a beat cop. I’m out on the streets every night. I don’t fall apart.”
“Good, then it’s agreed?”
My hands went up. “Whoa. I didn’t agree to anything.”
“You didn’t have to. I’ve already spoken with your supervisor and his boss. The paperwork for your transfer will follow in the morning. You can quit altogether and be unemployed, or you can work for me. We need you. Your first case has already…dropped into your lap. It’ll be up to you to find the people responsible for reanimating that dead man.” Detective Thomas shrugged into his coat and started for the door. “Your partner will fill you in on all the details of your new responsibilities.”
“Wait a minute.” I followed Detective Thomas to the door. “I haven’t agreed to this.”
Thomas stopped and turned toward her. “Maybe you don’t understand. I don’t have enough staff to chase this new threat. The man tonight wasn’t the last of them, but nearly everyone else on my team is too tied up to take on new assignments. Unless you step up, the next zombie is going to put more people in danger.”
The blue-gray of the zombie’s face flashed through my mind along with the chill that lingered where his hand had gripped my ankle. “There are other…zombies out there?”
“We’ve had three reports, each a day apart and each zombie is getting more aggressive.”
“Why aren’t they making the news?” I asked.
Thomas nodded toward Blaise. “You want to tell her?”
Blaise leaned his back against the wall beside the door, crossing one leg over the other. It should have looked ridiculously posed. Instead, it looked ridiculously sexy. Damn him.
“The mayor of our great city doesn’t want to kill the multimillion-dollar tourism trade. Between us and the mayor, we keep a tight cap on what stories reach the paper.” He shrugged. “Not too many legitimate papers would touch a story like this, anyway. It sounds too crazy.”
Normally, I roll with the punches, but this—this was a bit overwhelming. “I just started with the Fifth Precinct, I don’t want to change jobs again in such a short amount of time.”
“And we’re wasting time arguing.” Detective Thomas gripped the door handle. “You and your new partner need to get started on the investigation yesterday before anyone else gets hurt.” He opened the door and strode through.
I followed the older man out into the hall. “Partner? When do I get to meet him?”
Detective Thomas turned back to me, frowning. “You already have, and he’s the best we’ve got. He can tell you everything you need to know since he is also a member of the paranorm community.”
It became my turn to frown. “Who—wait—what do you mean?”
Thomas nodded toward my left shoulder. “Blaise is your new partner.”
My stomach flipped, my pulse galloped and I glanced over my shoulder at the man standing in the doorway behind me. “Him? He’s my partner?”
Blaise tipped his head, a light dancing in his black eyes. “The pleasure will be all mine.”
“No way.” I turned back to Detective Thomas, but the man had already started down the steps. “No way. Take him with you.”
The detective’s hand rose, but he didn’t turn back. “I’ll want a full report tomorrow night of anything you’ve found.” The man disappeared, leaving me with the sexiest partner I’d ever had the displeasure of working with.
I groaned as I faced Blaise Michaels. “I can’t work with you.”
He held the door for me to reenter my own apartment as if he owned the place. “I’m sure I don’t understand why. I promise not to bite—unless you want me to.” He chuckled, the sound warm and inviting. “Besides, I’ve learned that whatever Detective Thomas asks for, he gets, no questions asked.” The jerk gave me a decidedly smug grin. “You and I are now partners.”
I stepped far enough into the apartment that my back was to him then closed my eyes, tipping my head back to ease the tension in the back of my neck. Before I could even blink my eyes open, warm fingers clamped down on my shoulders and strong thumbs dug into the knotted muscles, soothing the kinks out. I should have jumped and inserted a safe distance between us, but my feet refused to move, and his fingers worked magic on the soreness caused by a two-hundred pound corpse landing on top of me. Twice.
“This is not going to be the norm.” I didn’t want him to get used to touching me. Since Chicago, I’d become wary of letting anyone lay so much as a finger on me. I tended to lash out instinctively whenever a man got within arm’s length, as the guy from the station with the imprint of the concrete floor on his face could attest. So why wasn’t I pulling away? How could it be that I was actually relaxing under the skillful pressure of his hands?
“Understood.” His fingers kneaded up my neck to the base of my skull and downward to the middle of my waist and lower.
God, it felt good. Too damned good. “What did Detective Thomas mean by you being a member of the paranorm community?”
Blaise’s thumbs dug into the base of my spine, just above the swell of my ass, dispelling the ache that had grown there since I’d pulled myself from beneath my earlier attacker.
“I’m currently the only member of the PIT crew—that’s the acronym for the Paranormal Investigative Team—who is a living, breathing paranorm. However, I am actively recruiting others to join.”
The warmth that he generated with just a touch suddenly froze and an ominous chill slid up my spine, spreading fingers of ice to my extremities. “What do you mean?”
“I’m a demon.”
Chapter Two
What do you say to something like that? I had no idea. So for the first time—in my life, maybe—I just kept my mouth shut and listened…while standing way the hell on the other side of the room from Blaise.
For the rest of the dark morning hours, I stayed mostly silent while Blaise more or less performed a core dump of information on me. My mind spun with images of what he swore was out on the streets of New York City and everywhere else in the world.
Werewolves, werecats, vampires, demons, witches, zombies and more. Seriously? And the token demon of our PIT crew expected me to sleep like a baby? I wanted to lock my doors and wear garlic by the time he finally left me alone. I could see why the mayor went on the assumption that ignorance was bliss. Every man, woman and child would be terrified of their shadow if they only knew what walked the streets. I considered myself as tough and level-headed as anyone I knew, and yet when I fell into bed after Blaise left, I had the totally irrational hope that I’d go to sleep and wake up to find that it had all been a bad dream.
No such luck.
After a three-hour failed attempt at sleep, I gave up, threw on a pair of jeans, my leather boots and a Rolling Stones T-shirt and headed to the Fifth Precinct station. Transferred or not, it was the only place I knew to go—and if I could put in a request for a new partner while I was there, then that would just be
