CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The locker room was empty except for us. Adam watched me solemnly, not looking away, so I used my body to hide my combination as I spun the lock. It wasn’t that I thought he would steal from me, but I’d worked too long as a police officer to trust much of anyone.

It meant my back was to Adam as I took off my jacket and hung it on a hook in the locker. The holes in the jacket were from Kate’s nails, not the demon. I undid my belt so I wouldn’t have to pull the dress shirt over the stomach wounds. It meant that everything on it slid around a little, but I figured I was safe enough in the locker room. Then Adam started to crowd me.

“I need your jacket, too,” Adam said.

“If you’re looking for claw marks so you can identify the type of demon, you only need the shirt.”

“You’ve got bandages on your right arm, Havoc, that means I need the jacket to help us line up the cuts in the shirt.”

“The arm isn’t from the demon,” I said.

“Did you have an altercation with something else today?”

I hesitated, because the truth was, yes. I just hated to out Kate. She wanted to be human like everyone else; if I told the truth to Adam, he had no filters. He wouldn’t talk about an ongoing case, but he might talk about Kate to the wrong person. If it had been almost anyone else in the ME’s office, I’d have told them the truth, and of course they would have just called me to bring my clothes down to them. No one but Adam would have chased me down like this.

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, and knew it was the wrong thing to have said as soon as I saw his jaw clench.

“I am good at my job, Detective Havelock,” he said; his eyes darkened like gray clouds filling up with rain.

“I know you are, Adam, I mean Assistant to the Medical Examiner Thornton.” Something on the bandages had caught on the shirtsleeve so I couldn’t get it over them.

“I am not stupid, Detective.”

“I never said you were.” I tried to force the sleeve over, but it actually hurt to press on it. Scratches always hurt worse than deep wounds at first, more nerve endings exposed to the air.

“Then why is it hard to explain to me? Are you afraid I won’t understand the attack, the demon, or the magic involved?”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all,” I said, and tried to think of a way to save the conversation without hurting Kate. She’d been hurt enough for one day.

“I know more magic than you do.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said, and finally gave up getting the sleeve over the bandages, which meant I turned to the other man with the shirt hanging off my arms like I couldn’t dress myself.

“Then why are you insinuating that I won’t understand a simple demon attack?” he asked, his gray eyes the color of storm clouds. Apparently, he was one of those people whose eyes just got darker the more pissed they were; if they reached black, I wondered what would happen.

“First, there was nothing simple about the attack,” I said, but he wasn’t looking at me, or he wasn’t looking at my face. He was staring at my stomach.

He reached out to touch my stomach. I jerked back out of reach and that hurt, but I didn’t want him touching my bare stomach. Maybe I’d been too fast to say he wasn’t bisexual, because he tried to touch my stomach again.

“Stop it, Thornton. We don’t know each other that well.”

He frowned up at me. “I’m not trying to touch your abs, I’m trying to get a sense of the demon marks. Did anyone get pictures of your wounds or take measurements?”

“Pictures, yes, but no measurements,” I said.

“That was careless,” he said.

“This isn’t like a true physical beast,” I said. “The demon’s hands can change shape. Measurements don’t help with beings like this.”

“They do with some demons, Havelock; you have enough background in the Infernal to know that some of the demonic have set shapes.”

“This one didn’t,” I said.

“Let me take measurements now.”

“I’d have to remove the bandages for that.”

He looked up at me with a so-what? look on his face. “Thornton, you either need to get out of the lab more often, or never leave the lab.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, frowning and ready to take offense.

“It means I am not ripping off a clean medical dressing in a locker room just so you can take measurements that won’t matter. The demon changed shape several times while we were fighting it; anything that mutable won’t be caught from physical measurements.”

Adam leaned closer to my bandages as if he could see through them. I tried to remember what his psychic talent was, but it was something to do with lab work, so why was he bent over like he could see through the bandages?

I finally asked, “What are you looking at, Adam?”

“Your wounds, they’re partially healed.”

“You can see through the bandages?” I asked.

He nodded and leaned in even closer like his nose was going to bump into me soon. “I can see that which is hidden,” he said, as if that explained what he was doing. I knew it was psychic and not magic because I felt nothing. Psychic gifts can be used unseen even around other gifted people, but magic is harder to hide; no one knows why it works that way, it just does.

“Help me get the cuffs unbuttoned and you can have the shirt,” I said, hoping to distract him from getting his face any closer to my abdomen.

Adam looked up at me, his gray eyes back to their usual color. He wasn’t angry anymore; he was interested. “I’ve seen bodies cut up by demons; you should be in the hospital, Havoc, not almost healed.”

“There was an angel, it helped heal me,” I said, and just reached across my own body to start trying to undo the cuff on my injured arm, because Adam didn’t seem to want to help. My arm coming across my stomach did move him a little back from me. He even stood up.

“I didn’t hear about an angel manifesting at the hospital.”

“It wasn’t exactly a manifestation,” I said. I was not sharing what happened with him, for the same reason I didn’t want to share Kate’s secret with him; he talked when he shouldn’t have about things sometimes. What had happened at the hospital would get around; there’d been too many witnesses for it not to become gossip, but none of it would come from me. They could make up what they wanted, but I wasn’t helping the rumors.

“Is that why the wounds are almost closed without scabbing, as if the skin is just closing back up?” he asked.

It was harder to undo the cuff buttons with the shirt inside out, but I finally got them, but realized the bandages still impeded me getting the sleeve off, which meant I needed the other sleeve off first. It’s funny that sometimes smaller injuries can surprise you with how inconvenient they can be.

“Yes, if you’re healed by Celestial energy it doesn’t scar,” I said. I started to reach my hands toward each other like normal, but the arm protested. If there was another angel anytime soon, I’d need to remember to ask for extra healing for the arm. I moved the uninjured arm across my body again. Moving my hand on the injured side tugged at the scratches so the pain was sharper. I wasn’t sure what fumbling at the buttons moved in my arm that made it hurt so much, but again small movements matter if you’re hurt.

“Here, I’ll help you,” he said, and just reached out to do the same thing I’d asked him to do earlier. It was like he hadn’t heard me ask, too lost in peering at my wound through the medical dressing. How had he done that?

“How did you see through the bandages?” I asked, while he focused just as completely on the buttons on my shirt as he had on everything else. When he didn’t answer right away, I let him finish the task before I repeated my question.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t think about you being injured and the difficulty of taking the shirt off.” He took the shoulder of my shirt down so I could more easily slide my arm out of the sleeve.

“Thanks, okay, I appreciate the help now.”

He actually stepped behind me, helping me pull my injured arm out of the other sleeve. He held it up in gloved hands and started letting it fold down into the paper bag. I could have shoved it in the bag, but I couldn’t have made it look neat with just one hand like that.

He sealed the bag, then got a marker out of his pocket and wrote on the bag, so it would go with all the rest of the evidence from the hospital. “Please initial here, Detective,” he said, holding it out to me and putting his palm underneath the plastic so I had a surface to write on. The shirt was lower than the plastic top, so we weren’t pressing on the evidence. It was neatly done.

“How did you see my wound?” I asked again.

“I have a very specialized type of remote viewing, except instead of being able to see something hundreds of miles away I see through things that are directly around me even if they’re hidden from my physical sight.”

“Like my wounds.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Or a clue that’s hidden under a stain,” I said, making a logic leap.

He smiled at me as happy as I’d ever seen him. “Exactly.”

“No wonder the ME values you, you’re perfect for the job.”

He grinned and it transformed his face so that he was . . . pretty. I’d have never said that to his face, but he was just so delicate that handsome seemed the wrong word.

“Everyone covered in there? Lieutenant wanted to check what was taking so long,” Lila said. She did hesitate, to give us time to yell stop. Ravensong would have come on in, assuming she’d warned us enough. It was a co-ed locker room, but we all tried to warn anyone who was shy.

Both Adam and I looked toward the door as she opened it; he still had that great smile on his face. Lila stopped and looked at us as the door swung shut behind her. There was an expression on her face I couldn’t quite read.

Adam said, “Are you unhappy with us?”

She shook her head, ponytail bouncing. “No, why do you ask?”

“I’m not always great with reading people’s faces, so sometimes I just ask,” he said.

“I couldn’t decipher her expression either,” I said, “and I am good at reading people.”

Adam looked over his shoulder at me. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No, I’m being honest.”

“The expression is me finding two handsome men in the locker room, but I’m at work so I can’t be unprofessional,” Lila said.

“You’re just being polite,” Adam said.

“No, I’m not,” she said, and I realized what the look had meant at the door now. She’d seen Adam’s smile and seen him in a new light just like I had, except it might have meant more to her than it had to me. I wasn’t sure, but I was betting she saw him as attractive now. Would it change things between them? Probably not, but then again you never knew with women, or Heaven help us, men either. A small change in perspective can translate to something larger, or it can just sink back into business as usual.

Adam frowned at her. “I know what I look like and I know what Havoc looks like, especially with him shirtless.”

“Havoc is my friend and the fact that he looks good out of his clothes isn’t something that a friend remarks on,” Lila said.

Adam did that frown that made me want to smooth his brow again. “I don’t understand the difference when it’s just words.”

“I know you don’t,” she said, but she wasn’t irritated with him like normal, almost patient especially for Lila. She wasn’t incredibly patient with anyone. She wasn’t cruel, but she wasn’t always kind either.

I turned to open my locker and give them what privacy I could, though Lila wouldn’t need privacy from just me if she was intent on moving forward with something, but I thought Adam might be a little shy with me watching. I shouldn’t have worried about it.

“I wish I could read your face,” Adam said.

“I wish you could, too,” she said.

I looked at the clothes folded in my locker; neither of them really matched the dress slacks I was wearing, but I finally chose the black one because I’d bought it most recently. The other one was a tank top that I’d had forever and cut the sleeves off and it was too revealing even with the jacket over it.

“You aren’t mad at me, are you?” he asked, and I knew he wasn’t asking me.

“No, what made you ask?” Lila said.

“Because I can’t always see when people are irritated with me, so I keep pushing and then they get mad.”

“You’re not being irritating right now, it’s a nice change,” she said.

He missed the humor and said, “I don’t want to irritate you.”

“What do you want?” she asked, and I knew that tone in her voice. I’d heard her question suspects with it when she was the good cop, and I’d heard it when she was flirting—for Lila, they were both a type of negotiation.

“I’m really bad at this part,” Adam said.

“What part?” she asked.

“If I say the truth, you’ll get mad.”

“I promise that whatever you say I won’t get mad; I may not like it, but I won’t get angry.”

“I tend to make women upset,” he said.

“Just say what you want, because you telling me I’ll be upset with you after I’ve promised not to be is getting on my nerves.”

“I told you,” he said.

I kept my back to them as I got dressed, and it wasn’t for my modesty’s sake. The T-shirt didn’t hurt going on over my arm, but the suit jacket forced me to go slower. I turned so that I could see myself in the mirror at the end of the locker area. The black looked better than I’d expected, like one of those designer T-shirts instead of the only clean shirt I had that fit me.

“I’m going to give you two a few minutes alone; just tell me what room I need to go to,” I said.

“Don’t go,” Lila said; so that was that, when a female friend asks you to stay around when she’s talking to another man, you stay.

Adam glanced at me, then back to her. “I’m sorry I’m being irritating, or weird.”

“Do you want a coffee date?” she suggested.

“I’d like a date with you, yes,” he said. His affect never changed, and I couldn’t tell if he was controlling his emotions so she wouldn’t know how much it meant to him, or if it was just the way he processed.

“Let’s take it slow, coffee date first, see if we have anything in common,” she said, but she was giving that wry smile that meant she was sort of laughing at herself.

“I don’t drink coffee; can we make it a tea date?” he asked.

Her smile widened, but she nodded. “Sure, whatever you like to drink. We’ll just do it at a coffee shop that serves other things.”

“I’d like that,” he said.

“Me, too. Let’s talk details after we’ve shown Havoc the evidence. We don’t want to keep Lieutenant Charleston waiting any longer than we already have.”

“Agreed,” he said, and there was none of that bubbling excitement that I would have felt, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling it.

We all filed out of the locker room with Adam back to his base frown. I held the door and caught Lila’s gaze as she went through. She rolled her eyes and gave that smile again. It was enough for me to know that she didn’t know if the coffee/tea date was a good idea, but something about that one smile had made her want to try. My personal life wasn’t in good enough shape for me to throw stones at anyone else, so I just followed the two of them through, making sure my face was pleasantly blank. If the rumor got out that they were maybe dating, it wouldn’t come from me. Though if I had the chance later, I was going to ask Lila what had made Adam go from someone so irritating she hid from him to offering a coffee date. I’d have bet good money that Lila would never have given Adam the time of day; just more proof that I had no idea what any woman would do when it came to romance.