Chapter 1

It was cold, but the body in front of me, with her drowned eyes popped wide open and her lips parted in a constant wet scream, felt colder. They’d pulled her out of the river before we arrived. She hadn’t been in long; her water-logged flesh stayed firm under my fingertips. She could still talk to me.

I put my hand on the girl’s arm and called my magic. It made the wind stop howling. It quieted the talk around me. It even chased away the cold. When I channeled death magic the rest of the world fell away. Instead I was in the dead girl’s world, reliving her final moments.

Pain, choking burning pain, and an image dancing behind her eyes, a wall of solid green as her mouth filled with water. She drowned, but not in the icy black waters of the river; no, the water in her mouth tasted salty. She’d died someplace else and from the strength of the images I could tell it’d been a few days ago.

I searched back in the memory trying to find something, some part of her death to give me a lead to catch her killer. There wasn’t anything except the solid green. Maybe swamp water, maybe the side of a pool somewhere, and someone holding down her arms while she drowned, fighting for air.

Reading her took all my magic and the power of her death rocked me back on my heels, leaving me sitting in the frigid mud along the river bank. Baton Rouge didn’t usually get this cold, not even in late January. A bad storm was coming, with snow and ice. With the magic gone cold seeped into my veins. The rain started, cold rain to match the cold water in the river.

“Well, partner?” A warm hand offered me an even warmer cup of coffee which I accepted gratefully. The hand belonged to a man who was handsome once but was older now, soft around the middle. Age hadn’t touched his deep brown eyes or dark black hair, and even the storm couldn’t stop his smile.

My partner didn’t seem to notice the gale force winds or the way the temperature was slipping below freezing. But then, he was standing by the river. Give Danny a river and he was content.

“She drowned but it wasn’t here,” I said between sips of hot coffee.

“Is it one of ours?” he asked, meaning was it a supernatural kill.

I tilted my head, unsure. Our city was about ten percent witches and another two percent assorted preternatural creatures. Citizens were sprites, goblins, fairies, and all sorts of things I couldn’t name, like Danny.

Most of those supernatural beings were content to go about life as a normal person, though some wanted to hide what they were. But no one could hide from the law, and when a goblin or a fairy or anything else a little more than human got in trouble with the law they ended up with us, the Supernatural Investigative Unit.

We were the police unit charged with taking care of domestic disturbances between people who could turn into snow or trolls who could tear apart buildings. The rules were pretty simple; the minute magic entered into a case it was ours. Use a spell to get your ex-wife to give you back some trinket you left behind? That was supernatural assault and we’d see you on Monday. Set up a summoning star and call a demon to take care of your lousy landlord? Supernatural assault with intent to kill.

Even the boring stuff, an air witch loses his temper and blows the windows out of his office, became our problem. But this girl, was she one of ours?

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “She died looking at a field of green, a light green painted ceiling maybe? Someone was holding her arms down. That’s all I’ve got.”

“Better than nothing.”

I agreed with him but I was still angry. I was sick of the cold, and I never wanted to see another body they pulled out of the river in January. Bodies talked to me: animals buzzed, human bodies whispered. Even ghosts chatted with me on occasion. Some of them were comical or helpful but it couldn’t all be good news. I was a detective with the city’s Supernatural Investigative Unit. Most of the dead bodies I saw were murder victims.

****

Danny drove us back to the squad room, unnaturally quiet.

“What’s bugging you?” I asked.

“The kids are sick. Well, actually Nora’s sick but I’m sure Maeve will get it soon enough.” Danny had three kids, all black Irish with pale skin and dark curly hair like him. The youngest, Emma, was a champion step dancer. They looked like angels but could tear things up and I would know: I was their babysitter.

“Emma miss this one?”

“Yeah, she’s like me, never gets sick. Katie’s getting over it and Emma’s doting on her.” Katie was Danny’s Irish-American wife, with bright copper-colored hair and an easy smile. Of course, trapped in a house with three girls, one who was sick, another getting sick, and just getting better herself, I didn’t think Katie was smiling very much.

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” I said as I slid out of the unmarked car in the parking garage.

“Nothing anyone can do except wait for the storm to be over.”

I didn’t ask him which storm, the one inside his house or the one brewing outside.

****

The SIU lived several stories above the ground in a tall government building built by the lowest bidder. The elevator opened a few steps in front of tall glass locking doors, stenciled with an arching “Supernatural Investigative Unit” and underneath it, in smaller letters, “Lieutenant Edward French.”

The lieutenant was a good guy; he’d hired me with no experience before I was willing to admit I was a death witch. An ex-Marine (was there such a thing?), he kept the bull pen with its four sets of partners’ desks and corridor leading back to his glass enclosed office in strict military order. Still, when I opened those doors I wasn’t expecting the quiet on the other side.

Usually the SIU was filled with people crying, chanting, trying to call up some otherworldly answer to their problem, or plain yelling. Today, on the edge of a historic ice storm, it was quiet, which made the vampire sitting at my desk all the more disturbing.

“What are you doing here?” I knew this vampire. In a town of one hundred thousand people and maybe two hundred vampires I didn’t know all of them. My boyfriend, Jakob, the head vampire in town, who made the rules, didn’t like most of the others. So really, I knew him, his best friend Mark, and well, only one other vampire: the arrogant prick who was sitting in my chair.

“A better question is what are you doing here?” He smiled with an insufferable grin on his boyish face. Amadeus Baptiste was a professional, which was the polite way of saying a prostitute. Thanks to the morality wars, the oldest profession was legal now. Amadeus made his living offering women the delights of cool skin and sharp fangs.

We’d run into each other a few months back when one of my cases took me to the town’s only supernatural brothel. He got under my skin. There was something about the way his handsome face would never look old enough to drink and those brown eyes suggested all the things he could do to me. For some reason, Amadeus seemed to think my steady, grown up relationship with Jakob meant I had a thing for vampires. He was wrong.

“I’m here because that’s my desk. Now unless you’ve got some problem you can run along.”

“Actually, it’s after seven, so this is my desk,” he said cheerfully, opening one of the drawers on the left-hand side to take out a coffee cup.

“What?” My voice came out a little too loud.

“Oh, hey Mallory, looks like you know the new guy,” Ben said, passing through to the break room. Ben Auster was the night shift detective who sat at Danny’s desk. He was Danny’s mirror, doing what my partner did from seven at night until seven in the morning. A hulking Hawaiian with dark skin and a body shaped by hours in the gym, Ben never caused any problems for me.

He was an air witch, and the department’s go-to guy for interviewing vampires when I wasn’t around. It never felt like he was invading my space, which was exactly what Amadeus was doing.

I turned back to the vampire with as much disdain as I could muster. “You’re the new guy?”

“Detective Baptiste at your service.” He held out a hand but I didn’t take it. “Actually, I’m not really new, more like coming back. I was on the force for about thirty years but that was…”

He stopped, making a big show of the math. He looked about seventeen, but he was at least over a hundred years old. “Probably when your parents were toddlers.”

He smiled at me expecting some response but since the only thing I wanted to say wasn’t work-safe I kept my mouth shut.

“So first day on the force and I already outrank you.” He laughed, the son of a bitch laughed.

I turned on my heel and walked out without another word.

****

I’d taken the train to work, reluctant to take my precious Jeep out in bad weather. I loved my Jeep, we were meant to be together. But like all good relationships we needed time apart, and when it was cold and wet with a high wind, Lara’s plastic windows made for a little me time. Unfortunately, the walk to the train station and the one from the train station to my apartment made me even wetter than I had been.

My building is a luxury high-rise with thirteen floors. My place was on the twelfth with a solid wall of windows. I woke up to a stunning view of the city each morning. The Eclipse gave a discount for cops or I could never afford the place. Even with the discount my budget groaned between the rent and the heating bill. No one ever mentioned a wall of windows made a room pretty cold.

Cold enough that when I walked through the front door I went right to the fireplace and spun the dial on the gas flame up as high as it would go. My boyfriend, Jakob, should have been there to meet me, but I suspected he was out on some storm-related errand. My rainy walk drenched me, turning my hair into a drippy wet mess, soaking my clothes, and generally making me miserable. I shivered thinking about the girl we’d pulled out of the river. I probably wasn’t that cold. I was probably just still feeling the way she’d died, cold and drowning. The realization didn’t help me warm up and I found myself mumbling to the fire goddess.

“Anna says you like me, E says you like me; well I’m freezing my ass off here. A little help, please?” I muttered, waiting for the warmth of the fireplace to fill the room. Anna and E were both fire witches; they shared the ability to control flames but to a much different degree. Anna could call mating fire, the bright blue flame that brought lust, and she could make candle flames jump by asking them to, but E was much more.

She was strong enough to be called a mage, the title witches gave to someone who channeled the goddess with ease. Anna had done it once, tapping into a wellspring of power to save me last summer. E did it all the time. She was a friend of Jakob’s, a loner who kept to herself.

Anna was social, one of the most outgoing members of a family who had been fire witches for generations and held a high position in the church. The two women couldn’t be more different.

E was short and boyish, a war veteran who was tough all over. Anna was a model, nearly five-ten and everything about her screamed sensuality. As different as they were right now they had one thing in common that made me jealous: neither of them ever got this cold.

I shivered, half-convinced the fire wasn’t going to get warm enough. I should head upstairs and get into the shower, except the water would take forever to get warm and afterward I’d still be wet. I groaned in frustration, falling back onto the living room carpet, positive I’d never be warm again.

I laid there dripping for a few seconds, mustering up the desire to head to a shower when the doorbell rang. Frustrated, still cold and wet I answered the door to find E’s pixie-like frame.

“Come here,” she said, opening her arms and stepping inside the apartment. She let the door swing shut behind her, offering comfort like someone’s mother.

We ended up in the living room, in front of the fire; somehow it seemed to get warmer because she walked in front of it. E had that effect on fires. She sat down cross legged and gestured I should do the same. A minute later she stretched her hands out to meet mine and bright orange flame licked at me.

It didn’t burn and it didn’t bring the feeling of desire and pleasure I associated with blue mating fire. Then again, mating fire might be something fire witches only shared with each other, not people like me. The fire grew around me, climbing up my arms and down my body, squirming its way under my clothes. E smiled.

“You do this all the time?” I asked. The fire was working its way into my hair, fingers of flame giving me a massage that soothed and warmed all at once. My hair turned from dark black ropes to deep brown waves as it dried.

“Often, not all the time,” she replied with a smile. “Usually when something good happens, I take a fire bath to burn it into my memory.”

“Something good?” And the memory came to me through the flames, E with a man, in a bedroom filled with sunlight, the pleasure and the passion, release after so long. It stopped so abruptly I didn’t think she’d meant to share it with me.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, confirming my thoughts. “It’s hard to be like this and not let your thoughts spill over.”

“Then why come over?”

“You asked for help, and we’re happy to give it.” We’re, I hated it when E mixed up her pronouns. She considered the goddess her sister-self, a thoroughly pagan phrase that set my teeth on edge. I didn’t have a religion of my own, so I struggled with matters of faith. I liked my gods distant and hands off, not intermingling with people.

Then again, I was warm for the first time in what felt like days. Warm and dry, the fire won the battle against the discomfort I’d been feeling for weeks. I’d grown up in the South, in a small town with farmers and sunlight. I wasn’t used to the gray cold damp that invaded from the north. It sucked the life from me, turning my world into a dishwater-colored place, making me worry I was slipping into depression. Wrapped in fire, holding E’s hand, those worries seemed silly.

Magic tingled at me, called, and it had nothing to do with the woman in front of me or the goddess she worshiped. Something was coming, and the death witch in me wanted me to pay attention. I stopped talking, stopped listening to E talk, and turned my mind inward, focusing not on the pleasant warmth but on the tickle of magic.

My building was vampire-friendly, supernaturally safe, built with shutters to block out the sun and cages for things that needed to lock themselves up at night. As my power flew over those floors I felt every vampire in the building. There were five of them, none of them nearly as old as the one who called to me. When I recognized him, I moved past the building, opening my mind further when a voice caught me.

“What is this?” It was the crackle of speech made flames, the popping and burning of a fire turned into words. It was E’s voice when she channeled the goddess and it stopped me cold. “Let me feel it.”

I didn’t take Her command so much as continue with what I was doing. I searched, opening myself to all the death in the building. The littler things, bugs and plants, those deaths barely registered. A dog a few floors down who would pass in the next few days buzzed at me. While my companion tried to direct me, tried to pull the sense of death in one direction I went another, trying to find the power I knew so well.

“Take it first,” She said. It took me a minute to realize She was talking about the dog. I’d done that once with a werewolf, commanded it to die and it had. I wasn’t about to do it again, not unless someone was attacking me. I ignored Her, and pushed out to the parking lot, to the outside.

I found him there, my lover, a vampire who changed nearly six hundred years ago. I could see how powerful he was, how old and how strong with that death sense.

I could imagine his fine blond hair cut short on the sides but long enough to style in front, his sparkling blue eyes and his body, lean and strong in all the right places.

But it wasn’t his physique my magic saw, it was the magic he could control, the magic that made him what he was. I followed his magic as he walked a few steps from the car. Then, in a way that meant he could feel me too, Jakob ignored the building and flew to my balcony.

I dropped E’s hand and the fire left with it. I didn’t need the flame anymore. Jakob could warm me up just fine.

“Hi there,” I told him, my voice breathless. He looked every bit as good as I pictured him. In jeans and thin gray sweater, his bright blue eyes sparkled under wet eyelashes. His frame was lean like a dancer with narrow hips and a tapered waist. Seeing him, a little wet from the trip and perfectly framed inside my balcony door, almost made me forget about the other person in the room.

“I thought I felt…is everything all right?” he asked, anxious. I didn’t use magic outside of work unless there was a problem.

“It’s fine, Mallory needed to warm up,” E interrupted with a smile.

Jakob frowned. A devout Catholic he didn’t approve of Pagan gods. He’d helped raise E. Watching what the goddess put her through as a child confirmed his opinion that the only good god was his. I tried to be more open minded but the way that fire-voice pushed me to kill the dog bothered me.

“I’ll leave you two alone,” E said on her way out. Before she shut the door, she called back, “Enjoy the storm.”

“Should I ask?” Jakob looked at me, his face a mix of concern and disapproval.

“Not really.” I clicked off the gas fireplace and looked out the windows, not relishing the idea of driving in the mess of rain, snow, and ice. “So you want to drive or should I?”

“We should take both cars, but I suspect you don’t want to risk Lara.” Jakob’s smile made it clear he was teasing. Of all my friends, he indulged my love for my Jeep, for Lara, more than anyone else. He’d been with me on the night the two of us first saw each other. Lara was the prize in a raffle the church of Anu, the air god, had done. Jakob put up with my insane desire to win her and my more insane need to name her, drive her, and pamper her ever since. It was just another way he was the perfect boyfriend.

“You’re right. I want her safe and sound in her underground parking space.”

There was no way to argue I should drive; Jakob had better reflexes and he could see things I never would. Minutes later, I was happy to sit in the passenger seat and watch the city streets give way to rural highways.

“What are we going to do for three days of ice and cold?” he asked.

“Well I had a few ideas…” I turned away from the window and dropped my hand to his neck, caressing the cool skin there. While I might not share Jakob’s taste in decorating I loved spending time in his bedroom. Six hundred years of practice made him one hell of a lover and with three days off work when I’d be trapped inside I couldn’t think of anything better to do than spend my time in his bed.

“For all three days?” I could see him struggling to keep his eyes on the road. I let my hand drop from his neck to his thigh.

“Well, maybe not all three, but at least the first two.” I laughed as he hit the accelerator. Jakob drove a vintage special edition Mercedes. Whenever I borrowed it I drove with more caution than a ninety-year-old on her way to church. He treated it like a machine, pushing it to go faster even on those dark slick roads. I did my best not to scold him for it, while I promised myself I’d never let him drive Lara that way.

****

We pulled into his garage and got inside without getting drenched. I was grateful, since there was no way I was calling on the fire goddess again. Jakob’s home might have been formed by magic into a cave but it never felt cold or damp, only welcoming and safe. Something about coming inside made me want to take my shoes off and relax, so I did, sitting on the sofa while he made a fire for us.

“This is pretty romantic you know.” I tried to smile suggestively.

“Is it?” He feigned innocence coming to sit beside me, his hand casually tracing circles on my leg. Even through my pants his touch stirred me.

I leaned over and kissed him gently, careful not to move the leg he was touching. He smiled at me and returned my kiss with another. I ran my hands over his chest and back, feeling the soft sweater and the hard muscles beneath it. Jakob had been a miller once hundreds of years ago; working with heavy wooden machines he’d shaped those muscles into planes and angles. I loved the way they felt under my skin.

Between kisses he whispered to me in his first language, an Old German he only used in our intimate moments. I didn’t understand all the words, beautiful and beloved I caught, but the tone of those sweet whispers stole my breath away.

“I want you in my bed,” he said, switching to English before he lifted me up. Jakob held my weight effortlessly, the way a vampire could lift anything from a car to a feather but there was tenderness in his touch, a gentleness that made me love him. I rested my head against his chest, finally used to the quiet there, the silence left by no heartbeat, no breath.

He walked the hallway to the bedroom but I didn’t look at the photos on the wall or the carpet beneath his feet, my gaze stayed locked on his chest and the almost impossible to see fine blond hairs. My examinations ended in the bedroom, when he put me down on the soft bed, whispering again how much he loved me.

After that I stopped paying attention to his words, and focused on his body and the wonderful way it made me feel. Satisfied, Jakob held me until I drifted to sleep, telling me how much he loved me the whole time.

****

I woke up on Wednesday morning later than usual. Jakob’s bedroom with its lack of windows did that to me. With no sunrise to wake me I always slept as late as my body wanted. It was a delicious feeling, and it went perfectly with the blueberry muffins he’d left for me in the kitchen.

Jakob was an amazing cook which was both a blessing and a curse. It was one of the places where we didn’t get along; he thought I ate too much junk food, I thought his insistence on healthy eating was childish. I sat on one of the kitchen stools picking the whole grain oats off the top of my muffin trying to decide what to do with my time until he woke up.

What did people do on snow days? If I had family I could call them but I didn’t. My dad died when I was a kid, I barely remember him. My mom and I hadn’t always gotten along; then when I was thirteen she started dying of cancer. She did a bad job of it, hanging on until I was twenty-three.

My husband Greg didn’t share her trouble; he died quick and easy, riding his motorcycle around a turn, not paying attention. Of course, Greg had a little trouble staying dead. I’d called him back as a zombie without realizing it, so maybe Mom’s method was better.

I shook off my morbid thoughts as I made coffee. Phoebe, my best friend, had set up a shelter for people who didn’t want to spend the storm alone. She was a spirit witch and lately she’d been volunteering with an outreach group. They found witches who were new to the life, scared and alone, and put them to work helping the community, turning a potentially bad situation into a win-win.

With her long blonde hair and sparkling green eyes, Phoebe was perfect for the group, photogenic and outgoing, not to mention always able to guess when someone was down. She’d invited me to help out but I didn’t think a death witch would be welcome in a shelter filled with scared people.

My other friends were riding the storm out at home; Anna and her girlfriend Nancy were probably stocked up on fire wood and wouldn’t be coming out for days. Isaura, the air witch in the group, was home as well. Her Lord of the Rings marathon would only be interrupted by phone calls to Ben at the station. They’d been dating longer than Anna and Nancy, and even though they didn’t live together we all agreed they were the better couple.

Rhythm, a Greek muse who completed our quintet, was hosting a three-day long dance party at the local witches’ bar, Convenire. I could have gone there or watched movies with Isa, or crashed the romantic doings at Anna’s place. Could have gone lots of places actually, could have even worked through the storm.

So why was I in Jakob’s living room waiting while he slept? I didn’t have a good answer, so I settled down with a book to ignore the question. I dozed, I must have because when I looked up there was a woman looking at me. She sat on the edge of the couch, her skin dripping but not making anything around her wet. Her hair dripped water down her pale skin, bloodless lips opened and water poured out.

It was the woman we’d pulled from the river. I reached out to touch her hand and instead grabbed a cool mist.

“What?” I asked.

The ghost opened her mouth again and more water poured out. My hand broke through the mist, reaching for her and the words screamed into my mind.

“Stop them.” Over and over again, stop them, you have to stop them, they have to be stopped, don’t let them, stop them, pounding into my brain. She didn’t tell me who, she didn’t tell me why, just that I had to stop them. It went on for hours the clock said were only seconds and then she was gone. I laid on the couch nursing a headache before I got up and called the squad room.

****

“SIU, Edwards.”

“Simon, perfect.” I smiled despite my task. Simon was a very strong spirit witch. Of all the people I could have gotten on the phone he was one of the best. “Danny and I went to look at a body yesterday. It’s not our case but it needs to be. The dead woman showed up to talk to me. Can you pull the case for me?”

“Uh, maybe? There’s a form, right?”

“There’s a form for everything. I think this one is an 86J…or 86K? I can’t remember without my cheat sheet.” Simon and I were both new to the force; I had nine months in, he had six. I didn’t feel the least bit of guilt admitting to him I hadn’t committed the number of every form to memory.

“86H, transfer responsibility for the investigation of a homicide due to supernatural interference,” a voice called from outside the receiver.

“Thanks, Amadeus,” Simon said cheerfully while I groaned. Obnoxious know-it-all vampire.

“Shouldn’t he be asleep?”

“It’s dark out, he’s eating, so no big deal.” Simon ignored my angry tone. “I’ve got the form, I’ll look the case up. Want me to email the details to you at home?”

“Uh, I’m at Jakob’s, I’ll log into work from here.” I gave it to him and chatted politely for a few minutes. The squad room was quiet, no one causing any problems, no one needing our help. We both hoped it stayed that way.

My email came through a few minutes later. The message told me “all transfers are 86, H for homicide.” Three guesses who sent it and the first two don’t count. Amadeus was determined to remind me he was a better detective. I was sitting in front of the computer in Jakob’s office drumming my fingers angrily when he found me.

“If you just woke up now, why is Amadeus awake and being a pain in my ass?”

“He’s not that young, and if there was a good reason he could stay awake, especially if he had time to prepare.” I heard him sit down on one of the leather chairs, but kept my eyes on the infernal machine. “What was important enough for him to call you at three in the afternoon?”

“I called the office, not him. Turns out Amadeus joined the SIU. Didn’t you know?” I finally looked up. Jakob was wearing my favorite outfit: black silk pajama bottoms and nothing else. If there was anything that would get me to forget my most annoying co-worker he was it.

“No, but he did tell me he’d be looking for another line of work.”

“Because you didn’t approve of his last job?” I asked even though I knew the answer. Jakob didn’t approve of vampires biting their lovers. Since I had no desire to play pincushion it worked out for us. The women Amadeus worked for had a much different opinion.

Phoebe, who was a bit of a sexual adventurer, had been more than happy to pay two hundred and fifty dollars for the pleasure of him taking her mind and making her feel things she’d never felt before. Unfortunately, the whole experience left her a bit confused, and when she came to cry on my shoulder Jakob overheard.

It led to a short fight between us; it ended with me extracting a promise that he’d never hurt Amadeus. I was kicking myself for that promise right now.

“Actually, a new position was his suggestion. I take it you’re not pleased?”

“No. The bastard is sitting at my desk right now, showing off how he’s a better cop than I am and it’s only his second day. He’s obnoxious and annoying and—”

“I suppose asking you to evaluate him on the merits of his work would be a waste?”

I glared at him for having the audacity to suggest something so fair and logical.

“I suspected as much. If he’s working night shift will you really have to deal with him much?”

“No, but that’s not the p—”

“Has he done anything truly offensive or does his very presence aggravate you?”

“Not truly offensive,” I stalled realizing how neatly his logic ruined my argument. His logic had a habit of doing that. “But on the phone when I couldn’t remember the name of the form he said it and then he sent me this note explaining how to remember it and…”

That’s it, the rant was ruined. I might not like the smoldering looks Amadeus gave me but coming from anyone else I’d consider what he’d done helpful. Phoebe, with her spirit witch insight, and another friend, a satyr, both told me I had a thing for Amadeus, an attraction; it bothered me so much I turned it into hate. They could be right.

I’d worked with difficult people before, like the werewolf on the squad, who turned out to be a great guy despite the way werewolves scared me into a panic whenever I saw them. If I could see past my issues to accept him, I could cut Amadeus a break. Maybe.

“Something woke me?” Jakob politely changed the subject.

“Oh, yeah the ghost, sorry.” I’d forgotten about her for a minute. Okay, I’d forgotten about her for more than a minute.

“Nothing to worry about then?”

“New case,” I said, pointing to the paper work. “Why don’t I tell you about it while you cook dinner?”

Jakob had moved on from his obsession with Nigella Lawson, the famous Italian cook, to a mild obsession with Bobby Flay, the famous American cook. Personally, I didn’t like the guy, but what his recipes did in Jakob’s hand made me weak. Tonight, was a mushroom soup with some sort of fried ham. Crispy ham, maybe? Jakob was cutting it into strips with a frying pan full of oil waiting on the stove. It was all fascinating to watch but not nearly as fascinating as the case in front of me.

“Okay, so Cynthia Sweeny, age forty-three, lobbyist for MetroTech Chemicals but she started there as a scientist processing soil samples. First reported missing by her boyfriend about three days ago. Want to see the picture?”

Jakob shook his head, busy doing something with mushrooms.

“Too bad, because that’s about it. She has a normal week, heads out on Saturday afternoon and no one sees her again until we pull her out of the river. No links to any known crime, no past history, nothing, perfectly normal life until she ends up dead.”

“What did her ghost tell you?”

“Stop them. But there’s nothing here that helps me with who they are.” I flipped back through a few pages. “Guess that’s the mystery.”

“Good thing you’re a detective,” Jakob teased. I was thinking of a witty reply when my cell phone rang. I grabbed it and recognized the number with a smile.

“Hey partner, about that case the other night—”

“I’ve got something more important. Where are you?”

“Jakob’s place.”

“Fuck.” I’d never heard Danny curse before.

“What’s wrong?”

“Maeve’s got a fever, nothing we give her is bringing it down and now we’re out of Tylenol. None of the stores are open. I’m scrambling to find some.”

“Even if the stores were open you couldn’t get there.” I looked out to Jakob’s wide stone porch; it was covered in two inches of solid ice.

“I can’t drive anywhere, I could walk though, or…or hell it doesn’t matter if they’re not open.”

“The hospital?” I tried, panic creeping into my brain.

“We called. They told us not to bother. Even if we found a way there with the roads this way they’re packed. How the hell do I treat a fever with no drugs in the middle of an ice storm?”

I had no idea. Thankfully, before I told Danny that entirely not reassuring thought Jakob took the phone.

“Pack her in snow, or at least ice, her arm pits, around her neck, behind her knees.” I couldn’t hear what Danny was saying but I was grateful to have someone who’d raised kids long before Tylenol or even thermometers existed.

“Just one blanket, a thin one.” There was another pause, some question but Jakob interrupted. “I have drugs here, everything an adult might need, if she can take—”

“There’s a small stream not too far behind the house. You could get to it from the river.”

The one-sided conversation was beginning to get to me. How had we switched from talking about drugs to rivers? They went on for a while, directions, landmarks you could see from the river, none of it making sense. Danny didn’t have a boat.

“I’ll leave some clothes for you inside the door and package the drugs in something waterproof.”

What the hell? Jakob hung up my phone and walked out of the room, only slightly delaying the start of my interrogation. I found him in the master bathroom, opening a plastic shoebox filled with over-the-counter drugs.

“Planning on opening a pharmacy?”

He stopped, putting down the box he was opening to look me in the eye, suddenly serious. “I love you. I want my house to be your home, there’s food for you, and clothes, and if you ever need it medicine to heal you.”

I let my jaw hang open in surprise. “So you bought all this.” I gestured to the fifteen cardboard boxes, brand new cures for any stomach ailment, cold, fever, or ache a girl could have. “In case I got sick when I was here?”

“I’d like for you to be here more often. I keep trying to ask you but you always misunderstand, Mallory I—”

“You want me to move in?” I interrupted. I adored the way he could slip into flowery Victorian speech but I was too excited to wait. “You’re asking me to move in with you?”

For the tiniest second his face fell and I expected him to take it back, to tell me it was too soon, we should wait or something but then the expression was gone, replaced by a smile. “Are you saying yes?”

I jumped up to hug him, crossing the four or five steps to the sink where he was standing in one leap. Good thing he was strong enough to grab me and hold me there for a long deep kiss. I was moving in with Jakob. Wow.

Eight, no, nine months after I’d met him we were still in love, still crazy with lust when we saw each other but now we’d learned to work through things that bothered us. All of it was amazing, the most stable, positive relationship of my adult life, and now it was moving forward. I’d never expected this. Jakob was too Catholic to believe in cohabitating but he must have realized how much it meant to me. I had a sudden urge to say thank you in a more physical way.

I let my tongue slip a little farther into his mouth, exploring, while my hands reached to the waist of his silk pajamas. He hadn’t put on a shirt yet and I could feel his nipples harden underneath me. My kisses worked their way to his ear, gently nibbling the bottom of his delicate ear lobe in a way that always made him moan.

“Danny will be here in twenty minutes.”

“He couldn’t drive here that fast,” I whispered in his ear, my hands searching for the drawstring of his pants.

“He’s not driving, he’s swimming.”

“What?” I stopped, no more kisses, no more undressing. “It’s thirty degrees out, the river has chunks of ice floating in it. There’s absolutely no way a person could swim in it.”

“He won’t be swimming as a person.”

“Wait, you know? You know what Danny is? You’ve known all this time and you didn’t tell me?”

“You never asked.” He turned back to the boxes of pills.

The mood was gone but I didn’t mind; I had something much more important to find out. “I’m asking now, what is he? It’s some sort of shifter, right? Oh my God, is he a weredolphin? I thought that was it but…”

“No.” Jakob kissed me on the forehead. He’d assembled a neat pile of individual packages of pills, all of them waiting to go into a small capsule on a thin cord like I remembered wearing at the pool as a little kid.

“Well what? Is it a fairytale creature? I thought mermaid, merman for a while but he has kids, normal kids without tails, so not that. Tell me!” I demanded.

“He’s a selkie.”

I looked a Jakob dumbly.

“One of the Pooka? They turn from seal to man by shedding their coats. I’m sure I have some of the stories in the library, maybe even a movie left over from when Ronnie was young.”

Ronnie was Jakob’s adopted son. I’d spoken to him on the phone over the holidays, semi-meeting a man who was nine years older than me but called my boyfriend Dad. It was more than a little odd and I suspected would be a touch difficult to get used to. When I could think of Ronnie as a kid, perpetually ten years old it wasn’t a problem.

But then there was E, who had a huge crush on him when she was four, reminding me that Jakob had an extensive life before me. And yet somehow E bothered me in a different way than Ronnie did. Maybe because we’d become friends, while Ronnie was still Jakob’s kid from half a lifetime ago. Life could be strange that way.

Just like it was strange I’d been trying to solve the mystery of what Danny was for months and offhandedly, as if it were no big deal, Jakob did.

“How did you know?”

“I knew one once, during the war—”

“Which war?” With Jakob there were several.

“World War I,” he answered absently putting away bottles of medicine. “Danny hides extraordinarily well, but Emma feels exactly the way Oonagh did.”

“Oonagh?” I asked, trying out the pronunciation of the strange name. Jakob admitted to only a handful of women in his six hundred years. I was always on the lookout for gossip about them. As usual he was tight lipped. The only answer he gave me was a nod.

****

I sat on the couch waiting for Danny thinking about moving in with my man. Well okay, moving in with my vampire. There were a thousand things to consider, all the normal boring items: if I would take my furniture, where my stuff would fit, how it would change my commute and then the more supernatural ones, like how after all the time we’d been together I’d never seen Jakob eat.

I knew he drank blood but that was as far as he would discuss it. He hated talking about being a vampire to me. The few brief conversations we’d had started and ended with him denouncing vampires for being amoral, feral creatures.

I was deep in the middle of fitting my couch into his living room when Jakob walked by holding a pair of jeans that were miles too big for him. He headed toward the front door as I called out to him. “Should I ask where you got those?”

“James left them behind,” was his non-answer answer as he left the pants on the porch. Who was James? No clue. Mark, Jakob’s best friend who worked with me on occasion, might have mentioned the name once but it didn’t ring any bells. Contemplating moving in with Jakob meant I’d have more time to find out the things I didn’t know about him. There were so many of those.

The doorbell rang about fifteen minutes later and Danny, dripping wet, wearing the jeans and holding a dark brown coat that could have been a seal skin, barely stepped inside the house. His face was lined with worry in a way it didn’t get even when we were looking at the most gruesome crime scene.

“How is she?” I asked.

“Better, the ice trick worked, but not great. It might be strep throat but it could be the flu. I never realized how dangerous that could be.”

“It was enough to kill people when I was young,” Jakob said, handing over the capsule of drugs. Danny’s face looked grim at the thought and his thank you betrayed more emotion. When I opened the first of Jakob’s double doors to the outside the cold hit me. Through the small space designed to keep sunlight out of a vampire’s house I could see heavy rain and icy ground. I knew Danny’s errand was desperate but I still didn’t want to send him out in the bad weather.

“Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” I asked my partner, but I knew the question was silly. More than anything Danny was a dad. He loved his girls and he’d walk through fire, rain, and ice to get to them. “I’ll be fine. We’ll talk about this after the storm?”

I nodded. “We’ll talk about it after Maeve’s okay.”

****

We spent the night watching The Secret of Roan Inish. Danny called a couple of hours after he left to announce he’d made it home safe and more importantly, Maeve’s fever broke. She was still a sick little girl but she’d make it through. Was there ever a chance she wouldn’t? Could a girl die of a sore throat and stuffy head in the twenty-first century? I didn’t even want to think about it.