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“Not necessarily.” The address was printed on the card, too, and the more the powder worked, the better I could see the matte black color of it, and the phone number.
“He got injected with that drug in the Bronx. That’s far away from Hell’s Kitchen,” Hunter said.
I flinched.
“Yeah. But it’s worth checking it out.” Because unless the guys at the morgue found anything else on him, it was the only lead I had for now. “I’ll need to check his record first, though. See what he did for a living, if he has any family.”
That was probably going to be the worst part. I’d never had to work with dead bodies before, and so I’d never had to call any family member to give them that kind of news. Would I have to this time?
“And what hewas, too. I’m pretty sure that’s important.”
I nodded, putting the clean card away in my backpack before I turned the engine on. “Let’s get back to the office.”
“Don’t forget to stop by a Starbucks when you see one,” Hunter said as he buckled up, even though he’d already had a large latte on the way here. I hadn’t dared to buy one for myself because I wasn’t sure how I’d react to the sight of the dead body, but now, I would definitely be joining him.
Miles Douglass was a centaur.He operated a window cleaning business, and he had no family that we knew of. No wife or kids. No parents or siblings. Did it made me a horrible person that I was glad I wouldn’t have to call and deliver the news of his death to anyone?
I was probably going to rot in hell. Just as soon as I got to the bottom of this.
I parked the car a street down from Dave’s Grill. Hunter was in the passenger seat, Patricia in the back. Eva had had a date with a “hot werewolf”—or maybe she’d lied through her teeth because she didn’t want to work overtime. Either way, she wasn’t here.
“Ready?” Hunter said, pushing the door open.
“Yeah. Just stick to the plan.” We were here just to have a drink and see what we could see or hear from the staff and the customers.
“The plan is to get drunk on ODP money,” Patricia said with a grin.
“No getting drunk,” I warned. “We need to focus.”
“Sure. We’ll focus.” And she winked at Hunter, as if I wasn’t right there and could see her.
“One drink—that’s it.”
“One drink,” Hunter said. “C’mon, I’m really curious about this place.”
I was curious, too. Dave’s Grill was not the kind of bar I’d thought it would be. It was actually really…nice in there. It was dark, with dim orange lights burning on walls covered in dark red wallpaper. Every piece of furniture was made of dark wood, including the counter. The music was low, the beat steady, and the sound of people talking and laughing gave it an even better vibe. There was more than enough space between the round tables, and it wasn’t as crowded as at the bar. Plenty of space to breathe.
“Wow. I would definitely come here for a drink.” Though it was far from my apartment, I liked everything about this place—even the chairs looked comfortable. Only two tables were free, and we took the one near the middle of the room, where we could be closer to the crowd. Except the music and the chatter were not going to let any of us hear anything clearly. My ears worked, but I was no vampire or werewolf. Or high fae.
“Right? This isnice,” Patricia said when we sat around the table. It really was—the chairs were definitely more comfortable than any other bar I’d been to.
“Damn, look at these people,” Hunter said with a whistle. “We’re definitely coming to Dave’s more often. The men are seriously hot. Look over there.” And he nodded his head at the left side of the bar where three guys dressed in white shirts with bulging muscles almost ripping the fabric apart were having beer.
“Yum. I could do the blonde one,” Patricia said.
“I got the one with the brow piercing,” Hunter said. “I love piercings.”
“Guys, focus,” I said, inviting their eyes to me. “We’re not here to hit on people. And you’re already seeing Lynn.”
“So what? We’re not exclusive or anything,” Hunter mumbled. “I would tell her.”
“Let’s just focus on what we see here first, okay?” Because something told me that we would seesomething. Just a gut feeling that I’d had since I first found the business card in that man’s pocket.
“Okay, but first—did you hear about Avery from HR?” Patricia started. It was incredible. She’d had plenty of rumors to tell us in the morning, but she’d somehow refilled her rumor bag at the office, and she didn’t stop talking for a good thirty minutes.
I went to the bar to get us drinks, and the bartender actually asked to see my ID before he gave me beer. Seriously. But I got the drinks, and I saved the receipt, and I searched every person and every detail of that place. Most of the people at the bar were human, but we were definitely not the only supernaturals. I didn’t have the ability to sense what someone was, but it was pretty easy to feel the magic hanging to a person when you knew what you were looking for. Two vampires were sitting with two women by the bar, and they both buzzed with magic, though I had no idea what they were. A couple at our back were werewolves—I was almost a hundred percent sure of that, but it could also be a trick of the lights behind them playing with the colors of their eyes. And two women and one man on the other side, near the toilets, were not human, either. The way one of them laughed—her voice sharp like a knife assaulting my ears all the way in the middle of the room—made me think maybe she was a banshee. Their magic was in their voices—too powerful for anything to hold back when they used them at their fullest.
But try as I might, I didn’t see anything suspicious like I was hoping. Nobody was sneaking anything to anyone in secret, and nobody was whispering in each other’s ears or looking around them. They all seemed to be completely relaxed. I pulled up the email app on my phone again—probably for the fiftieth time—to see if I’d received anything new. The Research crew were working on the remains of those syringes, trying to come up with anything that would tell us what kind of substances were used and what kind of magic Crackdown was. They hadn’t really been too hopeful because there wasn’t much left in those syringes, and the blood of Miles Douglass had already wiped all traces of it in his system, but I was still waiting.
