Catastrophe (3 page)

I took a deep breath. This was why Sy and I would never work as a couple. I loved my job. I loved everything about bounty hunting: the hunt, the chase, and even the capture or kill. Sure, it was a thankless job at times, and it certainly didn’t win me a lot of friends, but it was satisfying. It was better than sitting around doing nothing or training for wars that would never come, like the rest of my people did. This was my place in the world, and Sy knew that because it was his place too. However, it didn’t stop him from trying to protect me, but how was I supposed to make a difference if I was being treated like a damn flower?

“Nothing is going to happen to me, Sy.” I stayed my hand from reaching toward him. “I’m the best.”

He took my shoulders, turning me toward his entirely-too-serious face. “Femi, you know that I—”

“Stop,” I said firmly. Whatever declaration he was about to make, I didn’t want to hear it. I pulled back from him. I shouldn’t have kissed him. “We’re friends. We’re great friends. Why isn’t that enough?”

A self-deprecating half-grin twisted on his face as he looked down at the table. “Are you ever going to let me tell you how I feel?”

My head shook ever so slightly. He didn’t need to say the words. I knew what they were. “Can’t we just leave this alone?” I didn’t want to hurt him, but this was all I could offer him right now. I didn’t want to be tied to anyone. I was a free agent.

He sat down on the couch. “I have a room already booked for you in New Orleans. It will be waiting for you whenever you want to go.” He crossed his legs. “One more thing, then I promise I will leave this alone. I’m not going to wait forever, Femi. You need to decide what you want. I know what I want.”

His words formed into a pebble within me and sank, disturbing a pool of stubbornness. “I never asked you to wait.” The words came out harsher than I meant them to. I never asked anyone to wait. Not the man I was betrothed to back home, not Sy, not anyone. It was just another way to control me, and I wasn’t having it. I cast him a sidelong glance. “If it were just a one-night stand or a fling…”

Sy met my gaze as if it had been waiting for it. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. We both knew it would never be that between us. He wanted what Olivia and Holden or Selene and Cheney had. I wasn’t the girl to give him that.

“That’s what I thought,” I whispered.

I walked back home, deciding to get my car later. Not that I was running away from Sy or anything, but things had gotten too serious and we both needed some space. It would all go back to normal by morning. He was just reacting to the council bringing me in.

He worries because he cares about you,
the more reasonable internal voice reminded me. Just like I cared about him—and maybe someday we would be more. Just not yet. There were still things I wanted to do. Adventures I wanted to take and worlds I wanted to see.

“And how is my favorite bounty hunter?” Corbin’s voice purred from just beyond the light in front of my apartment door.

Years of training kept me from jumping at the sound of his voice, even though I hadn’t perceived the vampire at all. “What do you want?” I unlocked my door and went inside before he could answer, leaving it ajar.

He followed me in, movements smooth and measured, like a panther stalking its prey. Even the dim light of my apartment seemed too bright for him. The paleness of his hair and his sharp cheekbones lent to his vaguely threatening appearance, but what truly made him look as dangerous as he probably was were the cold, nearly black eyes that never seemed to lighten. They made him impossible to read, and vampires were temperamental. One day you might be their friend and the next they could try to kill you. That was just the way they were—at least the ones I had known.

“Do you color your hair?” I asked him. The Billy Idol blond had to be fake, and yet I couldn’t imagine him going to the trouble of actually dying it.

His cheekbones became even more pronounced as his lips pulled together. “No.”

I cleaned off one cushion on the couch and took a seat, crossing my legs. “What do you want?” I finally repeated.

“I can’t just come to visit a friend?” he asked flatly.

That was the problem. We weren’t really friends. We had worked together a couple times and he hadn’t betrayed me (unlike the first and last vampire I tried to be friends with), but that didn’t mean we were ever going to hang out. “I’m tired, Corbin. What do you want?”

He slowly meandered around the living room of my apartment, his finger lightly grazing over the piles of junk. “Do you ever clean?”

“Not if I can help it.” I was hardly ever home, and that was how I liked it. Mostly this place was a drop-off point. I’d get back from a job, leave my laundry, and repack before I was on the move again.

“I can tell,” he said lightly.

“Are you offering your services?” I asked, pretending to consider it. “Very well. You can start in the kitchen.”

Corbin finally went still, standing in front of me. “Any news from our mutual friend?”

I rolled my eyes. Thomas. Of course that was why he was here. Once, years ago, I had a fling with a vampire. It was one night, and that stupid night was going to haunt me for the rest of my life. How was I supposed to know that he was trafficking rare races in the Abyss to the highest bidder? All I had done was take a bounty to catch a vampire, and I stumbled onto to the rest with his careful prompting. One thing led to another, and we slept together just before he suffered a fit of conscience and warned me he was leading me into a trap because they wanted a Sekhmet. I did my part. I told the vampires and I told Sy, but I also warned him, making sure he got out before they arrived, because he had warned me. “You know, he hasn’t synced our calendar in ages. Do you think he doesn’t love me anymore? Does this mean we broke up?” I said with mock trepidation.

Corbin didn’t look amused. “You seem to be the only one he comes out for these days.”

I cleaned an imaginary speck of dirt off my brand-new silver-heeled boots. The second time Thomas showed up in my world was just a few months ago, but it was just as disastrous at the first time. “I have only seen him twice in my life. The first time, he wasn’t on the run, and the second he sure as hell didn’t come for me. What do you really want? I thought we were past this.” Corbin spent time following me around, determined I knew more than I was saying, but why would I lie? Especially to save an asshole like Thomas.

“Just following up on a couple rumors. Figured I’d come right to the source rather than chasing shadows. That’s all I do these days.”

If I could have invited him to join me on my case, I would have. Corbin and I worked well together. Despite his flaws, he could handle himself in a fight, and he had follow-through. But the council would probably get their panties in a bunch if I brought him in. “Maybe you should just stop looking for him. Get on with your life.”

He raised an eyebrow and his expression clearly said, “What do you know about my life?” which was a fair point. I didn’t know anything, and we were going to keep it that way. “Well, it was good seeing you.” I stood up.

“Are you coming or going?” he asked. “When’s your next case?”

“Going,” I said. “I just got a new one tonight.”

He nodded. “Anything interesting?”

Was Corbin trying to make small talk? What in the hell was happening to the men in my life tonight? “Doubtful. Things have been kind of dull, but hey, a trip to New Orleans. I’m not complaining. I really do have a few things I need to do here before I get some shuteye.”

He stood vampire still (not moving, not blinking, not breathing) and stared at nothing on the wall. Finally he nodded and let me lead him to the door. “If you hear anything…”

“You’ll be the first to know. Night.” I closed the door and flipped the locks, briefly wondering what Corbin had heard.

****

The next morning, everything was like it always was with Sy. He smiled and gave me breakfast before he took me back to my car. Not a single word was mentioned about us or the case. Just like I hoped it would be. The engine roared to life with the turn of a key, and I hit the road.

My mind immediately went to the new case. What in the hell was killing people in New Orleans? No matter how I tried to twist it, a werewolf didn’t make sense. The first sign was that no more wolves were popping up. Sure, you could say the wolf was a crazed monster, because that’s what they were, but growing their pack would be instinctual. They always, without fail, made more wolves, which was why they were easy to hunt.

Even if it were true, though, that this one was the sole surviving wolf, then why do all of this now? To have survived this long meant the wolf would have evolved and would be more than the rabid dog we all knew them to be. Why expose your existence if you were just going to devour all of your potential pack? There was no long-term gain in that, and any wolf that had been smart enough to survive would have been smart enough to figure that out. Either it’d leave enough for regeneration, or it’d eat the whole person to keep from being noticed.

Really, the only thing that made any sense at all was that someone else was doing this. They wanted the attacks to look like a wolf, but the question was why? What did they have to gain by that? It also wanted attention, or it wouldn’t have gone after bounty hunters. That alone was asking for a nightmare of trouble. Had the council not gotten involved and Sy hadn’t broadcast the news to the bounty hunters, any suspicious creature in a two-hundred-mile radius would have been taken out. We may not like each other, but we also took care of our own. Maybe that was what the council had been trying to avoid by sending me here.

Obviously the rest of the hunters came in like it was a werewolf, which meant they tried to hunt it. They would have followed its tracks, learned its patterns, and then, just when they thought they had it, it killed them. Taking on an aware bounty hunter was no small feat. Killing two working together was impressive. Whatever was out there wasn’t just good at what it was doing. It was exceptional.

I parked the car a couple blocks from my hotel and hefted my bag out of the trunk. The air was warm and filled with smells I couldn’t quite identify—for better or worse. However, the city had energy, a life force of its own that seeped beneath my skin and eased away the hustle I usually felt in Chicago. I strolled toward the hotel, listening to the faint sounds of jazz that carried through the air from somewhere in the distance. I could already tell I was going to like it here.

The closer I got to the hotel in the French Quarter, the more I felt the unbridled enthusiasm of the people around me. Humans were mostly just a blur of nameless faces for me, but they were far from being the only residents in a city like this. Vampires were simply everywhere, which was odd. In most cities they pretty much kept to themselves, but here they were out and thick in the evening crowds. All types of fae wandered the streets, and plenty of jinn too. It was a mecca of decadence. One that was almost impossible to resist. I definitely needed to come back here when I didn’t have to work.

I caught sight of my hotel entrance. It wasn’t the typical Abyss establishment I would have normally stayed in. Some of the Abyss was parallel to the human world, and some of it simply overlapped. The establishments that didn’t want to deal with humans at all usually had a spell on them that kept them obscured from sight. Usually those were tucked into the alleys and cracks in the walls, places most people wouldn’t look at twice. This was a human hotel, which was strange. Humans were far more concerned about what other people were doing than we were. All it really did was add another layer I would have to be aware of during this investigation. Why would Sy book me here?

I rang the bell and was buzzed inside. After a quick check-in, I took the elevator up to my room on the fifth floor. Inside there was square box wrapped in matte black paper and tied with a shiny black bow sitting on the bed, and a manila envelope beneath it. I wrinkled my nose. Could this case get any stranger?

I pulled the ribbon off and opened the box. Inside was a wrinkled sheet of paper that looked like it had been crumpled and smoothed multiple times before it was folded and placed into the box. I reached down and plucked it out, unfolding the soft sheet of paper. It was a bounty, an old one from the case I was working on when I met Thomas. I’d hunted down a vampire named Ambrose who was accused of taking a little girl. He didn’t make it and he turned out to be innocent, mostly. It was one of those cases that would always stick with me.

Sy wouldn’t have sent this to me. Corbin might have, but he didn’t know—no one did except Thomas. I stared at the paper in my hand. It was subtle, but I couldn’t think of anyone else who could possibly have this besides him or Sy. Maybe Corbin was right and Thomas was coming out of hiding again, but why now, and why in the hell would he come to me? The last time he was here he’d betrayed me for a second time. I was literally the last person he should try to see.

I refolded the paper. I should have called Corbin to let him know, or at the very least told Sy, but instead I slipped the paper into my back pocket and picked up the envelope. This was definitely from Sy. I recognized the writing on the front. Inside there were four hotel room keys, with the names and addresses of different hotels on them. And there was a stack of cards with a rubber band around them. I flipped through the cards: a human driver’s license, a credit card, a private detective license, a library card, and a random assortment of other crap I didn’t understand. Underneath was a note from Sy.

The other bounty hunters stayed in the Abyss and out of the human eye. I thought you might want to check out their rooms, but wear the necklace. Be as human as possible.

I touched the flame agate on a silver chain around my neck. So he was thinking the hunters had been targeted too. Was it because they caught the killer’s eye, or was it because they were onto something? There was really no time like the present to find out. I tucked my own key into my back pocket, and took theirs too.