Merchant of Dreams 1.04

When I left my apartment twenty minutes later, Kaiten was standing by his car with a scowl painted on his face. Alright, maybe I hadn’t been ready when I called him. Who there was chewing gum on the back of my trousers? Certainly not me.

Last night, I’d been sleepy and quite a bit tired, so I’d failed to notice details I usually kept an eye out for. Now, with the morning sky golden above us and a nice chill in the air, I let my gaze rove over Kaiten with greater detail. He was either ex-military or very well trained. I could tell by his dead eyes and straight back, by the way he held himself, entirely aware of the space around him. It was a quality only the most competent could master.

Deadly. Efficient.

He was in a black suit, dressed for work and without a hair out of place. The slight bulge in his jacket signaled a weapon, and I was sure there was another at his ankle even if I couldn’t see it. Could I take him in a straight draw? Probably not. It was just a feeling I had. His motion was too fluid, too easy. His eyes never missed a detail and there was a way to him that I’d only seen around hit-men in Deadtown.

“Five minutes?” he asked coldly.

I turned and showed him my back. “I had chewing gum stuck to my jeans, and good morning to you too.”

He gave me a flat stare. “You didn’t say where we were going over the phone. Apparently, my every word is being recorded by several clandestine organizations.”

“For being an asshole, yeah,” I replied, “and we’re going to the coroner’s office. No time to chat, Iceman.”

“The coroner’s office? Is this related to the case, or am I simply acting as my driver?”

“Are you refusing to take me? Very, very bad, Kaiten.”

He ran a hand through his thick hair, and I think I wobbled slightly. “It’s right by my station,” he said finally. “Am I missing something? Do you know something I don’t?”

So Robocop wasn’t omniscient. Well that was just magnificent, wasn’t it? I slipped into his black Camaro and started playing with the radio almost as soon as I was in. He slapped my hand away—twice—before turning on me and demanding a straight answer.

“Alright,” I sighed. “Calm the hell down or you’ll blow a vein. Leela Snow died an hour ago at the hospital.”

“What?”

“She’s off to sunnier pastures,” I clarified. “I paid someone at the hospital to call me the moment it happened. The corner is planning to cut her open any minute, and I want to be the first to hear the findings.”

“You mean the corner is going to perform an post-mortem? We don’t call it ‘cutting open’ in our profession.”

“Yes, that,” I replied with a distracted nod. “Are you glad I woke you?”

“I wasn’t asleep, if you must know,” Kaiten said. “What’s with the change of heart, anyways? You do realize it’s your function to keep me away from the investigation?”

“And do you realize your function is to get as close to the investigation as you can? By reminding me of my function, you reduce the chances of ever receiving credit for this,” I replied. “So let’s be happy I bothered to call you and move on, alright?”

Kaiten’s eyebrows met in sharp disapproval, but he started the car and pulled out into the street. I gathered a deep breath, lost in swimming thoughts, and I was hit suddenly by the scent of molten chocolate and almonds. Man, but did I want to bury my nose against his neck and just pant away. Did he rub himself down with the stuff? It was the only way to smell like that. Right at this moment, he felt more like a tasty meal than an attractive man. Maybe a bite of him wouldn’t hurt.

Calm down, tiger. Think ugly thoughts. Blood and gore. Gore and meat. Meat and steaks. Steaks are yummy. So is coffee. Coffee is like chocolate. Chocolate with almonds. Kaiten Elzoran. Oh, my god! It was a vicious cycle. How was I going to escape? Get out of my head, demons!

“What are you thinking?”

“Blood and gore,” I said, perhaps a little too quickly. “You know…the post-mortem. There’s going to be so much blood.”

“Actually, there’s not going to be much. The bodies are drained before,” he replied. “Does blood scare you?”

What a funny guy, right? “No, blood doesn’t scare me,” I said lamely. “Trust me when I say I’ve seen my share of it.”

“That’s what I heard.”

I was suddenly quiet. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, not much,” he replied with a shrug. “People talk. I don’t indulge in the practice, but I asked around about you.”

Shit. How much does everyone know about my past “Did you, now?”

“You sound offended.”

“And you sound incredibly friendly today. It’s creeping me out.”

Kaiten laughed, and I think it was the first time I’d heard him. The sound was deep and strong, overflowing with life but not enthusiastic enough to reflect a true happiness. Like me, Kaiten had his dark past. He had his regrets, fears and evils.

“I was terribly rude last night, and I’m hoping to make up for it,” he replied, and there was a note of honesty in his voice. “After I saw how your colleagues treated you…well, I didn’t feel incredibly just in my outrage.”

My hands curled into tight fists, and I pressed them down against my thighs. “I don’t need your fucking, self-righteous pity,” I snapped. “If you want to treat me well, do it because of my merits and not my weaknesses. I have enough people looking down on me.”

I was expecting an outburst or sharp counter of some kind. In fact, I was hoping he’d get pissed off enough to kick me out of his car. I could deal with hate and anger, but I couldn’t deal with friendship. His kindness was a sharp blade digging into me, because I knew I would turn it against him eventually. I’d betray him as I was taught to. I would betray him because he couldn’t possibly find out about my secrets.

“They say you ran off when you were thirteen,” said Kaiten quietly. “To Deadtown, no less. Just disappeared. Is that true.”

“Why?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” he replied. “I was undercover there for a time. Three years with a local gang.”

My heart dropped down and hit my ovaries. I tried to keep calm when I asked, “When was this?”

“Almost ten years ago,” he replied. A cool breath of relief slid free from my lungs. “I was new to the division and good with covers. Back then, we were just figuring out how to work with the prenaturals, and I was one of the few willing to trust them.”

I laughed, but it sounded empty even to me. “You? Trust us? I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Kaiten shot me a sour glare. “I’d been dealing with red tape for two weeks when I met you last night. The Prenatural Branch threw everything they had at me, and I was angry,” he explained. “You showed up, and I just decided to let it all out. I think you’re a pain in the ass and know very little about police work, but you didn’t deserve being insulted.”

“Stop, please,” I begged with a grin. “You’re ruining everything. Can’t I just hate you? I mean, it’s so damn easy. You’re like an icicle.”

“So I’ve been told,” he replied, smiling that small smile of his. “To be honest, Deadtown changed me. It was hell at every turn. Blood and death. If aren’t a killer down there, then you’re—”

“—A victim,” I completed. “Yeah, I’ve heard that more than once. Why’re you telling me all this? Sounds incredibly personal, and I’m all for girl talk and shit, but I’d rather not have you crying on my shoulder.”

Kaiten’s gray eyes hardened slightly. “You said I shouldn’t judge you by your weaknesses,” he said, “and I’m not going to. From what I know, and it isn’t much, you survived longer than I did, and you did it as a child. Thirteen-year-old girls are either whores or someone’s play thing. Which one were you?”

Son of a bitch. This was all another way to insult me. Of course he would assume I was a whore. How else did I survive there? It filled with a burning anger that I just couldn’t hold in. “Go fuck yourself, why don’t you?” I spat, turning my face away and pressing it against the cool window. “You haven’t the slightest fucking clue what I went through, so don’t throw shit at me, you little, upstart dick.”

Kaiten laughed, and it was cold and remorseless. “I saw girls like you. Beaten and useless. Addicted, track marks all over their arms,” he replied. “If I lifted your sleeve, would I see that?”

I jerked at my jacket, pulling it off and baring my arms to him. I raked my nails across the hard muscle and thrust them up at him. “Look at that, you piece of shit!” I shouted. “Look! Not a fucking mark. I’m as clean as fucking baby. If you even knew how I survived down there, you’d crap your pants and beg me not to tear your fucking throat out.”

And then I saw it, that shadow of amusement. He was enjoying this. He’d got exactly what he wanted. Everything that had come out of his mouth was meant to piss me off and inspire an angry reaction. Shit, but I’d walked right into his trap. He’d laid it so well, pretending to be kind and understanding. Then he sprang that whore comment on me, knowing I’d snap and say something revealing, and I’d done exactly that.

“Oh, don’t stop,” he goaded. “You were saying something about tearing my throat out.”

“You’re a bastard, you know that?” I replied, and I was suddenly calm. I was calm like I was before I killed someone. I’d gone to that place of utter solitude where you could do just about anything and not care. It took a certain amount of experience turn your feelings off by command, but it’s a skill I’d mastered years ago “My past isn’t a tool to be used against me. This isn’t amusing. My life isn’t amusing.”

Kaiten slowed at a red light and looked down at me. “I don’t think it is, but there is darkness to you that I don’t trust. I’ve seen it before, and we both know what it means, don’t we?”

Yes, we did. He had it as well. The numbness that came after you’d killed enough not to care anymore. That point where you could draw and fire, kill and maim without hesitation. It was trick you eventually learned in Deadtown, and if you didn’t learn it fast enough then you died like the rest of them. I was a survivor, and I would never apologize for what I’d had to do.

“If I can’t trust you then I at least have to know what kind of person you are,” he continued. “There are quite a few people in the APD who believe you’re a mole. That you’re working for someone in Deadtown.”

My head snapped up, and my eyes were empty well of hate. “If my uncle thought for even a second that I couldn’t be trusted, he would never have let me join.”

“You mean your father?”

“What?”

“Chief Commissioner Danthir is your father, not your uncle. You called him that yesterday as well.”

I shrugged. “On paper, sure. He adopted me, my sister and my brother—all from different families,” I replied. “We always looked at him like he was our uncle because we still remember the homes we came from. I don’t see how that’s relevant to any of this. I’m not a mole.”

“I know that, but others are certain you are.”

I frowned up at him suspiciously as he accelerated out of the stop. “You know that? How do you know it?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

Kaiten sighed, and I noticed the slight tightening of his hands around the steering wheel. “There are no track marks on your arms. Nothing to show you were an addict, and you don’t act like one either,” he said. “I spent enough time in Deadtown to know it’s almost impossible to stay away from the drugs.  If that place couldn’t break you; if it couldn’t corrupt you, then I doubt you’d betray father’s loyalty so easily.”

“You actually believe that?”

“Yes,” he replied honestly.

“Then you’re being naive,” I replied. “We both know there are more ways to corrupt a person than by drugs.”

“Oh, we do?”

I nodded firmly. “I’ve seen into you, Kaiten. Don’t play me for a fool,” I said. “We’ve already been broken, as much as we want to believe we haven’t. There’s that line you cross; that line you can never came back from. You know what I’m talking about, but you just don’t want to admit it.”

He sat there in silence, and I had my answer.

Our humanity was just a cloak for what we hid underneath.

♦    ♦    ♦

My arrival at the coroner’s office was enough to get my spirits back up. What I didn’t realize until I walked through the front door was that I knew the chief medical examiner. In fact, I knew him damn well. Hanar Javim was a middle-aged doctor who’d been a friend of the family for as long as I could remember. He was the epitome of an academic: inquisitive and slightly mad. I loved the man mostly because of his quirkiness and the fact that he never cared what people thought about him.

Oh, and he was a necromancer. Not many people knew that.

“Aza!” he exclaimed when Kaiten and I walked into his cluttered office. Glasses askew and blue eyes filled with almost childlike excitement, he jumped up and wrapped me in a strong embrace. “I received a call telling me you were on your way. I haven’t been this excited in months!”

We jumped around for a good five minutes, joking and laughing, and catching up on what had happened since we last saw each other. Apparently, Hanar had found a girl whose fascination with corpses rivaled his own, a morbid detail of his character that I’d never held against him. The fact that he admitted it meant she was probably one hell of a person. Necrophilia, anyone?

Kaiten stood in the doorway, dark and brooding, the embodiment of ‘let’s get the fuck on with this’. I ignored the testy bastard and stretched our greeting out until I could feel him shifting on the balls of his feet, just itching to jump in and separate us. Go ahead and try, Iceman.

Hanar finally became serious, looking at me from behind his steel-rimmed glasses. “How are you really doing, Aza?” he asked sternly. “I know the readjustment hasn’t been easy.”

My eyes flitted to Kaiten and then back to him. “How do you know that? Is Sana tattling to you?”

“Your sister is concerned,” he replied. “She said you’ve missed the family dinner three weeks in a row.”

“Seriously? They have one every Friday. I can’t be expected to drop everything and show up.”

“What did I tell you when you came back? Routine is essential for recovery,” he said. “Routine, Aza. You need it more than you think.”

I gave him a lovely pout, bringing my dimple-powers to bear. After my return from the land of the missing, Hanar had assumed the role of an informal psychiatrist. He actually had a degree, so stop looking at me like that. The man probably knew more about what happened in Deadtown than anyone who wasn’t there to see it with their own eyes. Despite the fact that he could easily read me, Hanar wasn’t exactly resistant to my charms.

“If I promise to go, will you leave me alone?” I asked.

“Tonight,” he said firmly. “You promise?”

Score for the dimples! “I promise.”

“Good,” he replied. Then, his gaze went to Kaiten. “Detective Elzoran, forgive me for not greeting you probably. Aza has the effect of completely distracting me.”

Kaiten gave him a stiff smile, and I knew him well enough by now that the expression came as a surprise. He’d barely even looked at the receptionist, and I had the feeling Kaiten wasn’t the kind of person who cared about annoying others. So the fact that he’d bothered enough to give Hanar a smile meant he didn’t have anything against him.

“That she does, Dr. Javim” he agreed, “and the ability to annoy me to no end.

I scowled up at him, but I was too happy to be angry.

“You’re both here for the woman who died recently?” asked the doctor. “One of the white-eyes?”

“White-eyes?” I asked.

Hanar nodded, and I could see the edge of excitement in his eyes. This case interested him immeasurably. “That’s what I’m calling them. The white-eyes,” he replied. “Their eyes don’t actually turn white, they simply roll so far back that everything else disappears. Muscular spasm.”

Well that was good to know. “What can you tell us?”

Hanar hesitated. “You are part of the investigation, aren’t you?”

“I’m liaising,” I replied. “Technically, that makes me a part of the team.”

The doctor grinned. “I’m all for technicalities. This case is magnificent, Aza. I always come across interesting deaths when prenaturals are a factor, but these are some of the most bizarre I’ve ever seen.”

I hated lying to him, but I had to do it. Hanar knew I’d killed people when I was in Deadtown. He didn’t know how much though, and he didn’t know I’d done it more often on orders than in self-defense. I’d been too afraid to admit that to him. In fact, I’d been too afraid to admit any of it, and most of what he knew was based on assumptions. I would make an ambiguous statement, and he would take whatever meaning he could out of it.

Not the best system, I know.

“The cause of death isn’t clear, but it’s entirely a result of the mind,” he explained breathlessly. “There’s no trauma whatsoever on the three victims. I’m operating on the theory that they died from a neurological problem. It was almost like their body shut down; someone pulled their plug.”

“Is there any chance the victims were poisoned?” asked Kaiten. “Two died while asleep in their beds, and the third was found in an alley not a block away from where she was believed to be staying. If there were no defensive wounds, it would be possible they were poisoned.”

Hanar pursed his lips. “I considered that, but every test I’ve run came up negative for poisons,” he replied. “However, I did find something quite interesting. I don’t know how it pertains to the nature of their deaths, but all three had a common mutation in their genes.”

“Lycanthropy.”

The word slipped out of my mouth before I could stop myself, and I was immediately horrified. That’s me—the effervescent detective without a clue about a damn thing. How could I go and spit that out? There was no way in hell I could explain my source of knowledge, even if I consumed a dozen cups of coffee. Here’s to all the idiots capable of screwing themselves without help.

The doctor stared at me with an open mouth and then shut it with an audible click. “I believe you just stole my thunder.”

I shot Kaiten a sheepish glance and found him staring down at me in a mix of triumph and suspicion. The triumph was obviously for the fact that I’d confirmed all his theories. Now he knew I was hiding something, and he wouldn’t stop until I spilled it all out. The suspicion was obviously him wondering whether I was worth trusting and what else I’d hid from him. Just when we were beginning to understand each other, I’d pissed it away with a careless impulse.

“Care to explain how you guessed that, detective?” asked Kaiten slowly, his voice edged with warning.

“Well there’s your answer.”

“What?”

“I guessed it,” I replied with a nonchalant shrug. Yes, I’m badass and I can pull of nonchalant shrugs. That’s good genes. “Just had a feeling. Hanar always saves the best for last, so I said the first thing that came to mind.”

The doctor was too oblivious to make out the undercurrent in our exchange and continued talking. “All three of them tested for lycanthropy. From what I know, Detective Inspector Schuler has yet to link them in their private lives, but I have a medical reason to believe they may have been targeted because of what they were. I honestly believe that Schuler is incompetent.”

If there was one thing I agreed with, it was that. From what I could tell, though, there were more pressing problems than Schuler’s sheer incompetence. Kaiten was beginning to look at me like he had last night. Like I was something that ought to be knocked over the head, stuffed into a car trunk and driven off the edge of a pier.

What now?

Merchant of Dreams 1.02

Kaiten, not that we were on a first name basis, was trying to force his way into the alley where it appeared as if the crime had taken place. Murder? Probably, judging by the number of people hanging around. Two faeyr policemen blocked his path, broad chested and mean. They were stonekin, the wrestlers and enforcers of the faeyr. Detective Elzoran probably had no idea he was trying to push past a pair prenaturals who had the combined strength of six men between them. After all, I was one of the few people who could see through their human façades.

With a sigh, I quick-legged it over to him and jerked at his shirt insistently. “Can I help you, Detective Elzoran?” I asked as neutrally as I possibly could, considering the outcome of our previous exchange.

“You again!” he cursed, when he turned to see who it was. “I thought we were going to stay away from each other.”

“Charming as always,” I replied with a smile, but no dimples this time. Bad boys didn’t get dimples. “I’m afraid that’s not happening. I’ve been appointed the liaison. If you insist on poking around our crime scene, you and I will be seeing a great deal of each other.”

The detective’s stark features tightened in annoyance. “Your crime scene, detective?”

“This falls under the jurisdiction of the Prenatural Branch,” I replied, immediately switching to professional-speak. “Your division can only assume a backseat role in this investigation and provide support where asked. Any access to evidence is entirely voluntary on my part.”

He towered over me, gray eyes filling with that same coldness I’d noticed earlier. “So what, I’m stuck with you now?”

“Or I’m stuck with you,” I replied. All things considered, he was quite calm. I’d seen people throw punches when they were denied access to evidence. “What the hell did you do to get this job? I thought you guys hated working with us.”

“We do,” snapped Kaiten. “I drew the short straw. Prenaturals are dragging this city to hell, and now you’re throwing red tape in my way out of spite. I won’t take this from you or anyone else.”

My eyebrows went up. His hate wasn’t ordinary. He had something against us, but I couldn’t figure out what exactly. Dead family? A brother or a sister dating a prenatural? You could never know with these people. All it took was a little mistake and they treated you like the goddamned plague.

“I’m going to have to ask you to calm down and let our people do their job,” I replied, unsmiling and suddenly cold. They’d taught us these infuriating lines at the academy, and I was going to throw them at him until he burst like a rocket. “Would you like to contact my supervisor and report my behavior? I can provide you with refreshments if it helps.”

Kaiten let out an incredulous laugh. “You want me to lose it, don’t you?” he demanded. “It will give you an excuse to have me thrown off the case. That’s it, isn’t it?”

I shrugged. “I just need you calm, Sir. This isn’t an attempt to undermine you.”

“I disagree.”

“You’re allowed an opinion, Sir.” Suck on that, bitch.

The detective closed in one me until our noses were almost touching. It was made all that much easier since I stood almost as tall as him. If I flinched now, he’d never learn to respect me. I knew I wouldn’t. This wasn’t enough to scare me. Not after I’d stared down men holding automatic rifles at my chest—more than once.

“I think I liked you more when you were acting like a spoiled child,” he said under his breath so no one else could hear. “You’re a fool if you think I’m going to let you pull this shit with me.”

“I think I never liked you,” I replied. “Now that we’ve established what we feel about each other, you might want to get the fuck out of my face.”

I fixed my black eyes on his grays, pinning him with my stare. Good thing I’d been practicing in the mirror or I’d be screwed right about now. We stayed like that for a good twenty seconds, neither looking away, until someone shouted out from behind me.

“Kiss her!”

The detective scowled and looked back over my shoulder. “Shut your mouth or I’ll break it, Constable Mavis.”

“Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir.”

I gathered a deep breath, trying to hide the flush that colored my cheeks. “That wasn’t necessary. I can handle my own problems.”

“Please, there’s no need to delude yourself. I did that for the sake of my reputation,” he replied. “It would do me no good to have rumors of an affair with a monster flying around.”

That hit hard and deep. It took every, last inch of me to school my features. I wasn’t afraid of showing anger but rather of showing the pain his careless comment had caused. I wouldn’t be weak. I wasn’t weak. I knew that after years of surviving in Deadtown, unarguably the worst place in Ashen City. If I could live through a storm of bullets and magic, gangs and street wars, then I could survive a few harsh words and pointless politics.

“I think I might hate you,” I said with a sweet smile. “Don’t bother talking to me.”

I stepped around him, maintaining an expression of nonchalance, and walked over to the dark alley. The stonekin officers guarding the entrance glanced at me then shrugged and stepped aside. Kaiten tried to follow me in, but I whirled around just in time.

“Not him!” I barked. “He stays outside until I say otherwise.”

The wall of flesh moved back into position.

“You can’t do this!” called the detective from behind the line. “I’m going to file a complaint against you!”

I ignored him and moved into the mouth of the alley. Schuler and Syba were already there, watching as a pair of paramedics hauled a body onto a stretcher. I stopped and stared. Paramedics? Why were paramedics removing a body? Unless, of course, it wasn’t a body. Did that mean there was no murder? Why all the people then? That’s me. Questions and no answers. A summary of my short existence.

“What’re you doing here, Rohin?” demanded Schuler. “You’re supposed to stay by the human.”

I wasn’t listening to him. In fact, the world had faded into a mass of endless gray. Blood rushed into my ears, and my heart fluttered with a thunderous staccato as panic set in. This wasn’t happening. Not now, and not here. Not when I was finally free of my dark past.

The woman on the stretcher had milky eyes. It was almost like a liquid swirled under the surface, injected by a needle too small to leave a mark. The scene was all too familiar. The rigid body, white eyes, pale flesh and shallow breathing. I’d seen it before, but it’d been my handiwork back then and not someone else’s. I’d done this—this exactly—to people who couldn’t defend themselves against my power. Even now, after all these years, I could still remember the feeling of invading their minds and leaving them dead in their dreams.

She was in her thirties. Slanted eyes, beautiful and dressed in a t-shirt and jeans. There was nothing remarkable about her, or at least nothing that stood out immediately. I tried to remember every detail of what I was seeing, brand it in my mind to look over later. Whoever did this was like me; a glamourist or with gifts similar to mine. Everything matched, and despite my urge to deny it and move on, I just couldn’t look away.

“I’m talking to you, Rohin!”

Reality snapped back into focus, and I turned my black eyes on him. For a moment—just a moment—I wanted to drive my fear into him. I could do it, too. Give my emotions shape, mold the cold malice like a white hot knife and drive it into him. Would it be worth it, though? The human mind was a construct of fragile glass. I’d broken the will of men without meaning to, leaving them shadows of what they once were. I knew if I did that here, all my secrets would be revealed.

Somehow, I managed to swallow my anger with a deep inhalation of winter air. “Sorry, sir. I’ll keep him company.”

Striding quickly, I came abreast of the stretcher and looked the woman over. My eyes slid across her face intently, but there was nothing to see there that I hadn’t in the past. With a quick thrust of my mind, I tried to break through the cage of her thoughts and into that roiling mass of emotion and memories that formed the human essence. I found myself pressed against a solid barrier of confusion, placed there by whatever destruction had been wrought over her mind.

It was irreparably damaged. If I tried to force my way in, I could just as easily leave her dead as the person who did this to her. I was determined to see this through, but not at the cost of an innocent life, even if that life was beyond saving. There was a time when I might’ve not cared, but that person was long gone, driven out by sanity and logic.

I realized I’d followed the stretcher right up to the ambulance and quickly tore myself away before anyone noticed my interest. For once, I appreciated the cold. It reminded me to stay calm. Stay calm and gather my thoughts. Maybe this wasn’t what I thought it was. Just my overactive imagination picking out details that reminded me of my past. That could be it, couldn’t it? There was nothing at all to worry about.

“Is something wrong?”

I looked around sharply to find Detective Elzoran close behind me. “No,” I replied. “Why would you care anyways?”

“So something is wrong?”

“No!”

He watched me for a long moment, perfectly still. Inhumanly still. There was an edge to this man that I couldn’t understand. Did he practice in the mirror? It’s pretty hard to pull off dark, tall and mysterious, but this guy had it down to the letter. Oscar-worthy performance. Just smack a Sean Connery accent on his lips and we’re done. I just wished he hadn’t opened his mouth and ruined the image. Things could’ve been so much better.

“You reacted to her.”

My stomach clenched. “What’re you yammering about? Off your meds again?”

“You know exactly what,” he replied, jerking his head towards the ambulance. It was already pulling out, lights flashing blue and red. “I saw it in your eyes. You knew her, didn’t you?”

Sometimes, fools dug their own graves. “Maybe,” I said, sighing. “She looks so much like someone I used to know, but it could be anyone.”

“Liar.”

“What do you want from me?”

Kaiten thrust his hands into his pockets, pushing his coat back. It was an intimidating stance, and one I assumed he reserved for interrogating suspects. “Most people would say they weren’t lying. You didn’t.”

“My father says I’m special. He even bought me sticker that says so,” I replied. “Wanna see it?”

“You were afraid. In fact, your hand is still shaking.”

Shit. My brilliant strategy to distract him wasn’t working. Merlin’s beard, but was this guy sharp or what? “You’re really throwing a Sherlock vibe there, detective. Sure all that cigar smoke hasn’t gotten to your head?”

“You tried to hide your hands when I said they were shaking. I couldn’t see, not in this light,” he continued. “The fact that you felt the need to do it means I was right. What does the woman mean to you?”

This wasn’t like me. Not one bit. The shock of seeing my own handiwork had thrown me off. Thrown me off enough to ignore every instinct I’d honed over years on the street, running with the hardest, most brutal gangs of Deadtown. Now this fool walked in and had me over a spit like I was some weak-willed bimbo who couldn’t stand a grilling. Hell, I’d been shot and stabbed and not budged an inch. I needed to get my head back in the game, and I needed to it fast.

“Looks like they’re clearing out,” I said, gesturing at the crime scene. “The evidence is bagged and the pictures are all take. Everything’s in place.”

“And?”

“And that means I don’t have to tolerate your shit anymore, detective,” I replied. “This is where I clock out. You can eat my brains tomorrow.”

Without waiting for his reply, I turned on heel and hightailed it back toward my car. When I reached the road, I found myself faced with a much more immediate issue than some mysterious kill. My car was being towed. Was nothing scared in this city? I was a detective constable on the job, and they wouldn’t even leave my car be?

“Hey!” I shouted, running over. “Don’t you dare. I’m a detective!”

The driver leaned out of the driver seat window. “Step out of the way, miss. You parked wrong.”

“Detective!” I corrected. “I’m a detective!”

“Not my problem,” he replied. “That one there—the oily son-of-a-bitch—told me I had to tow the car. He threatened to have me fired if I didn’t.”

I looked around to see who the ‘oily son-of-a-bitch’ was and found myself staring at Syba’s fanged face. Lamia’s were quick as whips. They were dirty in a fight, skilled in martial arts and entirely ruthless. Their scales acted like an armor that almost entirely dissipated the force of a punch. At this moment, with the world crashing down around me, I was an inch away from whipping my pistol out and putting a bullet in his head. Even with his skills and rapid healing, he wouldn’t survive.

“Syba, you worm!” I snapped. “What the hell are you doing?”

The lamia’s lipless mouth turned up in a vicious smile. “You should take care where you park, Azadana,” he replied. “Just because you’re uncle is the commissioner doesn’t mean you can break the rules.”

I pointed at the Bluebird, with its red, chipped paint and broken side mirrors. “This isn’t breaking the rules! I parked in the wrong place!”

“Tch. Same difference.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” I exclaimed.

The tow truck driver honked the horn. “Out of the way! I’m on the clock.”

I stamped my foot down in fury and wrung my hands. “Not my car!” I pleaded. “I have guns in the trunk. If someone gets their hands on them, I’ll be screwed.”

“Won’t happen,” replied the driver. “They’ll remove that at impound.”

Seething and seconds away from running away in a huff, I shuffled to the side and let him roar past, my Bluebird followed close behind. “You slimy bastard,” I cursed, looking at Syba. “I swear I’ll never forget this.”

The snake grinned. “Have fun, Rohin. I’m going to drive away now…in my car.”

And just like that, he slid off into the darkness like the slimy piece of shit that he was. I stood there for a brief moment, tempted to chase after him and teach the lizard a lesson. My plans for revenge went out the window when Kaiten loomed at my side, smelling of manly musk and something else. Molten chocolate? Molten chocolate and almonds? Molten chocolate, almonds and coffee?

Coffee? Where the hell was my coffee? Oh shit, it was still in car. “My coffee!” I groaned. “No, my coffee.”

“You seem more disappointed to have lost your coffee than the car.”

I turned on him. “Give it to me,” I demanded, holding my hand out. “Right now.”

“I don’t have your coffee.”

“Not the coffee. The chocolate. I can smell it on you.”

For a moment, he was actually amused. Now that our initial exchange of hateful remarks was over, I think we were moving to a more even playing field. We both knew we wouldn’t be friends, but there was an understanding in place. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me. With that firmly set in mind, I didn’t have to try very hard to resist his cold charm, which was like an icy wind on a winter night.

“You can smell chocolate on me?”

I nodded eagerly. “Man-musk, chocolate, almonds and coffee.”

“Interesting,” he murmured. “Man-musk?”

I frowned at him. “You obviously want something from me, because you went from psycho witch-hunt mode to flirty in thirty seconds,” I replied. “Spit it out, Iceman. I’m freezing my ass off out here, and I really like my ass. Heard some great things about it.”

“I think you’re lying to me, Ms. Rohin,” he said, not reacting to the ass comment. How frigid was this guy?

“Detective Rohin or Aza. Nothing else.”

“Fine, Aza. You know something about that woman no one else does. Your colleagues especially,” he said. “From what I could tell, they would give anything to be rid of you. Most of them think you are nothing more than eye candy to appreciate from a distance and never take seriously”

“Here’s my chest. Want to rip my heart out?” I asked pleasantly. “You’ve already destroyed my pride.”

“Once again, you avoid my accusation instead of defending yourself. You aren’t helping your case.”

I sighed and looked up, giving him my best pout with dimples thrown in for perks. “I’ve been at this for two years and most of that time has been spent behind a desk,” I replied honestly. “What could I know that you and everyone else at the crime scene don’t already?”

“You are a prenatural. It could mean you have more knowledge than I do about what happened in that alley.”

Nothing happened in that alley, I thought. It happened somewhere else. Somewhere far away. Instead of saying what was on my mind, I shrugged as casually as I could. “You know what I am? A glamourist. You probably haven’t even heard of-”

“You weave illusions with lifelike quality,” said Kaiten. “Don’t look so startled. I know more than you imagine. It’s my job to research the other side.”

“Then you should know I’m not remarkable. I can’t work spells like warlocks, call spirits like shamans, do whatever the hell the faeyr do or take advantage of some distant, mythological heritage,” I replied, letting a note of self-pity creep into my tone. If he thought I was nothing, then there was a chance he would leave me alone. “I honestly thought I recognized her. I’m sorry if it doesn’t fit with your theory.”

Kaiten’s lips inched up with a ghostly smile. “I know you’re lying, but I’ll let it go for tonight. It doesn’t happen often with me, but I think I’m beginning to pity you.”

“Why, thank you,” I replied. “I’m always in need of some good, hard pity.”

He stopped, and I noticed a dark flush spread across his face. The detective coughed in his hand, suddenly uncomfortable, and I wondered whether he had much experience with the opposite sex. If you could see past his glaring personality, there was a possibility of something more to him, but was it enough that women actually bothered with the trouble? I knew I wouldn’t; not if he was such an asshole all the time.

“I came here to offer you a ride back to your house,” he said, breaking the awkward silence. “We might be seeing more of each other for a while, considering we work together now and that you’re hiding something from me.”

“Did you miss God’s class on social skills? You don’t offer help while accusing someone of lying. Not a good way to convince them of your intentions.”

Kaiten shrugged his muscled shoulders, and I watched the motion with avid interest. “I’m not a liar, detective. My intentions are entirely dishonorable, and I intend to wheedle my way into your inner circle until you spill your secrets,” he replied, and I think he was being genuinely honest with me. “Of course, this would all be much easier if I didn’t have an aversion to your kind.”

“My kind?” I asked, far too amused to be offended. “How would this be easier, then?”

“Why, I’d just seduce you, wouldn’t I? You do appreciate good, hard things, or was that a lie as well?”

I grinned. “Touché, curly hair. Let’s just be glad we despise each other. You can drop me off, but any funny business and I reacquaint myself with the feeling of fists battering flesh. You wouldn’t like that.”

“I won’t bother. You make my skin crawl.”

“You say the sweetest things, don’t you?” I replied. “Oh, and by the way: this is my real form. No illusion. Nothing. This is how I am in real life. See what you lost by calling me a monster?”

In that name of all that was coffee, I needed some sleep.

Merchant of Dreams 1.01

“Aza.”

My eyelids fluttered.

“Wake up, Aza.”

I groaned aloud and tasted my mouth. It was dry and thick with an unpleasant taste I couldn’t immediate identify. What was that? Onions? Garlic? Man, I must have bad breath. Blame it on the endless stakeouts and my nonexistent sex-life (maintained by sleek battery-powered tools).

“Azadana Rohin! Up! Wake up!”

I struggled with my eyelids, each which weighed a ton or more, and listened to someone prattle on in a meaningless lecture. None of it made any sense, so I mumbled an incoherent reply laced with profanity and fell back into my dreams. Sweet dreams, really. I was part of an office that appreciated my skills, with a boss who wasn’t half-troll and half-cyclops, and the sex was just—

“Azadana!” snapped a woman’s voice for the fourth time, and it seemed to come from far, far away. Through wormholes and across galaxies, all the way down to little old me. “This is an office, not your bedroom! Everyone is staring.”

Everyone?

Everyone.

I jerked my head off the desk and licked, elegant-like, at the trail of drool along the corner of my mouth. “Huh? W-what did-? Where the hell am I?”

A rush of light crashed down over my world, and I blinked away the sharp sting of tears. Florescent rods were a bitch, with their flaring whiteness and humming-bird flutters. A yawn hit me faster than I could hold it back, and my mouth opened wide in a close copy of the scene from Jurassic Park where the man gets eaten in the public bathrooms. I’m the t-rex, by the way.

I winced as a woman’s nails dug into my shoulder. “Wake. Up.”

“Oww,” I whined massaging myself and barely managing to shake off the blanket of sleep. “Go easy on me, Mahla. I’ve been here since last night.”

My coworkers, men and women carrying guns, watched with faint expressions of amusement and pity. They were officers of the law, these monsters. And I call them monsters in an entirely scientific sense. Most of them, in another age, and even in this one, would be considered monsters of some kind or another. Ever wondered what the inquisition was about? Look no further. Want to know why serial killers do what they do? Well, because they’re not humans. They’re something more and, in a manner of speaking, something less.

A few of my fellow monsters managed to snap photos of my t-rex impersonation with their nifty, little phones. Quick-like, so as to preserve whatever respect I still had, I wiped my chin with the back of my hand and tried to seem as professional as possible. Hopefully, they’d catch that on camera too.

Fingers crossed.

“Azadana,” chided the squat, motherly woman standing over me. “You’re hanging onto your job by a thread as it is. Don’t give them an excuse to toss you out. What would your father think?”

My brilliant stepfather, Danthir Rohin, who I truly loved but was perpetually frustrated with. Police Commissioner and Man of the Goddamned Year (century). Gather ‘round. Come get an autograph.

A day didn’t go by when his name wasn’t thrown in my face, cementing everyone’s opinion of the fallen star (that would be me). I had a brother whose talent was matched by none and a father whose meteoric rise through the hell of government bureaucracy was spoken of only in hushed whispers. Truly, it was the stuff of legends.

But then they all looked at me. Let’s not forget Azadana Rohin, they said to one another. Let’s smear her name whenever the opportunity arises, since it’s pretty much all she’s good for. Let’s take snapshots with nifty, little phones while she sleeps at her desk—a desk she’s warmed for six months. Let’s thoroughly amuse ourselves until the day she blows her goddamned head off or performs a rendition from the scene in that movie (you know which one I’m talking about) where the crazy chick shoots the other guy and then proceeds to massacre all her colleagues.

Yeah, that’s how I felt. Welcome to my world.

“My father would throw a banquet if they kicked me out,” I huffed in reply, although I knew it was absolute shit. He was too kind for that. A little shindig, maybe, but never a banquet “You need me to file something, Mahla? Photocopy someone’s ass? Maybe a whooha? I could clean out your drawers if you like, because that’s all I’ve been doing these days. You know, I think someone mistook me for the cleaning woman last night. Told me to clean the toilet.”

The mother-hen and in-house Godzilla of our police station looked down on me with stern disapproval. Mahla had that face. You know, the one that makes you want to curl up, pout and whine some nonsensical excuse for a mistake you haven’t even made? She was the embodiment of all of Meryl Streep’s characters rolled into one.. It probably had to do with the bow in her hair. Maybe it had something to do with how she always smelled like baked cookies. That motherly scent you never forget. Scared you at a primal level, she did.

“Azadana,” Mahla repeated for the hundredth or so time, smiling down at me like I was something that needed fixing. “They want you at a crime scene. Schuler called specifically for you. Congratulations.”

Everyone in the office stopped working and turned to look. Even the lady working in the copy room stuck her head out curiously. Now this…this moment would be talked about for many years to come. Bastards, all of them. At least they could act moderately surprised instead of so blatantly horrified. You’d think they were handing me missile launch codes.

I put on my best expression of hurt but couldn’t help but grin like a child. “Hey, don’t act so surprised,” I replied, dimples appearing in my cheeks. “But really? I mean, really. What madness is this? Why would they want me out in the field?”

The woman patted my head of black hair. “Detective Inspector Schuler called on your phone, but your sleeping habits seem to be interfering with the job,” Mahla replied, but it lacked the harshness that often accompanied her reprimands. “I sent the address to your phone. Go before he fires you for being late.”

“Right now?”

“Yes, right now,” she snapped. “Quickly, Azadana.”

I scrambled for my drawer, jerked it open and lifted my service weapon out from the bottom where it was gathering dust. The FN Five-Seven worked better for me than most other handguns, and I’d tried out a great many considering my history as a part of one of the most vicious gangs in Ashen City. Good days, I tell you. Except the part where I got shot, stabbed, beaten and almost killed by hookers looking to steal my things. Oh, don’t forget the little children with Desert Eagles, bellies bulging like mini-tyrants on a kill-fest.

I clipped the Five-Seven to my waist, jumped up, knocked a stack of files off my table and then scrambled to save them. They spilled under desks and chairs, skittering off into dark corners of the office never to be found again. So long…suckers.

Mahla sighed, a beautiful little sound, and steadied me with a hand to the shoulder. “Leave it,” she ordered firmly. “Here, drink some coffee; it’s just how you like it.”

I snatched the cup away from her, suddenly territorial, took a deep gulp and then hopped on one foot as it burned a fiery trail down my throat. “Hot! Hot!” I gasped, fanning at my open mouth. “Shit, where are my car keys? My keys, Mahla! Schuler is going to kill me for this.”

The woman held an Inuyasha keychain out in front of my nose, and I grabbed it in my mouth, one hand occupied with my coffee while the other grasped in vain for my leather jacket. Mahla helped me into it, tugging my waterfall of midnight-black hair out from under the collar. She made soft clucking sounds that reinforced my theory she was a hen during her previous life, and then I was scrambling through the office with a stunned silence ushering me out.

Why were they so surprised? I was a good cop, wasn’t I?

♦ ♦ ♦

Now, there’re a few essentials to cover before we jump in. I, Azadana Rohin, am an upstanding officer of the Ashen Police Department. The CID, really. Criminal Investigation Division, if you couldn’t guess. Get with the program, idiot. I entered the service two and a half years ago as a greenhorn constable, smelling of freshly mown grass and childish excitement.

Also, I was covered in enough tattoos and scars to make most think I’d walked through every battlefield in the world and then stumbled in a tattoo parlor. Once I’d carried out my mandatory probation period as a Constable, I was accepted into the CID as a detective constable under the power of the Spook Squad. What’s the Spook Squad, you ask? Good question. I’ll let you know when they tell me.

What I do know is that we investigate whatever the hell the public doesn’t want to see, or at least what our government doesn’t want them to see. Dead banshee? Call the Spook Squad. Murder by the way of werewolf? Call the Spook Squad. Harpies scaring the shit out of humans who had no business knowing monsters existed? Call the Spook Squad. Sighting of a rampaging demon? Well, you get the idea.

Why am I here? Long story, but the short version is that I’m not entirely human. The magic 8-ball—wildcard—mystical power that makes some of us what we are picked me to be a glamourist. I’m like a stage magician. Only difference is that my illusions are real. My magic is just that. Magic. I don’t use props or a misdirecting assistant in a thong. I shape reality and bend perception, twist light and manipulate emotion, creating whatever my mind can imagine. Hence, a glamourist.

What’s that I hear? A standing ovation? This is too much. Everyone sit down. Please, you are all too kind. Enough with the applause. No, really. You’re too kind. Really. Stop. Stop.

Do you think I’m impressive? Well, I’m not. At least not in the crime solving business. What do you want with girl who can create crisp images out of thin air? Not much. That’s why I’ve been relegated to a desk for the past six months. My social skills are nil. First time out on police business, I told a grieving wife her husband had been torn from groin to neck in a most brutal fashion. That didn’t do much to assure my superiors.

You’d think my second name—the famous Rohin name—would push me up the ladder, but it doesn’t help at all. Family dinners have always been a bitch, especially when siblings are career driven sociopaths who would eat their own children if it meant a promotion up the ranks. Brilliant, pyrotechnic brother. High-powered, lawyer sister. Celebrity father on the path to becoming one of the most powerful men in Ashen City. What was I but a mark on the family name?

To top it all off, they were so goddamned supportive. They never criticized my decisions, looked down on me or did anything otherwise to make me feel inferior. What I would give for a good, hateful family. A family that was ashamed and disappointed by my mere existence. Oh, but no. God, Buddha, Yahweh, Innana, Allah (you pick) had decided to stick me with a soppy, caring father and two siblings who thought sunlight shined out of my ass, and a mother who wanted nothing more than to care for me. Did I need a psychologist, or what?

Alright, back to real world.

♦ ♦ ♦

I smacked into someone on my way out, knocking him into the wall. I heard the dull thud of his head striking concrete, but I hurried away with a shouted apology. Donuts for him—sprinkles and all—just not right now. I arrived at my battered Nissan Bluebird and struggled with the door until it burst open and spilled empty coffee cups into the parking lot. It was a pigsty in there; the accumulated garbage of four years. The four years since I left my previous life of service to a dark master. All my attempts to clean it out ended with a hazmat crew and flame throwers.

I ignored a pair of laughing uniforms rolling by in their squad car and jumped right into the mess. By some miracle, I managed to stick the key in the ignition and start the engine by begging and begging until it took pity on me and sputtered to life. I was gunning it along the Ashen City streets twenty seconds later with the cold, winter wind whipping across my face.

This was Old Quarter, the center of the city. The Ashen Police Department’s headquarters along with the city council building sat at its core and around it orbited most of what kept the city on its feet. Government stuff, really. From this point onward, Ashen’s depravity increased exponentially until you had fifteen year-olds with AK-47s running through the streets. That was Deadtown for you, the armpit of crime. Of course, half those fifteen year-olds were once my friends and now led gangs of their own. A few had graduated to a full-blown kingpin status. Kudos to them.

“Watch where you’re going, woman!” shouted a red-faced cabdriver.

His cry was echoed all around, and I flipped him off before overtaking an eighteen-wheeler and barely managing to squeeze back into my lane before a wall of oncoming headlights roared past me. Don’t worry; everything’s fine. This is how I always drive. With my foot set firmly on the accelerator, I followed the twisting streets out of Old Quarter and into Codo, the business district of our fair city. This place was all flash and smoke, women in stilettos and men with private jets.

I spotted a cluster of flashing lights up head and only just managed to hit the brakes before I overshot my mark. The Bluebird’s wheels locked suddenly, sending the car into a screeching slide that ended with me pinned against the steering wheel. With the engine coughing to stay alive, I pulled off a skillful parallel parking and stopped between a squad car and tow truck. Got here in one piece, didn’t I?

Now, how to get out?

I managed to free my long legs from the driver’s seat and then spilled out onto the sidewalk without making a complete fool of myself. A hand caught my arm before I landed flat on my face, and I looked up to find a dashing, ol’ fellow standing over me. Fine, he wasn’t old, but his gaze seemed to carry a thousand years of pain and weighed down on me like an anvil. His hands were large, made for crushing and brute work rather than shaping a crystal dolphin from molten silicate. No idea why I thought of that.

“Oh, wow,” I breathed, always the eloquent one, “do bench-press much?”

He pulled me up, gray eyes swimming with the color of a storm. Now that I looked at him—head on—he wasn’t all that handsome. He might have been if he wanted to, but there was a cold edge to him that threw me off. Angled features, hawk-like nose and square jaw that screamed displeasure. Oh, my God. Did I have daddy issues? Naw.

I gave him a dimpled smile that would dazzle anything from a corpse to a Greek god, and tried not to make a fool of myself. “Thank you for the save, mister…?”

His expression was enough to tell me I wasn’t about to get the answer I wanted. “This is a crime scene,” he replied, not caring to share his name. “You’re not allowed here, ma’am.”

Ma’am? For a second, I ignored him and searched in my pockets. There was supposed to be a little pill bottle somewhere. “Uhmm, couldn’t I just stay for a while? I have to work as well.”

“No, you can’t just stay for a while,” he replied tersely. “If you have no business here, I advise you leave, ma’am.”

Ma’am again. If he hadn’t opened his mouth, we might even have been friends. “Ma’am, my ass,” I muttered under my breath, searching desperately in my pockets. Where the hell was that pill bottle? I could already feel the pain building in my chest, a dull throb that would only worsen. “My pretty little ass.”

“Pardon me?” he asked, his voice dropped an octave. “You do realize I’m with the police?”

“Sure I do,” I replied with an easy smile. It wasn’t his fault he was an asshole. “You have a Walther PPK in your jacket.”

The man frowned, and I could see him wondering who I was. I didn’t bother helping him out as my fingers wrapped around a cylindrical object, and I drew it out of my pocket with a relieved sigh. I wasn’t usually this careless. If nothing else, I always made sure my pills were with me. An addict’s nightmare.

Things start to get weird—dangerously weird—if I’m not careful with my doses. It was an orange pill bottle, and I went nowhere without it. Danthir, my brother and my sister would kill me if I did.

“Are you listening to me?” His drawl was laced with boredom.

I glanced up at him. Oh, he was cold. He had the bad boy, dangerous vibe going for him, but it wasn’t exactly working due to his úber-professionalism. Some people couldn’t stick to one personality. It had to do with the dichotomies between who they were, who they wanted to be and what society expected of them. Why wasn’t everyone else as practical as I was? Flip your middle finger and just don’t give a damn. If this guy bought himself a leather jacket and a Harley, well I might’ve even given him a smile, because it would’ve worked well for him.

Instead, I did a little trick I shouldn’t have. Bad, bad girl.

I reached out with my mind and felt the edges of his aura, a shimmering mass of colors that swam and danced in circles around him. Nothing particularly remarkable. He was human. A black-and-white human or at least he appeared to be. There was a shadow to his aura that I couldn’t place, but it was likely an imprint of his past. Traumas that hadn’t healed. Memories that would never go away. It must have been something horrific to leave such a clear mark on him.

An iron-hard finger prodded my arm, jerking me out of my observation. “Stop trying to read me!” he snapped, and I felt him push back with his mind. It was expertly done, especially for a human. Shit, he had training. “Who the hell are you?”

I needed to swallow my pill. No time to play around. “Hey, cool your balls,” I replied, holding my hands up in defense. “Detective Constable Rohin. Who the hell are you?”

“Detective Inspector Elzoran of the Criminal Investigations Division,” he countered almost immediately. “I’m with the humans.”

Alright, shit just got serious. I’d pissed off a superior. Good thing he wasn’t working with us or I’d have to answer some rather probing questions. “I’m CID as well; I work for the other side, though. Spook Squad.”

“You’re a prenatural?” he demanded, taking a step back as if I was something disgusting. “Aren’t there enough of you here already?”

Very mature. This guy was really heaping on the charm. He was one of those. The ones who believed we—prenaturals, that is—ought to be lined up and shot by a firing squad. Almost all humans who knew we existed were afraid of us, and that made them hate us all the more. You tend to despise that which you can’t understand. If this Elzoran character wanted to play a game of who’s the bigger asshole, I was more than willing.

“Prenatural is a racist term, Detective Elzoran,” I replied, uncapping my pill bottle and looking inside. Oh, shit. Only twelve pills left. It would last me six days. “We prefer monster or boogeyman. If you find either offensive, just call us ugly beasts. It doesn’t matter whether we’re ugly or not. Just use it.”

I think he was too surprised to come up with witty reply—not that he seemed the witty type—because he watched as I shook a pill onto my palm. It was tiny and blue, marked with a small ‘A’ for ‘Azadana’ on both sides. They were custom made just for me. Dangerous little things, these. Suppressed most of my natural power and left me a shadow of who I really was.

“Water?” I asked. “Got some? It’s bitch swallowing these dry. Burns all the way down.”

The detective inspector frowned. “What are those for?”

“Birth control,” I replied sweetly, flashing him my dimples and swallowing the pill dry. “In case you and I hit it off tonight.”

His anger flared, spreading streams of red through his aura. What was it with this guy? He was wound as tight as a steel cord, ready to snap and tear me in half. Even someone as good looking as him didn’t have the right to be this unstable. I wasn’t sure whether to distance myself from the man or recommend a therapist. The APD had an excellent deal.

“You’re being highly inappropriate.”

“So screw me—sue me, I mean. Tongue slip, begging your pardon.”

“You’re bordering on sexual harassment,” he said through gritted teeth. “Should I file a complaint?”

Really? Why did I have to be stuck with idiots? Why? My first time alone on a crime scene, and this is what I got?

“Oh, no. Not one of those babies,” I replied in mock horror. “My father would blow a gasket. Imagine the rumors: innocent, little Aza Rohin sexually harassing the big, bad wolf. So scary.”

Fine. Maybe I was acting like a bitch, but I think six months behind a desk gave me the right to turn up the heat. I was here, here at an actual crime scene, and some super-cop was playing mine’s-bigger-than-yours games before I even stepped out of the car. Goddamned misogynists. They’re the ones who belonged in a kitchen.

“Rohin?” he asked, suddenly taking a step back. “Are you related-?”

“To Danthir and Talus Rohin? Father and brother—bring out the trumpets,” I replied. “Look, I know I’ve got a disgusting car, my hair is all wrong and I think I have Cheetos stuck to my ass, but I’m just here to see the crime scene. My boss is going to kill me if I don’t report to him in the next twenty seconds. Can we table our little soap opera, fascinating as it is?”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. It was gone before I could fix it in my memory, and the scowl was back in place. “I’ve been dealing with your people since dawn. Don’t cause any trouble.”

“Hey,” I replied, acting hurt. “Me? Trouble? Puh-lease.”

Detective Elzoran shook his head, which made his dark curls bounce around, and led me toward the yellow tape. Crime scene technicians in white coats scrambled about, snapping photos of everything from cigarette butts to yesterday’s dinner tossed into a dark alley. The dark alley in question was surrounded by uniforms and stern-faced men with thick jowls. They were classic, old-time coppers with a penchant to smoke cigars and fondle that-which-shall-not-be-fondled. In other words, their testicles.

“Lechers,” I muttered under my breath. “They have nothing better to do than stare at my chest.”

The detective glanced back. Sharp ears on this one. “You think this is bad? You ought to take a drive through Deadtown. It’s possibly the worst place in world,” he replied. “A girl like you wouldn’t last more than a few minutes.”

A girl like me? Were my dimples getting to his head? “Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“Well that’s funny, because I lived in Deadtown for five years,” I replied. My annoyance made me say stupid things. Things others weren’t supposed to know. “Survived just fine. Flourished even. Maybe it’s just you.”

A mix of curiosity and anger sparked in his eyes, but he said nothing. Instead, he drew his badge out and presented it to the officer guarding the tape. “Who’s at the scene, Constable Mavis?”

Mavis was a small man who sported an elegant mustache and expertly shaped sideburns. Real Casanova, this one. “DI Marrin Schuler of the Spook Squad, Sir. He’s got that worm Syba with him. Real charmers, those two.”

Real charmers. Real bastards, more like. Syba and Schuler made it their mission to ruin my day, and their barely veiled innuendo was not even remotely amusing. “The Schuler,” I said. “That’s what we call him at the station. Not to his face, of course. It’s a hanging offense where we come from.”

The detective turned slowly to look at me. “I would appreciate it if you kept the comments to a minimum,” he replied.. “In fact, don’t talk at all.”

I cocked a hip. “What’s your full name?”

“Why? You intend on reporting me to your uncle?”

“I don’t need my father for anything. I’ve never needed him for anything.”

“Fine,” he replied. “Kaiten Elzoran; DI Elzoran to you.”

I nodded. “Alright, Kaiten,” I said. “You hate me, and I can’t figure out why. I don’t even care, but I’m under the purview of the Prenatural Branch. You might rank higher than me, but I don’t take orders from anyone but my fellow monsters. Got that?”

“If I say yes, would that stop you from talking?”

“Maybe.”

“Good. We’re in agreement,” he replied. “You stay on your side of the fence; I’ll stay on mine.”

The detective slipped under the tape and strode toward the throng of uniforms near the mouth of the alley. I watched the sway of his body and the way hard muscles rippled under his jacket. He was tall, a little over six feet, and had broad shoulders that tapered down to a narrow waist. The good ones were all assholes.

I shook myself out of the carnal stupor and tried to follow, but Constable Mavis blocked my path with an outstretched hand. “Badge first, miss. Have to check who you are.”

“That’s detective to you, constable.”

“Sorry, detective,” he muttered back, as if it hurt him to say it. “Still have to check your badge.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s standard procedure. First time on a crime scene?”

First time alone. Rub it in, why don’t you? I reached into my leather jacket with a sigh and just barely managed to extricate my wallet. I bought it at thrift store. Two-for-ones are my favorite. I flipped it to him upside-down, letting him get a brief look at my badge number. He scribbled it on a pad and then motioned me through with obvious contempt.

Floodlights pointed out toward the street, blinding anyone who tried to get a look at the crime scene. It was standard police trickery. If you messed with someone’s night vision, no way in hell they were talking to any reporters. Can’t report on something you can’t see. I picked my way toward alley, catching several curious looks. They hadn’t seen me before. Black-haired thing looking all lost and innocent. Maybe they could save me.

“There you are, Rohin!” roared a figure silhouetted by the floodlights. “Get your ass over here!”

Everyone in earshot turned to look, and that meant half the city’s population. Thank you, DI Schuler. Why not stick a sign to my head saying ‘look here, I’m going to humiliate her’. Arrogant prick. He’d spent more years on the job than almost anyone still alive, but he was stuck as a detective inspector due to his crap attitude. Some people were strict; others were cold but professional. Schuler was thoroughly inappropriate and took pleasure in tormenting others. Schuler the Sadist. Sadistic Schuler. Shitty Schuler. The SS.

He was a mixed-blood. His mother was faeyr. Faeyr, not fairy. A troll, I think. His father was a cyclops and one of the best metal workers in Ashen City. The dual heritage made him as strong as an ox and gave him the temperament of a pissed off child on steroids. If he didn’t get what he wanted, the Schuler went nuts.

♦ ♦ ♦

This might be a little annoying, but there’re a few more things you need to know. Most of us prenaturals don’t look remotely like humans. I do. So do my sister, brother and uncle. We’re the lucky ones, though. Then there are others, like Detective Inspector Schuler, but he’s by no means the weirdest of them all.

The bastard has one eye. One, perfectly round eye, courtesy of his cyclops blood, and it’s centered above the bridge of his nose. His skin is an odd, brownish hue and it’s covered in sharp ridges, which I guess he owes to his mother. Trolls have traits like that, although they’re not all identical. Besides that, Schuler is five feet tall and strong enough to crush a man with his bare hands, a fact he’s happy to boast about when humans aren’t around.

So how does he walk around without being noticed? I think there’d be a city-wide manhunt if anything remotely resembling him walked down the street. Simple and straightforward, Schuler, like every other prenatural, uses illusions to conceal his true form. Glamour, some would call it, and it’s the secret to our continued survival. With seven billion humans on earth, even the gods wouldn’t stand a chance against them.

Anyone who looks at Schuler sees an average height man with a flat nose and eyes that scream get-the-hell-away. Even prenaturals have trouble knowing what their fellow monsters are. The fact that I’m a glamourist lets me see through almost every illusion except the most powerful, and even those aren’t entirely reliable. That’s why he can hide himself from anyone but me, and I’m not about to share that little fact. Glamourists are few enough that most don’t know how clearly magnificent I am.

If the knowledge of my ability was widespread, I think I’d have been popped a long time ago simply on the principle of it. Back to what was happening by the alley before Schuler’s ugly face ruined everything.

♦ ♦ ♦

Tagging close behind Detective Inspector Schuler was a taller man with rippling, green scales covering his body. He had slit eyes, no hair, and two curved fangs stretched out from under his lips. Lamia, a child of the snake bitches. Deadly in a fight, fast as a striking cobra and treacherous as a knife in the back. They could grow back anything but their heads, which made them very difficult to kill. Syba was Schuler’s bitch and a forked tongue bastard if I’d ever seen one, and the fact that he slithered about whispering lies about me didn’t help my opinion of him.

Why was he here, anyways? Call me suspicious, but when there are this many detectives on a crime scene, calling one more doesn’t really help. It just crowds the place and forces everyone to whip out their penises to figure who has the biggest one and thus who will lead the case. Syba was a detective constable, just like me. It was pointless having two of us at a scene. Unless…unless this was all a practical joke and I was about to be sent back to the station

No way. Please. Please, don’t do this to me.

“Good evening, boss,” I said, giving Schuler the standard head-nod unique to our little group. My eyes drifted to pet snake-man, and it took several thousand calories to keep utter revulsion from showing on my face. “You too, Syba. Looking good, all green and polished. What is that shine? Lube?”

The lamia’s mouth thinned to a narrow line, and he gave me a derisive stare while Schuler thrust his single, blue eye up in my face. “You’re late, Rohin,” he snapped. “I don’t pay you to be lazy.”

I stood my ground, deadpan and steady. “Sorry, boss,” I said. No point making excuses. Not that I had an excuse. “I was sleeping” isn’t exactly the best way to defend your behavior. “Won’t happen again.”

“Of course it won’t,” said Syba with an oily smile. “You may never see a crime scene after tonight. This is the closest you’ll ever come to real police work.”

Crawl into a corner and die, I thought. Instead, I gave him a brittle smile and ignored the comment. “What can I do, boss?”

“Not a damned thing,” replied Schuler. “You’re here to liaise between us and the humans. The schmuck who usually does it died last night. Got himself ran over by a car. Splat, dead.”

I looked properly startled; no reason to show how happy I was. It wasn’t good form to rejoice in the death of your colleague, even if it did further your career plans. “Is he alright?”

They both gave me flat stares.

“Of course not,” I deadpanned—stupidly. “He’s dead. What am I saying?”

“When you figure that out, send me a fucking memo,” replied Schuler. “Now make sure you liaise your pretty, little ass off. Don’t let the humans anywhere near my crime scene, Rohin. I won’t take it well.”

Besides the ‘pretty, little ass’ comment, Schuler was quite tame tonight. It probably had to do with the fact that we were in public and as unlikable the troll was, he knew a thing or two about optics. Don’t shit on your employees where people can see you doing it. Privately, it’s fine. It might even be fun, if you’re an especially sadistic gutter-worm.

It was quickly becoming clear the only reason I had this job was because the last person got himself killed. Great way to boost self-esteem, I tell you. Matters were finally beginning to turn in my favor, but there were more pressing concerns at the moment. I was here to liaise; why didn’t I see that coming? With my luck, it shouldn’t even have surprised me.

Liaising involved keeping the humans off the Prenatural Branch’s ass. I was there to distract them, annoy them, and do anything in my goddamned power to keep them interfering in our business. I think I was authorized all means short of a crime. There was nothing worse than this job, because it meant hanging around people who hated your guts.

“What’s with your goddamned face, Rohin? Are you refusing the job?” demanded Schuler, whirling on me. Even if he did look like a human, he wasn’t actually one. His turn was a little too fast, and I noticed several human officers eye him uncomfortably. “I don’t care who your relatives are, but you’re going to liaise with humans or I’ll have you thrown out of the CID and sitting in evidence faster than you can get on your knees and beg for mercy.”

I was a kind girl. Wasn’t I kind? Why did I have to be treated like shit because of my name? Also, it was becoming clear Schuler had fantasies of me on my knees, and I didn’t want to know what happened in them. If he ever tried to bring those fantasies to life…well, he’d find himself missing all three of his testicles plus the appendage that hangs above. Yes, the appendage.

“I never said I didn’t want the job, boss,” I replied quickly with a smile. “Just tell me what to do.”

“You’re here to distract the humans” he said. “Pop a button or two and get that man away from my crime scene. He’s already seen too much!”

I was about to ask what man he was referring to, but my eyes fell on Detective Inspector Elzoran. Great. The prenatural hating human. I was going to babysit a bastard. Here’s to popping a button or two and showing some cleavage.