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Telling him all this wouldn’t change a damn thing, so I swallowed it all back down and let out a sigh.
“I’m on my way to brunch.” I jammed my feet into my shoes to prove a point. “It’s not a workday. If you want to come back another time…”
“This isn’t about me, Addie. It’s for work. People are dying, but I can’t prove it.”
His words made me pause halfway to my purse. Lifting my head, I turned a stare towards him.
“How do you know? Can you see them, too?” My words felt small and nervous.
However, Perse thought that would be a good time to walk up to Maddox’s face and wave her hands in front of his eyes. She fisted her hands at her sides and shouted at him, which made me flinch.
When Maddox didn’t react, she twisted towards me and shrugged.
Maddox shook his head. “No, I can’t see ghosts. Though I can tell from the way you just flinched, there’s one here causing trouble.”
“I don’t get it. If you have a body, obviously you can find a way to prove there’s been a murder. You don’t need me. You made that very clear when you ran off.”
Maddox’s jaw tightened. A growl rumbled inside him.
I stood my ground. I wasn’t afraid of the ghost wolf. My arcana rose in challenge. The skeletal hand of death rushed out of me and reached towards Maddox. I yanked it back, thinking he would recoil from my power. Instead, Maddox breathed in like it was his first breath of fresh air in years.
In the time we’d been apart, I’d forgotten that he fed on my arcana. His change from human to shifter had been a strange one, unlike any other shifter in recorded history. I’d gone to the local Pack records to search for past shifters like Maddox, but I came up empty handed.
The Lakesedge Pack’s former Alpha bit and changed Maddox;however,that Alpha had been very dead at the time. The Alpha’s bite had more than the normal shifter magic in it, which changed Maddox into a wolf that could teleport using portals to the afterlife and change shape depending on the arcana I gave him.
If he hated me for that, I totally understood. He’d been changed while protecting me. It was the one thing he could blame me for that I would accept.
“I don’t have a ghost or a body…” He sucked in a deep breath. “All I have are calls to the emergency dispatchers. Everyone thinks they’re prank calls, but I convinced the Captain to let me hire a professional Medium for a small fee. I think he’s humoring me, but it doesn’t matter. It’s a foot in the door, which is all I care about.”
My phone pinged in my hand. I turned it over to see a message from Ness.
I’m outside, but I see you have a visitor. Should we reschedule?
I wanted my grapefruit mimosas, damn it. However, if there was another murderer on the loose, and I could help, then it was my duty to do so. Sometimes, I hated my arcana and the guilt that came with it. This heavy burden held me back time and time again.
“You owe me mimosas,” I grumbled to Maddox as I texted Ness back.
Yeah, I think so.
The message hurt to send, but a part of me was happy to have Maddox back. He was here on official business, but that meant there was a chance that we could make amends about what happened before. He didn’t completely hate me.
Ness rolled away, her new car quiet outside. She’d gotten a nice upgrade after Vi flipped her old car in a fight with demons.
I turned to Maddox and put my hands on my hips. It was then that I realized he was looking me up and down. His gaze slid along my body, leaving heat in its wake. A glimmer of his wolf’s light reached those dark eyes until he shook himself and averted his gaze.
Perse sauntered up beside me and tried to nudge me with her elbow. Of course, her elbow went through me since she was a ghost, but I still caught her meaning. I shot her a look of warning.
“See, you never know when you’re going to run into a nice man!” She lifted her hands innocently.
I narrowed my eyes. He must have been outside for a while. Perse had to have seen him. It explained her behavior this whole time. I gave her a look of annoyance. Because Maddox couldn’t hear her, she didn’t have to stifle her open laughter.
“Mimosas?” Maddox asked.
“I know you heard Ness’s car pull up. Don’t play coy with me, detective shifter-man. I’m all dressed up to go out to brunch today.” I gestured to my outfit.
He shook his head. “There’s no time for brunch. Besides, you call that dressed up? That’s a ripped sweater and combat boots. Since when did women stop wearing sundresses to go out?”
“Oh, these aren’t cheap combat boots.” I walked up to him and kicked him in the shin. “These are steel-toed boots.”
