“No shit.” Draining her mug, she sets it in the kitchen sink. “Your clothes are clean and hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I’m going to get dressed. There’s a spare toothbrush on the sink. Towels are in the linen closet. Shower. Use anything you need of mine—I don’t like girlie scents, so you won’t end up smelling like a flower shop—and then, assuming you weren’t a total and complete idiot and left your car wherever you were drinking, I’ll drive you to go pick it up.”
As she scoots past me, I reach out and grab her wrist. “Zoe?” She doesn’t pull away, but her shoulders stiffen and she holds her breath. “I am sorry. You deserve a better partner. If you wish, I will speak to Commander Eve.”
Her gaze softens slightly. “We both know that’s not going to happen. This is my case now just as much as it is yours. So you’re going to pull yourself out of your current pity-party-bender and start being honest with me. What Ideserve—what I want—is foryouto be a better partner. To help me rather than standing in my way. So get on that.”
With a little huff, she twists free of my hold, and when the bedroom door closes with a soft click, I nod. She is right. I need to be better, and I will. Because while most of the previous night is a blur, I do remember one thing very clearly.
Regina is no longer in Hell, and I fear she just kidnapped another shifter.
* * *
Zoe
Longest. Night. Ever. Lying awake as I tried to forget the sight of my partner’s mostly naked body? Torture. Listening to him scream at 3:00 a.m.? So much worse. I don’t think he remembers the nightmare. Or how I rushed out in just my sleep tank and skimpy shorts and tried to wake him. Or how he grabbed me and held on like his life depended on it for all of a minute before passing out again. Or the words he kept repeating over and over again.
“I failed you. Lost you.”
Failed me? Sure, he was an ass. And a shitty partner. But the anguish in his words was so much more than leaving me alone on my first day would ever warrant. And he certainly didn’t lose me. Was he talking about someone else?
I should tell him about the nightmare. Better to come clean now than have him remember in a week, right? Making a mental note to ask Kunchin to tell me more about incubi, I pull on a pair of jeans and a black sweater. Everything else in my wardrobe hangs off me these days, but these two pieces? They’re from my time at the police academy when I was running five miles a day, and they’re about the only clothes I own that make me feel…good. Maybe even sexy.
Stop it, Zoe. He’s your partner. And he’s a demon. Just because he needed you in the middle of the night doesn’t mean anything can or will happen. In fact, you need to make sure it doesn’t.
Except when Sin emerges from the bathroom fully dressed, his black hair tamed, and stubble covering his jaw, his eyes hold a heat I know wasn’t there yesterday.
“You look better,” I say, a little surprised at how quickly he bounced back from what had to be one hell of a hangover.
“I feel like shit. But I will live. We should go.” He picks up his phone from the coffee table where I set it the previous night and glances at the screen, then frowns. “My car is parked a block from a shifter club called Loup Noir, and we need their security footage.”
“Why?” I grab my keys, crossbody bag, and travel mug. Sin looks back at the coffee pot longingly, and I arch a brow as I point to the insulated cup’s twin sitting on the counter. “Take it. I’m mad, not a heartless bitch.”
His laugh surprises me, and from his expression, it might surprise him too. “A heartless bitch would not have let me in last night.”
“You didn’t give me much choice. Pretty sure you would have passed out in the hall. That would have earned me a stern lecture from the building manager, and I’m already on his shit list.”
Sin keeps pace with me as I take the stairs three floors down to the underground parking garage. “Why are you ‘on his shit list’?”
I sink into the well-worn driver’s seat and start the car, then grip the steering wheel so tightly, two of my knuckles crack. “After Temple...” Swallowing the lump in my throat, I force myself to take a deep breath. “I lost it for a while. Only I didn’t have anywhere else to go, so instead of crashing at a partner’s place, I puked in the mail room. Twice.”
“We will stop them,” Sin says quietly. “I promise.”
* * *
Loup Noir doesn’t looklike much from the outside. Not at 9:00 a.m. in the morning, anyway. A massive steel door, no windows, and the usual complement of detritus scattered over the sidewalk. The only indication it’s a club at all? The plastic wrist bands in the gutter. “You spent your nighthere? No wonder you smelled like death.”
The sound Sin makes is something close to a growl. “This is one of the more reputable clubs in the city. Like the members themselves, the exterior transforms when it opens.”
He doesn’t even glance at his car before going up to the door and pressing a small, almost invisible button at eye level.
“We don’t open until seven,” a weary voice says through an overhead speaker.
“Agents Sinclair and Dawes from the Bureau. We need to speak to Jinx immediately.”
“Jinx?” I mouth.
Sin takes my arm and draws me away from the door a few feet. “You are about to enter a world unlike anything you have seen before. Let me take the lead, and above all, donotstare.”
“I spent all of yesterday afternoon with aYeti,” I hiss. “If I can get through that, I can—“
