SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (179 page)

“That doesn’t even make any sense. I passed you on the staircase that was farthest from me, which means I kicked your ass even harder.”

“Your legs are longer. You had an advantage. And besides, I was carrying cargo.” She chucked the toilet paper at him with a grin.

He caught it easily. “No excuses, Vale. If you’re ever gonna be in Blue Unit, you have to pick up the pace.”

She wandered off down the hall. “A Sentinel? No, thanks,
Commander
. I’m sticking with Investigations. If I ever did make a move, I’d like to work in Sasha’s department, maybe.”

Shit. He wasn’t a sentimental guy, but it was like an icepick through his chest every time she mentioned her future at IB. It wasn’t as if Evelyn would leave Immortal Bounty penniless—he’d made sure of that when he’d prodded Clark about her signing bonus. And if they brought down the traffickers before Clark gave her the sack, the bounty was going to be enough for her to live on for years to come. But that wasn’t enough for Jesse any more. He thought maybe he and his new partner might really have a future at IB as a real team.

“Oh my God,” Evelyn breathed out.

He rushed down the hall, not sure what to expect, but then she pushed wide a set of double doors and he saw what had caught her attention. The master bedroom.

He wouldn’t need anything this fancy, but he could see why the doc might like it. The carpet was cream-colored and it gave under his footsteps. There were windows all along one side of the room and thick drapes with those tassel things hung to the sides of the windows. A big white stone fire place took up half the wall to the left and in front of that were light green sofas and chairs in different fabrics that matched the drapes. The room was huge, and a big crystal chandelier hung in the center of the vaulted ceiling, which he supposed made it extra fancy if you were into that. What got his attention, though, was the big four-poster bed stacked high with pillows and plush bedding. Evelyn would truly look like a princess lying in the center of a bed like that.

“Nice,” he said.

“Nice?” she echoed. “Jesse, we could have dance parties in here!” She twirled around the room and stopped mid-spin in front him. When he smirked, she added, “Not
those
kind of dance parties.”

“Yeah, I have to admit, the steward outdid himself. We’re pretty lucky that this neighborhood has a few folks suspected of being in the body-borrowing scene.”

She frowned. “Well, that ruins it.”

“Don’t forget why we moved here, short stack. If we can’t find the contacts we need quickly, we might as well be back on the IB campus working serial hauntings.”

She shrugged and went to check out the bathroom. “You know what? I’m not going to let you ruin this for me. Tomorrow, I may have to act like your lovelorn, discarded sex slave. But tonight, I’m just going to enjoy myself.” She squealed when she saw the huge tub with jets around the sides. “And you and me, we’ve got a date with destiny, Mr. Hot Tub.”

His mouth fell open. “We do?”

She glared at him. “No, not you. Me and the tub.”

“You’re going to name our appliances?”

“I just might.”

God, he wanted to kiss her. He wanted to run some hot water, push her into that bathtub, and kiss her until they both passed out. This mission was a total, grade A, fucking disaster.

Immortal Possession: Chapter Nine

Jesse got up early the following morning and went for a run. He used it as an opportunity to get his bearings in the neighborhood and get a first look at the surrounding construction areas. The six other houses on his street were every bit as nice as his and Evelyn’s place, but each house was totally unique in its architecture and landscaping.

Two of the six houses had signs of having children in residence, one with an elaborate play structure in the back yard and the other with two miniature bikes in the front. He hoped he could cross the two homes with children off the list, because if one of these freaks had a kinkster club in the basement of their house, he sure as hell hoped it wasn’t a house with kids. Fuck protocol, he’d go in there himself, pack up the kids, and then go back and kill every last one of them with his bare hands.

And that’s what he was thinking about when he descended the stairs, fresh from the shower, and walked into the kitchen. Evelyn sat by the French doors leading to a private patio, reading the newspaper and sipping a steaming cup of coffee. She wore the full-length black silk robe they’d bought yesterday, and the morning sun lit up her brown hair like there was a golden halo perched just behind her head.

He stopped dead in his tracks like he’d smacked into an invisible wall. It was like walking into a scene from some heartwarming family movie, and Evelyn…she looked like the star of the show, the mother of his children, like any minute now, a bunch of giggling brats were going to run down the stairs and perch in her lap as she smiled down at them and ruffled their hair.

Evelyn Vale was a good woman. A smart, beautiful woman. Why was she even mixed up in all of this? Choosing Immortal Bounty was choosing to live on campus and give up a shot at a normal, Greater American life. Did she even get that part? Maybe if she made some bounty money and then parted ways with him it would be for the best…

Evelyn looked up and smiled, then folded her paper and set it aside. “Good morning, sleepy head. Want some coffee?”

“Sleepy head?” He glanced at the clock on the refrigerator’s control panel. “It’s seven-thirty and I’ve been up since five. I’ve already had breakfast, exercised, cased the neighborhood, and showered.”

“Wow. Where did you find breakfast? All the team put in the cupboard was coffee and sugar.”

He smiled. “That was the part that impressed you? Breakfast?”

“Well, yeah… I’m hungry.”

Jesse laughed. “I packed some nutrition bars. I’ll trade you one for a cup of coffee.”

“You, sir, have a deal.” She got up and rummaged through the cupboard for a cup, while Jesse went to the cupboard where he’d stashed his emergency rations.

They returned to the breakfast table, and she pushed the coffee toward him as he placed the protein bar in front of her. He eyed her coffee cup. It was old and cracked and looked as though it had been hand painted by a chimpanzee on drugs. It might have had little Christmas trees on it, but the way the patterns ran together, it was hard to tell.

“You brought your own mug? That was one of the prized possessions you brought from your house.”

Evelyn regarded her cup and then took a sip. “Yes, it is.”

“What’s so special about it?”

She raised her brows. “Listen to you. Do you always wake up so curious?”

He took a sip of his own coffee, and it was perfect. She hadn’t even asked how he took it. Maybe she’d been paying attention at Coot’s Café when they’d met there. “If it’s too personal, you don’t have to share. Curiosity is all it was.”

“I don’t mind.” She regarded the cup again and smiled. “Little Casey painted it.”

“Casey?” Visions of Evelyn’s squalid family apartment came to mind, and he remembered that was the name of the little spirit he couldn’t see. “The little girl who lives with your family?”

“That’s her.”

“How did she paint it? I doubt she can be over a level two spirit. It seemed like she could hardly even manifest in her own resting place.”

“Yeah, she’s a level two, but just barely.” Evelyn started to get fidgety and it got Jesse’s attention.

“And…”

She shrugged. “And she’d been telling me that she really wanted to paint a ceramic mug at the ceramic café down the street. Do you know what that is? You pick the pottery, and then you decorate it and they fire it in a kiln.”

“Well, it’s not like me and the guys hang out there on Friday nights, but yeah, I’ve heard of that kind of thing.”

Evelyn leaned back in her chair, cupping the mug in both hands now, as though warming her fingers. “So Casey had been watching out the window since the place opened, and for months she’d seen other kids going there with their parents. She asked me if I would take her and let her paint a mug. So I did.”

He shook his head. “Maybe my coffee hasn’t kicked in yet this morning, but I think I’m missing something. She’s barely a level two spirit, and a kid at that. How did she manage to leave her primary resting place and hold the paint brush? Are you hiding an animist in your closet or something?”

She laughed. “I wish. Then maybe some of those SSUs would leave me alone. But no, I…uh…loaned her my body.”

“Oh, Doc. You have to be kidding me. You let a kid who couldn’t have been more than six or seven years old when she died possess you and walk around town in your body? You could have been hit by a car. Raped. Mugged. Take your pick.”

“She was supervised,” Evelyn said defensively. “I was watching her the whole time.”

“You couldn’t have been watching her. She was in control of your body, and you were out.”

Evelyn bit her lip. “Not exactly. I was still in control of my body, she was just sharing it.”

He set his mug on the table and leaned closer, watching her eyes. “That’s impossible.”

“Apparently, it’s not.”

It took a minute for the implications of what she said to sink in. “Holy shit. Why didn’t you tell us? Clark needs to know this.”

Evelyn stood and went to rinse her coffee cup in the sink. “No, he doesn’t. I’ve only been able to do it with Casey. It’s not going to help you with Lauren or this case.”

He got up and followed her to the sink. “But this is major. It’s never been done in the twenty-seven years since The Great Collision. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s Casey, but this is definitely something we need to look into. Maybe that’s what you’re packing all those extra joules for—some gift that hasn’t even been discovered yet. You’ve got to tell the steward.”

Evelyn turned on him. “No thanks, Commander. I spent years studying abnormal parapsychology. I know what they do to their lab rats, and I’m not interested.”

He looked at that ugly cracked cup again with new eyes, realizing everything it symbolized. “So you keep that mug to remind you that you’ve done something that nobody else has ever done…”

She shook her head and patted his shoulder. “I keep this mug because that following Christmas, Casey had my dad wrap it and put it under the tree. She’d been making it for me all along.”

* * *

Evelyn understood why her partner would be surprised by the news that she’d been able to remain conscious while hosting a spirit in her body. But it was such a relief when he finally let it go and started treating her normally again.

They went to the grocery store that morning, and it was odd. She’d waited her whole life to be an IB investigator, and currently, her job consisted of choosing which cheese might go better on homemade pizza and if she and Jesse could compromise on two flavors of ice cream or just break down and get the third quart as well.

She understood that Immortal Bounty had deep pockets and their cover identities were the type who would buy the best wines and cheeses and the finest cuts of meat, but it was still hard to spend the money and not be a nervous wreck. When they got up to the checkout, a spirit of a deceased clerk was hovering beside the clerk who was scanning their groceries. The spirit eyed Evelyn, picking up on her low possession threshold like flies pick up on the scent of rotten meat.

He drifted closer and Jesse stepped into his path. “Don’t even think about it. I have a plasma gun in the car, and if you so much as trail your wispy fingers through my wife’s hair, I’m going to blast you back to Abaddon.”

They left the store with a shopping cart piled high with food and drinks. After years of being on such a tight budget, Evelyn couldn’t shake the guilt. A group of four small children crowded around the area where the extra carts were stored. They held their hands out, asking for food or money.

When Evelyn paused, Jesse said, “Don’t give them money. They’re usually working for someone older and they’ll just get the money confiscated. If you want to do something, give them food.”

She gave him a wry smile. “You saw where I grew up. I know the drill.”

She took a couple of the bags from the cart and handed them to the boys. After they scampered off with their goods, she followed Jesse down the walkway as he pushed their bulging cart. Why did two people need this much food at once? What if it went bad before they could eat it? “I think we should eat the fresh foods first,” she said to Jesse. “And save the canned food for last.”

He navigated the cart through the parked cars. “Whatever you want to do. But you know, we can always buy more.”

“Well, I was just thinking, if this—” she realized just in time that it would be a huge faux pas to talk about their assignment in public. “If we don’t end up staying at our house for the full month—and if you don’t mind it—I could take the canned goods we don’t use back to my apartment for my dad.”

Jesse popped the trunk open and they started loading the grocery bags inside, organizing them by which ones needed to be in chilled section of the trunk and which could be kept at room temperature. “No offense, but your Dad sure is skinny for being the only one who eats around there.”

“I was eating, too, don’t forget. But we tend to be the house the neighbors go to when they haven’t had enough to eat. All they know is I’m some college educated girl, so we must have resources to spare. As if that were true. But you try saying no to kids from down the hall who knock on your door and you can hear their stomachs growling from four feet away.”

Jesse put the last bag in the trunk and then slammed it closed. “I know what you mean. I used to be the little kid begging food off people.”

“I’d like to know your story, if you ever feel like sharing.” She wanted to ask more, but waited until they were in the privacy of their car. “So how did you get discovered by Immortal Bounty? I haven’t wanted to pry, but I’m figuring to make it to commander, you must have one heck of a mutation.”

Jesse laughed and punched in their next destination on the car’s navigation screen, then he folded his arms and sat back. “I don’t like to talk about my mutation with most people, but I’ll tell you.”