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“Uh. Sure?” I was a little confused how I’d gone from pulling a recalcitrant shifter out of a dumpster to taking said shifter to a fucking vet—was that offensive? It seemed like that might be offensive. But if the damn thing wasn’t going to take human form, I didn’t know that the ER was a better option.
Maybe Raj could clue me in. Rajesh Parikh, Raj to those of us he’s actually willing to tolerate outside of work, is a shifter. Specifically, a tiger. Someday I want him to actually show me what he looks like in tiger form, but I know better than to push it. A lot of shifters are really self-conscious about being seen in their animal forms by people who aren’t also shifters.
Raj works in Internal Affairs, which means most of the RPD hates him, and I, the perennial trouble-maker, basically have him on speed-dial.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket with a grimace, then tried to figure out where I could wipe the slime off of it that wasn’t already covered in blood or goop.
Doc leaned over and offered a small, plastic-wrapped package of tissues.
I sighed. “Thanks.” I took some and cleaned off my phone, then tried to wipe the worst of it off my fingers. I held the dirty tissues in one palm as I texted Raj.
Where do I take an injured shifter who doesn’t want to shift back?
I almost put the phone back in my pocket before I thought better of it and settled for just keeping it in my hand.
Mays took it as a sign I wanted him to give me a vet’s name. “Broad Street All-Night Vet.”
I dutifully swiped my finger over my phone’s notes app, writing it down. I didn’t have a pet, so unless Raj thought a vet was the way to go, it probably was useless information, but whatever.
The phone buzzed in my hand, and I pulled down the text notification.I don’t want to know, Hart.The next one popped up while I was reading.You can take us to a vet, as long as we’re in animal form.
Okay, then. Maybe Iwasgoing to a vet with a shifter Xolo dog.
My phone buzzed again, and I looked at the next message from Raj.
Whoever it is will probably just shift when they feel safe. Do you need me to come out?
I thought about it, then sent back a no, thank you. While having Raj here to help with the shifter problem was appealing, calling IAD to a crime scene would put everyone else on edge and probably only exacerbate my already shit reputation as a tattle-tale.
I don’t take it personally.
If you’re going to be a piece of human trash, damn fucking right I’m going to tattle-tale on you. Because it’s always the humans. Okay, fine.Almostalways. Ninety-nine percent of the time. First of all, there aren’t really many Arcanids on the force. RPD had me, Raj, and a vamp over in Precinct Two. There had been a wolf shifter in Three, but he’d retired last year.
Arc-humans were more common—there was a shitty banisher in Four who was absolutely in awe of Ward. Each of the precincts also had at least one empath, who were damn useful as living lie-detectors, as well as a couple touch-psychics in One and Two who often got sent out on loan. But the skills of Arcs vary pretty widely—even if Four had a banisher, we usually called in Ward anyway because he could mop the floor with the guy without so much as having to take a deep breath.
Precinct One even had a straight-up magical human: an actual witch, Dani Bowman. Look at us and our diversity—a Nid, an Arc,anda witch. Witches and warlocks weren’t Arcs, not properly speaking, anyway. They were born with their magic, whether they ever actually tapped into it or not. Most magical practitioners had been essentially underground for, well, pretty much all of recorded history because Western so-called civilization since the dark ages had a penchant for setting them on fire, drowning them, or pressing them to death with stones. But with Arcanavirus, they suddenly saw an opportunity to show the world that magic had been here all along.
And it had mostly backfired because people fucking suck and blamed them for the ‘magical plague’ that was now ravaging humanity. While the prevailing scientific theory that the Arcanavirus had mutated in a magic practitioner to carry some of that magic encoded in its viral DNA—or whatever—was probably true, that wasn’t an excuse for people to go all medieval witch hunt, particularly since it wasn’t intentional. But things were slowly getting better in the magical toleration department, and practitioners like Bowman were able to actually get jobs doing magic.
But all of us—Nid or Arc or magic practitioner—were still treated like complete freaks by most of the ordinary normie cops, whether beat, desk, or detective. I watch my back every damn time I’m out on a scene. I also make sure that every ‘I’ has a perfect dot and every ‘T’ a neat little cross, because I know the brass has it out for my irritating ass.
I get it. I’m not the most charming guy on the planet, I don’t give two shits about people’s feelings, and I have this thing called a moral compass that makes me dislike things like bribes and looking the other way.
Don’t get me wrong, you want to deal some low-level drugs to other consenting and mentally competent adults, I don’t actually give a shit. But you want to let a kingpin walk by pissing on evidence or let a rapist get away with it because the victim’s skirt is shorter than what you let your daughter wear out on the weekends, and I will go out of my way to make sure Raj Parikh hears about you.
Raj would probably get it even worse than I do, but he can eat your face if he gets pissed off, and I’m just pretty. For some reason, people are a lot less likely to go full asshole around Raj.
Not that most people dare to say shit to my face, mind you. But believe me, they say plenty that makes it back to my pointy ears, in addition to the stuff that probably doesn’t.
With a sigh, I looked down at the dog, who was curled up in my coat on Ward’s lap, shivering intermittently. It looked up at me, turning its head to stare at me with its brown eye. “I suppose I could put you in my car, doggo,” I said to it. “Get you out of the damn wind, anyway, until I can get someone to look at you.”
After giving up and stuffing my phone back in my still-disgusting pocket, I carefully scooped up both dog and coat from Ward’s lap and made my way back down the alleyway until I got back to my Charger. I put the dog in the passenger seat, still on my coat.
It looked up at me with wide eyes.
“Do I need to turn the heat on?” I asked it.
The dog whined a little.
