Stone Chameleon (Ironhill Jinn #1) Read online

  “Who are you, and how did you get in here?” My sharp tone left no question about my degree of irritation.

  His hand extended toward me. Short nails, hints of dirt in the knuckles, callouses galore. A working man’s hand. “Connor Lewiston. Your secretary said it’d be okay for me to wait in here for you because she had to leave.”

  I glanced down at his hand, back to his casual expression and storm-cloud eyes, no more impressed with him than before. He was handsome, I supposed, in a simple sort of way.

  “She did, did she?”

  Gloria and I would be having a chat tomorrow.

  Tired of leaving him hanging, I shook his rough hand, and then perched a hip on the edge of the desk, smoothing my palms along my skirt to keep it from rising. “What can I do for you, Mr. Lewiston?”

  “Connor, please.” He tilted his head and squinted at me. “You’re not what I expected after reading so much about you in the papers.”

  I sighed and propped my palm on the smooth wooden surface beneath me. “How so?”

  Thoughts passed over his face before he spoke. “I guess I expected you to be a little less lady and a lot more, I don’t know, leather and blades.”

  “Just because I look and dress like a lady doesn’t mean I’m not capable, Mr.— Connor.”

  “Of course not. No insult intended.”

  “Your smirk would suggest otherwise.”

  His lips flattened, and he played his hands along the green tie secured at his neck. His short haircut stood up as if his fingers had made several passes through the copper-brown tresses. He didn’t seem suited to formal attire. Those rough hands and his fidgeting suggested he’d have been more comfortable wearing coveralls and spending his days beneath machines.

  When he didn’t speak, I circled my hand. “You were saying? I’m rather short on time at the moment.”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sure you’re terribly busy given the influx of creatures into the city lately.” He rubbed his hands together as if trying to merge them. “It seems I have a problem that fits your unique skill set, especially your finesse with the authorities, if it comes to that.” His hands had moved to the flaps of his black suit jacket pockets, flipping them open and shut. The suit didn’t fit him well. I was certain Mr. Lewiston wore someone else’s clothes, someone broader and taller than he was.

  I stared at him, still trying to figure him out. “If this is a legal matter, I’m not sure why you’re here and not at the precinct talking to Detective Peterson.”

  “It’s a delicate matter.” He cleared his throat and looked everywhere but at me. “I have something in the basement of one of my facilities that I’d like removed quietly.”

  Even if my elemental senses hadn’t picked up the increase in his pulse through the tile under my feet, I’d have known untruth passed his lips. Though I didn’t know what subtle difference separated lies and fear, I could distinguish one from the other. “What’s in your basement?”

  He shook his head, glanced up at me, and then continued his fidgeting. “I’m not entirely sure. It’s at least moderately intelligent, because it can operate doors, and I heard it weeping last night. I’m guessing a female by the pitch of its voice.”

  From the small bar fridge beneath my desk, I withdrew a diet soda to give me some time to think and to parch my nagging thirst. Unlike Harper, I couldn’t have even a drop of refined sugar. It affected the jinn, or at least me, worse than a night of binge drinking. My mother discovered the issue when I was still young. We’d had to move before child services investigated the drunken baby at daycare.

  “Would you like one?” I held out the can.

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but no.”

  I dropped into my leather chair, forcing a puff of air to hiss from the cushion, and linked my fingers together atop my spotless desk. “If you’ve heard of me, then I assume you know I don’t keep anything from the authorities when the law and protocol requires it of me?”

  “Yes, I’d heard that.” His balled fingers pushed into his pockets. “I also heard that you use a great amount of discretion when dealing with these things, when no laws have been broken. I’d hate for our investors to get nervous about our product, and even worse, the labor board if they think our workers may be in danger. We’re a new company and suffering the scrutiny of everyone.”

  I poured some soda into a glass and downed a few mouthfuls. “How soon would you need me to look into it?”

  His swallow lifted his Adam’s apple above the knot of his tie. He withdrew an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and set it in my palm. Without opening it, I knew it contained a large amount of cash by the bulk and weight of it. “This is half of what I’ll give you if you’ll do it tonight.”

  I stared at the envelope, every impulse telling me to hand it back to Connor, but it took a lot of funds to keep the reservation afloat, as Blake had said. A peek into the envelope revealed bills in hundred and thousand dollar denominations. Connor didn’t seem like a man who should have that kind of cash lying around for the simple removal of a weeping creature squatting in his factory.

  “There’s ten thousand there, and another ten when the job’s done.” He shifted his feet. “So do we have a deal?”

  Twenty thousand? For one job? That could run the facility for a few months. Protocol dictated I should clear it with Blake, but knowing him as I did, he’d have danced naked in Center Square for that kind of cash.

  Ignoring the warning voices in my head that knew at least part of what Connor said had been a deception, I nodded my agreement. “I have business with the police I need to take care of first. Give me the address, and I’ll be there when I’m done. Given the urgency, I assume you won’t mind if it’s late?” If Isaac threw a fit, I might arrive after dawn.

  “Any time, Miss Hudson.” Although his face had blanked of expression, his eyes held a victory that unsettled me further. He pulled a business card from inside his jacket and handed it to me. “Everything you need is on there. Thank you. Until tonight, then.”

  Chapter Four

  I pulled into the parking lot of the precinct at a quarter past nine. After a fruitless search of the entire reservation for Blake to discuss a contingency plan if I were to be detained tonight, I’d given up and checked on all of our long-term residents at the reservation. I wasn’t stalling; I was giving my emotions time to settle, which was in everyone’s best interest.

  Leaving my handbag on the seat—I didn’t want to bring any suspicion that I had concealed weapons even though I’d decided at the last minute to strap my stone blade to my inner thigh—I exited my hatchback and stared up at the building. The grey brick monstrosity took up an entire city block, the shatterproof frosted glass of the front doors glowing from within.

  The street lights buzzed to life as I straightened my shoulders and strode up to the door, giving no pause before pulling it open and stepping inside. Several officers wrangled a shirtless man and a woman in a zebra-striped skirt toward the counter.

  Many voices clashed in the lobby and beyond. When the desk sergeant spied me in the entrance, silence fell, as if everyone picked up on the tension my presence evoked among the officers. A woman who had a way with the objects of their nightmares didn’t sit well with the boys and girls in blue.

  Careful to keep my hands in plain view and relaxed, I nodded to the desk sergeant, who already had a phone receiver in hand. A few moments passed before the staff warlocks appeared by the metal detector I’d have to pass through on my way to the preternatural division, which was in the back of the building, of course.

  I approached, smiling at Deirdre, who smiled back. Her red skin had marbled striations of white that grew pink if she was embarrassed. She’d secured her black spiral-curled hair at her nape with a clip. Instead of a proper officer’s uniform—I still hadn’t convinced the city to allow preternatural beings on the government’s payroll, only as temporary consultants or contract workers—Deirdre and her partner wore black dress slacks an
d white shirts sporting an embroidered shield on the left breast.

  She’d always been the most personable of the warlocks, which was why I’d approached her to have my jinn name removed from all memory and records when the media became interested in what I did for a living. Although my true name only appeared on my birth record and hadn’t been a point of concern until recently, I wouldn’t chance leaving any clues about my ancestry for a pesky reporter to find.

  Once a person had made a contract with a warlock, nothing and no one could make them break it. They were known for their powers over magic and mind, but more so for their loyalty. Their word was their contract, and they’d die before breaking it. Deirdre was the only person in the world other than Mum who knew what I was, and the only person I trusted to keep my secret.

  “Good evening, Lou.” Deirdre gestured toward the metal detector. “Right this way.”

  “Is an escort really necessary?” I asked.

  “Yes,” the male beside her said, his voice a blade. Something in his solid red eyes said that he’d not only incapacitate me if I made a move he didn’t like, but he’d enjoy having a go at me.

  “This is Brex. He’s new, not that you could tell, because he’s as big of an ass as most of the others.” Deirdre waved off his snarl. “Lord Isaac demanded you arrive in chains, but I gave him my word you’d give us no trouble.”

  His foul mood shouldn’t have surprised me, but my heart still tripped at that news. I nodded, smiling. “I would never make you break your word.”

  “Told you.” She glowered at Brex, then went to the far side of the archway, while he came in behind me.

  I held my arms at my sides and passed through the metal detector, sighing internally when no alarms went off. Although I usually had no weapons—not that the stone would set off the metal detector—I always held an irrational fear the authorities had employed a new enchantment that would out me as jinn. If it hadn’t happened after thirty some odd years of a jinn-free world, logic suggested they were no longer looking for survivors.

  Deirdre walked beside me while Brex remained behind as we headed through the maze of desks full of staring officers. Some watched me from beneath lowered lashes as if afraid I’d catch them looking. Others made no attempt to hide their curled lips, and a few of the female officers appeared to be laughing at me. I’d gone to school with a few of them, not that I’d been popular even back then. If any of them knew what I was, they’d have fled the building by now and called in the SWAT team.

  Once through the door at the back, Deirdre cursed under her breath. “What you saw back there is nothing but bruised egos, Lou,” she said close to my ear. “Don’t let them bother you.”

  I had an urge to touch her, refraining when her partner shifted closer, as if operating on a hair trigger. “People fear what they don’t understand.” I met Brex’s red eyes without flinching. “It’s one of humankind’s greatest failings, which is why it’s my mission in life to make them understand that different isn’t necessarily dangerous.”

  “Get moving.” Brex thrust his hand toward a door. “He’s waiting.”

  His reference to Isaac kicked my heart into action.

  Brex strode past us to an interview room I’d been in several times before, only it had never stirred such utter dread. He paused, his hand on the knob. “Do you need a moment?”

  His half-curled lip suggested it wasn’t a gesture of kindness, but a test. The vampire wanted to assess my emotions. Asking for time to settle my nerves would tilt the scales toward guilt.

  I marched up to the warlock, staring at him until he stepped aside, then faced the door. “Enough with the games, Isaac. You’ve no doubt been monitoring my heartbeat since I entered the building. Now, open the door, and let’s get on with this.”

  Deirdre moved in beside me with a grin. “The truth will out, isn’t that what the Brits say?”

  I’d come into the world in Stourbridge, Great Britain, to a Canadian-born mother, but we’d moved to Pennsylvania when I was twelve. I smiled at her, searching her crimson eyes for signs of doubt, but as with Harper, I found only certainty. “Thank you,” I said.

  The door opened inward to a dark room, save for one light shining down on a metal table in the middle. Detective Gerry Peterson of the Preternatural Division of the Ironhill Police sat on the far side of the briefing room table. He was a broad-shouldered man, thick through his barrel-shaped chest, making me imagine him standing atop the Donkey Kong video game platform beating his hairy chest.

  My focus settled on the shaggy head of a man sitting to Gerry’s left. The young man had been dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and shackled and chained to a ring on the steel table.

  Bloody hell.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” I rushed into the room. “Why is Dominic here?”

  Dom pulled against his chains, and his lashes appeared wet. “Collateral to make sure you showed up,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  I bit down on a rant and glared at Gerry. “I’m here now, so unlock him so he can go home. He has nothing to do with this.”

  “The boy stays.” Isaac’s smooth tenor came from the shadows in the far corner, hints of his Scottish brogue underlying the words.

  The downy hairs on my nape reacted to the potential in the air, as if the sky was tasting me in search of a good place to deliver a lightning strike. My, but he was angry.

  Gerry raised his hands in surrender when I focused on him again. “Not my circus, Lou. I’m only here because Isaac allowed it, as he’s so eloquently reminded me several times tonight. At least I got the kid a shower and something to wear that doesn’t stink like piss.”

  He sighed harshly and bent forward, tapping the end of his pen on a pad of paper. “Serves you right for leaving a crime scene again. Sit down nice and polite-like, and spill your guts.” He pointed his pen at me, his brown cop eyes vigilant beneath his bushy brows.

  I sat, reaching over to touch Dom on the arm, stopping when he flinched. “I’m so sorry about this,” I said. “I’ll have you out of here soon.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Isaac said.

  I ignored the vampire and reiterated everything I’d seen in the sewer earlier, finishing with the butterflies and leaving out the part where I’d lifted the body out of the water with my jinn connection to the earth.

  Gerry held his hand toward Isaac as if to stop a rant the hive lord was about to unload. “Forgetting the fact that you were alone when you discovered all five victims, what do you think did this?”

  Isaac had moved to the edge of the light at some point, posed like a Celtic statue. His black eyes held a metallic shine like polished hematite beads. They often changed color with his violent mood swings. All the text I’d read in college speculated that whoever had developed the vampire curse didn’t want them to pass as human, and that’s why their eyes turned dark.

  His blue kilt, with pinstripes of white and green crisscrossing the tartan, reached his knees. Navy blue kilt hose covered him from the black shoes on his feet to the tops of his calves. He was built like a fighter, the curves of muscle expertly sculpted. On his broad upper half, he wore only a blue sash across one shoulder, bound with a golden crested pin at his right hip, leaving the rest of his splendor naked for the world’s viewing pleasure. All masculine, in-your-face sexuality in a pleated skirt, complete with a fur sporran attached to his wide black belt.

  I might have swooned in his presence if I wasn’t aware he’d died many centuries before my time. “If you’re looking for a profile of this murderer, my best guess is someone with magical abilities, who has a grudge against the hive.”

  “I think you’d find fewer people that don’t have a grudge,” Dom muttered.

  I kicked him under the table.

  He shrugged. “You know it’s true.”

  Isaac came forward, his subtle movement registering to my inner senses. “Why did you flee the scene in such a hurry, Miss Hudson?”

  I shifted in my seat to see him be
tter. Not for the first time, I wondered if he used the hive’s collective power to enhance his size. He had several inches over top of my five foot ten height, and he was broad at the shoulder with hard mounds of muscle through his chest and abs. I knew little about ancient Scotland, but I supposed their men could have been born that large, coming out of the womb ready to go to battle and do hard labor. If I thought he might answer me, I would have asked him.

  “One of my employees was injured,” I said. “I took her to Dr. Courian.”

  His head canted right, his black eyes morphing to glittering gold—a sign of growing annoyance. “Doona play with me, lass, because you will lose. Your boy suggested you were taking damning evidence to the incinerator in your underground reservation.” His quiet accusation scared me more than if he’d shouted. Contained fury was unpredictable, adaptable, and potentially explosive. I preferred him shouting.

  “That’s bullshit,” Dom blurted. “He’s twisting my words, Lou, I swear. I told him if you’d done this and were trying to cover it up, we’d have taken the body to the incinerator.”

  Mercy mother of hellfire. Why had he put that thought in the vampire’s head?

  Isaac swung his focus to my young Doritos addict. “Perhaps that evidence points to you, and that’s why she’s always first on the scene, so she can protect you.”

  Gerry pinched the bridge of his wide nose.

  Sensing Isaac’s movement again, I launched out of my chair, putting myself between Dom and the hive lord, who was suddenly right in front of me. His long hair, a shade lighter than root beer, hung loose around his shoulders, not a tress shifting with his stillness. His fangs had slipped below his upper lip.

  I stared, unblinking, into the abyss of his black eyes that had red flame spilling up from their depths. We’d made it to anger. Bloody hell. “Dominic has nothing to do with the murders.”

  Isaac pressed nearer, and despite wanting to, I didn’t step back. “Are you willing to bet your life on it?” he asked, continuing to stare at me as if I’d just bitten him on the leg.