hidden talents (7 page)

“Well,” he said, his voice a little throaty. “Maybe I should start clearing.”

“Oh you can leave that to us,” Mrs. Lupone demurred. “We invited ourselves this morning. And it"s your day off. Why don"t you and your nice young lady take an after breakfast stroll?”

“I"m not his -” Ari stopped when Adam gave his head a small shake. Maybe he didn"t want his aunt hearing about cop stuff. “Um, sure. A stroll sounds great.

Thanks for the awesome grub.”

“You"re welcome,” Mrs. Lupone responded with her eyes sparkling.

Ari hadn"t realized she"d been tense, but she took her first truly easy breath of the morning when she and Adam exited the rowhouse"s front street door.

Adam was as quiet as she was. The day was a picture perfect autumn

creation: crisp, sunny, the trees that grew from the railed-in planters in the sidewalk starting to turn scarlet. The borrowed sweatshirt she wore was the ideal weight for the weather. As they walked, Adam plunged his hands into his cargo pants pockets. Ari couldn"t decide what to do with hers.

He stopped beneath the maple at the next corner. “You okay?” he asked.

“You"ve had a lot of shocks in a short span of time.”

Ari snorted. “Not the least being woken up by a three year old.”

Adam"s shoulders hunched as he dug his hands deeper. “Werewolves don"t

exactly stand on ceremony.”

“I didn"t mind. I just haven"t hung with a lot of kids.”

“You were fine with him. Good, actually.” Apparently, Really Hot Cop

blushed at the drop of a hat. He looked away from her to the Italian grocery on the corner. Bins of fresh apples glowed in the dappled sun, so bright Snow White would have been tempted to bite one. Ari restrained an urge to pinch herself. For all she knew Snow White was a real person here.

When Adam turned back, he"d pulled his cop side into his face again. “I need to debrief you. Get everything you know or even think you know about the Eunuch.”

“O-kay,” she said slowly.

“Also -” He reached out to lightly touch the base of her neck. “You should wear the depowering charm Nate ... gave you if you go out. It doesn"t just damp your magic, it inhibits other people from reading how much you have. Level Five is high enough to draw attention. You wouldn"t want Blackwater putting it together that you"ve come here gunning for him.”

Ari stuck her hands in her pockets, then realized she was echoing his posture.

“How many levels are there?” she asked, refusing to pull them out and make herself more conspicuous.

“Eight,” he said. “It"s called the Bunscombe Scale. The gargoyles invented it.

One to three is nothing you"d notice if the person were in your world. The ability to change shape gets you ranked a five, but the demarcations aren"t black and white. Most weres don"t
do
magic, they just
are
.”

“That gargoyle called me a Level Five.”

“You probably are. Magical Mentoring would have to test you to be sure.”

“Magical Mentoring?”

Adam grimaced. “It"s like foster care for Talents who wander into the Pocket, which happens more often than you might guess. Their counselors train you to control your gift. Spell out the rules for what"s allowed and what"s not. Plus, you get officially registered, which you have to do before you can take the certification test. Some things citizens can"t do without a license.”

Like torture people
, she thought.

“Strictly speaking, there"s no license for that. A couple government

departments do it anyway, but they"re not supposed to.”

Ari pulled her hands from her pockets and crossed her arms. “You read my mind.”

“I only can do it sometimes. I have a touch of the Sight. My grandmother was an elf.”

She couldn"t help it. Even though she was irritated, she had to laugh.

“Lemme see your ears.”

He smiled as she brushed his silky locks behind one, then stood on tiptoe to see. Their shape was perfectly normal.

“Pointy ears are recessive,” he informed her.

Because touching even his ear felt a bit too good, she dropped her hand.

“This place is so freaking weird.”

“Bad weird?”

His expression seemed serious. “No,” she said, caught by his gaze again.

“Not bad ...”

Why was he looking at her like that? Like her answer was important? The air in her lungs thickened. His hands had taken her upper arms, and his thumbs were sweeping over the soft sweatshirt.

“Ari,” he said huskily. “I can"t seem to stop touching you.”

She couldn"t either. Her hands were on his waist. He bent to kiss her, and she could have sworn it had been eons since she last tasted him. The kiss was harder than the night before, nearly fierce. She stretched into it, kissing him back with more abandon than she"d known she had in her. She drove her hands under the thin T-shirt that seemed to be all the warmth he needed. His skin was silk laid over hot muscles. When she scratched lightly up and down his spine, he groaned and stabbed at her tongue with his. Ari sucked it as hard as she could, delighting when this made his canines extend.

“Jeez,” he gasped, wrenching free. “I could fuck you right out here in the street.” His groin was mashed against her belly, the giant hump at his crotch making his point for him. Between her legs, her clit felt like it had swollen to the size of a strawberry. It pulsed like a mariachi band throwing a party.

His full lower lip, the one with the dent in it, was reddened from kissing.

Ari took two tries before she could speak. “I guess people don"t have sex in the street here.”

“No.” He dragged his slightly open lips up her cheek, inhaling as he went.

His teeth found her earlobe and took a delicate nip. “Fuck, Ari, you smell good.”

It killed her to hear him say this. As a werewolf, his nose was better than hers. If she wanted to roll around in his scent, what must he want to do with her?

Shivering, Ari pushed away. She had a mission. She needed to focus. This thing with Really Hot Cop was getting out of control. Adam didn"t help when he took both her hands in his and squeezed. The pressure of his fingers was unaccountably erotic.

“Debriefing,” she reminded him shakily.

“Right.” He released her hands to run one of his back through his thick black hair. “I"ll call the team. We can go over it together.”

∞

The Lupones were still at Adam"s place watching Ethan. Evidently, Adam"s apartment contained fewer breakables. Rather than request they leave, Adam collared Rick and Tony and headed across the street to Nate Rivera"s.

Hot Latino guy lived in a big loft space, no walls except for his fancy bathroom and some storage. He was a clothes horse, for sure. In his bedroom corner hung more nice suits than Ari had seen outside a department store. They were organized by color on long rolling racks like you"d see burly guys pushing along the Garment District"s streets. Nate"s ceiling went up forever to exposed pipes, and cool little paintings Max would have loved hung on the rough brick walls. The place was so slick Ari wasn"t sure where the others found the nerve to prop their feet on his ottomans.

The only absent team member was Carmine. He was spending his day off

with his wife and kids.

Nate served everyone coffee in matching miniature off-white cups.

“You sure Nate"s not the gay one?” Ari heard popping from her mouth.

From a mile away in his open kitchen, Nate shot her the fish-eye.

“Wolf ears,” Tony said, touching his own. “They can hear pins drop.”

Adam suddenly found Nate"s copy of
Urban Style
deeply interesting.

Shoot
, Ari thought. He must have heard her getting off last night. She struggled against her blush, but it wasn"t easy when Tony"s mouth curved up.

Unlike his brother, he appeared to like the idea that Adam was hot for her.

Nate set a second French press of coffee wrapped in a quilted cozy on his low glass table. “Now that we"ve got our caffeine supply, maybe our tourist would like to spill her info on the Eunuch.”

“Maybe you"d start by asking what you want to know.”

“Names,” Rick said, leaning forward from the sculptural white couch he was sharing with his brother. His manner held the same edge of challenge it had last night. “Associates. Enemies. Other Talents who work with him.”

“You don"t have names?”

“We have some names from here, but we"ve never succeeded in getting a spy in his inner circle. Our understanding of his operation is sketchy.”

Ari wasn"t as comfortable answering him as she was Adam, but she"d agreed to this. “Well,” she said, propping her forearms on her thighs, “he doesn"t seem to travel without his entourage. He"s got six or seven goons he favors, who stay with him in whatever place he"s leasing. He moves maybe twice a year, and always goes high end. Like, penthouses with park views. Some of his pet Talents live with him. Others like me have outside jobs. We only come to him when he calls.

Every so often, one of his pets disappear. The junkies especially don"t last long.”

“They disappear,” Adam repeated. Like her, he sat on his own chair. She noticed he"d angled it more toward her.

“Most of us assume they die. Whatever he has them doing seems to burn

them out. Or maybe they OD the old-fashioned way.”

“But you don"t know for sure what happens to them.” Nate"s manner was

intense but in a different way from Rick"s. He seemed to have no beef with her, just a naturally skeptical nature. His chair was red with black cow spots and shaped like an egg. He would have looked silly in it, if he weren"t giving off such a danger vibe.

“No,” she agreed. “We don"t know for sure what happens. One day they"re there, and the next they"re not.”

“Do you remember names?” Nate pressed.

“I put the ones I know in my tablet. Blackwater hates computers. It seemed a reasonably safe way to keep track.”

Ari shifted her gaze to Adam, who exhaled resignedly. He understood what her raised eyebrows were asking. “Yes, I confiscated your tablet.” He pulled it out of the army green rucksack he"d brought with him. He held the device between his knees for a moment and looked at her. “Nate has a converter that can make your tablet run on local power. It would be helpful if you gave him permission to look at it.”

“And if I don"t?” Ari asked, curious to hear the answer.

“If you don"t, we have to get a warrant, or what we find won"t be admissible in court. If we need a warrant, we"ll have to turn you over to Magical Mentoring.”

“And that you truly won"t enjoy,” Tony said helpfully. “You"re a rogue Level Five. If you"re lucky, Mentoring will only keep you in protective custody for a couple months.”

A couple months were more than Ari could afford to delay. As long as

Blackwater stayed in Resurrection, Maxwell and Sarah were safe. If he headed back to New York and was still in a rage over Ari"s rebellion, she didn"t want to guess how he"d take revenge.

“Give Nate the tablet,” she surrendered.

Nate rose and took it to a sleek office area that was set up along one wall.

The others followed, so she did too. The plug Nate stuck in the tablet"s port looked ordinary, but when it powered up her scalp prickled. She pointed out the file she"d been keeping her records in.

“Password?” Nate said over his lean shoulder.

Ari"s face heated. “Godlovesme2. With a numeral at the end.”

Behind her, Adam"s hand settled on her back. His palm didn"t rub her, but it was warm. He kept it there while Nate cross-searched the police database with the names in her file. Metrosexual werewolves could be techno-geeks, she guessed, because his long fingers seemed at home on both machines. Less than ten minutes passed before he straightened.

“None of these Talents are in our system,” he said. “If the Eunuch brought them here, they"re not registered.”

Tony"s side brushed hers as he leaned in to see the screen, his big body warming hers unself-consciously. “We could ask the gargoyles. They usually notice new magic folks.”

“Eh,” Rick said dubiously. “Gargoyles are notoriously bad with names.”

“I have pictures,” Ari offered, causing all four men to look at her. “My camera phone never seemed to work around Blackwater, but my friend Maxwell managed to sketch a few.”

For the first time, Nate regarded her with respect. “
Chica
, you are not as blonde as you look. Maybe those hair spikes haven"t punctured your brain.”

Ari didn"t know whether to laugh or be offended. Her style was her style, the same as Nate"s was his. Deciding to ignore the dig, she showed Nate where she"d hidden the scans of Maxwell"s sketches. He sent the file to his printer.

“These accurate?” he asked, showing them to her.

His printer must have had a charm on it. Maxwell excelled at capturing faces, but his sketches had printed out like photographs.

Ari gulped and nodded. Seeing those missing faces just as they"d been in life was eerie.

∞

Ari was getting to Adam, not just her smell or her looks but who she was.

Her password was the latest chip in his defenses. Someone must have told her God didn"t watch over freaks like her. If he"d known who it was, he"d have given them a piece of his mind. And good for her, for knowing better. This
chica
, as Nate called her, had spirit.

They returned to Nate"s sitting area, where they could pass around her

friend"s pictures. Adam knew his men were searching their sharper than normal memories for faces they might have come across in the past. Rick was the last to go through the stack.

When he finished, the beta flapped the pages on his thigh. “What do you used unregistered Talents for?”

“Illegal stuff,” Tony answered.

“Right,” Rick said, his gaze unfocused, “but here in Resurrection, they"d be limited to small tricks. Any use of power above a three, and they"d be too likely to set off the gargoyles" alarms.”

“Maybe the Eunuch has better shields than we know about,” Nate said.

“Maybe. But Talents aren"t so good at precision work. The bigger the job, the more unpredictable their results. Everything we know about the Eunuch tells us he"s an anal guy.” He looked at Ari, his expression hardened by the guardedness in it. “From what she says, the Talents who disappeared were burned out. If that"s true, how much would they be able to do even here?”