Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Aeren? Are you ready for bed?” Lamar called out, flipping off the kitchen light as he passed the switch. When he reached the living room and found it empty, he frowned. Continuing on down the hall, he stuck his head into the bathroom. It was also empty. When he got to the bedroom, he stopped short to avoid crashing into the smaller man who had dressed and was standing in the doorway.
“You’re leaving?” The disappointment washing over him took Lamar by surprise.
“I am,” Aeren confirmed quietly. “I’ve already worn these clothes for two days, and besides, I have to work tomorrow.” He smiled, but it seemed off. “Thank you for dinner last night and the pizza tonight.”
Lamar’s frown spread. “Give me a minute to pull on my clothes and I’ll drive you,” he offered.
Aeren shook his head. “That’s okay. My Uber will be here in a minute.” He waved his phone in a half-hearted gesture.
“I see.” It was a lie. Lamar had no idea what was going on. “Let me walk you out then.”
At the back door, Lamar bent to kiss him, but Aeren dipped his head at the last second so Lamar’s lips brushed his cheek. Headlights flashed in the drive and Aeren darted out the door, slipping into the dark-colored sedan without a backward glance, leaving Lamar staring after him in disquieted surprise.
Morning, when it came, found Lamar crabby and unrested. Or, as Genov put it after Lamar had snapped at him for the third time in ten minutes, all horns and rattles.
“I want the mirror.”
“What?” Lamar glared at him.
“I want the fucking mirror,” Genov repeated. “You’re never this pissy.”
“Whatever.” Lamar pulled the Chief’s shaving mirror from his slacks pocket and slid it across the table. He waited until Genov had angled it toward him and it showed his reflection to snarl, “Are you happy now?”
“As a matter of fact, no,” Genov snapped back. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Lamar lied, turning back to the laptop. “Would you find something to do so I can get to work?”
Genov stalked off, still grumbling under his breath.
Lamar turned back to the footage fromAfter Nine, inspecting frame after frame of footage as he searched for reflections in the mirror and comparing them to the stock image of an incubus that he’d downloaded from the internet. When his cell phone buzzed in the late morning, he hissed out a frustrated sigh and stabbed the display without looking at it.
“Cooper.”
“Hey, man,” Trask sounded surprised. “You sound pissy. Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he started to lie and then huffed. “Actually, no.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
Lamar looked around the room. It wasn’t exactly private, but no one seemed unduly interested in his conversation. “Did Aeren seem off to you last night?”
“Off?” Lamar could tell Trask was thrown by the question. “Off how? I mean, he ate some pizza and crashed. How should he have seemed?”
“No, Vic,” Lamar sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I mean, was it really him?”
There was a long pause. “Are you asking me if Aeren was the incubus?”
“Yeah,” Lamar sighed again. “I guess I am.”
“No,” Trask replied confidently. “Absolutely not. The scent was all him.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. Shapeshifters have a very distinctive scent. Kind of like rotten eggs.”
“Sulfur?”
