes, sir.” I snagged my purse from the couch and hurried over to the guys.
“You’re working with us,” Grant told Carvi, his voice as cold and calm as though he was talking to another agent and not a three-thousand-year-old vamp.
Carvi opened his smirking mouth and Grant held up a hand.
“We’re keeping this in the team. Only you, Bridges, Kowalski, and myself will know where she is.” He handed me my shoes and I used a hand to balance against the table while I tugged them on.
“What about Quil, sir?”
Marble eyes met mine and my heart seized.
Why did I suddenly feel the need for some of that eucalyptus?
“Since when do we tell victims’ boyfriends where they’re hiding, Ryder?” Grant asked.
It was like he was staring right through me and all I wanted was for him to pull me into a hug.
“He could help, sir,” I said.
“I’ve already talked to him. He is going to help.”
He just wasn’t going to be told where I was.
Yeah, cuz Quil was going to just accept that.
“The GPS, Special Agent Grant?” Carvi asked.
Grant and I both turned to stare at Carvi.
His finger danced over the slick table as he raised an eyebrow at us. “Someone could hack into your system, yes?”
“No,” Grant said. No further explanation necessary. Typical Grant.
Why explain when ‘no’ will do?
I loved how Grant could face down Carvi without a blink. I wished I could handle him with such aplomb.
Of course, Grant had some secret powers he wasn’t tellin’ anyone about that apparently gave him his edge.
“Let’s go.” Grant turned and walked out the door, knowing we’d follow.
“Ohhhh, so commanding.” Carvi gave a shiver. “Just imagine what that man could do with some silver chains and a whip.”
“Oh my God!” My hands flew to my flaming cheeks and I stuck my tongue out at Carvi as we followed Grant’s steady stride to the elevator.
“Eck,” I gagged as lightning fingers grasped my tongue, holding it out.
A stern click said Grant had his gun out and the safety off. I was willing to bet he had silver bullets.
Carvi’s fingers didn’t taste salty like a human’s would. Vamp skin’s sweeter.
“Next time you shove this tongue at me, I’m going to make good use of it.” He let go and turned with slow, exaggerated motions. “Calm down, Grant. I would never hurt her. Well, not permanently.”
Grant didn’t say anything as he lowered the gun and hit the elevator’s down button.
We piled into the elevator.
Buzzzzzz.
“Ah,” I gasped, giving a little hop.
“Jumpy, Ryder?” Grant asked as he unhooked his cell from the clip on his belt. He answered with his usual, “Grant.” He nodded along, face and short yeses and nos telling nothing.
“What’s he saying?” I asked mentally.
“Someone’s dead.” Carvi held up a finger behind Grant’s back.
“No, you’re on your own with this one, Mender,” Grant said.
“Mender?” Carvi asked.
“She’s the leader of team three,” I said. “What does he mean ‘on her own?’ Do we have a case?”
“Apparently. Suicide, but signs of the supernatural saying the guy was murdered. It sounds like it took the local police a while to get it to the FBI. It’s just been kicked to your section because the lieutenant knows about the supernatural and that these cases go to the FBI.”
“What’s supernatural about it?”
“Don’t know.”
Translation, he didn’t care.
Grant hung up and I resisted the urge to stick my tongue out at Carvi. “Sir?”
Grant stared me down.
“Ugh.” I cleared my throat. “Do we have a case?”
“No.”
“Sir, if...”
“Are you kidding me?” Carvi cut me off. “If I’d thought you’d want to jump in and help, I wouldn’t have told you. You’re going into hiding, not to play detective.”
“I don’t play detective, Carvi, I am one. That’s a real man, with a real life, who is real dead. It’s my real job.”
“No,” Grant said. “Today your job is to survive. Mender’s on it.”
“I’m the psychic.”
He stared me down and I stared back, everything in me shirking away. His gaze intensified and my insides shriveled.
I finally looked away.
“I can change,” I said, “put on a wig, or dye my hair, put on some glasses. The people after me aren’t going to expect me to be out and investigating. They’ll expect me to be in hiding.”
“No,” Carvi said as the elevator doors sprang open.
“We’ll put it down in the report that I’m in hiding.” I whirled on Grant as we walked in. “We might even find our leak this way, sir. Please, please don’t ask me to hunker down while something supernatural is out there killing.”
“I’m not asking, lea,” Carvi said. “You’re going into hiding if I have to drag you.”
“Come with me, help us find who’s doing this. You do that, then we’ll find who’s after me. After that, if you help, I promise we’ll talk.”
“About?”
“Whatever you want.” I met his eyes, knowing Grant was watching, gleaning
what we were saying by my face.
“Just talking?”
“That’s all I can promise. But yeah, we’ll talk.” I blushed at his smile.
“As much as I respect your willingness to whore yourself out-”
“Hey!”
He held up a hand. “I’m still not biting,” he said out loud. “You are one of maybe two hundred psychics in the world. You’re worth a thousand of those humans.”
“Now, see,” I said, “just when I start thinking of you as a person, you go and ruin it by saying something like that. They’re people, Carvi. All of them matter to somebody. I’m helping. And you can either help me and work to protect me or you can put me at risk by forcing me to fight you every step of the way and sneak out of whatever place you shove me into when I can.”
I propped my hands on my hips. “What’s it going to be?”
His jaw worked and he finally spat, “Fine. But you’re going to be disguised and surrounded by the other agents and myself at all times.”
I nodded and he sighed, running his hands over his hair.
“Considering the night,” Carvi said, “it’s almost certainly ghosts doing this. Damn Samhain.”
Chapter three
“Fancy meeting you here,” Kat said as I stepped off the elevator.
She’d beat us there and even had time to change into normal clothes (well, normal for her) since we’d had to swing by the occult store for Carvi to get some general magical blockers for me and then had to fight through traffic.
He wouldn’t let me hit my place for a change of clothes since the assassins were almost certainly already in Nashville and would have my place under watch.
Since my phone was lost to the wilds of the park, he gave me a burner phone and I put in the numbers I knew off the top of my head.
Which were only eight of them.
Grant took it and programed in the ones from work I needed that I didn’t remember.
I texted Pyro and told him to stay in for the night and keep an eye out for anything around the house.
Couldn’t have anyone see him flying around, realize he was alive, and kidnap my flying carpet to trade for me.
I got a… what Mama would call a salty text back.
I went to the crime scene in my beer girl costume and one of Carvi’s button down shirts tossed over it for warmth.
Because someone hired assassins, actual kill people for money assassins, to go after me.
Surreal didn’t even come close to coverin’ it.
I was pretty sure I was in shock because I wasn’t feeling much of anything.
The supposed suicide was in downtown Nashville at one of the older apartment buildings, The Riverfront. It was kept up since people were willing to pay top dollar for the location, but it still showed its age in the slightly rundown carpeting and wallpaper in the hall and the faint smell of mildew.
The Riverfront was thirty stories tall and we were on the twentieth. High enough for the dwellers to escape some of the noise from below, but nothing short of a hundred floors and soundproofed glass would keep out the noise of downtown Nashville on a holiday.
“You waitin’ for us?” I asked as we walked down the hall.
“Yeah,” Kat said. “I just got here and was under strict orders to wait for the guys before I went down to check out the body. The cops have got it blocked off, but still, I don’t like waiting.”
“Why did you have to wait?” I asked.
It wasn’t like Kat needed a babysitter to go down and do her job. Most of the time she was the one acting like a babysitter over the bodies, watching us all like a hawk to make sure we didn’t mess up anything on her body.
She jerked her chin at Grant.
“Sir?” I asked, keeping my voice even.
He glanced at me and walked faster, forcing mine and Kat’s littler legs to scramble to catch up.
Carvi stayed behind us, and not just to watch my behind, I’m betting.
He said he could work a few spells to help keep me more hidden and to keep people from even remembering my face, but that’d take time, and until he could set up in somebody’s kitchen, he was staying on my six.
“He’s worried someone will go after your friends,” Carvi said in my ear, making me jump from the sudden proximity, as Grant hit a door in the middle of the hall and opened it without knocking.
Kat and I exchanged a look.
“Oh,” I said. “What about-”
“Your family is already under watch,” Carvi said. “They were a bit closer to us, so my people were able to get to them about the same time I got to you.”
“So that just leaves close friends around here,” I said, licking my lips as we hit the apartment. “Okay. This shouldn’t take long. We’ll do our thing and I’ll get a vision, and we’ll go from there on the whole protecting me thing.”
We went in and the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood clean up.
“Shit,” Carvi whispered under his breath. “I knew it was ghosts.”
“What is that feeling?” I asked, not even sure why I switched to talking mentally.
“EMF,” he said. “Lea, this is the heaviest I’ve felt in a long time.”
“Is that bad?”
He shot me a look. “Nahhhh, if you don’t mind a rift into the afterlife.”
My mouth fell open.
“What?” Kat asked.
I shook my head, mind spinning as Carvi told her what he’d just told me.
The place looked normal-ish, if a bit small and bare.
There was a threadbare couch of some indeterminate color between brown and orange pushed along the wall separating the living room from the kitchen, a few folding chairs folded up next to it, all clashing illogically with the giant flat screen TV across the room, the set of guitars leaning against the wall, and the piano in the corner.
A giant American flag took up the wall above the couch and there were a few knickknacks lining the top of the piano.
“I don’t understand what I’m seeing,” I said.
“Guy has his priorities,” Jet said, making me whirl towards the kitchen.
He walked over and held up his gloved hands. “I’d hug you, girl, but middle of collecting the blood samples.”
Jet’s a pretty man. Tall, thin, and mixed race, he has light mocha skin, big brown eyes, thick lips, and close cropped black hair. He used to have an earring, prompting my nickname for him of Jolly Rodger, but he hadn’t been wearing it lately. And he knows how to dress. Today’s ensemble was black slacks and a bright orange button down to go with the holiday.
“That’s okay,” I said, following him past the small cheap folding table to the kitchen.
This room looked normal for a small older apartment. Had the appliances lining the inner wall, no dishwasher though, and a set of shelves built into the outer wall, basically the tiny kitchen version of a pantry.
Everything was straight and put away, the counters were all clean, and there were dishes drying on a towel on the counter.
“We sure this was a guy who lived here?” I asked.
No man was that clean unless he had OCD.
“Just because you’re a slob,” came from behind me.
I was too numbed out by it all to even jump this time.
“Hey, Dan,” I said without turning. “I was just thinkin’ the guy has to have OCD or something, and here you show up.”
Dan and I never had gotten along well. He was a New York jerk who moved down to Nashville to join the SDF team his best friend, Jet, was joining, but he never lost the accent or attitude.
He was short and barrel chested, with a square face that’d be attractive if his attitude didn’t ruin it, black square glasses, and geek chic clothes of jeans and a blue plaid shirt.
Jet kneeled back down to where he’d left his evidence kit.
There were barely a few drops of blood. No more than if the guy had accidently nicked his finger making dinner.
“May I?” I asked, kneeling ne
xt to him.
“What we’ve been waiting for, girl,” he said, sitting back on his heels.
I took a deep breath.
“Good,” came from behind me.
“Why are y’all sneaking up on me today?” I asked.
I felt more than heard Carvi kneel behind me.
“Show me what you’ve learned the past few months,” he said. “If anything.”
I scowled. “What the… just say whatever you want before ya choke on it.”
“You should’ve been studying with me. You’ve wasted months where you could have been learning.”
“You never called.” I shrugged.
“And that is my job why?” he said, voice giving away nothing. “So maybe next time, you won’t act like a child and expect me to do everything to maintain this relationship, especially when I’m offering to teach you things you desperately need to know.”
I creased my forehead.
Was it just me, or was Carvi hurt I hadn’t called him?
Nah.
I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes.
This place was so thick with psychic energy, I didn’t even need my sandalwood.
Flash.
A tall man with dark hair was cutting a cucumber at the counter. He was wearing suit bottoms and a dark blue button up but no shoes.
A white lab coat was laid over the back of one of the dinky chairs at the table, and a pair of loafers were by the door.
Was he a doctor?
This place seemed a little cheap for a doctor. Then again, student loans could do a lot to a professional’s income.
He turned around with a bowl of salad, grabbed a beer from the fridge, and sat at the table, shoveling food in as he pulled out his phone and started swiping through Facebook.
He was cute. Short black hair, big brown eyes that held an intensity I could sense from even this mental distance, high cheekbones and a wide mouth. He grinned at something on the screen and he had a great smile, making lines appear around his eyes.
I couldn’t begin to guess his age beyond he was between late twenties and early forties, but something about the bags under his eyes and the depth of the laugh lines said he was on the older end of that.
“Scheisse!” he said suddenly, shaking his hand out.
Blood flew and hit the floor and he stuck his finger in his mouth.