Hidden Crimes (13 page)

What the hell was going on with him?

Nate didn’t let women sleep over. He fed
them, he fucked them, and then he ushered them as charmingly as
possible out the door. If a repeat encounter so much as hinted at
leaving her toothbrush here, she was history. He didn’t think of
women as possessions. To him, they were entertaining loans.

Evina looked so right snuggled in his bed he
wanted to keep her there forever.

Alarmed, he dragged one hand through his
tangled hair. He needed a shower and a stiff whiskey. Okay, maybe
not the whiskey. Under the surface sheen of anxiety, his body was
seriously relaxed.

That second time, when he’d taken her from
behind, his bulbus gland had activated. Located low down on the
underside of werewolf penises, the organ was a vestige of their
canine halves, meant to improve the chances of conception. When
werewolves hooked up with a likely genetic mate, it swelled at
orgasm, tightening their fit within their partners. Because the
bulbus was nerve-rich, it could produce killer orgasms. Nate’s
scalp had just about peeled off when he’d exploded in Evina.

The reaction didn’t make sense to him. Evina
was a tiger: by definition inappropriate to mate. Of all
Resurrection’s races, only faeries could interbreed with anyone
they chose. Nate had only had his bulbus swell twice before, and
each time for wolf partners. On those occasions, he’d found the
phenomenon mildly uncomfortable. With Evina, the ecstasy had been
breathtaking.

To his dismay, he saw that as he sat there
pondering, he’d laid his hand on her hip and was rubbing it with
his thumb. That too was making him feel good.

Shower
, he ordered, drawing back the
caress.

He needed time alone to sort this out.

~

Evina roused to the murmur of a television
with its sound on low. The flicker of the screen led her across the
open loft, whose lights were otherwise turned off.

Unsure whether she was welcome to wander
around naked, she’d wrapped the slightly ripped silk sheet around
her, toga-style. Nate sat in the living room, watching a large flat
screen from a very sculptural low white couch. Thanks to her inner
cat night’s vision, Evina had no trouble seeing him. Nate’s hair
was damp, and he’d pulled on a pair of navy silk boxer shorts.
They’d have been laughably Casanova-ish on anyone but him. As it
was, she noted once again how tight and sexy his body was.

He glanced up as she padded over. “The WQSN
spot was on. I’ll play it again for you.”

She sat, and he used the remote to rewind for
her. The spot was simple enough. The sketch of the child was shown,
along with a tip line number. The newscaster asked if anyone had
information about the boy, explaining that the police believed he
might have gone missing between May and August of that year. The
timeframe seemed right to her. She turned to Nate and found him
biting his thumbnail.

In a man as self-assured as he was, the
nervous gesture was a big deal.

“Nate,” she said, “did you get into trouble
over this with your boss?”

He grimaced, then caught himself and
shrugged. “It’ll blow over.”

“Well, forgive me for noticing, but that
Grand Canyon-size furrow between your eyebrows is contradicting
you.”

He hopped up from the sofa before she could
touch his arm. “I can handle it.”

She looked at him. His body language was as
troubled as her daughter Abby’s when she couldn’t find a way to
protect her twin from a slight.

“It’s not a problem,” Nate insisted.

His tone didn’t convince her. Would his alpha
throw him out for going behind his back? Some lead shifters were
too rigid to tolerate defiance.

“Do you have family besides your pack?” she
asked. Her voice was too sympathetic. She knew that from the way he
drew his pride closer to himself.

“I’ve been a lone wolf before,” he said
dryly.

Evina knew she ought to shut up. She rubbed
her knees through the sheet, trying to get herself to do just that.
Then she caught sight of the time on Nate’s Elfnet cable box.

“Crap!” She jumped up in horror. “It’s nearly
5 a.m. You recorded last night’s news. Oh my God, I have to get
home.” She smacked her head in annoyance. “Milk. Rafi drank it all
yesterday. I was supposed to buy some before breakfast.”

“I have milk,” Nate said soothingly. “Nearly
a whole gallon. Why don’t you shower and get dressed?”

She needed to wash up. Both her children had
sharp little cat noses, and Nate’s scent clung too strongly to her
to pass muster. She wasn’t ready to answer questions about him—not
even her own, if it came down to it.

“Go,” he said, shooing her.

“I’ll pay you for the milk,” she promised.
“I’m afraid my son is a bottomless pit for it.”

His eyes went soft, his own troubles
forgotten in solving hers. “It’s a gift, Evina. A small one. You
don’t even need to thank me.”

~

He might not need her thanks, but Evina
couldn’t forget Nate’s kindness. She’d seen him bristle at her
attempt to poke into his problems, and still he’d been sweet to
her. Twice, she caught herself stroking his plastic milk container
instead of pouring it. That was completely stupid. He’d given her
some milk, not volunteered to help feed her litter from now until
adulthood.

Sometimes having a primitive half was a pain
in the ass.

“Mommy?” Rafi said from his seat at the
kitchen table, where he and his sister were shoveling in their
favorite Faerie-O’s cereal.

To her relief, he’d been sleeping in his boy
form when she came in to wake him up. She hated chivvying him to
change first thing in the morning. For one thing, it took forever.
For another, the fact that she had to so often worried her. How was
her little boy going to grow up happy and socialized if he felt
more kinship with his tiger than the world of mostly one-formed
people?

“Yes, sweetie?” she asked, hoping none of
that sounded in her voice.

“If you had faerie blood in you, would Daddy
have married you?”

Unprepared for this, Evina barely stopped her
coffee from spurting out her nose. She stood in front of the sink
with her back to it. This, she’d learned, was the best position
from which to goose her sometimes wandery children through
breakfast. When she recovered her breath, she spoke.

“Why do you ask that?”

Rafiq’s face was thinner than his sister’s,
his eyes the same big round pools of blue. Though both had her dark
curly hair, those azure eyes came from Paul. Right then, Rafi’s
were round and curious. “Grandma said Liane cast a spell on him.
That’s what faeries do, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” Evina said carefully, “but we
don’t know Liane did. I expect your father just fell in love with
her.”

“Grandma called her the
B
-word,” Abby
added helpfully.

“Grandma has her opinions. I hope you know
you shouldn’t repeat them.”

“Ever?” Abby asked, which Evina suspected was
a trick question.

“Not if you think someone’s feelings will be
hurt. Even Grandma wouldn’t call Liane the
B
-word to her
face.”

Abby looked like she wasn’t convinced of
this, possibly proving what a sharp tack she was. “When I grow up.
I’m going to get some faerie blood in me. Then I can marry if I
want to. Or change mean people into toads.”

Abby’s practical turn of mind was hard to
argue with. Evina wondered where to begin explaining that she’d
have to be
born
part fae—and that this wasn’t always a
blessing. Liane was beautiful, it was true, but because of her
heritage, her and Paul’s mixed-race child was facing
challenges.

A knock on the kitchen side door saved her
from searching for the words.

“Daddy!” Abby and Rafiq chorused. Evina
supposed his arrival explained the twins’ choice of breakfast
topics. Little felines especially had access to information that
sometimes seemed psychic. To them, the coincidence was nothing to
be startled by. They ran to hug their father as he stepped in.

Paul gave them the growls and tickles they
both adored, his playful side part of what had made her fall for
him.

“I didn’t know you were coming by,” she said
when the chaos had subsided.

Evina’s ex was a big tiger. His smile and his
bright blue eyes were his best features, though he wasn’t
unhandsome. He had Rafi tucked under one wrestler’s arm, while Abby
rode his big shoulders. He was so tall Abby’s mop of black curls
brushed the ceiling.

“I thought I’d take them to school,” he said.
“Plus it seemed like I ought to talk to you.”

His choice of words joined a whiff of
belligerence to put her on full alert. “It seemed you
ought
to,” she repeated.

Paul set his jaw, trying as usual to be more
alpha than he was. “Liam called me.”

Liam must have given him and earful about the
wolf who’d come sniffing around the station house.

“He had no business calling you. No more than
you have lecturing me.”

“I used to run that station.”

“
Used to
, Paul. And never without me
to back you up.”

“Mommy!” Abby complained as a brickish color
washed up her mother’s ex-boyfriend’s face.

“You’re in the wrong,” Evina said
quietly.

She didn’t use her dominance on him. Though
her will packed more watts than his, it didn’t seem right to do
that in front of their children. The resentment in Paul’s
expression said he knew she could force him to back down.

“They’re my cubs too,” he blustered. “You
shouldn’t be doing . . . unnatural things around them.”

Rafi squirmed out of his father’s hold so he
could look at her wide-eyed. “What unnatural things, Mommy?”

Hell
, Evina thought, unable to lie to
him. “Mommy made a friend who’s a wolf. He’s a police detective and
very responsible, but some people don’t think cats and dogs should
be friends.”

“I like puppies,” Rafi offered, which made
her laugh. She ruffled his mop of curls, cut to match his sister’s,
then reached up to pat Abby’s cheek.

“I like puppies too,” she warned her ex
darkly.

~

Nate, Carmine, and Dana their dispatcher had
nearly a hundred tip line calls to sort through when they arrived
at work. Carmine’s experience came in handy for deciding who was or
wasn’t worth calling back. Since every recording had to be listened
to regardless, screening the crazies from the maybes ate up the
whole morning.

After that, Carmine insisted lunch was a
must. Though Nate was itchy to get going, he had to admit filling
his stomach helped him get through the afternoon.

They were on their tenth follow-up visit when
it looked as if their luck—which had sucked so far—might be
changing. They’d come to an older and poorer section of the city,
to an address in a goblin warren. Buildings in Goblinville, as the
projects were colloquially known, appeared bombed out but were
perfectly sound inside. The goblins who clustered together in them
simply altered the original human apartments to suit their own
aesthetic.

Dank and crumbly was the prevailing
theme.

The rate of crime in the area made Nate
thankful they’d signed out a department vehicle. Goblins didn’t
have as much spellcraft as elves or fae, but the average
do-not-steal charm wouldn’t deter them. Nate’s Goblinati would have
been especially enticing, having been assembled in a goblin-run
factory. The goblin lower classes, whose neighborhood this was,
sometimes resented the owners of the goods their miniscule upper
strata profited from selling to.

“Jeesh,” Carmine said, shaking his head as he
stepped heavily from the car. His huge work boots crunched a soda
can that lay in the sidewalk’s weedy strip of grass. “Why do people
live like this?”

“They feel at home here. Everyone has their
comfort zone.”

Nate’s attitude wasn’t universal. Every so
often, some supposed do-gooder group started a campaign to have
goblins deported back to Faerie. The efforts invariably died on the
vine. Goblins were too useful as cheap labor in too many
businesses. Despite their occasional propensity for theft, they
never went on strike, and they weren’t usually violent. If they
wanted to live in squalor, lots of folks decided that was the
immigrants’ business.

“There’s Building B.” Carmine pointed out a
marginally less gloomy building among the depressing huddle of dark
brick.

They picked their way to it through more
trash and knee-high weeds. Just in case, they kept their hands on
their weapons and all senses on alert. Glittering eyes watched them
silently from windows, causing their hackles to crawl a bit. They
ducked through a vestibule that had been purposefully lowered. Few
goblins were more than four feet tall. High ceilings, so they
claimed, made them feel oppressed. Low ones certainly made policing
them uncomfortable for the cops.

Forced to crouch but resigned, they took the
creaky lobby elevator to Unit 1204. The graffiti that embellished
it was in a language neither of them spoke.

They announced themselves and, when
requested, pressed their gold shields to the low peephole.

The door was opened by a female goblin whose
skin was a surprisingly beautiful shade of red. Lower class goblins
were mostly gray.

“You’re Hephaesta Erg?” Nate asked, wanting
to be sure. “You called in a tip about a child last night?”

The goblin inclined her hairless and pointy
head. “I am and I did. Please come in if you wish to speak.”

Nate and Carmine entered, relieved to
discover the goblin’s ceilings reverted to normal height. The
interior wasn’t dirty, though it did give off an impression of
shadowy disarray. All the hand-built wooden furniture was
child-sized. Necessarily not invited to sit, they stood.

For a moment, the goblin simply stared at
them, wringing her long red hands in front of her bony chest. She
wore clothes, which her kind didn’t always do. In her crocheted
cardigan and white-collared dress, she reminded Nate of a very
small lunch lady.