Living With the Dead (Otherworld 9)

"Magic power?" He remembered interviewing Adams, remembered being afraid she'd somehow pick up on his secret.

"Are you going to parrot everything I say? I bet that's what they teach you at double-agent school, huh? In case of exposure, whatever your interrogator says, repeat it back?"

"Double-agent - " He stopped himself. "I don't know what - "

" - I'm talking about. Lesson two: deny everything. Now you'll tell me that Hope's wrong, you don't have supernatural powers."

He felt his jaws part. He wouldn't go so far as to say it dropped, but it definitely opened.

"Better yet, gape at me like I've lost my mind."

He shut his mouth.

"Over the last few days," she continued, "I have had very good cause to question my sanity, but if I know one thing right now, it's that I'm not crazy and nothing you can say is going to convince me otherwise. Now, are you going to tell me you don't have supernatural powers?"

He should deny it. He'd been raised to do that until he was married, and then only to tell his wife, warning her the same way he would if his genes carried a disorder.

But Robyn Peltier would see his lie. She'd condemn him for it worse than she'd ever condemn him for the truth. Considering she was a fugitive currently holding a gun on him, her opinion shouldn't matter. But it did. And he knew if he was going to solve this case, and find not only justice but truth, his answer - and her opinion - would be critical.

"No," he said.

"So you are going to deny it."

"I mean no, I'm not going to deny it."

She took a second to recover, loosening and regripping the gun.

"Can you put that down?" he asked.

"Right now, this gun is the only thing guaranteeing me the truth."

"No." He met her gaze. "It isn't."

She faltered again, her fingers peeling off and finding new holds. Then, slowly, she lowered it to her side.

"You have them, don't you?" she said.

"Who?"

"Hope and Karl."

"I don't have any - "

"Your employer does, then."

"My employer - " Finn exhaled, air whistling through his teeth. "Okay, let's back up. Who do you think I work for?"

"The man in the photograph. The one Portia sent to me, that started this whole thing."

"You mean Irving Nast?" He took out his badge. "This didn't come from a cereal box, Robyn. You can call in the number right now and check. I'm a real detective."

"Of course you are. That's the beauty of it. They get you on the LAPD and anytime a crime involves you people - "

"You people?"

She flushed, as if caught making a racial slur. "Your... your sort. People with... supernatural powers. Werewolves, demons, clairvoyants, whoever works for the Nasts. If they get into trouble - or cause it - you swoop in and clean up, keep your world a secret."

There was, Finn reflected, a bizarre logic to that... once you got past the part about werewolves and demons employed by a nefarious organization posing as a Fortune 500 corporation, which, he admitted, was rather a large roadblock.