“Stop it, Thornton. We don’t know each other that well.”
He frowned up at me. “I’m not trying to touch your abs, I’m trying to get a sense of the demon marks. Did anyone get pictures of your wounds or take measurements?”
“Pictures, yes, but no measurements,” I said.
“That was careless,” he said.
“This isn’t like a true physical beast,” I said. “The demon’s hands can change shape. Measurements don’t help with beings like this.”
“They do with some demons, Havelock; you have enough background in the Infernal to know that some of the demonic have set shapes.”
“This one didn’t,” I said.
“Let me take measurements now.”
“I’d have to remove the bandages for that.”
He looked up at me with a so-what? look on his face. “Thornton, you either need to get out of the lab more often, or never leave the lab.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, frowning and ready to take offense.
“It means I am not ripping off a clean medical dressing in a locker room just so you can take measurements that won’t matter. The demon changed shape several times while we were fighting it; anything that mutable won’t be caught from physical measurements.”
Adam leaned closer to my bandages as if he could see through them. I tried to remember what his psychic talent was, but it was something to do with lab work, so why was he bent over like he could see through the bandages?
I finally asked, “What are you looking at, Adam?”
“Your wounds, they’re partially healed.”
“You can see through the bandages?” I asked.
He nodded and leaned in even closer like his nose was going to bump into me soon. “I can see that which is hidden,” he said, as if that explained what he was doing. I knew it was psychic and not magic because I felt nothing. Psychic gifts can be used unseen even around other gifted people, but magic is harder to hide; no one knows why it works that way, it just does.
“Help me get the cuffs unbuttoned and you can have the shirt,” I said, hoping to distract him from getting his face any closer to my abdomen.
Adam looked up at me, his gray eyes back to their usual color. He wasn’t angry anymore; he was interested. “I’ve seen bodies cut up by demons; you should be in the hospital, Havoc, not almost healed.”
“There was an angel, it helped heal me,” I said, and just reached across my own body to start trying to undo the cuff on my injured arm, because Adam didn’t seem to want to help. My arm coming across my stomach did move him a little back from me. He even stood up.
“I didn’t hear about an angel manifesting at the hospital.”
“It wasn’t exactly a manifestation,” I said. I was not sharing what happened with him, for the same reason I didn’t want to share Kate’s secret with him; he talked when he shouldn’t have about things sometimes. What had happened at the hospital would get around; there’d been too many witnesses for it not to become gossip, but none of it would come from me. They could make up what they wanted, but I wasn’t helping the rumors.
“Is that why the wounds are almost closed without scabbing, as if the skin is just closing back up?” he asked.
It was harder to undo the cuff buttons with the shirt inside out, but I finally got them, but realized the bandages still impeded me getting the sleeve off, which meant I needed the other sleeve off first. It’s funny that sometimes smaller injuries can surprise you with how inconvenient they can be.
“Yes, if you’re healed by Celestial energy it doesn’t scar,” I said. I started to reach my hands toward each other like normal, but the arm protested. If there was another angel anytime soon, I’d need to remember to ask for extra healing for the arm. I moved the uninjured arm across my body again. Moving my hand on the injured side tugged at the scratches so the pain was sharper. I wasn’t sure what fumbling at the buttons moved in my arm that made it hurt so much, but again small movements matter if you’re hurt.
“Here, I’ll help you,” he said, and just reached out to do the same thing I’d asked him to do earlier. It was like he hadn’t heard me ask, too lost in peering at my wound through the medical dressing. How had he done that?
“How did you see through the bandages?” I asked, while he focused just as completely on the buttons on my shirt as he had on everything else. When he didn’t answer right away, I let him finish the task before I repeated my question.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t think about you being injured and the difficulty of taking the shirt off.” He took the shoulder of my shirt down so I could more easily slide my arm out of the sleeve.
“Thanks, okay, I appreciate the help now.”
He actually stepped behind me, helping me pull my injured arm out of the other sleeve. He held it up in gloved hands and started letting it fold down into the paper bag. I could have shoved it in the bag, but I couldn’t have made it look neat with just one hand like that.
He sealed the bag, then got a marker out of his pocket and wrote on the bag, so it would go with all the rest of the evidence from the hospital. “Please initial here, Detective,” he said, holding it out to me and putting his palm underneath the plastic so I had a surface to write on. The shirt was lower than the plastic top, so we weren’t pressing on the evidence. It was neatly done.
“How did you see my wound?” I asked again.
“I have a very specialized type of remote viewing, except instead of being able to see something hundreds of miles away I see through things that are directly around me even if they’re hidden from my physical sight.”
“Like my wounds.”
“Yes,” he said.
“Or a clue that’s hidden under a stain,” I said, making a logic leap.
He smiled at me as happy as I’d ever seen him. “Exactly.”
“No wonder the ME values you, you’re perfect for the job.”
He grinned and it transformed his face so that he was . . . pretty. I’d have never said that to his face, but he was just so delicate that handsome seemed the wrong word.
“Everyone covered in there? Lieutenant wanted to check what was taking so long,” Lila said. She did hesitate, to give us time to yell stop. Ravensong would have come on in, assuming she’d warned us enough. It was a co-ed locker room, but we all tried to warn anyone who was shy.
Both Adam and I looked toward the door as she opened it; he still had that great smile on his face. Lila stopped and looked at us as the door swung shut behind her. There was an expression on her face I couldn’t quite read.
Adam said, “Are you unhappy with us?”
She shook her head, ponytail bouncing. “No, why do you ask?”
“I’m not always great with reading people’s faces, so sometimes I just ask,” he said.
“I couldn’t decipher her expression either,” I said, “and I am good at reading people.”
Adam looked over his shoulder at me. “Are you making fun of me?”
“No, I’m being honest.”
“The expression is me finding two handsome men in the locker room, but I’m at work so I can’t be unprofessional,” Lila said.