But for now I needed to hold on to my grave-sight a little longer. At least until I could get a good look at whatever ritual had happened around the rift. It might have been better if I’d walked the whole scene and not drawn attention to my interest in the rift, but if I was going to see that hole, I needed to do it now-ish. I said as much to Falin. His lips thinned to a grim line, but he nodded and led me on a more direct path.
“I think we have enough cadaver dogs on the scene already,” a snide voice said as I drew near the rift.
The skin along my neck prickled. Jenson. Haven’t I dealt with enough for one night? Unlike Nori or even Lusa, Detective Jenson wasn’t someone I could hope I’d never see again once the case was over. He was John’s partner, and I didn’t know if he blamed me for John’s getting shot and that was what was with the attitude for the last few weeks, but it would be better for everyone involved if we could at least be civil toward each other. So I forced a smile I didn’t feel as I turned toward his voice. And then I froze in my tracks.
Jenson stood a couple of yards away, his thumbs in his waistband, his right hand suspiciously close to his gun. But that wasn’t what stopped me; what gave me pause was his face. His jaw was wider than normal, and it jutted forward in an underbite that provided room for the two tusks an underbite that provided room for the two tusks protruding from where his lower cuspids should have been.
The tusks curled over his upper lip, the skin around them dark and cal oused from years of contact.
“What are you staring at, Craft?” he asked, glaring at me.
I shook my head, blinking. His image didn’t change. The rest of his face was normal and exactly the same as always. It was just his jaw and mouth that were different. His soul glimmered a normal bright yel ow, which I’d come to associate with humans.
“Trol blood?” It was a testament to how tired I was that I asked the question out loud. I tried to bite the words back as soon as they escaped my mouth, but of course, by then it was too late.
Jenson’s expression darkened as the color built in his face. “Oh, so you can figure that out, can you?” He stalked forward. “Look at you. Homicide’s darling is a fucking faerie in hiding. Who would have guessed?”
As Jenson crowded my space, Falin moved to block his path, but I touched his arm, stopping him. This was something Jenson and I had to work out for ourselves. In the years I’d been working with the cops, I’d learned that for some of them, there were only two ways for me to earn any respect: be helpful in putting the bad guys away and be able to hold my own. Jenson had always been one of the former—or so I thought—but if he was swinging toward the latter, Falin running interference for me would only make things worse.
So I stood up straighter, exaggerating the inch or two of height I had on Jenson and tried to minimize my trembling.
Jenson had decided to get in my face, and though I wasn’t about to get in a catfight at a crime scene, I would meet his chal enge.
“That’s a rather ironic insult, al things considered,” I said, my voice low since it didn’t have to carry far at this distance. I let my gaze flicker to one tusk so he knew exactly what I was talking about.
exactly what I was talking about.
The blotchy color fil ing his cheeks flushed a deeper crimson. “You think that’s funny?”
Funny? “I’m not fol owing. Do you have a problem with me?” My newfound heritage? My job? My abilities? What exactly was he lashing out at? Yeah, I’d figured out he was feykin, but it wasn’t like I was going to out him.
“Yeah, I have a problem with you.”
I stared at him, waiting. “Okay. What’s the problem?”
Jenson sneered, his upper lip rol ing back from his tusks.
Then he brushed past me, knocking me with his shoulder hard enough to send me stumbling. I kept my feet under me, but only just barely. What the hell was that about?
I glanced at Falin, who looked just as perplexed as he watched Jenson’s retreating back. Jenson’s issues with my, or maybe his, heritage—or whatever his issue was—
wasn’t a problem I needed to waste energy on tonight.
Time was slipping away from me, the night speedily rushing toward morning. I closed my eyes for a moment, no more than a second, and the world felt like it swayed around me.
Damn. I needed to wrap this up, get home, and get some sleep before I col apsed where I stood—which was starting to feel like a real possibility.
I turned my attention to the tear in reality.
I wasn’t sure what the area looked like if viewed just on the mortal plane, but with my psyche crossing several planes of existence, the scene was a mess. Residual magic hung in the air and pooled on the ground in murky patches. The smel of burned grass stung my nose, and the evidence of a struggle showed both in the way the Aetheric moved around patches of magic it didn’t like and on the ground. Numbered plastic markers littered the area, alerting the techs to evidence that needed to be processed.