“Long story. Anyway, the city is where I like to be. You’ve got the shadows where you can hide, and the bright lights where you can stand out. There’s anything from a dive bar and seedy vampire blood brothels, all the way to expensive private supper clubs and high-end shifter nightclubs. I like the duality.”
“You sound like a philosopher when you say it like that,” I said, my chest twinging with sadness. “You sound like Balthazar, actually.”
“You liked him a lot, didn’t you?” Declan asked as we pulled up to a traffic light.
“He was the best teacher I ever had. And he got me into the academy. I never would have been let in otherwise. I could have afforded it with the money I inherited from my parents, but I didn’t gain access to my magical abilities until really late. Most students at the high-end academies are more skilled than me. He heard about me through the grapevine and wanted me at his school because he’d never taught a shifter witch before.”
Declan frowned, tapping his finger on the steering wheel. “I get that your kind are rare—and I don’t mean to sound like a dick here —but why are you so special that this guy would bring you in? There’s probably a few dozen shifter witches in the country at any given time.”
“I was a late bloomer in all areas,” I said, leaning my head back on the headrest. “I didn’t gain access to my magical powers until I was fifteen, and I was a latent shifter until seventeen.”
“Seriously?” He snapped his head around to look at me. “That long for both? I’ve?—”
“Never heard of that. Yeah, yeah, I hear that a lot. It’s part of why I’m kinda mediocre at magic. I’m not the worst in my class, which is a relief, but I’m far from the best. That belongs to Virgil Tacitus, Wendy, and a couple others. It all seems easy to some of them, and I always have to try so hard to stay in the middle of the road. I think Balthazar saw it as a sort of challenge, maybe? Or a way of giving back? Who knows? I’m just grateful he gaveme a chance to try and become my full self even if I’m not great at either side.”
“Yeah, but there are people everywhere who would quite literally kill to have the powers of both a witch and a shifter.” Declan took his hand off the steering wheel to pat mine. “Don’t be that hard on yourself. You’re rare and special, even in a rare and special world.”
His words touched me in a way I couldn’t recall happening before, and the backs of my eyes stung. Looking at him, I saw the man in a new light. Upon first meeting him at the door, I’d thought him a disheveled drunk, with his hair askew, eyes blurry, and face groggy from sleep. That was mostly my fault since I’d come pounding on his door in the middle of the night.
Now that he was cleaned up and dressed, I could see the man for who he was. He was shockingly handsome, his strong jawline coated in short stubble that was the same salt-and-pepper as the short wavy hair on his head. Each time he looked at me with those bright blue eyes, it felt as though he was peering into my soul. That look was intimidating enough without even taking into account the rest of him. He had huge shoulders and thick arms, a barrel chest, and from what I could tell, he had very little fat anywhere on his body, and his damn legs looked like tree trunks. For someone who was retired, he’d done all he could to keep himself in fighting shape.
“What do you do for fun?” I asked, then immediately grimaced at how silly a question that was. But I wasn’t a fan of awkward silences, and it was getting pretty awkward in here.
“Sleep, eat, read, workout,” he said, never taking his eyes off the road. “That’s about it these days.”
That didn’t go anywhere. Try something else.
“How do you afford the mortgage on a house and a safe house, if you’re retired?”
Declan sighed and flipped his turn signal on, taking a side street. “I was smart with my money back in the day. I also helped this vampire lady find out her husband was cheating on her with a human—some college girl who had no idea her new boyfriend who only came around at night wasn’t a twenty-three-year-old pre-med undergraduate, and was instead a four-hundred-year-old bloodsucker.
“The lady dumped his ass and tipped me off on a company she’d founded that makes a sunscreen for vamps, which allows them to walk in daylight for up to an hour. Expensive shit, but it works and sells like hotcakes. I invested early and made a hell of a return. It’s not enough to retire and live like a king, but it was enough to retire and live like a middle class nobody.”
“You aren’t a nobody,” I said. “You’re a hero. From what little of that book I read, you?—”
“Iamnobody,” he said, his voice low and gruff. His tone told me he didn’t want to discuss it any further.
“How did you get into private investigation?” I said, hoping to find out more.
“I fell into it, basically,” he said, giving no further explanation.
The guy looked like a magazine cover model, but he had the conversation skills of a tree trunk. He gave off the aura of a man trying his best to be a douchebag asshole, but there was also a hint of sadness in everything he did. As a kid, ashamed of being unable to shift, I’d been painfully introverted and chose to spendmy time watching people rather than interacting with them. It had given me an almost preternatural sense of empathy and understanding of most humans and humanoid creatures. Declan wanted people at an arm’s distance, and I was pretty sure he used his gruff nature to do that.
“You don’t like people much, do you?” I said before I could stop myself.
Declan turned his attention from the road, pinning me with those baby blue eyes once more. “Why do you say that?”
I shrugged. “You live alone. You seemed pretty upset when I turned up on your doorstep—though, I admit it was super early. I also get the feeling you don’t have many friends. I didn’t see any photos in your house. No pictures of you hanging out with buddies on the golf course or fishing, no shots of you in a tux standing next to a guy on his wedding day, none of the stuff you see when people have close friends.”
Declan let out a short bark of a laugh and shook his head.
“Veronica, you could make a hell of a detective too with an eye like that,” he said, and there was a warmth to his voice that hadn’t been there a moment before. The compliment sent a fuzzy warm rush through my stomach and chest.
As he turned the steering wheel, I couldn’t help eyeing the rippling muscles and the veins on his forearms and hands. As little as I wanted to think about it, what with my entire life in shambles and being framed for a murder I didn’t commit, I had to admit that Declan wasdefinitelymy type. I’d always been more attracted to older guys. It wasn’t a fetish or anything like that—I just preferred their maturity. Guys my age had never appealed to me. Too young, too childish, too conceited, tooconcerned with what everyone else thought about them than being themselves.
I pushed my glasses up my nose and pulled my shoulders back. I was determined to appear as the poised and composed witch that I wanted to be, subconsciously trying to impress him. I was determined to appear fully put-together and unconcerned about the danger I was in.
The air around the car shimmered strangely, making me blink in confusion. My ears popped, and I winced at the sensation. From what I could see, the area Declan had brought us to wasnotin the nicest neighborhood. Even now, with the sun rising, men and women stood deep in the shadows, eyeing us as we drove past. There was an aura of magic in the air that was palpable even through the shut windows.
