“Right now, I’m a lowly employee of the Office of the Potentate. One day, if I play my cards right, I might get promoted to upper management.”
“Wow.” She sank back against her seat. “He’s pretty hot if you’re into the grim reaper type.”
Once upon a time, I might have agreed with her, but on bad nights, I still dreamed of him.
The moth-eaten black cloak that hung from his shoulders, the threadbare cowl that hid his pale face. All that, I could stomach, but his scythe…the way moonlight glinted off its blade when he raised it to strike a killing blow…
I stood on the right side of the law these days, but one look at him had me feeling cold steel parting the warm flesh at my throat.
“Is this like official business?” She scanned the scene. “Did someone bite it?”
While she gawked, I manually unlocked my door. “That’s classified.”
“That’s a yes.” She grinned at me, metal glinting over needle-sharp teeth that made me wonder if she wasn’t as pixie as her hairstyle. “I’ll be in the area if you want to call me up special.” She passed me a crumpled piece of paper trimmed into a lopsided rectangle. On the front, she had painstakingly drawn a business card with colorful markers. On the back, she had crossed out the last four digits of her debit card number on a receipt for takeout. “The app won’t let you pick who you get, but I’ll charge their rates for a private ride.”
“I appreciate it.” I tucked the slip into my wallet so as not to ding her pride. “See you around.”
As I stepped onto the curb, she peeled out, blasting rap music that rattled my bones from three feet away. She hadn’t given me a chance to shut the door, so she yanked the wheel hard to one side and let momentum slam it for her.
“Goddess,” I muttered, grateful to have survived the experience.
“Buy a car,” Bishop advised on his way to greet me. “You won’t suffer so many near-death experiences.”
Adrenaline still pumping, I glanced behind me. “Do you have one?”
“Hell no.” A shudder rippled through his broad shoulders. “People drive like maniacs here.”
The snow-white hair he kept trimmed short and styled neat was streaked with russet brown. Not much. Just enough to tell me he had fallen off the wagon. His eyes, usually a brilliant titanium, were tinted the milky green of the corpse he had no doubt left in his wake. But he and I had an unspoken agreement. I didn’t ask how he fed, and he returned the favor.
“I heard Midas Kinase is here.”
“Yeah. The victim is gwyllgi.” Bishop studied me. “That a problem?”
“No,” I lied, and he pretended to believe me.
“Come on.” He led me to where sentinels, necromancers working undercover with the Atlanta Police Department, held the line. “The pack reps are waiting for you.”
“Goody.” I had successfully avoided all remnants of my past life since arriving in Atlanta, but it looked like my number was finally up. “It just had to be a gwyllgi.”
“You got this,” Bishop murmured, misreading my hesitation.
Ahead, two men cut from the same cloth stood watch over their dead. Gwyllgi varied in height, but they ran toward beefy—in a sink-your-teeth-in kind of way—and these two made a girl think about taking a bite. They lifted their heads in tandem upon scenting us and joined us at the barricade.
“Hadley,” Ford said, his voice warm. “This your scene, darlin’?”
Ford Bentley, who had cracked a joke about his name the first time we met, wasn’t laughing now. As the pack liaison with our office, he and I were on friendly enough terms that I recognized the endearment wasn’t a come-on or condescension but simply habit.
Sorrow had turned his lively blue eyes dull, and his wild black hair showed tracks from where his fingers kept tunneling through its jagged length.
“Yeah.” I locked my gaze on him to keep it from sliding to his left. “The POA is in Savannah.”
That meant this was my case to solve, the first one I would tackle as lead.
Just my luck, Midas was here to bear witness. A ghost from my past, come to haunt me.
Perfect.
“Have you met Midas?” Ford twitched his head toward the slightly taller man. “He’s our beta.”
“We haven’t been introduced.” I dropped my gaze to the victim, using the gruesome tableau to help regulate my pulse. “I’m Hadley Whitaker.”
“Midas Kinase,” he said, his voice sandpaper rough, not with emotion, though I heard that too, but from an old injury no one so much as whispered about behind his muscular back. “Are you sure we haven’t met?”
Predator that he was, he scented my nerves and eased in front of me for a better look.
In response, the predator in me unfurled, creeping across the asphalt, stretching shadowy fingers under his boots, tapping on individual treads, as if counting all the ways it could kill him.
“We both live in the city.” I kept my voice bland, eyes focused on the stag logo branding his tee. Fine. I was ogling the way his pecs stretched the thin fabric to its limits. He had packed on serious muscle since the last time I saw him, but he hadn’t been the heir then. His sister, Lethe, had held that title until deciding to break ties with Atlanta and start her own pack in Savannah. Guess her defection had landed him a promotion. “You must have seen me around.”
The new cut and style reinvigorated my blonde hair with short layers and plenty of curls, and the hazel contacts, heavy on the green, plus a few magical augmentations, meant Midas would see only Hadley. Just the law-abiding citizen and enforcer of justice. Not the homicidal maniac our mutual friends would have warned him about.
“Your scent…” Flaring his nostrils, he parted his lips. “It’s familiar.”
“I work a kiosk in the mall, and I run the Active Oval in Piedmont Park five days a week.” I held my ground. “You could have picked up my scent anywhere.”
Crowding me, he ducked his head, attempting to force eye contact, a dominance tactic that didn’t work half as well on necromancers as it did on gwyllgi and did nothing for me. “What was your name again?”
“Hadley.” I caved to the challenge and my annoyance, which never failed to land me in hot water, and met his gaze. “Hadley Whitaker.”
The full force of his shifter magic pooled in his eyes, turning the tranquil aquamarine to vibrant crimson. I should have been terrified. I was terrified. Goddess, I couldn’t glance away after verifying he was every bit as gorgeous up close as I remembered from all the glimpses I had stolen of him through a curtained window in that other life.
Sun-streaked blond hair fell in waves to his broad shoulders and framed a face so beautiful in its austerity that I wanted to reach out and touch it, see if he was real. His jaw was hard, and muscle twitched in his cheek. His mouth was full, perfect. Soft, I bet. But his eyes. That’s what captured and held my attention. The sorrow in them tugged on my heartstrings, and I understood in that soul-bearing moment when our gazes clashed that he was dangerous to me on levels I hadn’t conceived of before meeting him in the flesh.
The one thing I had been warned against doing—instigating a staring match—was exactly what I did while Bishop and Ford looked on in horror.