Talent’s skin flushed dark. “Oh, I’ll remember. Somehow I’ll remember, and you won’t like my retaliation, Chase.” In a shimmer of light, he shifted back to his true form—so as to properly glare at her, she supposed. He pinned her with a threatening look. “It shall be long and creative.”
“What are you doing?” Mary hissed with a glance at the door. “Get back into character before someone sees you.”
He waved a hand. “Takes but a second. And the bloody mustache itches.”
“You ought to have thought of that before.”
Talent ignored her in favor of scowling at the door Rush had closed. “Besides, if they do, you can work your little witchcraft upon them, now can’t you?” He laughed shortly and without real humor. “Hell, I cannot believe I forgot that particular trick. An utter waste of breath on my part, wasn’t it?”
“I must admit that I am surprised you defended me,” Mary said. “I was under the impression you felt the same as he.”
He made a rude noise through his lips. “Bother, Chase, did you not hear a word that I said? Sex has nothing to do with proficiency. Our head director is a woman.” His expression grew smug. “Any objection pertaining to your role here is due to you being a pain in my arse.”
“Oh, well, that is a much nicer sentiment.” Though in a perverse way, it was.
“Of course it is.” Oblivious as ever, he went back to glaring at the door. “What I object to in that prat is he’s a bloody middle-class fool.” His upper lips curled. “A more priggish bunch I have yet to meet.”
In many ways Talent was correct. The middle class, in their drive to mimic their betters, tried to live beyond reproach. “They do set a rather high standard to live by.”
“Bloody England. I ought to decamp to the States and be done with this land. Only the bloody Yanks are just as grasping.”
“Perhaps you should travel there. Just to be certain.” Mary bit back her smile. Really, the man was so readily worked up, it was almost too easy to needle him. “They might appreciate a man of such revolutionary ideals.”
Talent rounded on her, his fierce frown shifting into an expression of wry admonishment when he caught sight of her expression. “It won’t be that easy to be rid of me, Chase.”
“Pity.” She sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to try harder.”
Mary cleared her throat and touched the lace doily on the back of the couch with an idle hand. What was she doing, bantering with Jack Talent? And why was she enjoying it? Unconscionable. She felt like a traitor to herself. She turned to face him again, and her skirts swished against the couch. “Do try to contain yourself with the housekeeper.”
He gave her a long look, all flaring nostrils and sneering lips. “I do not have time to shilly-shally with social niceties.”
A strangled laugh caught in her throat. “You said it yourself, Talent. Social niceties are unavoidable. But you? You have all the tact of a Bedlamite ranter.”
He made a rude noise. “Are we finished with the deportment session? May we kindly return to our case?”
“My word, you phrased that so nicely. I am quite astonished.”
His scowl was truly aggrieved. But then he suddenly grinned bright and crafty. Without warning he reached over and tweaked her ear in a move worthy of a five-year-old. “Lest you think I’m learning anything,” he said with his evil grin still in place.
“Pinch me again and lose a finger.” She meant for it to be a threat, but her voice came out oddly husky, his touch having made her pulse quicken.
As if he’d picked up on her tone, his lids lowered a fraction, setting her off balance, for heat lit his eyes. An illusion surely. Her breath sharpened as Talent’s voice turned sultry. “Is that a dare, Chase?”
Their gazes clashed, and Mary had the disorienting sense of the world’s having suddenly turned upside down on her. Her lips parted, and he studied them, his looming form tilted toward her as if drawn. Impossible. The door opened, and they sprang apart. Which was ridiculous, given that they’d been standing at a respectable distance.
Mary, for one, was glad of the intrusion. With an unsteady hand, she smoothed back a lock of hair that hung heavy at her temple, and was shocked to find it damp.
True to his word, Talent was now back in form and raising an imperious, bushy brow. “Well then,” he snapped to the housekeeper, “Let us proceed.”
Chapter Five
Jack’s steps were slow as the housekeeper led them into the bedroom where Mr. Pierce had been found. Sunlight brightened the room, the heavy brocade drapes having been thrown back. Thankfully the housekeeper had not thought to open the windows. Despite the rank stink of death and decay that made his stomach roll, Jack needed to inhale each scent, his shifter’s sense of smell giving him the ability to find clues within the muck. He let it flow over him, and then it hit him. He knew this victim. The knowledge turned over in his gut, and it took everything he had not to react before going to the bed in which the departed Mr. Pierce still lay.
The housekeeper’s pale lips pinched tighter than a lockbox, her thin body stiff as a post. “It isn’t decent, letting him lie there.”
He shot the woman a look. “And it isn’t decent to let the murderer get away with taking his life.”
Some days Jack hated his job. Give him a good chase, something to fight, anything but trying to cajole information out of prats. He finished the rest of his oft-said speech. “By leaving him as he was, we might find some clue as to who did it.”
The woman nodded sharply. “Aside from the drapes, nothing’s been touched, sir.”
He studied the dead man. His eyes were open wide, terrified, his mouth gaping in the way of death. He was lying on his back, and his hands were up by his head as if they’d been held there while he died. Blood matted his dark hair and soaked the bed, turning the fine linen sheets into a macabre splatter of black and crimson. In the center of his bloodied nightshirt, just over his left breast, a cross had been branded, burning through the fabric and into his flesh. The smell of char and roasted flesh was a thick note amongst the rot of death. But there again was Pierce’s natural scent, and Jack knew it well. It had permeated his skin on a long-ago day when this very bastard had sunk his teeth into Jack’s neck.
“And how did you find the drapes, Mrs. White?” He glanced at the housekeeper. “Shut tight? Slightly open?”
Her long, sharp nose wrinkled. “Shut tight.”
Which did not mean the killer hadn’t come through the window. Jack walked over to them, but found the sashes locked tight. No forced entry of any kind. Which did not mean much when dealing with the supernatural. Down below, black-topped carriages ambled by, and a pair of ladies strolled along the walkway, their blue and yellow parasols up to protect them from the rare London sunlight. Yet a few clusters of gawkers were hovering on the street corners and idling by the low, wrought-iron gate across the way.
Jack let the drape fall and turned, only to notice Chase hovering by the door. Jesus, but the woman was grey. Sweat beaded her brow, and her mouth hung slightly open. As a GIM, she ought to have seen plenty of death, but she acted as if today were her first experience with studying corpses. Something within him softened.
“If you’ll excuse us, Mrs. White,” he said to the housekeeper. Unsurprisingly, the woman fled the room. Once she was gone, he set his attention back on Mary.
“Chase.” He said it quietly but she flinched. Her brown eyes were round and glassy as she looked up, and he fought the urge to move closer. “Why don’t you question the staff?” Hell, he needed to be alone for a few minutes at any rate.
She did not like being told what to do, that was bleeding obvious. Her eyes narrowed, and he suppressed a sigh. “Look, there is nothing wrong with admitting you find a task distasteful. I bloody hate talking to witnesses, as you have pointed out my distinct lack of tact. It is quite obvious you are one breath away from vomiting.”
She stiffened. “I am not.” A shaking breath left her. “Not one breath, anyway,” she finished with a petulant mutter that made him want to smile.
He kept his voice gruff, lest she catch on. “There ought to be some benefit to having a partner. Sharing disagreeable duties tops my list.”
With lips as pinched as Mrs. White’s had been, she studied his face as if looking for some sign of foul play or sarcasm. He let her do it, knowing that he had her. When she let out another quick breath, he relaxed.
“All right,” she said. “I’ll see to the staff.” She hesitated for a moment, her gaze cutting to Mr. Pierce. “He wasn’t a shifter, was he?”
His head jerked. “How did you know?”
Chase’s soft mouth quirked. “He does not smell of shifter. And Pierce was a registered shifter.”
Jack paused. “And what does a shifter smell like?” He believed her, only his curiosity now ran rampant. How would she describe it? Did she like the scent? Did she like his scent? Bloody pathetic idiot, he was.
Her firm little chin rose a notch as she stared him down, clearly seeing this as a challenge. “Well, I only know your…” Her mouth snapped shut, and he almost grinned. Only his scent. She knew it and none other.
Chase’s eyes narrowed as if the look could stop him from reaching that conclusion. When she spoke again, her voice was snappish and resentful. “Like earth and stone.” There was an abrupt pause. And his breath caught. Her eyes grew lighter, glimmering gold as her words slowed. “Warm yet strong. Like granite baking in the hot sun.”
“Very astute, Chase.” His voice was too thick and rough for his liking. He looked away. “Now get to it.”
Thankfully, she fled the room with as much haste as Mrs. White.
Once alone he crouched down and put his head in his hands. “Shit,” he muttered.
Jack glared up at the corpse, its white foot listing at an awkward angle over the bed. Ever since he’d been freed and able, he’d been looking for those who had tormented him in the dank, iron-lined room. He remembered every fiend’s scent, so that he would know them when he killed them. Finding them was the hard part. The Nex hid their own well. And now someone had beaten Jack to this kill.