Hotter After Midnight (Midnight 1)

She answered by rote. “I always have a sit-down meeting with anyone who is interested in my services. Before I do any evaluations, before I agree to work as counselor, I get the person to come in. We sit down, talk, and—”

“And you use your psychic gift to figure out if the would-be client is an ordinary human or one of the Other. ”

Emily nodded. She also partially lowered her shields at the meeter to get an idea of the person’s power. If she felt the taint of darkness or power that was too uncontrolled, she gave a nice, polite speech about how she wasn’t taking any new clients right then.

“Vanessa told Brooks that Michelle Tome never arrived for her appointment.”

And he thought Michelle and Gillian were one and the same. “Why would she use an alias? I mean, I wouldn’t know her either way.”

“I don’t know. There are quite a few things I don’t know about Ms. Nemont.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to find her?” Alive.

“I’m gonna do my best.” Not exactly the definitive answer she’d been hoping for.

She thought back to last Friday afternoon. She’d been mildly annoyed when Vanessa announced the appointment was a no-show.

She felt a rush of shame now. She’d been annoyed, while Gillian had—what? Been in danger? Been running for her life?

Been killed?

Emily swallowed. And why had Gillian wanted to see her?

She might never know.

“Doc, Emily, I had to ask you about her.” Colin took a step toward her, his hands lifted.

Oh, now he wants to play nice. Now that he thinks I’m not in on a murder.

But the damn annoying thing was that she understood. He was a cop, working the most high-profile case in the city. He’d found her name in Gillian Nemont’s appointment book. If he hadn’t followed up on the link, well, she would have wondered about his detective skills.

And his ethics.

But he had followed up. He’d pissed her off, offended her, ruined her night, but he’d done his job.

“Next time, Gyth, don’t come in with guns blazing.” She ignored his raised hands and turned her back on him.

He exhaled heavily. “I screwed things up, didn’t I?”

Hmmm. Commander Obvious had struck again. But maybe there’d be hope for him yet. Emily spun back around, a knife gripped in her fingers. “I don’t like your methods, Gyth, but I understand why you had to question me.” And why Brooks had to question Vanessa. Although she bet her assistant hadn’t appreciated the interruption. Wednesday nights were her coven nights. And tonight, well, tonight the coven had a skyclad ritual on the agenda.

She had a pretty good idea what Brooks had said that elicited earlier appreciative male laughter.

“Ah, you do?” Colin barely glanced at the gleaming knife.

“Umm, next time”—she really, really hoped there wasn’t a next time—“try playing good cop with me. It’ll work much better.”

Using the knife, she began cutting the lasagna. Colin stood there, a faint tension emanating from him. He didn’t say anything, just watched her. She could feel his intense stare on her.

After a few minutes she broke, glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Well, we have to eat, don’t we?” She muttered. Waving toward the table, she ordered, “Sit down. There’s no sense in wasting good food. Besides, we haven’t gotten to finish our talk about the Other.” She could play the professional card too.

They did need to finish the lesson.

And she wanted him to stay.

It looked like they both had some trust issues, but, hey, no one was perfect.

Not the Monster Doctor and not a shifter.

But perfect…perfect could be boring, she realized. And after living too much of her life on a regimented, by-the-minute schedule, she was ready for a bit of imperfection.

The shifter had better not screw up again. One free pass was all he was going to get from her.

So he’d royally f**ked up. At least the doc had let him stay for dinner.

Dinner. The woman had actually cooked for him. Put out candles. Nice plates.

He couldn’t remember anyone doing that for him before.

Sure, he’d had more than his share of women. But they’d usually gone out to restaurants. And the relationships hadn’t lasted past a few sexual encounters and a couple of fancy meals.

He’d never had this cozy, relaxed kind of date before. And, yeah, despite the fact that he’d spent the first half hour of his time there grilling her, he still considered it a date.

Number two for them.

He wondered if the doc would let him get to second base.

A guy could hope.

“So, that’s the main difference between wizards and warlocks. The warlocks have just as much power, but they use the darker magic, and if you ever make the mistake of calling a wizard by the term warlock, well”—Emily paused, downed a rather large swallow of her wine—“then you’re in trouble, because you’ve just seriously insulted the guy.”

“Right. I’ll try to keep that in mind.” Throughout their dinner, Emily had kept up a steady stream of conversation about the Other.

He now knew that charmers could talk with only one type of animal. Some charmers were born linked to snakes, some to birds, and so on.

There were two types of vampires, the born or the Blood as they were called, and the made or the Taken. To make a vampire, you didn’t need the three blood exchanges like the books said. No, according to Emily, one was all it took. The victim had to be drained nearly dry by the vampire, then the would-be vamp had to drink from the sire— that was what Emily had called the guy, a sire—and boom, you had yourself a brand, spanking new vampire.

He’d also grilled her about shifters. She’d been right when she mentioned earlier that he could smell others of his kind. He could.

There was a wild, rich scent that clung to others like him. He’d first caught that scent when he’d been a nineteen-year-old rookie.

He’d stumbled onto a bear shifter and been so surprised he’d nearly dropped his gun.

The bear had broken into a vacation home, ransacked the place. When he’d arrived, the shifter had changed in front of him, a quick, easy transformation from beast to man.

He’d apologized for the wreckage, saying, “Sorry, mate, the beast took over.” He’d winked. “You know how it can get.”

“So…” Emily said, her soft drawl pulling him from the past. “Anything else you want to know?”