As for Nova, first and foremost, she was a person of interest in his quest to learn more about the dead man.
If he found her to be a person of interest in any other sense, he wasn’t about to let that stand in the way of his duty.
The narrow, dark side alley where Mathias stood now shadowed him from view, but also gave him a clear visual path to Ozzy’s shop on the other side of the main street. He’d been watching the place all this time, waiting for the opportunity to find Nova alone.
The client she’d been working on when Mathias was in the shop had exited twenty minutes earlier. The last appointment of the night would have arrived five minutes ago, except the burly dock worker had experienced a sudden change of heart mere steps away from the door and fled without bothering to cancel.
Even though humans had more or less gotten used to the idea that they shared the planet with vampires, it was still amazing what the sight of sharp fangs and glowing amber eyes could do to even the most hardass members of their population.
Mathias smirked as he pushed away from the brick wall he’d been leaning against and stepped out onto the main street.
He should call his friend in JUSTIS to clue him in on what he’d encountered earlier that night.
At the very least, he should have alerted his fellow warriors to the situation.
Instead, he approached the tattoo shop with silent purpose, prepared to do whatever it took to make Nova talk to him, confide in him about what really happened between her and the man later found stabbed and floating in the river.
Mathias needed to earn her trust if he could.
Or pull the truth out of her some other way, if her trust proved elusive.
He walked in, glad to find her alone in the shop. She had her back to him as she replenished a handful of bottles and bandages at her station. No sign of Ozzy. His station was neatly closed up, his stool pushed under his work table.
“Be right with you,” Nova called over her colorful shoulder.
“Take your time. I’ll wait.”
She startled at the sound of his voice, but in the short moment it took for her to whirl around, she hit him with a forbidding frown. “What do you want now?”
A dozen answers sprang into his mind uninvited, none of which he was willing to speak. “I had a few more questions for you about the altercation that happened in here last night.”
Her frown deepened. “I didn’t say anything about an altercation.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. I didn’t.” Her English accent was cool with challenge, even if her gaze was cautious as he strode through the studio, over to her station. Mathias hadn’t noticed what color her light eyes were earlier; now he stared into baby blue irises ringed with indigo. She folded her arms over her breasts. “If that’s all you came to ask me, then I’m sorry you went to the trouble to come back.”
He met her flat look with an easy smile. “No trouble at all.” He took a seat on the client’s chair in front of her.
“You can’t sit there. You can’t stay.”
“Why not?”
Her chin hiked up a notch. “Because I’m working here. Because this is Ozzy’s shop, not the Order’s interrogation room.”
“We don’t have an interrogation room, actually. It’s rare we have to resort to that. Folks tend to confess long before we feel the need to haul them in for a formal interrogation.”
He was joking--pretty much. But she didn’t so much as smile. No, she was taking this all very seriously.
Deathly serious.
Mathias glanced around the empty shop. “Anyway, I don’t see Ozzy now. It appears it’s just you and me, Nova.”
“He’s here,” she said. “He’s upstairs in his apartment. And in case you didn’t hear him the first time, we don’t appreciate anyone coming in here asking questions about our work or our clients.”
“I heard him. I just wonder if Ozzy’s got something to hide.”
“He doesn’t,” she replied tightly.