Brooks turns to Church. “I don’t. Do you have any questions for him?”
“I’m not sure anyone’ll listen if I do.”
“Great!” Brooks says. “Go introduce your new partner to the team.”
Church smiles, and I realize this is just the beginning of him making my life difficult. “There is nothing I’d rather do. Come, human.”
I raise an eyebrow at Brooks who gives me a smile and a wave. He doesn’t seem to care that my new partner is probably going to eat me and is also calling me after him like I’m a dog.
Church walks into the open area and over to a corner where the detectives I’ve seen him interacting with are working. There are two open cubicles where six desks are, three on each side. It’s probably to promote working as a unit, but I can’t imagine Grumpy Fangypants willingly working with anyone.
Church dramatically clears his throat. “Can I have your attention for the briefest of moments for a very inferior item of business.”
Two men and one woman turn around from where they’re working all on the same side. Which means I’ll get to sit next to my new favorite partner.
“This is Finn Hayes. Don’t bother remembering his name. Someone will probably eat him by tomorrow.”
“Are you offering?” I ask. “Because if you are, I might not mind being eaten.”
He glares at me as the female and the blond-haired male laugh.
I shrug. “You’re the one making jokes about wanting to eat me. I was just agreeing to being interested. A little nibble never hurt anyone.”
Church grumbles something and I try to question what’s wrong with my brain when I find it strangely attractive. Like… really? A vampire talking about me dying and then grumbling when I reply, is attractive?
Clearly, my lack of partners has turned my brain into mush.
“This is Homicide Detective Finn Hayes—”
“A human,” the vampire who didn’t laugh at my amazing joke says. He has an accent that’s probably Russian, if I had to guess. “Why is there a human in here?”
“He is momentarily taking Welks’s place until we find a replacement,” Church says.
“A… human?” the vampire repeats. “They think since the last vampire they hired was an idiot, a human would be a better idea?”
“I promise not to bite anyone unless they want to be bitten,” I assure them.
“This is bullshit,” he says as he gets up and heads toward Brooks’s office.
“The guy who already doesn’t like you is Alexei Karsynov—we call him Karsyn—this is Bentley DeGray, and Lena Briar,” he says as he motions to the blond-haired man and the pretty woman with dark hair pulled back into a tight bun.
I smile at them and hold my gloved hand out to DeGray first. “It’s nice to meet you,” I say, and the man returns the greeting while giving me a solid shake. Then I move to the woman who is watching me with a soft smile. “And it’s nice to meet you too.”
“This is going to be interesting,” Briar says, sounding amused.
“Zanuda,” Karsyn snips as he comes back and slides into his seat. I’m not quite sure what that means, but it looks like I might even get to learn some neat Russian terms!
That’s fine, I’m used to annoying vampires. Even cute ones who have the whole pouting angry look figured out.
Church turns to me. “We just got an alert on the vic’s roommate’s credit card. It looks like he made a purchase at a shopping center off Park Avenue. Come on, kid, we’re headed out.”
I follow after him, kind of surprised he didn’t tell me to just take a seat and twiddle my thumbs until five o’clock comes around. “You know I’m not a kid, right?”
“You’re a kid to me,” he says as he keeps walking.
“Alright, Grandpa. I’m coming.”
His eyes narrow as he turns to me. “Excuse me?”
I give him a look of innocence. “You’re a grandpa to me.”
He ignores me throwing his words back at him and hurries out to his car. I slide on my lightly tinted sunglasses and head after him. Once I get into the passenger seat, I buckle my seat belt, ready for whatever Marcus throws my way.
He glances up from his phone and starts the car. “Brooks just messaged me. When you get back, he needs you down at the main office to get everything settled. Since you’re still homicide at this moment, you can help me out, but they’ll get everything arranged for you to be a temporary officer.”
There sure is a lot of emphasis on that “temporary” going around. “Got it.”
“Here’s who we’re looking for,” he says as he passes a phone over to me so I can look at a picture of the man. “Did Brooks run through the case with you?”
“Nope. I just know what I do from yesterday.”
“Thirty-four-year-old woman, a fairly young vampire, killed in her own home.”
“That explains why she bled out so easily. Didn’t look like much of a struggle. Are you thinking the roommate?” I ask.
“We haven’t been able to contact Ronald Travis, the roommate, so he’s at the top of our suspect list. But he is a human, so the likelihood of him attacking her without her struggling is unlikely.”
I think about it for a moment. “It’s strange for her to have a human roommate when she was so young.”
“People make stupid choices.”
I’m glad he’s talking to me like a fellow detective. It makes me realize that all of his previous gruffness and bravado might have just been to discourage me. I want to prove to him that I’m useful and not a kid or weak just because I’m human.
“What’s with the gloves?” he asks.
I look down at my thin black gloves that hide another excuse for him to believe I’m weak. “I just don’t want to get your cooties.”
“And the glasses?”
“I want to look cool, just like you.”
He ignores me.
Perfect!
He pulls into the shopping center and parks behind a large vehicle before getting out. He’s wearing a button-up and tie, much like mine, so we both look inconspicuous. We get out and head toward the convenience store tucked in the shopping center. Since Travis already used his card, it means he was done and paying, so it’s unlikely he’s still around. But there is a possibility he stopped in another store or he’s on foot.
“You head to the right, I’ll do a sweep in the store and go to the left,” Church decides.
“Aren’t we supposed to stick together? I don’t want to get reprimanded on day one.”
He raises an eyebrow, hand on the convenience store door. “We don’t have the same regulations as other departments.”
“Okay… but I don’t have any way to contact you if either of us finds him.”
He doesn’t seem concerned. “We’re wasting time,” he says as he slips into the store, leaving me on the sidewalk alone.
Clearly, just because he was sharing information with me in the car does not mean he’s willing to work with me. I turn away from the store and start down the covered path. I glance in stores, thankful they have glass fronts that allow me to see inside. As I near the edge of the shopping center, I smell cigarette smoke and glance around the corner. That’s when I see two men, one of them matching the description of Mr. Ronald Travis.