CHAPTER 6

I awoke in the closet again.

I kicked off my blanket in disgust. I’d dreamt of being beaten. The memory of the dream fluttered in front of me, still vivid. It was my eleventh birthday, and the older boudas had chased me into an old farm equipment store. I’d hid in a metal drum trough, the kind used to feed the pigs. They’d found me, poured kerosene into the drum, and set me on fire.

I remembered the smell of my hair burning.

I pulled my knees to my chest. My dream wasn’t just a nightmare; it was an actual memory. I had spent years trying to suppress it, but the stress and all the talking with Ascanio must’ve caused it to resurface in my subconscious. I reached over and touched the closet wall to remind myself the dream was over. The sleek paint felt cold to my fingers. Since I made such frequent visits here, maybe I should just move in. Install a toilet, a sink, build myself a nest…heh.

The day was starting outside. It was time to get on with it. I needed to get dressed and visit Anapa’s office. In my human shape. At least the magic was down. If I got irritated, I’d shoot my way out of it.

I left the closet. Outside my window, past the bars, thick gray clouds clogged the sky, promising rain. Against that faded backdrop, the crumpled husks of once-tall buildings hunkered down, dark and twisted, tinseled with green plants stubbornly trying to conquer the crumbling city. On the fringes of the business district graveyard, new construction sprouted, stout buildings of wood and stone, no more than four stories high and built by skilled masons. Human hands, no machines.

In the distance, police sirens wailed. Just another fun morning in post-Shift Atlanta.

I stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom. The woman who looked back at me seemed sharper than she’d been yesterday. Meaner. Stronger. Too rough around the edges for most of the things in my wardrobe. Normally I wore jeans, khakis, off-white shirts. Neat professional attire, meant to inspire confidence and communicate safety to prospective petitioners for the Order’s assistance. The motto was confident but nonthreatening.

I was done with being nonthreatening. There had to be something in my closet that fit the new me.

Input Enterprises had a southeast address, on Phoenix Street. Despite the ruined condition of the neighboring blocks, this street was clean of garbage and refuse, brand-new houses lining both sides like soldiers on parade. There must’ve been some serious money behind that rebuilding project, because the houses had been tastefully embellished with cornices and decorative brackets. Even the bars on the bay windows were stylishly ornamental, with metal squiggly shapes. The area clearly was making an attempt at becoming a respectable business district.

I parked the Jeep in a small lot and walked, looking at the building numbers. The overcast sky finally decided to cry on my shoulder. The rainwater turned the asphalt dark. It was good that I wore a hat.

When I found the right number, instead of a building I saw a stone arch with a sign that read INPUT ENTERPRISES on the wall, complete with an arrow pointing inside the arch. Fine.

I walked through the long narrow tunnel and emerged into a wide space. A large patio stretched in front of me, all sand-colored stone, with vegetation confined to narrow rectangular flower beds, running in two lines toward the building in the back. The structure rose three stories high, but the three floors were oversized, pushing the height of the building to a dangerous level. Another foot or two and magic would take notice of it.

The main part of the structure was all modern office: glass, steel, and pristine white stone combined into a sleek elegant whole. The top of the building suddenly broke with the plan and turned into a cupola of glass and crisscrossing metal beams with a golden sheen.

I walked through the front doors. A polished tile floor rolled from where I stood to the marble counter, manned by a receptionist. She was in her early twenties, her makeup was heavy, her suit powder blue, and her pale brown hair was arranged in a picture-perfect French twist. Behind her a large banner affixed to the wall, golden letters on black, read, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BOSS!

I walked across the tiled floor. The receptionist looked up and did a double take. I wore a light brown duster. I had left it open in the front, and it showed off my blue jeans, combat boots, black T-shirt, and twin Sigs in the hip holsters. An old cowboy hat sat on my hair.

I stopped by the counter, tipped my hat, and drawled in my native tongue. “Howdy, ma’am.”

The receptionist blinked. “Ehhh, hello.”

“I’m here to see Mr. Anapa.”

“Do you have an appointment?”

“No. I’m investigating a murder on behalf of the Pack.” I handed her my PI ID.

The receptionist gave me a practiced smile and nodded at the low couches on the right. “Please take a seat.”

“Sure. So boss is having a birthday? Is he throwing a party?” Raphael had mentioned getting an invitation. It nagged at me so I thought I’d check it out.

“It’s tonight,” the secretary informed me.

Ha. Either my guns had made an impression, or nobody had explained to her that she was not supposed to give strange women confidential information. Most receptionists would’ve told me to shove off. “Wonderful. How old is he?”

“Forty-two.”

I went to the couches and sat. Minutes trickled by, slow and boring.

A quiet creaking of plastic wheels rolling came from the hallway. A man emerged—Latino, late fifties, early sixties. He pushed a bright yellow industrial mop bucket and he walked slowly, his eyes tired, his shoulders sloping forward. Probably part of the night cleaning crew, wrapping up his shift. As he passed the counter, the receptionist cleared her throat.

He glanced at her.

“There is a mess in the second-floor kitchenette,” she said. “Someone spilled coffee.”

“My shift was over half an hour ago,” the man said.

She stared at him. My opinion of Anapa’s reception staff plummeted. How difficult was it to clean up your own coffee spill? Get a rag and mop it up. If the man’s shift was over, let him go home.

He heaved his shoulders. “Fine. I’ll get it.”

I watched him roll away. The building lay quiet again.

I studied the stone tile: golden brown with slight charcoal and russet undertones. Beautiful. Raphael had a similar type of tile installed in his place. I could never understand the man’s aversion to carpet. His house looked like a castle: stone tile on the floor, beige and gray wall paint, Azul Aran gray granite countertops. He’d actually hired an artist to come in and paint stone blocks on the foyer’s walls. Cost him an arm and a leg, but it looked awesome, especially once I bought him a pothos vine and installed some tiny hooks to keep it growing in the right direction. He also hung bladed weapons on the walls.

I could picture him as a hidalgo, ruling some grand castle like Alcazar, dressed all in black. My imagination conjured up Raphael, his muscular body hugged by a black doublet, leaning against a stone balcony, a long rapier on his waist…with a seven-foot-tall blond bimbo by his side.

I had to stop obsessing. It was like my mind was stuck on him—every moment I wasn’t actively thinking about the case, my thoughts went right back to Raphael. Sometimes I plotted revenge, sometimes I felt like hitting my head against the wall. These bouts of feeling sorry for myself and daydreaming ways of making him regret he was ever born had to stop.

My ears caught the sound of distant footsteps. I rose. Three people strode out of the hallway, a trim woman in a beige business suit in the lead. She wore glasses and her light brown hair had been braided away from her face. Her clothes and hair said “business.” Her posture and eyes said “combat operative.” A man and a woman in tactical gear and dark clothes brought up the rear, holding cop batons. Each sported a sidearm on the hip.

“Good morning, Ms. Nash,” the woman said, her voice crisp. “Mr. Anapa sends his regrets. His schedule is full and he’s unable to see you.”

“I’m investigating murders on behalf of the Pack,” I said. “I only have a few questions.”

“Mr. Anapa will be very busy this entire week,” the woman said.

“He isn’t a suspect.”

“Whether you suspect him or not is irrelevant. You’re no longer a member of law enforcement. You’re here as a private citizen. Please leave our premises.” She turned, squaring off with me.

If I’d still had my Order ID, I’d have made her swallow those words. I considered my options. I could go through the two guards, but the faux secretary would provide a problem. The way she kept measuring the distance between the two of us telegraphed some sort of martial arts training, and her stance, square and straight on, said law enforcement experience. She was trained to wear body armor. Most shooters would blade their body sideways, minimizing the target area. People in bulletproof vests tended to face the danger.

Law enforcement meant she knew the rules and understood exactly what I could and couldn’t get away with. If I made a scene and got in to see Anapa, she’d sound the alarms and the cops would be on me like wolves on a lame deer. I could see the headline now: “Shapeshifter terrorizes local businessman.”

A part of me, the bouda part, wanted to do it.

I had to back off. She knew it and I knew it. “I’ll be back,” I told her.

“Bring a cop with a warrant,” she said.

I reached the door.

“Ms. Nash!” she called.

I turned. The “secretary” smiled. “This lobby isn’t big enough for the two of us, Ms. Nash.”

I shot her with my index finger. “I’ll remember you said that.”

Outside, the cloud cover had broken. I squinted at the sunlight and turned to examine the building. Anapa didn’t want to be questioned, but that didn’t make him guilty. It might just make him an ass. Except that I’d questioned hundreds of suspects over the years and this was far from a typical reaction. Usually when you walked up to a place of business and told the employees that you were investigating a murder, natural curiosity took over and everyone gathered around to find out more. People are voyeurs and most of us are fascinated by morbid things. You tell someone, “I’m investigating a murder,” the next question is usually, “Who died?” Anapa’s receptionist had asked no questions. Neither had Anapa’s knight in beige business armor.

The beige business suit woman must’ve taken the time to research my background to punch me with that “you’re no longer a member of law enforcement” bit. True, the Order had retired me, but before that my career was distinguished and nothing in my resume indicated that I gave up easily. She didn’t strike me as the type who missed details. It would have been so simple for Anapa to chat with me for ten minutes and clear his name. He would be off my suspect list and I would go away and stop bothering him. But he used his security people to chase me off instead. All sorts of alarming flags popped right up. Why all the secrecy?

When I was training, my instructor, a grizzled and scarred ex-detective named Shawna, taught me to eliminate suspects rather than look for them. Look at your suspect pool, pick a most likely one, and try to prove that he didn’t do it.

Right now that process of elimination had excluded only Bell. Anapa still remained on my possible perp roster, and now he had managed to bump himself right to the top of my suspect list.

I surveyed the building. Barred windows, surveillance cameras—which would work only during tech—and, if the rest of the security was anything to go by, probably really good wards on the windows. As a shapeshifter, I had a natural resistance to wards, but breaking one would really hurt and create enough magic resonance to make anyone in the building with an iota of magic sensitivity scream bloody murder.

I circled the building. On the north side, a small window three floors up had no bars. The security cameras were also conveniently positioned to cover other approaches. I stood for a while and watched them turn. Sure enough, the pattern of the cameras offered about twenty seconds of undetectable approach to the building. They’d built a trap into their defenses. I chuckled to myself. Clever. Not clever enough, but it would fool your average idiot.

I had to get close to Anapa. He refused to see me, his building was well defended and likely booby-trapped, and I didn’t have the legal leverage to force him to meet with me.

The door opened and the older Latino man exited, minus his mop bucket. He squinted at the sky, a long-suffering look on his face, sighed, and started toward the street. I followed him at a discreet distance. We passed through the stone arch, turned onto the sidewalk, and I sped up, catching up with him.

“You need something?”

I held up a twenty. Stuck in your investigation? Don’t have a badge? Offer people money. That’s just how we roll.

“Tell me about Anapa and his office?”

The man looked at my twenty. “I’d take your money, but there isn’t much to tell.”

I nodded at the small restaurant on the other side of the street, with a sign that said RISE & SHINE. “It’s raining. Let me buy you a breakfast and a cup of coffee.”

We got inside and sat in a booth. The waitress brought us hot coffee. I ordered four eggs and my new friend ordered some doughnuts. We both stayed away from sausage. Unless you knew the restaurant well and trusted the cook, ordering ground meat was a bad idea, because for some places “beef” was a code for rat meat.

The coffee was fresh, at least.

“So tell me about Anapa.”

The man shrugged. “He isn’t there much. He comes in and out when he feels like it. I only seen him three or four times. Good suit.”

“Where’s his office?”

“Third floor, north side. There isn’t much there. I clean dust from his desk once a week.”

Interesting. “What about his employees?”

The man shrugged. “There are about twenty or so of them. It’s a sham.”

“What do you mean?”

“The company is a sham. It’s like a bunch of kids got together, bought good clothes, and pretend to play at being businesspeople. They sit, they talk, they drink coffee and have lunches. Once a week, when the boss shows up, they all line up by his office to make him feel important. But not that much work is getting done.”

The waitress brought our food and left. It started raining again outside our window.

“How do you know?” I asked.

He bit his doughnut. “Paper. They don’t use any. A working business like that makes paper waste. You know, copies, notes, shredded documents, empty boxes from office supplies they order. I work for a janitorial company. I have other clients on my route that have staff half Input’s size. They make three, four times Input’s paper waste. I go into Input’s copy room, their waste bins are empty. Two-thirds of the time I don’t have to touch them. This week was my biggest trash haul to date for them, and that’s because they sent a memo out about Anapa’s birthday.” He finished his doughnut. “They do send packages to his house sometimes by a personal courier. I’ve seen receipts from it in the receptionist’s trash. Thanks for the food.”

“Thank you for the information.”

He left. I ate all the yolks out of my eggs and poked the eggs whites with my fork. If the man was right, then whatever business Anapa actually did took place from his house. Well, there was one way to check on that.

I waited until the waitress came by with the check, paid for my meal, and let her see that I was leaving a nice tip. “Got an odd question for you.”

“Sure.”

“What day do garbage men empty the Dumpsters on this street?”

“Friday.”

“Thanks.”

It was Wednesday. The Input Dumpster should be almost full. I took myself and my duster out into the rain, walked back to the Input building, and circled it. A narrow alley led from the back of the building’s lot to a larger street. Two Dumpsters sat in the alley, against a brick wall, one blue, one green. I flipped open the lids. Since the intrusion of magic made the mass production of plastic a thing of the past, all trash had to be divided and sorted. Food garbage was packed into wooden barrels or recycled metal drums, set in the green Dumpster, and picked up by composters. The recyclable waste—wood and metal—was simply thrown into the blue Dumpster, together with paper waste packed into burlap sacks.

Input’s green Dumpster had a single drum, half-filled with remnants of rotting lunches. The blue Dumpster contained a sad, half-deflated burlap sack. I ruffled through it. Lots of copies of the memo about Anapa’s party, some crumpled doodles, most featuring boobs of various sizes and an ugly but exceptionally endowed man doing X-rated things to said boobs, and a legal pad half soaked with coffee.

I abandoned the garbage and headed back to Rise & Shine.

I had to get into Anapa’s house.

The solution to the dilemma appeared in my mind.

No. No, there had to be some other way. Any other way.

Any way at all.

Anything would do.

I clenched my teeth. It didn’t help me produce any brilliant alternatives.

Fine.

I walked into the restaurant, offered them ten bucks to use their phone, and called the office. Ascanio answered.

“Cutting Edge Investigations.”

“It’s me.”

“You didn’t take me with you this morning,” he said. “I was good yesterday.”

Oh bother. “Ascanio, you can’t come with me every time. Any news for me?”

“There’s an autopsy report from Doolittle,” he said. “Raphael called.”

Think of the devil. “What did he want?”

“He asked when you’re going to release the building site crime scene to his crew, because ‘that damn cat’ won’t let him do anything until you say it’s okay and he isn’t ‘made of money.’ Could’ve fooled me. I told him you were out, and he asked who with, and I told him that I wasn’t at liberty to say. Then he chewed me out.”

Christ. Just what I needed. “Did he leave a number?”

“He said he’s at his main office. Also that guy from the service station yesterday found the check he received for towing that woman’s car. He says if you come by his place after five, he’ll give it to you. He said to bring the money.”

Well, it was thin but at least it was something. “Please open Doolittle’s report and look for the estimated time of death.”

The phone went silent. I tapped my fingers on the counter.

“Between two and four a.m.,” Ascanio said.

“And the cause of death?”

“Death resulted from anaphylactic shock due to a snakebite. Symptoms included respiratory failure, multisystem organ failure, and acute renal failure…What does severe ecchymosis mean?”

“It means subcutaneous accumulation of blood. Thanks.” I hung up and dialed Raphael’s number.

“Raphael.”

His voice took me to all sorts of places I didn’t want to go. “It’s not enough you brought your floozy to my office, now you’re hassling my intern.”

“Intern, huh. Just what is he learning under you?”

Really? He really went there? “Are you alright? First, you replace me with a bimbo, now you’re feeling threatened by a fifteen-year-old boy? Did something happen to give you an inferiority complex?”

“That boy has a long resume of sleeping with adult women and you looked a bit desperate the last time I saw you.”

I pictured myself reaching through the phone and slapping him off his chair. “Thank you for your concern, but have no fear. I prefer men, not boys. That’s why I’m not with you anymore.”

He snarled into the phone.

“Temper, temper, sweet pea.” Sweet pea? Where did that one even come from? “I understand that your upcoming engagement will set you back quite a bit and you are in dire need of money, so you need me to release the crime scene.”

“I have money! I need the site released because it’s a waste of everyone’s time for it to sit there.”

“Two conditions,” I said. “One, all items from the vault are to be stored in the Keep until the end of this investigation. I’ve catalogued them.”

“Done,” Raphael said. “Will send them in under an armed convoy during tech. Two?”

“You still have that invitation to Anapa’s birthday bash tonight?”

“Yes.”

“Is the invitation for you and a friend?”

“Yes.”

“I need to be that friend.”

Raphael paused. “You like Anapa for the murders?”

“Possibly. I tried his office. They wouldn’t let me through the door. He’s got a bulldog in a business suit on staff and she didn’t buy my sweet smile.”

“You mean you showed her your guns and she didn’t faint?”

Ha-ha-ha. “No, honey, you’re the only one who does that.”

“As I recall, it was usually the other way around.”

“I’ve seen plenty of guns. You have a nice one, but it didn’t make me faint.”

“That’s what you say now.”

“Raphael, I don’t own this phone. Don’t make me break it, because I just gave up my last ten bucks to use it.”

His voice was sweet as honey. “Darling, do you need me to loan you some money?”

“I have never in my life needed you to loan me money. If I was dead, and the ferryman needed a coin to take me across the river to the afterlife, and you had the only quarter in existence, I’d tell you to stick it up your ass.”

People looked at me. This wasn’t going well.

“Andrea…”

“The next words out of your mouth better be work-related or I’ll drive to your office and shoot you in the gut. Repeatedly.”

“Why in the gut?”

“Because it’s painful and not life threatening.” He was a shapeshifter; he’d heal the bullet wounds.

He laughed. He actually laughed at me on the phone. My head was about to explode.

“Why do you want to meet Anapa?” Raphael asked.

“Meeting him is secondary to sneaking into his office and looking through whatever dirty laundry he might be keeping in there. Someone had to have known about that vault, because it wasn’t a random robbery.”

“Really? And here I was thinking random robbers strolled by a deep dark hole guarded by people who grow four-inch claws and decided, ‘Hey, I think I’ll go in there and steal things.’”

Bastard. “It’s a good thing that you are so pretty, because you sure aren’t smart.”

“I run a clan and a God damn business,” he growled. “I’m smart enough.”

“Yes, yes.” Raphael’s outrageous hotness was his downfall. People rarely took him seriously at first glance. Instead of listening to the smart things coming out of his mouth, men dismissed him as a pretty face and women concentrated on not drooling. I heard many things said out of his earshot: a player, high-maintenance, beefcake, yummy, and so on. Ruthless businessman and lethal fighter weren’t usually the labels people arrived at until they got to know him better. It was a costly mistake to make. A few weeks ago one of Aunt B’s enforcers forgot that and decided to insult him. Raphael retaliated in kind and she lost her head and attacked him. He landed three killing wounds before she even hit the ground.

Raphael was silent. Probably seething on the other end. This wasn’t getting us anywhere.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said, keeping my voice professional. “I just want to solve this murder. I know this is difficult for us both. Let’s go back to the killers. They came in prepared, they killed your people, and they knew how to open the vault. All that implies prior knowledge and resources. It is very likely that one of the three reclamation companies who bid on that building had something to do with it. I’ve eliminated Bell as a suspect. The Garcias are a dead end for now—something might pan out there and I’ll know more by tonight, but as of this moment, their work site is abandoned and has been for a few weeks. That leaves Anapa. How much paper waste does Medrano Reclamations generate?”

“Enough for the city to charge us for commercial pickup,” Raphael growled.

“Input produces almost nothing. Tomorrow is their garbage day and their Dumpster has half a sack of paper trash, most of it lewd drawings. I talked to a janitor, and he thinks their business is a sham. Apparently Anapa operates out of the office in his house. I don’t like this any more than you do, but his party is my chance to take a look at him and search his office. Believe me, I would rather eat broken glass than go with you anywhere.”

“Thanks,” he said, his voice dry.

“You’re welcome.”

“It’s a black-tie affair.”

Of course it was. “Black-tie like my blue dress?”

“We ruined the blue dress, remember?” he said. “We were having sex on the bed and knocked the bottle of cabernet onto it?”

I flashed back right to that sunny afternoon. We had wanted to go to dinner, and I had laid the blue dress on the bed, and then Raphael brought a bottle of wine to the bedroom and did his Raphael thing, and we ended up on the bed ourselves, with the dress on the floor.

Anger bubbled up inside me, mixing with sadness, and a sick feeling that I was falling and falling, and somewhere below, a hard bottom waited for me. I was angry with Raphael. I was angry with myself. I wanted to bite someone or something.

“That’s right.” Damn it. “Okay, I’ll come up with something.”

“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.

“Much obliged,” I drawled.

“Don’t do your Texas thing on me; it won’t work.”

“I’ve done my thing on you and you quite liked it at the time.”

“Not nearly as much as you liked what we did after.”

I didn’t answer and neither did he. We just sat there, with the phone line between us. We had to stop doing this to each other.

“Raphael, there is something else I wanted to mention. I meant to tell you this yesterday morning, but the appearance of your fiancée knocked me off my stride. From talking to Stefan, I understand there were six people besides you who were there when the vault was discovered.”

“I know where you’re going,” Raphael said, “and I can tell you right now, none of them would betray me.”

“Then this will be very easy. Help me eliminate them. I need to account for every moment of their time from the instant they left the site until four a.m. If they made phone calls, we need to know. If they went to a bar and talked to someone, we need to know. You know them best and I would rather you do it, because my hands are full.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Stefan needs to be checked out, too.”

“I said I would take care of it.”

He would. Raphael was infuriatingly thorough when he wanted to be. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

“Maybe.”

Bastard. “Seven o’clock. Be there or your site will stay closed.”

“You do understand that if we get caught, the Pack will be blamed. The PAD isn’t going to bother with subtleties like you not being an official member of the Pack or that we’re investigating a murder. They’ll see it as two shapeshifters burglarizing the house. We’re disenfranchised enough as is.”

“I’m aware of that, thank you.”

“Just thought I’d remind you,” he said.

“I appreciate your concern.”

“Fine.”

“Perfect.”

I hung up. I felt like taking a cold shower. The clock on the wall behind the counter showed twelve minutes past ten. I had until three p.m. to find a dress and read through Doolittle’s report. Then I’d go to see the mechanic with a check from the mysterious woman and her towed car.

Since I was near a shopping district, I tackled the dress first. When you are short and curvy, your choice of dresses is limited. I had decent breasts, muscular calves, and strong, pretty legs. There was a magic point about two to three inches above my knee, where dresses and skirts looked great on me. Anything else had to be floor length, because people generally looked at me from above, and lengths in between made my legs look shorter and wider. Styles that made my neck look shorter than it already was, like bateau and collar necklines, were right out. On top of that, dresses with a bold pattern or bright mix of colors completely swallowed me, overwhelming my pale face and blond hair.

When I needed formal wear, I usually shopped at Deasia’s, a family-owned shop ran by Deasia Randall. The owner, a stern-looking black woman in her mid-fifties, had impeccable taste.

After an hour at Deasia’s, I’d tried all of the usual suspects: teal, peach, blue…I even tried a chartreuse, which made me look like a barrel dyed in pea soup. Things that should have looked good on me, because they always had, suddenly didn’t.

Deasia examined me with the critical eye honed by thirty years of fashion experience. “What is the dress for?”

“For a formal birthday party at a millionaire’s house.” And I had to look presentable enough to get through the door.

“Who’s escorting you?”

“My ex-boyfriend.”

Deasia’s eyebrows rose. “Ah. Mystery solved. Has he moved on?”

“Yes.”

“And you want to make an impression?”

“I want to knock his socks off. I want him to see that I’m just fine on my own. I want to be vibrant.”

“Vibrant or shocking?” Deasia asked.

“I’ll take shocking.”

“Wait here.”

She disappeared between the racks of clothes. I surveyed my latest attempt. A violet, high-waisted number should have been flattering, but it wasn’t. My face had changed, too. I used to be able to pull off fresh and even sweet. The woman who looked at me now looked good in a duster and a pair of guns. Draping pretty purple fabric on me was like coating a razor blade in a Skittles candy shell.

Deasia reappeared, carrying a hanger with something black and lacy.

“I appreciate it, but black is not me,” I said. “It washes me out.”

Deasia fixed a junkyard dog stare on me. “Try it.”

I took the dress and went to the dressing room. I took the purple monstrosity off and pulled the black dress off the hanger. Black lace over black fabric. Not me. I slipped the black dress on, stepped out, and looked into the three-paneled full-length mirror.

The black dress hugged me like a glove, stopping about three inches above my knee. Solid black below the waist, the asymmetric gown climbed up diagonally across my chest, over my left shoulder. The left side had a tiny sleeve, but the right shoulder was shockingly bare. A long serpentine shape of a Chinese dragon was cut into the black fabric of the dress. Its head rested on the left side of my chest, its long body slithering between my breasts, just a hair too narrow to be indecent, curving to the right, and sliding down my right thigh. Black, jagged lace overlaid the dragon’s outline, its pattern mimicking the dragon’s scales, giving a sexy glimpse of my bare skin. A single red stone marked the dragon’s eye and as I turned, it shone with the pure ruby glow of a bouda’s eyes.

Black had never been my color, but it was today.

Deasia set a pair of black pumps in front of me. I stepped into them, picking up four inches of height.

Holy shit. I looked aggressive. “This is an evil dress.”

“Evil can be beautiful,” Deasia said. “Don’t over-accessorize. Pair of earrings, nothing too large, and maybe a bracelet. That’s it. Oh, and this dress calls for a red mouth, Andrea. Scarlet red.”

“I’ll take it.”

“Of course you will. Knock him dead.”

Raphael wouldn’t know what hit him. Neither would Anapa. And if any evidence of Anapa’s connection to the deaths of the shapeshifters existed, I would do my best to find it.

When I walked into Cutting Edge’s offices, a man was sitting in my client chair. He was bent over, doing something with his feet, and as he turned his head at my approach, I saw a car seat. A baby lay in it, a little spot of white and pink against the green fabric patterned with cartoon dinosaurs. The man’s face seemed familiar. It took me a second, and then I placed it. Nick Moreau.

The last time I’d seen him, in June, he’d looked ten years younger. The man who sat in front of me now seemed old and tired, and when he gazed at me, his eyes were devoid of life, as if they had been covered with ash.

“I told him you were out,” Ascanio said, from the storeroom doorway. “He said he didn’t mind waiting.”

I sat in the other chair next to Nick. He ran his hand through his light brown hair.

“That’s my son,” he said.

“He’s beautiful,” I told him.

“Would you like to hold him?”

“May I?”

Nick picked the baby up and put him in my arms. Baby Rory looked at me with dark gray eyes, puzzled and fascinated, his mouth slightly open. He was nearly bald, his hair a soft peach fuzz on his head. His eyelashes were a happy, sunny blond.

So tiny. Such a fragile little life.

“Hey there,” I whispered.

Baby Rory looked at me and I could see no fear in his eyes. No sadness, no bitterness, nothing jaded. The world was a big wonderful toy and Baby Rory had no idea how badly it had hurt him. I wanted to wrap him in my arms and make it all be okay. I wanted to give him his mother back.

“He’s beautiful,” I told Nick again.

“His mother was, too,” he said. “He can’t even talk. He’ll never remember her.”

Baby Rory cooed and I hugged him to me, gently. How do you tell a baby his mother died? How do you even begin to explain why?

Nick reached inside his jacket, took out his wallet, and handed me a photograph. On it a woman smiled. Her hair was a mass of cinnamon curls around her face. Here was a pretty girl with freckles on her nose. Her file said she was twenty-six, only two years younger than me. She’d had no idea, but Rianna Moreau had been living my dream. She had a husband who loved her without reservation. She had a fulfilling job she loved. She had Baby Rory. They were a family together and their future looked bright until some asshole came over and robbed them of it.

Nick’s eyes watered. He squeezed his hand into a fist. “He won’t know that she was kind. He’ll know that she loved him because I’ll tell him, but he will never feel that love. My son is barely born, and his life is already broken.”

I wished I could say something, but nothing that would come out of my mouth would make his loss easier to bear.

Baby Rory made little noises, oblivious to his father’s grief.

“I’ll never see my wife again.” Nick’s voice faltered. He pulled himself back. “I want you to understand. I want you to know what they took from me. To me, she was everything. I can’t even say her name anymore.”

I reached over and rested my fingers on his clenched fist.

“Raphael said you’re the best. He said you would find them.” Nick’s gaze searched my face. If only I had the right words…

“You’re a carpenter,” I said. “You build beautiful things because that’s what you do. Investigation is what I do. I live it and breathe it, I’m trained for it, and I’m damn good at it. Your wife is not a name on the report, Nick. You and your son, you aren’t some meaningless statistic. Rianna is real, and so are the two of you. I know what you had and I know what it’s like to lose it. I understand.”

I saw the split second when Nick broke down: something in his eyes snapped, the line of his mouth sagged, and he cried. I set Rory back into his car seat and hugged Nick. He shuddered in my arms, not sobbing but spasming, as if the pain inside him was breaking out in short bursts.

“I can’t promise you success,” I told him, patting his back. “But I promise you I won’t stop looking. I’ll never stop looking. I’ll do everything I can to get you and your son your answers and your justice.”

In the corner Ascanio stared at us, his eyes freaked out.

Nick shook, rigid, his voice a low guttural growl with bits and pieces of words coming through. “…Take her from me…”

“I promise you that when I find them, they will suffer,” I told him. “It won’t bring your wife back, but when we’re done with them, they will never rob anyone else of their life again. You must stay strong, Nick. You must be strong for your son. He still has a father, a tough, fierce father who loves him, who will be there for him.”

Gradually the shudders stopped. Nick pulled away from me, suddenly, as if just realizing that he had been crying. He picked up the child carrier. Baby Rory yawned.

“You’ll tell me when you know?” Nick asked.

“I will.”

He went out the door. I slumped in my chair.

Ascanio came over and sat on my desk. “Man, that was heavy.”

“That’s the other half of the job,” I told him. “You are accountable to the victims of the crime you’re investigating. You accept responsibility for it. They place their trust in you and they expect you to bring them justice. You must never forget that it’s about people. It’s about suffering and loss.”

“That sucks.”

“Congratulations—you’re catching on.”

He frowned. “But I thought you were supposed to be detached. So it’s not personal.”

I sighed. “You can’t let it get to you, because you still need to focus. You need some distance to be objective. But it’s personal. It’s always personal. You can’t ever forget that there are people involved. You also can’t let your compassion for the wronged cloud your judgment, because there are more important things at stake than getting Nick his vengeance.”

Ascanio studied me. “What can be more important than that?”

“Making sure that the guilty never do it again. The people who killed Rianna and the other shapeshifters broke the most sacred of laws—they murdered. Since they did it once, they will probably do it again. First and foremost, we have to make sure we keep them from destroying another life.”

Ascanio pondered it. “Nick doesn’t see it this way.”

“Nick doesn’t need to. It’s our job to worry about that, not his.”

“I think he wanted you to tell him you would find the killer and solve the whole thing.”

“Yes he did.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“Because I don’t make promises I can’t keep. Now get off my desk and bring me Doolittle’s report.”