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“Not my fault you look like a hard forty.”
He huffed, the sound of a man amused when he didn’t want to be. “I’m just one of those people who went gray by thirty.”
“Look, I’m not complaining.”
“No?” The lift of his eyebrow was all too tempting, as if I’d shown my hand.
Instead of answering—I didn’t need the complication of letting the werewolf next door know how incredibly handsome I found him—I changed the topic. “So, you said you had information?”
He leaned back and pulled a file from the kitchen counter, then tossed it onto the table next to me. I opened it and flipped through the two scant pages. “This is it?”
“I don’t know why people expect the police will have huge files on everyone. I hate to burst your bubble, but most people are exceptionally boring, and the police take little notice of them. Rachel Deglo was thirty-two, sold makeup for a living and had two cats. That’s everything there is to know about her.”
“How would she end up on the radar of a vampire?”
“People don’t need to do much to end up a victim, Ava. Just being in the vicinity of a vampire is enough.” He dropped his voice, as if making a point.
I closed the file and met his gaze. “Go on, lecture me. I know you’ve been dying to do it.”
“Kase isnotsomeone you should trust.”
“You know him? And here I thought it was rude to assume all you supernaturals knew each other.”
Troy’s expression didn’t soften. If anything, he seemed more frustrated by my not taking him seriously. “Kase is second in line in the local coven. Everyone knows him. Many say he actually runs it more than the leader does.”
“Colter looked pretty in charge when I met him.”
Troy’s stillness came back, that edge that said he was trying not to look as bothered as he was. “You met Colter?”
“He’s the one who called me in to work the case.”
“No one sees Colter, Ava, especially not on some low-level job. Even the consultants who work for the coven never actually meet him.”
So why had I? Why would I meet both Colter and Kase? And could Kase actually be as powerful as Troy seemed to think? I pressed my lips together as I considered it. It was hard to imagine Kase as being like Colter. Colter had been terrifying—he’d reached that point in being a vampire where he barely seemed like a person anymore. Kase, however, despite a few times when he would go still in that terrifying way, wasn’t the same.
“You still haven’t explained what they want with you or why you know what I am or why the idea of vampires and werewolves doesn’t bother you at all.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.” I pointed my fork at him. “Last I checked, you never told me you get all furry every full moon, so maybe you don’t pretend to be innocent here?”
He leaned back in his chair. “Fair enough. I told you I was turned about thirty years ago. That’s where my story pretty much starts and ends. Your turn.”
I opened my mouth then snapped it shut. When was the last time I’d told anyone anything?
I didn’t talk about myself, ever. I tried very hard not to think about whatever I was, to pretend it didn’t exist, that I was just like everyone else.
Yet, Troy stared at me in that way that said he wasn’t going to give in. The last time I’d seen that look was when I’d run over his hedges on accident, and he’d waited until I’d admitted it.
The bastard could outlast me for sure.
Better to get it over with and just rip the Band-Aid off. “If I said I could see dead people, would it sound too cliche?”
“A medium?”
Ihatedthat question. Not because I had a problem with mediums, but rather because I wished I had something so easily definable. It would make my life much simpler to be able to say exactly what I was, for better or worse. Instead, I always had to follow up every clarification withwell, sort of.
“Not exactly. Mediums use basic magic to draw in a spirit, and even then, it’s only the echo of one. Some are more attuned to that sort of magic, or drawn to it, but they’re just doing a spell that’s already been created. That’s why mediums are next to useless, why they can’t give any real information. They can only call up a reflection of who the person was before they went to the afterlife, like an imprint left here.”
He didn’t talk over me, didn’t seem to doubt me. Instead, he nodded for me to continue.
