Skinwalker

Oh, yeah. The camera. If he had been hoping to do Katie’s security and he missed a camera that I found, that could only make him look bad. “That, I’ll tell you.” I let my smile spread and lowered my eyes to the tea. “I’m good.” I sipped.

 

He huffed, a belligerent laugh, and let the silence grow, his eyes on me like a weight. But, in the game of waiting contests and which predator will blink first, he broke. His hostility melted in a plosive puff of breath and a faint stench of frustration. “Fine. You got ways of doing things I don’t. You got the job; I didn’t. But a girl was killed last night. By the rogue.”

 

“I know. I saw him.”

 

The Joe—Rick, he did have a name—sat up, gathering himself. I put down my mug, freeing my hands, and waited to see what he would do. He was wearing a T-shirt again this morning and, as his biceps bunched, the bottoms of the tats were more visible than yesterday. Definitely claws on the left arm. Something dark and fuzzy on the right arm and shoulder. I wanted to see them, but figured if I asked him to take off his shirt, he might get the wrong idea. I was so tired, I grinned without thinking.

 

“It isn’t funny,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “I knew her.”

 

I held up a hand, palm out, fingers splayed to show I meant no offence, and shook my head. He settled slightly and I picked up my mug again. “I’m sorry for your loss. If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t smiling about the girl.”

 

“You saw him kill her?”

 

“No. I was tracking him.” Which was the truth, except Rick would naturally think I was following by sight, not by smell. Here was where our conversation would devolve into lies, partial lies, and total lies, and where I would get tripped up if I made a mistake. “He went around a corner and I paused too long, thinking he might have seen me. He got her before I could react. He’s fast. He went up the wall when he spotted me.” I watched Rick’s face. He was studying mine. “Straight up. I’d always thought that thing about vamps being able to fly or climb walls was myth.”

 

Rick shook his head. “Only the old ones can climb like that. The real old ones.”

 

“And you know that how?”

 

“I know Katie. I asked.”

 

And she just answered? I remembered Beast’s first foray into the Quarter. The smell of vamps everywhere. There were a lot of real old ones. “I followed from the street as he ran across the rooftops.” Also truth, well, sorta. I finished off the tea and stood to pour another cup, but kept my body at an angle and Rick in my peripheral vision.

 

“Nobody saw you,” he said. “Cops were on the scene almost instantly.”

 

It sounded like an accusation again. I shrugged. He was persistent and curious. Persistent and curious people often stick their noses into things they shouldn’t, and this guy looked like a prime candidate for that particular trouble. I needed to point his nose into directions useful to me, keep him where I could see him, use him, and distract him away from things I wouldn’t share. “I need backup on this and I got a budget. You want the job?”

 

“Yes. And I want to know how you get out of here without me seeing you.”

 

I glanced back at him. Time for another lie. “You know the saddlebags on my bike?” I turned back to the tea. “Like that.”

 

He sat back, amazement crossing his face. “You know a witch who can make an invisibility charm?”

 

Invisibility charms were legend, not reality, so far as I knew, but enough people claimed they existed to merit the lie being taken for truth. “Not quite. But sorta. She calls it an obfuscation charm.” I added more sugar and stirred, keeping my face turned away. I didn’t lie well and I knew it. “You won’t see me come or go unless I’m in the mood to let you.”

 

He stood and came close, leaning on the counter, facing me, a little inside my personal space. “What’ll I be doing if I work for you?”

 

I took a breath to answer and felt it stop, felt my ribs freeze in motion. I inhaled slowly then, drawing in the air. The scent. His scent. I leaned in and pulled the air near Rick through my nostrils, feeling him tense when my face passed close to his neck. I pivoted, standing behind him, leaning in. His hands fisted in shock but I couldn’t stop. I opened my mouth and pulled back my lips, pulling in his scent.

 

It was familiar. One of the smells on the cloth Beast used to track the rogue. This scent. A woman’s perfume, a woman’s body, so faint on the vamp I had hardly noted it. The Joe—Rick—wore the same scent the rogue carried.

 

They had been with the same woman. With, as in with. How could anyone, even a human, bear to be with a sick, rotting rogue? Yet I didn’t smell rogue on Rick, only the woman. So why not? Why hadn’t she carried rogue stink back and forth between the two men?

 

I clamped down on my reaction and stepped to the table. When I set the mug on it, my fingers trembled. I made a fist to hide it. I needed privacy to analyze all this. “Today, nothing,” I said, picking up the conversation as if nothing had happened. “Tonight, I’ll give you some addresses to track down, owner, renter, property owners nearby, that sorta thing.”

 

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