“There’s a vampire prison on Alcatraz? No, wait. Of course there is.” Shaking my head, I lean back against the counter with a sigh. “I’d ask you to pinch me, but your hands are twice the size of mine and you’d probably break my arm totally by accident.”
His laugh sounds almost like a bark, but it’s such a happy, joyful noise that I forget he’sa yetiand join in. So gently I almost don’t feel it, he bumps my shoulder with his fist. “I may be big, but I’m a gentleman.”
“Can I ask you something?” We stand side-by-side, staring out at the bullpen, and I can’t look at Kunchin or Sin at this point, so I pin my gaze to the assignment board on the far wall. I’m not sure how I missed it before, but the San Francisco office of the Bureau only has a dozen agents. The rest of the people working here are all support staff. Crime scene investigators, Mem-Wipe technicians, researchers.
“Anything. I’m an open book.” Kunchin turns and fills our mugs, then adds a truly unhealthy amount of creamer to both of them.
“You’re like seven feet tall and covered with white fur. You don’t…live here, do you?”
“Here? At the Bureau?” His ice blue eyes widen, but then he chuckles and pulls a small black box from his pocket. With the press of a button, the yeti’s entire body seems to blink and vibrate for a split second, but nothing else happens. “Perception filter,” he says. “Works on all humans.”
“Um, I think it’s broken.”
Kunchin cocks his head, then shakes the box. “Dammit. If this thing’s on the fritz again…”
My stomach clenches, and I brace my hands on the counter. “You said it works on all humans. But what aboutothers? Does it work on them too?”
“Nope. It’s coded for human eyesight only. Well, and human recording devices. This is the age of the cell phone video after all.” He peers down at the box and fiddles with the buttons as I pull out my phone and snap a photo of him.
“Oh, shit.” I show him the picture. In it, a tall, very well-built man with pale skin and snow white hair stares at the box in his hand. His very human hand. “It’s working just fine.”
I can’t breathe, and my heartbeat roars in my ears. I need to sit down. No. I need— “Sin!”
He’s at my side faster than I think should be possible, and he and Kunchin each take one of my arms to help me to my desk. “Zoe, what is it?” Sin asks.
“I’m not human…”
Twenty-Three
Zoe
“Talk to me, Zoe,” Sin says as he takes my hands in his and searches my face. “What is wrong?”
“His…his per-perception f-filter. It d-doesn’t work on m-me.” The words don’t want to come. Or maybe I don’t want to believe them. ”I’m n-not…not…”
Kunchin rests his hand—paw?—on my shoulder, then shows Sin the black box. “Bureau-issued perception generator. Hides this,” he gestures to himself, “from human eyes.”
“I know what it is,” Sin snaps. “The shifters and the Fae carry them as well. What does this have to do with why Zoe is so upset?”
“It didn’t work on her.”
“And you are certain it is not broken?”
I hand Sin my phone with Kunchin’s picture on it, and he glances up at the yeti. Swiping to the camera app, he takes a second photo, then frowns. “Leave us, please.”
“Zoe?” Kunchin crouches down so we’re eye-level. “That okay with you?”
Sin growls, but I shoot him a look that could kill—if he weren’t immortal—and then return my attention to Kunchin. ”It’s fine. Just…don’t tell anyone else, okay?”
Making the universal gesture for locking his lips and throwing away the key, the yeti lumbers back to the break room for his coffee.
“What am I?” I whisper. “Nothing makes sense anymore, Sin. My life… Who—or what—I am.” Yet again, the sensation of being trapped inside my own body consumes me. I can’t breathe. I’m frozen. But I can see Sin, his face drawn in worry, and then I’m back with him, in the Bureau’s bullpen, and I stifle a sob.
“I would much rather discuss this somewhere I know we will be safe. Will you come home with me?” Sin asks.
“In a little over twenty-four hours, another woman is going to be taken. We have to figure out which clubs to stake out, keep working on the victim profile, try to find the other two men Thorn has…” If we keep busy maybe I can ignore what just happened for another few days. Maybe I can keep pretending I’m human until this case is solved and then I can fall apart. Because that’s all I want to do. Fall apart and reexamine my entire life to see if I should have known.
Sin stands, pulling me up with him. “We can continue to work. I have plenty of equipment for both of us and an encrypted connection to the Bureau’s databases. Trust me, Zoe. I want to solve this case more than you could ever understand. But there is one thing I want even more.”
