“By the way, nice jammies,” he said with a sly smile.
I hurriedly crossed my arms over my chest. The “jammies” were just the silk shirt and pants that I wore to summon, but it hadn’t occurred to me to throw on different clothes. Or even a bra. Not that I was so well-endowed that it was instantly obvious, but Justin was a cop and a guy. And it was chilly out. He had noticed.
And while I knew he was just teasing me and giving me shit, I never knew quite how to respond when guys joked with me in a quasi-sexual way. My aunt Tessa was not the most sociable of people, and I’d been forced to figure out the complexities of social skills on my own—with varying degrees of success. That was one of the reasons I loved being a cop: There was a built-in sense of brotherhood that satisfied a long-buried desire to somehow belong.
That was also why I loved being a summoner—there were rules when dealing with demons. Dealing with humans was never simple or straightforward.
Justin didn’t seem to notice my angst—he just snickered at my reaction, then settled down to the business of taking my statement and the report of the burglary. He took a few obligatory pictures of the damage to the window by the front door but didn’t bother going inside. Damn good thing, since the door to the basement was still ajar. That would have been a tough one to explain—the chalked circle, the carefully placed candles, the tinge of incense. I kept my smile fixed on my face while I gave myself a mental head-smack. I had no desire to be dubbed a “Satanist” by people who had zero clue about demons and the arcane. Even though there was no such creature as “Satan” or “Lucifer” or a “Prince of Darkness”—at least not among the creatures I dealt with—that fact wouldn’t help me explain away my penchant for summoning the other-planar creatures that were known as demons.
Finally Justin had all the information he needed and had my perp stuffed into the back of his car. He scowled as he closed the door. “Dopehead. He’s totally zoned out.” He glanced back at me as he climbed into the driver’s seat. “Hey, I think you cut yourself on some of the glass.”
I followed his gaze to my left forearm, where a thin trickle of blood was snaking its way down to my hand. I quickly swiped at the blood with the hem of my shirt. It wasn’t the first time I’d stained the shirt with blood. “Yeah, looks like I brushed against something. It doesn’t look too bad though.” I knew it wasn’t a serious cut. The knife I’d used was razor-sharp, and I’d become skilled at making the requisite slice no deeper than it needed to be. It was always worth that small pain to feel the sense of utter satisfaction after a successful summoning, to know that, as long as I didn’t screw up anything in the ritual, I would be able to control a demon. Even if I couldn’t control anything else in my life, I knew I had that.
“Well, be thankful that you’re not working tonight. Apparently the night watchman at the wastewater plant found a body.”
I leaned against his car. “Unless the guy was killed with a bad check, I doubt I’ll be involved.” That was one nice thing about working mostly white-collar crimes: I very seldom got called out in the middle of the night for an investigation.
Okay, that was the only nice thing. Everything else about it bored the living crap out of me. For two years I’d busted my ass as a detective in Property Crimes, and three weeks ago I’d finally been rewarded with a transfer to the Violent Crimes Division. However, I had yet to have a case assigned to me, and since there were still plenty of check-fraud and identity-theft cases, I’d continued to work those while I learned the ropes of homicide investigations.
But I could live with that. The feeling of accomplishment at the promotion had been damn near as sweet as a successful summoning. Here I was with thirty looming on the horizon, and I could actually say that I was finally getting somewhere in my life. I had a solid career and something resembling a future, despite my best efforts to fuck up my life when I’d been young and stupid.
“Girl,” Justin corrected as he pulled on his seat belt. “Not a guy. Cut all to shit, from what I heard, with a big mark on her chest.”
Goose bumps sprang up on my arms. “You mean, cut as in torture? Is the mark on her chest a symbol?”
Justin snorted. “Now, why you gonna go thinking like that? It’s probably some crack whore who got on the wrong side of her dealer.”