Hotter After Midnight

He’d kissed her, then he’d left her. A hard, swift kiss that she could still feel.

“So this is where the magic happens, huh?” He wasn’t lying on the couch, but sitting up, hands draped over his knees.

“I don’t necessarily think of it as magic,” she said carefully. Magic was a word generally reserved for the Other. They had magical powers. She was just a human who had a high psychic sensitivity to the Other.

“Umm.” He cocked his head to the side. “Tell me about them.”

“Them?”

“The Other.” His eyes never left hers. “I realized last night that I know damn little about”—a brief hesitation, then—“my kind. And that lack of knowledge could get me into some serious shit.”

Ah, yes, it could. “You’ve known others like yourself before, of course?” She’d figured it’d be better if they started with something he knew. They could begin with shifters and then build from there.

“I’ve met a few others. Haven’t exactly had deep meaningful conversations with ’em, if you know what I mean. And I’ve seen some vamps, a few demons—”

“What?” The pen she’d absently picked up fell from her fingers. Haven’t exactly had deep meaningful conversations? He made it sound as if other shifters were as foreign to him as vampires. “But your parents—”

“They died when I was a couple of months old.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him, as if it were just some random event that had happened long ago and didn’t have any meaning to him now. “I got put in foster care after that.”

Her breath rushed out in a fast expulsion. “What did you think was happening the first time you changed?” To shift without someone around for guidance, God, it must have been a nightmare.

He turned his head. Gazed out the window. “I thought I was dying.”

Emily said nothing. Just waited.

“My bones snapped, twisted.” His lips thinned. “Do you know what it’s like to hear the crunch of your own bones?”

No, she didn’t. “B-but I didn’t think the change was painful.” She’d been told it sometimes felt like a mild sunburn spreading through a person’s body.

“The first time it is. Damn painful. Like your insides are exploding. Everything reshapes, transforms. My nails changed first, grew into claws. Then my teeth—they got sharper, longer. Then the fur grew.” Colin stopped, shaking his head. He looked back at her, and she could see the painful shadows of his past in the depths of his eyes. “I tried to call for help, but by that time I didn’t have a human’s voice anymore.”

“Once you’d changed, how did you feel then?”

“Like a freak.”

Emily grabbed her pad, began jotting notes by rote. Traumatic first shift. No knowledge of his kind.

“I was an animal.” His jaw clenched tight. “I didn’t know what the hell had happened to me or how the hell I was going to change back. And for a while I thought…”

Her pen was poised over the pad. “What did you think?”

His eyes narrowed, dropped to the pen and paper. “I’m not one of your patients, Doc. I don’t need an analysis.”

Her fingers tightened around the cool metal base of the ballpoint pen. “I thought you might want to talk about—”

“About what? My screwed-up childhood? The ten foster homes I lived in? The first time I changed into a damn animal and thought I was going insane?”

Actually, yes. The pen scribbled across the pad. Feared insanity. Serious hostility issues.

“Emily.”

She froze. Lifted her head to stare at him.

Colin rose and stalked toward her. He leaned over her desk, bracing his hands on the old wood. “I don’t need you to poke around in my past and figure out why—” For a moment, his gaze dropped to the pad and his lips tightened as he said, “I’ve got hostility issues.”

She decided it would be best not to point out right then that he was definitely exhibiting said hostility issues. So she tried to be tactful. “Some people think the key to a successful future is facing a painful past.”

“Then those people are fucking idiots. A painful past needs to be shoved in a cold, dark grave and left to rot.”

Well, that was one perspective. Very carefully, Emily placed her pen down. “I shouldn’t have started to—” She broke off, clearing her throat, and realized that she was embarrassed.

Slipping into psychologist mode was second nature to her. And Colin’s pain, it had just called out to her. She licked her lips, tried again, “I shouldn’t—”

“Shouldn’t have started screwing with my head?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I wasn’t screwing with your head, as you so kindly put it.”

“Lady, you make a living screwing with people’s minds.” He leaned forward another inch.

She didn’t like the way he was towering over her. Asserting his dominance. Showing that he was the big, strong detective and she was the psychologist who needed to mind her own business.

Her own temper began to spark. Emily shoved to her feet. “I was trying to help you, Gyth. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re carrying around a hell of a lot of baggage.” And rage. Lots of rage.

She placed her hands deliberately on the table and leaned into him. Close enough to kiss. Or hit. And she was very tempted to do both.

Colin stared back at her, those crystal blue eyes of his glinting with emotion. “I told you about my past because I was talking to you, Emily Drake. Not the Monster Doctor.”

Understanding filled her. “It’s hard for me to stop being the Monster Doctor.” Her voice was softer. She’d been working with the Other for so long, trying to heal their minds, and she’d nearly forgotten how to turn off the doctor.

“We’re way off topic,” he muttered, and stepped back, rolling his shoulders. “I didn’t come here to drag up my shitty childhood.”

Emily licked her lips and realized that she’d very nearly screwed things up with Colin. She needed to think more like a woman with him and less like a psychologist. “Right. Sorry.” And she was. Sorry that she’d pressured him, sorry that she’d tried to make him into a patient.

“Just don’t try it again, Doc.”

That she couldn’t promise. “Look, Colin, it’s kinda hard to turn off, you know?” He’d been on her couch, in her office, and when he’d started talking she’d slipped into counselor mode.

“Try.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll see what I can do, and, hey, how about you try not to be such a jerk?”

He blinked, obviously caught off guard by the insult she’d just delivered in her soft, I’m-a-Professional voice.

Then he tossed back his head and laughed.

Emily fought the smile that curved her lips. Good. Looked like they were back on even ground.

“Agreed.” Colin strolled around her office, eyeing her bookshelves and the framed Rorschach inkblot pictures on her walls.

After a few moments, he said, “I need to know about them. Need to know what I’m gonna be dealing with.”

Yes, she understood that. Colin was ill prepared to deal with the world of the Other, especially considering his own rough introduction to the Other world. But before she could begin his lessons, there were a few other questions that she needed to ask.

“So you’ve come across other shifters?” All of the Other were born with an instinctive ability to recognize their own kind. Demons saw through the veil of glamour to other demons. Shifters could scent one another, thanks to their heightened sense of smell.

Witches and wizards felt the power pull of their brethren.

Like to like. It was the way it had always been.

And for whatever reason, Emily had been born with the ability to sense them all. Even though she wasn’t kindred to any of them.

Colin touched the spine of one of her books. “Yeah, I have. Once or twice.”

“You could…smell them, right? Smell the difference between a shifter and a human?” As far as she knew, shifters didn’t see the beasts they carried. They didn’t know about the golden glow that cloaked their bodies. It was just something she saw.

“Yeah, I can smell ’em.” He shook his head. “We all smell like animals.”

Her nose wrinkled at that. She rather liked the way Colin smelled.

“Well, all the Other have a way of sensing their kind. Demons can look through the glamour and see the black eyes that mark them, witches feel a surge of power in the air when another is close, djinn can hear the thoughts of others like them, charmers can—”

He glanced back at her, a black brow raised. “What’s a charmer?”

“You’ve heard of snake charmers, right?”

Colin nodded. “Big in India. Those guys who carry around cobras in baskets.”

“Right.” Well, partially right. “Charmers are beings who can communicate with certain animals. They can talk to them.” Some charmers talked to snakes, some to birds, some to dogs or cats.

“Just how many types of Other exist?”

Oh, now that was a hard one. “Think of every legend of every magical being you’ve ever heard and then imagine all those stories are true. Then you’ve got the Other. ” Hundreds, thousands of types. Some kind and benevolent. Some downright evil and dangerous.

Just like humans.

“This city seems to have more than its share of supernaturals. When I lived in Grisam, Illinois, there weren’t any others like me.”

“Well, yes, but if you’d gone to Chicago, you would have found dozens of SBs.” They liked the big cities. Loved them, in fact.

“Think about it, Colin. Where is it easier to hide? In small-town America, where your neighbors know every move you make? Or would you want to go to a big city where—”

“You could disappear into a crowd and no one would give a shit what you were doing,” Colin finished for her.

“Exactly.” She waited a bit and then, because she really couldn’t help herself, asked, “Isn’t that why you came here?”

“Yeah, yeah, I guess it is.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s talk about the demons first.”

“What do you want to know?”

“They’re fast healers, right?” At the slight inclination of her head, he continued, “What’s the deal with the power-level thing you keep mentioning? Level one, level two—what does that mean?”

“Demons can work magic, just like witches can. A low-level demon, a one or a two, can do small things, like light a candle or make a breeze blow through a room. But a level nine or ten”—this was the bad part, the very bad part—“they can stir tornadoes, start five-alarm fires, and even steal the minds of others.”

“What? ” He paced toward her, brows furrowed. “You’re telling me those bastards can control humans?”

“Sometimes.” That was how the idea of demon possession had first come into being. “If a demon is strong enough, he can push his way into someone’s mind, can control the person or, at the least, incapacitate him.”

Colin walked around her desk, came to stand less than a foot away from her. “Is that what happened to you?”

“Wh-what do you mean?” There was a faint line of stubble on his jaw. And far too much knowledge in his eyes.

“You told me you were nearly put into a coma once by an Other. The guy who did it, he was a demon, wasn’t he? One of those level nines or tens.”

No sense denying it. “Yes.”

She watched a muscle flex along his jaw. “Where is he now?” There was a banked rage in his voice, and for an instant, she saw the glow of the beast in his eyes.

“It doesn’t matter. That was years ago.” And Myles couldn’t hurt anyone with his magic, not anymore. “I told you before, he burned out.” She’d burned out the bastard.

“Would his powers have worked on me?” Before she could answer, he continued, “Niol tried something on me back at the bar. I could feel the hard shift in the air, but nothing happened.”

“No.” Shifters were the most powerful of the supernatural beings because they didn’t have just one body and one soul. Shifters had two. And the strength that came from that double bond was too strong for demons to touch. “A powerful shifter is the only Other that can match a demon’s strength.”

“Well, that’s something then.” His jaw clenched, and for a moment his eyes seemed to glitter. “How the fuck did you meet a guy like that anyway?”

Emily swallowed. She’d wondered when he’d ask. And since she’d pushed her way into his private life earlier, well, she figured he deserved to know about her past too.

“Was he your lover?”

She shook her head. “No, he was—” Damn. What had he been? “All my life, I’ve never fit in with the humans. They don’t understand me, and I doubt they ever will.”

He watched her silently, and she knew that he understood.

“When I was eighteen, I stumbled into Niol’s bar, pulled by the magic I could feel in the air. He knew I was human, of course, but he let me in. I think I amused him.” And he’d watched her, always watched her with those fathomless black eyes of his.

“Niol was the one who introduced me to Myles.” She’d felt the black waves of Niol’s power right from the start, and she’d generally steered clear of him. After he’d arranged for her to meet Myles, well, then she’d known what a true bastard Niol was.