The Darkest Kiss (Riley Jenson Guardian 6)

"You will, my girl, you will."

He shifted shape and stepped off the branch, swooping low past my head before soaring up into the blue. I watched his brown and gold form until it disappeared, and couldn't help the touch of jealousy. I wanted to fly like that, I really did, but I was beginning to doubt it would ever happen.

With a sigh, I dragged my battered body to its feet and walked over to the tree to retrieve my clothes. The magic that allowed us to shift shape didn't always take the best care of the clothes we were wearing, so I tended to shed my outer layer for these lessons and just wear strong cotton undies and a T-shirt. Of course, that meant more scrapes and bruises than I would have gotten if I'd worn jeans and thicker tops. But, like most weres and shifters, I healed extraordinarily fast. Jeans and tops weren't as easy to fix or replace. Not when I had a brother who kept blowing the family budget.

I grabbed the bundle of clothes and headed back to Henry's tree house. Not that it was actually a tree house - just an old wooden house built on stilts, so that the living areas were high in the canopy of the surrounding trees. The light that filtered in through the windows had a pale, green-gold look, and the air was always rich with the smell of eucalyptus and the songs of birds. I loved it, despite my fear of heights. It had to be heaven for a bird-shifter.

I rattled up the stairs and made my way to the bathroom, taking a quick hot shower before getting dressed. Brushing my hair took a little longer than usual. It had grown amazingly fast in the last few months, and now streamed in thick red layers to well past my shoulders. The only trouble was it tended to get horribly knotted, especially when falling out of trees onto leaf-littered ground.

Once it was tangle-free, I swept it into a ponytail to keep it that way, then collected my purse and car keys and headed out. But I'd barely made it back to my car when my cell phone rang.

I knew, without a doubt, that it would be Jack. And it wasn't my strengthening skill of clairvoyance that told me that.

It was experience.

Jack always tended to ring when I least wanted or needed to work.

I dug through the mess of my purse until I found my vid-phone. "You gave me a week to learn to fly," I said, by way of greeting. "It's only been three days."

"Yeah, well, tell it to the bad guys." Jack's voice was etched with a tiredness that matched the dark bags under his eyes. "The bastards seem to be going out of their way to be pains in the asses lately. Just like some guardians I know."

I'd already apologized a hundred times for not telling him about the bird thing, so if he thought he was going to get another one, he was out of luck. Falling to the ground a gazillion times had knocked any sense of regret out of me. Besides, as much as I liked Jack - both as a boss and as a vampire - he could give the rest of us lessons when it came to being a pain in the ass. "So what have you got for me this time?"

"A dead businessman in Collins Street. The Paris end."

I raised my eyebrows. The so-called Paris end of Collins Street was filled with beautiful old buildings and mega-rich companies and businessmen. They had to be, just to be able to afford the rent there. It certainly wasn't the sort of place you'd expect us to be called into. Though I suppose when death came calling, it really had no respect for wealth or location.

"So are we talking a street death, or inside a building?"

"Inside. He was found in his office by his secretary. No signs of a break-in, and no obvious signs of foul play."

I frowned. "So why were we called? It sounds more like one for the regular cops than us."

"It's ours because the victim was Gerard James."

Who was obviously someone I should know, but didn't. "So?"

"So Gerard James was the head of the Nonhuman Rights League - the party intending to run several nonhuman candidates in the next state and federal elections."

"And his death is a political hot potato, so the cops have hand-balled it to us?"

"Precisely."

Meaning the pressure would be coming down from on high to solve this case quickly. Great. "I gather he's not human himself, then?"

"Nope. He is - was - a hawk-shifter."

"Does he have family in Melbourne?"

"Elderly parents living in Coburg. Gerard's a self-made man, and there were rumors of a contract being taken out on him several months ago."

"Well, there are probably plenty of humans out there who'd go to great lengths to stop nonhumans getting into government."

"The rumor was investigated and appeared unfounded."

So why was he now dead in his office? "Have you called in a cleanup crew?"