Down the hallway was a small kitchen with a gas stove and green cabinets. “Feel free to bring food for lunch or cook something as long as it’s not too smelly. Christian Gutjar is sensitive to smell and will hunt you down to complain.” Elana paused to give her a knowing stare. “Trust me, you don’t want to get Chris started. There’s no off switch.”
“Good to know.”
Elana led her toward stairs that had a black runner down the center. “Four of the offices are on the second floor and there are two more on the third.”
Sorcha could just imagine the endless trudging of stairs that lay before her. “Is there an elevator?”
“Sadly, no. But if anyone has mobility issues, we meet them on the main floor or the garden level.”
“Garden level?” Sorcha liked the sound of that. Something about being in nature always soothed her.
“It’s the walkout basement, but it lets out into a garden. There are two offices down there—yours and your partner’s—and another interrogation room.”
“Son of a donkey eating turd ball! Screw you and your afterlife. Sheez! Give it a rest, you giant asshole! I hate you so much! Can’t you haunt the cemetery across the street? What is wrong with you?”
Sorcha drew up short at the deep masculine shout that echoed through the second-floor hallway.
Elana shook her head. “That’ll be the Chris I was warning you about. He’s very creative with his language.” She motioned her toward the office in the far-left corner. Knocking once, she pushed open the door. “There a problem, detective?”
He gestured toward the window. “Winslow…making me crazy as usual. Tell him to go bug someone else or I’m banishing him into the light.” He picked up a roll of paper towels and began dabbing at his desk and crotch where water had been spilled. “It’s sad that I can’t have a single sip because someone—” he glared at the corner “—won’t stop knocking my drinks over.” He growled low in his throat. “Two seconds! Two effing seconds. I swear to all that’s holy that I left the cap off my water to reach for my phone and boom… I’m going to kill him! Except I can’t. But oh! It’s so unfair.”
Elana slid her gaze to Sorcha to explain. “Winslow was poisoned by his wife and died in this bedroom. As a result, he knocks over any drink brought in here. Apparently, he’s trying to save the occupants from his bad ending. Make sure you have a lid on any container you bring in here. Chris, meet Sorcha.”
She waved awkwardly at the tall blond man who reminded her of a modern-day Viking. “Hi.”
“Hi. Sorry for the rough language and hostility. I’m normally very calm. This has just become a major pet peeve for me…and I’m having a crappy day.”
Sorcha definitely understood those. She’d been having way too many of them lately. So much so that she was beginning to wonder if the devil had put a target on her back.
Elana closed the door and pointed to the room across the hall that had the captain’s name on it. “My office is there and Bernadette’s is next to it.”
“Cap?” Bernadette stuck her head out of her office as if on cue. “Need you. Sorry. Can’t wait.”
Elana nodded. “Feel free to explore.” She handed Sorcha a key. “As I said, your office is on the garden level, just off the stairs. It’s the one without a name on the door. I’ll catch up to you.”
Then she was gone so fast that Sorcha barely had time to blink.
Okay, then.
More curious about her own space than anything else, she headed for the stairs they’d just walked up only to learn that they didn’t go down past the main floor.
Scowling, Sorcha turned around, looking for another set of stairs that would lead down to the garden level. “This is odd…”
She glanced out the window to see that there was a wrought-iron balcony on the backside of the house.
Hmm…
She started looking through rooms to find out how to access the balcony. Maybe it had stairs to go down.
As she passed through the foyer again, she saw an attractive young woman in the corner.
Sorcha didn’t speak to her. Not out of rudeness. Rather because she knew it was a residual haunting—a ghost that didn’t even know Sorcha was here.
Since this was her first day on the job, she didn’t want to expose her “unusual” abilities too soon. Even if it was Infernal Affairs and she knew they’d understand because she’d been hired for them, she just didn’t want to be exposed yet.
Which also made her wonder where Winslow had gone.
Chris might have looked to the corner, but it’d been vacant. So she knew he didn’t share the abilities she’d learned a long time ago to hide from others. Even those familiar with the paranormal had a hard time accepting her “gifts” at times.
