Running on autopilot, I robotically turned and marched back to my table.
The rest of my squadmates left, heading out for patrol, but Considine stayed lounging at the table where I’d left him.
“Sarge wants me to give you a tour.” For once, my words weren’t stilted because of my social anxiety, but because I was grappling with too many shocks in a short amount of time. “I thought I’d start with this room.”
Considine pushed his chair back and stood up. “Very well. This isn’t a simple meeting room, I take it?”
“It is, but specifically it is our muster room,” I explained. “Every night we begin our shift here. Sarge will give us any recent developments on our cases that were discovered during other shifts, as well as give us the evening’s patrol teams. The whiteboard in this room contains up-to-date information on whatever case we’re focusing on, with a replica whiteboard in our desk area.” I walked to the front of the room so I couldmotion to the whiteboard—which was currently covered with information about Gisila.
Considine joined me, surprising me when he actually studied the whiteboard. “Human cases?” he asked.
I looked up at the top righter corner of the whiteboard. “Oh, right. We save a spot on the whiteboard for cases that involve human government and systems. Sometimes human law enforcement will reach out to us if they think they have a case that involves a supernatural.”
I scratched my neck, my heart squeezing as I studied the picture of the woman that had been taped to the whiteboard since September. “This is a missing persons case—the first case the humans brought us that didn’t involve suspicions of supernatural meddling. We’re trying to keep an eye out for her, just in case, but we don’t have much to go by—not even a scent profile or blood type.”
“I see,” Considine cryptically said. “Do you have a similar whiteboard for House Tellier?”
I blinked. “You know about the Telliers?”
“Of course,” Considine said. “Or do you not recall how put out I was that their ill-advised stunts were eating up your time?”
House Telliers were a bunch of wizards who, after their reputation had fallen to an all-time low, had hatched the scheme of repairing their status by ingratiating themselves to humans.
In theory this didn’t sound too bad, but in practice the Telliers had decided that the fastest way to win humans over was to save them from dangerous situations. So they used their elemental magic to manufacture dangerous situations—they burned the garden of a local library to a crisp, created ice on a bridge that caused car accidents, messed with fireworks so they misfired in a crowd, and more. They then swept in and saved the humans, using their magic.
It was incredibly dangerous. Not only did they endanger humans to get the results they wanted, but they risked igniting hatred in the humans against supernaturals, something supernaturals as a society worked to prevent.
“We used to have a whiteboard for the Tellier case, but since they’ve been punished it’s been disassembled with the reports and evidence put into storage,” I said.
“What was the punishment?” Considine asked.
“The Adepts, Heir, and a bunch of the senior wizards are under house arrest,” I said. “They got a lot of fines, too, but what most upset them is they’ve been put on probation and lost whatever standing they had left in wizard society. They don’t even count as a recognized House for the next year.”
“All of that sounds nearly as political as vampire society,” Considine said.
“Most supernaturals are bound by politics.” I turned toward the door. “We’ll take a look at the whiteboards we have set up in the offices that display all our open cases, but for now I think we’ll start with processing.”
“Wait a moment.” Considine held his cellphone up selfie style and leaned in so we were cheek to cheek. Even on the cellphone screen Considine’s dazzling good looks were unavoidable.
His dark hair matched with his eyes—a much darker shade of red than the typical vampire’s—giving him a smoldering level of good looks. Matched with his olive shade of skin, which gave him a healthier hue than the standard vampire-pale complexion, and his five o’clock shadow, he was overwhelming to stand by if you weren’t careful.
He was a bit of a mismatch to my chin length, curly red hair, dusting of freckles, and green eyes that gave me a girl-next-door vibe when I wasn’t kitted out in slayer gear or my task force uniform.
“Smile!” He ordered before snapping a picture.
“Huh?” I said, my expression clueless. “What?”
Considine opened up his picture gallery and checked the photo. “Adorable,” he declared. “Exactly what I wanted to capture: our first moments as partners.”
I stared at him, thoroughly confused.
Since I’d met him—as both Connor and Ruin—Considine had never taken a photo.
Before this moment, I wouldn’t have been able to say for sure if he knewhowto take a photo with his cellphone.
Weird. All of this is weird.
“I’m not high enough up the hierarchy for this. I don’t want to be forced to think in layers and be so responsible.” I mumbled as I shuffled toward the door. “I just wanted to protect. Just to show we didn’t have to be killers.”
