“You’re just being polite,” Adam said.
“No, I’m not,” she said, and I realized what the look had meant at the door now. She’d seen Adam’s smile and seen him in a new light just like I had, except it might have meant more to her than it had to me. I wasn’t sure, but I was betting she saw him as attractive now. Would it change things between them? Probably not, but then again you never knew with women, or Heaven help us, men either. A small change in perspective can translate to something larger, or it can just sink back into business as usual.
Adam frowned at her. “I know what I look like and I know what Havoc looks like, especially with him shirtless.”
“Havoc is my friend and the fact that he looks good out of his clothes isn’t something that a friend remarks on,” Lila said.
Adam did that frown that made me want to smooth his brow again. “I don’t understand the difference when it’s just words.”
“I know you don’t,” she said, but she wasn’t irritated with him like normal, almost patient especially for Lila. She wasn’t incredibly patient with anyone. She wasn’t cruel, but she wasn’t always kind either.
I turned to open my locker and give them what privacy I could, though Lila wouldn’t need privacy from just me if she was intent on moving forward with something, but I thought Adam might be a little shy with me watching. I shouldn’t have worried about it.
“I wish I could read your face,” Adam said.
“I wish you could, too,” she said.
I looked at the clothes folded in my locker; neither of them really matched the dress slacks I was wearing, but I finally chose the black one because I’d bought it most recently. The other one was a tank top that I’d had forever and cut the sleeves off and it was too revealing even with the jacket over it.
“You aren’t mad at me, are you?” he asked, and I knew he wasn’t asking me.
“No, what made you ask?” Lila said.
“Because I can’t always see when people are irritated with me, so I keep pushing and then they get mad.”
“You’re not being irritating right now, it’s a nice change,” she said.
He missed the humor and said, “I don’t want to irritate you.”
“What do you want?” she asked, and I knew that tone in her voice. I’d heard her question suspects with it when she was the good cop, and I’d heard it when she was flirting—for Lila, they were both a type of negotiation.
“I’m really bad at this part,” Adam said.
“What part?” she asked.
“If I say the truth, you’ll get mad.”
“I promise that whatever you say I won’t get mad; I may not like it, but I won’t get angry.”
“I tend to make women upset,” he said.
“Just say what you want, because you telling me I’ll be upset with you after I’ve promised not to be is getting on my nerves.”
“I told you,” he said.
I kept my back to them as I got dressed, and it wasn’t for my modesty’s sake. The T-shirt didn’t hurt going on over my arm, but the suit jacket forced me to go slower. I turned so that I could see myself in the mirror at the end of the locker area. The black looked better than I’d expected, like one of those designer T-shirts instead of the only clean shirt I had that fit me.
“I’m going to give you two a few minutes alone; just tell me what room I need to go to,” I said.
“Don’t go,” Lila said; so that was that, when a female friend asks you to stay around when she’s talking to another man, you stay.
Adam glanced at me, then back to her. “I’m sorry I’m being irritating, or weird.”
“Do you want a coffee date?” she suggested.
“I’d like a date with you, yes,” he said. His affect never changed, and I couldn’t tell if he was controlling his emotions so she wouldn’t know how much it meant to him, or if it was just the way he processed.
“Let’s take it slow, coffee date first, see if we have anything in common,” she said, but she was giving that wry smile that meant she was sort of laughing at herself.
“I don’t drink coffee; can we make it a tea date?” he asked.
Her smile widened, but she nodded. “Sure, whatever you like to drink. We’ll just do it at a coffee shop that serves other things.”
“I’d like that,” he said.
“Me, too. Let’s talk details after we’ve shown Havoc the evidence. We don’t want to keep Lieutenant Charleston waiting any longer than we already have.”
“Agreed,” he said, and there was none of that bubbling excitement that I would have felt, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t feeling it.
We all filed out of the locker room with Adam back to his base frown. I held the door and caught Lila’s gaze as she went through. She rolled her eyes and gave that smile again. It was enough for me to know that she didn’t know if the coffee/tea date was a good idea, but something about that one smile had made her want to try. My personal life wasn’t in good enough shape for me to throw stones at anyone else, so I just followed the two of them through, making sure my face was pleasantly blank. If the rumor got out that they were maybe dating, it wouldn’t come from me. Though if I had the chance later, I was going to ask Lila what had made Adam go from someone so irritating she hid from him to offering a coffee date. I’d have bet good money that Lila would never have given Adam the time of day; just more proof that I had no idea what any woman would do when it came to romance.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I expected Lila to take us to one of the rooms that were bespelled or warded against supernatural powers, but I was wrong.
“Ravensong and Charleston both wanted you to see the evidence outside a warded room,” she said, as if she’d read my mind.
“You must be referring to Havoc,” Adam said.
“Yes,” she said with a slight upturn of her mouth instead of her usual irritation at his comments. The change in her was almost magical. I didn’t think Adam had done something psychic to her, it was more like some memory or feeling had been triggered in her. If the change in attitude continued to be this drastic, I would have to talk to Lila about it just in case some stray bit of magic from some other case had hit her. We’d had it happen before, once with a love potion and once with something murderous. Of the two, infatuation was much preferred.
It was one of the smaller interrogation rooms without an observation window; those were saved for rooms where we put people and things that we wanted to observe, so whatever was in here, no one was expecting it to do anything worth seeing. There’d only be the table and a couple of chairs in the room.
Charleston was standing beside the table, looking at the door. He was frowning, though not at us, more like he was thinking hard and staring into space. Ravensong and Officer MacGregor the Younger were bending over the table like they were looking at something sitting on it. So whatever Lila had collected from Mark Cookson’s parents’ house was small.
I didn’t sense anything evil in the room, in fact I didn’t sense much of anything that was wrong. There was always a low hum of energy from Ravensong and Charleston. Their magic was just too much a part of them for me not to notice them at that subliminal level. It was mystical white noise like the heating and cooling in a house; you only notice it when it stops.