He rubbed his chin. “So is this guy your partner?” he asked, pointing to the empty space beside me.
“No. Christian’s my partner. We don’t go everywhere together, but that’s the arrangement.”
His head jerked back. “The Vampire? The temperamental jerk who stormed off this morning?”
“That would be him.”
He glanced at my black nail polish. “You shouldn’t trust Vampires.”
I set down my fork and picked up the last crumb. “Who said I did?” I noticed his clothes beneath his open coat. “Nice tie. I didn’t know detectives had a dress code.”
He touched the blue tie, his fingers tracing the diagonal pinstripes. “We don’t. My mother taught me that presentation is everything, and what you project on the outside will shape people’s opinions. When I question people, they’re more intimidated by a suit and tie. It looks official.”
I mentally snorted. His mother would probably disown him for seeing a girl like me. Especially when I thought about how I’d shown up at the crime scene, braless and wearing a trapper hat.
“How much do you really know about Christian Poe?” he asked.
Niko approached the table but didn’t sit down. “Raven, we need to leave. Viktor called.”
I smiled at the detective. “I guess you’ll be seeing me again.”
“Give me your number.”
“I don’t have one yet.” Viktor hadn’t given me a phone since there was a special process he had to go through to get free access. “Give me yours.”
Glass scribbled his number on a napkin and pushed it toward me. He looked at me for a few beats, and I thought he was going to say something. Instead, he slid out of the booth and buttoned up his coat. “I hope we see each other again under different circumstances, where a body isn’t involved, but something tells me that’s not going to happen. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”
When he left, I looked at Niko’s half-eaten plate. “Do you want a take-out bag? And since when do you have a phone?”
He drew his hood over his head. “I can’t operate the touch screens, so Viktor gave me one with buttons for when he needs to get in touch. He just called and asked me to check something out, so I need a ride. It’s not related to this case.”
“Where?”
“Pawn of the Dead. There’s been a murder.”
Chapter 10
Niko shiveredwhen a sudden gust of wind beat against his face. He resisted the urge to tap into his Thermal abilities since they were on the job and he didn’t want to run down his core energy. Viktor had sent Blue to meet him at Pawn of the Dead, so Niko was patiently waiting for her arrival. One benefit of having a partner was they could work on different cases simultaneously.
He heard the familiar sound of Blue’s boot heels as she approached from the right, and when he looked up, he recognized her energy moving toward him.
Darkness was once the only world he’d ever known, so after becoming a Mage and developing these newfound abilities to perceive energy, he’d wanted to shut it off. It had frightened him, confused him, and stripped away everything that had once been familiar.
But in time, he learned to interpret what he could only refer to as shapes and colors. They were different, and so he gave them names. They most likely weren’t the same colors or textures everyone else saw in their world, but he used their language to identify what he saw and make a distinction. Everyone had a unique aura, and he realized he could sense changing emotions. Walking in the busy city was easier to navigate than isolated areas since he could follow the trails of energy.
He still wondered what clouds looked like during sunset, or the intricate patterns on a butterfly. There were so many things people took for granted, and while sight didn’t matter to him anymore, he was still curious about things he overheard in conversation.
Even though he moved through the world with ease, his blindness attracted attention. It made people question why a Creator would choose a blind man, and those were questions he didn’t want to answer. It also made him stand out and become more easily recognizable. So, like Blue, Niko had taken to wearing a hood. He had plenty of summer shirts with shorter sleeves that still offered him the ability to veil his face. Sometimes he relied on his long hair to do the trick.
“Why didn’t you wait for me inside?” Blue asked.
He turned in the direction of her voice. “I know how you drive. I thought you would only take a few minutes.”
Her aura briefly sparkled with humor, and her tone lightened. “Serves you right, amigo. So what did Viktor tell you?”
“He mentioned a murder, but that’s all.”
Keystone didn’t investigate every murder in the city, only ones with peculiar circumstances or linked to crimes they were already working on.
