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I haven’t accepted her as a client, but no need to make her more anxious at this point in the meeting.
The sores on her face and her chewed-up lips suggest Mrs. Lewis is a drug addict, but a sober one at the moment. Her trip here meant enough for her to scrape together the money for a deposit, which is no small feat when those funds could have bought her a week’s worth of her preferred substance.
Resisting the urge to wipe my palm on my pant leg, I instead fold my hands on top of her file. “So, you’re here because your husband went missing three days ago, and you haven’t seen him since?”
She nods jerkily. “Jimmy.” She licks the blood from her cracked lips. “He left for work and never came back.”
“Have you reported his disappearance to the police?” I ask.
Her gaze jumps around my office. “They said they’d look into it, but they won’t. That’s why I came here.”
“Because Jimmy’s a drug dealer?” I guess.
Nodding again, she leans forward. “But he’s a good man. He takes care of me. He wouldn’t just vanish like this. Not without telling me.”
I make a mental note to call the coroner’s office about any John Does. The most logical explanations are an overdose, murder by a rival gang, or city lockup.
If we can locate Jimmy’s whereabouts quickly, we can scoot her along to make room for other clients. I dislike wasting time on cases the police can easily solve.
“Please.” She lunges across the desk, then freezes when Darius growls a warning. She settles back in her seat and picks at a string on her skirt. “Don’t write Jimmy off just because he has a questionable profession.”
“His profession isn’t in question,” I assure her. “We aren’t the police.”
“He’s doing the best he can,” she insists, clearly not believing me. “We’ve been saving money for a long time now to make a better life for ourselves. We want to start a family. Once we get clean, we can buy ourselves a nice place to live.”
Tears fill her eyes. “Please, I have the money to pay you. That’s what matters, right? You’ll find Jimmy?”
Sighing, I look down at the cashier’s check sitting in the file in front of me. The deposit probably drained their little nest egg. “Look, Mrs. Lewis, we’ll make some calls, but this kind of case...”
I slide the check back across the desk. “This money will more than cover the expenses of a private investigator. I can give you some references to trusted companies, and I’ll call in a referral—”
“I know what you guys do here.” Eyes fever bright, she shoves the check back across the desk. “You’re the only ones who can bring my Jimmy home.”
I lean back in my chair. “What do you think we do here, exactly?”
“You’re based out of a fortuneteller’s shop.” She grips the edge of the desk hard enough to turn her knuckles white. “You’re one of those Others. You can go places a regular detective can’t.”
Others are what the humans call the demons and witches who came out to the public five years ago. They claim it’s more politically correct, disregarding what the paranormal call themselves, and thus making a clear distinction betweennormalhumans and theOthers.
But Mrs. Lewis isn’t here to discuss politics. “Why do you think anOtheris needed to locate Jimmy?”
Her gaze jumps around the office once more, searching for surveillance cameras. They’re present, so she’s not paranoid, but she won’t find them. We’re too good at what we do to show our hand so easily.
Despite not spotting anything, her voice drops to a whisper. “Jimmy was working the Bone Yard three nights ago.”
The Bone Yard is several blocks of Clearhelm that had once been middle-class businesses and apartment living until demons claimed it as their own. When the city couldn’t take it back, they’d done the next best thing and built a wall around it, turning it into a lawless sanctuary for Others.
People who enter do so at their own risk.
“He got his hands on some real angel feathers,” Mrs. Lewis continues, her tone hushed. “It was going to be his last run. It would have set us up for life.”
Gods, humans are dumb. They see one succubus with her wings out and suddenly they think they’ve seen angels.
But if Jimmy had acquired real succubus or incubus feathers and not the spray-painted ostrich feathers sold online, then the chance that he’s already dead just doubled.
Sure, there are non-harmful ways to acquire succubus and incubus feathers. But the sex demons are excellent at policing what they shed, since a single feather can send a room full of humans into a sex frenzy.
No, most demon body parts are stolen at the cost of the demon’s existence through the use of dark magic. Humans caught trafficking demon body parts don’t survive for long.
