Joe Bleythin went up the walk to the rambling stucco house that held Bleythin Investigations with reluctance. He used to look forward to coming to work. To a job worth doing, and doing it with thoroughness and pride. He’d been honored to learn the business.
And, the pay was good.
They were private detectives, but they didn’t take just any cases. No following cheating spouses for divorce cases—his elder twin brothers Harrison and Michael founded the business strictly as a missing-persons agency. As the family joke went, they had a “nose” for it.
Right now Joe was in the mood for chucking it all in and finding something less stressful to do with his time. Like chasing rabbits, maybe. Or going back to the Air Force.
He stepped up to the door and walked in, because he was the boss at the moment. The main room was large, containing three desks and a lot of other office paraphernalia. A picture window looked out on the desert landscaped lawn and busy street beyond. Doors led to two other offices, and a long hallway went to the private areas in the back of the building.
Two people were already in the room, and they looked at him as he entered—the male in mild surprise, the female in faint annoyance.
“What? Am I late?”
Joe would have checked his watch, had it not been stolen from the café bathroom the day before. At least his clothes were still there when he got back from the vampire chase. He’d learned never to take a wallet with him. He’d only lost about ten dollars in cash, and thieves never took the car key he carried.
All in all, yesterday morning had been pretty weird.
“Sid in yet?” he asked the annoyed office manager.
Cathy Carter bared her teeth at him in a snarl.
“Hey! What’d I do?”
“You’re being insensitive,” Daniel Corbett said.
He was seated in the chair next to Sid’s desk. Typically, he had a cup of coffee in one hand and a book in the other. Daniel didn’t technically work for the agency, but he was around so much, Joe figured they should either pay him a salary or start charging him rent. He was a cousin of Sid’s, the result of crossbreeding between a vampire and a human; scarily brilliant and weirdly psychic, but otherwise a fairly normal mortal—for a geek.
A geek who was looking disapprovingly at Joe over the top of his glasses.
Then it occurred to Joe why Cathy was in such a foul mood. He’d been born a werewolf, so he didn’t pay much attention to the phases of the moon. Cathy was one of the unfortunate victims of a werewolf gone bad; a bite from an attacker had brought her over to the wolf side. It took years for a human who’d been turned to get control over their morphing abilities, and the full moon played hell with their lives. Cathy was entering the time of month where she’d be spending four days locked up in the padded and soundproofed back room.
She hated that they had to get a temp in once a month to mess with her well-organized office.
“Sid’s not in, and I have a lot to do,” she growled.
“Sorry. I’ll leave you alone.”
“You do that.”
He carefully didn’t show any annoyance at being even more short-staffed in the days ahead. It wasn’t Cathy’s fault some crazy bastard had taken a bite out of her, left her for dead, but turned her, instead. His brother Mike had found the bastard and made sure he never victimized another human. It was Mike who’d brought Cathy home.
And right now Mike was another missing member of the agency’s staff. Not that Joe was going to complain about Michael Bleythin checking himself into rehab. He hadn’t fallen off the wagon, but he had been having urges.
“And there’s nothing meaner than a drunken werewolf,” Joe muttered as he settled behind his own desk.
“Don’t talk bad about your brother,” Cathy called from across the room.
Blast and dang werewolf hearing! “It was a statement of fact,” he replied.
“He had to kill another feral,” Cathy said. “You know what that does to him.”
Mike could do no wrong in Cathy’s eyes—but he was the only person who couldn’t. If Joe were to complain about Harry’s neglecting the family business to spend too much time with his new wife in Arizona, Cathy would agree with him.
She’d not only agree, but launch into a lecture on how it was not only a bad idea, but downright wrong for a werewolf to have married a human. Cathy was recently converted to the shapeshifter way of life, and in the way of new converts, she was somewhat fanatical about ancient tradition.
The root of Joe’s frustration lay in the fact that his brothers were not around. And it wasn’t only because werewolves were pack creatures. Joe was way too overworked, and beginning to feel out of control. This was not a state he thrived in.
On top of that, now there was something going on in the vampire community, and he strongly suspected he was going to get more involved in it. The drugged-out Primes he’d encountered yesterday must have something to do with the hunter/Clan operation Sid had turned over to a relative.
He checked e-mail and voice mail, but there were no messages from either of his brothers or Sid Wolf. “Guess I’m on my own. What are you doing here, Daniel? And would you like a job?”
“Waiting for Sid.” He nudged the antique Murano glass paperweight on Sid’s desk out of the way to make room for his coffee cup. “I’d love to help you find missing persons, Joe. That’s why I’m waiting for Sid.”
Daniel had a strong psychic gift, but it wasn’t much use for anything practical. Daniel Corbett could visualize the person who’d last been in a place, or held an object, and tell you all about them with frightening accuracy. If the person had lived a thousand or two years ago, that is. Daniel put his talent to use as an historian, or tried to. His colleagues in academia tended to think of him as a crank and a nutjob when he couldn’t provide actual hard evidence for the things he knew.
Sid had been teaching him how to focus his gifts on reading more modern objects. So far Daniel had managed to work his way up to occasionally seeing visions from about fifty years in the past. If he ever made it up to the here and now, he would be an invaluable asset to the missing persons firm.
“While you are good company,” Joe said to Daniel, “you take up valuable space.”
“And drink too much of your coffee,” Daniel agreed. “Go chase your tail,” he added, and went back to reading his book.
Joe pulled up a file and began to type, but his phone rang before he could type more than a few words. Joe felt a moment of dread before the second ring sounded. He trusted his instincts and hesitated to answer. But on the third ring, he picked it up.
The caller was Sid’s mother, Lady Antonia. And, sure enough, there was trouble.
Warning bells in his head urged Laurent to leave, and he paced the apartment, longing for the night. He’d gotten away with playing a Clan boy for three days, and it was bound to fall apart soon. He needed to make escape plans.
But you had to work with what the fates gave you, and they’d given him Eden. The worst part of it was, he wanted to keep her. Such insanity had to be nipped in the bud.
Nipping. He smiled. He liked the idea of nipping Ms. Eden Faveau. Often. It made his fangs ache just thinking about it. Thinking about it too much would make him hard, as well.
You really only need her for one thing, he reminded himself sternly. And sex isn’t it.
Still, he closed his eyes and instantly saw her naked. With her clothes on she appeared rather angular, almost gawky. But naked, oh, my, the treasures that were revealed. He liked her back, and the way it tapered down to the lovely round curve of her ass. He liked her strong arms and legs. Her limbs were long and supple and nicely muscled. Her belly had just the right feminine curve. Her hips were a bit narrow, but maybe after she had a kid—
Whoa—what darkly wholesome part of his imagination had that thought bubbled up from?
He also liked being with her, and he wasn’t supposed to like being with people. Not that he liked being with his own kind. Who was he supposed to like being with?
Well, he did like Eden naked, and that was acceptable. If he decided to keep her—own her—he’d keep her naked all the time.
That was a much better thought for a Tribe Prime.
He checked the clock, though he didn’t need to. Awareness of the movements of light and dark was born in him. Did that sense dull in those who used the daylight drugs? Maybe he’d get his hands on a dose of Dawn and find out for himself.
Should he use Eden to help him acquire the Dawn as well as break into the Patron’s computer? No. That was an excuse to stay around her longer. He knew who to go to for the drug, but that would wait until after he’d acquired the Patron’s wealth. He could have anything he wanted, then.
Trying to cure his restlessness, he sat down at the computer. He had no clue how to get online, but he did discover the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay, so he played the computer game for a couple of hours.
As sunset neared, Eden still wasn’t back. He’d been mentally searching the whole time he’d been playing, hunting for any vampires in the area. Even with the nasty zapper thing off, the safe house seemed to still be clear. Several nights of fights and an apparent bad reaction to Dawn had thinned the ranks of Manticores.
It was time for him to venture out on the streets alone. He needed to stretch his legs. He needed the fresh air.
He needed to retrieve the laptop, and he was tired of his Clan-boy impersonation delaying that.
He stood and dug a coin out of his pocket. Heads, he’d leave Eden a note. Tails, he’d do what a Prime should—go about his business without regard to some lowly female’s sensibilities.