Standing, I stretched, back popping one vertebrae after the other. “Giselle, are you hungry?”
Alex flipped himself over backwards, scrabbling across the hardwood floor, the silver tips of his fur catching the light. He slid to a stop at my feet and rolled huge amber eyes up to mine.
“Hungry, yes!”
Giselle chuckled to herself. “Socks, have you got your blue socks yet? You’ll need them soon.”
Helping her to her feet, I guided her into the kitchen. “No blue socks yet. But when I find them, I’ll let you know.”
“That’s good. Blue socks. You need them for sure.”
I settled her into a chair and heated up some leftovers. Nothing fancy, but at least it was home cooked. Alex dug in, alternating between using his claws and the fork, finally giving up and just using his mouth.
My mentor didn’t eat; just sat there and stared. What was I going to do with her when I got my next salvage? There was no way I could take her with me when hunting for a kid. Even now, I had to lock her bedroom door at night; she’d wandered off three times in the last month. With the weather sitting well below freezing, it was a bad time to develop a thing for midnight walks in her nightshirt.
“Giselle, you need to eat.” I held up fork with some food on it and pressed it against her mouth. She turned her head away like a naughty child. But I couldn’t be angry; it wasn’t her fault. The fault lay with the abilities she had to see what no one else could. The more she’d used her abilities, the more she was drained of her sanity; apparently it didn’t happen to all of the supernaturals like her. But a lot of them, for sure, had the same trade off. Not a very good exchange rate. Being a Tracker and an Immune, I didn’t have drawbacks like that. Thank the gods.
I tried again to get her to eat, holding the fork up. She pushed it away. “Someone comes.”
The sharp rap of knuckles on the front door sent a shiver of adrenaline through me. There were very few people I could call friends, and fewer still who’d show up unannounced.
My head and heart tripped over one another. O’Shea, it had to be O’Shea. Running full tilt to the door, I flung it open, breath catching in my throat.
Not O’Shea. But it was an FBI agent.
Agent Valley stood on my front porch looking up at me. Brown eyes flecked with green were definitely his best feature. He sported an overbite and an offset nose that looked as though it had been broken more than once. Jowly and a good four inches shorter than my 5’6, he wouldn’t seem the type to be in charge. Yet, here he was, department head for the Arcane Arts division of the FBI. His perfectly pressed black suit and the file folder under his arm made him look like a travelling salesman.
Still, he was O’Shea’s boss and my wannabe boss.
I didn’t say anything, just stared down at him.
Finally, he cleared his throat. “May I come in? I have some information you might be interested in.”
“About what?” I held the door, ready to slam it. Agent Valley wasn’t a bad guy, just not exactly as good as I’d have liked. He’d tried to guilt me into coming to work for his division, and that was a real piss-off in my books.
“Some cases we are looking at. And I would like to speak to you about O’Shea.”
Ah, here we go. He didn’t know where O’Shea was, either. I could still Track him, but had only done so once. That one time was enough for me. He’d been close—in fact, I suspected he had something to do with the local werewolf pack’s sudden loss of interest in Alex—but O’Shea was not a happy boy, his mental state fluxuating from rage to sorrow to blood lust, and then back through them all again. If I were to make a guess, I’d say that O’Shea could shift back and forth; his emotions were far too complex for him to have ended up like Alex. At least that was good. But I respected his choice. O’Shea wanted to figure this new part of his life out on his own. I wouldn’t begrudge him that, though I missed him fiercely.
I waited another ten seconds before slowly opening the door and allowing the agent to step in. I didn’t share my personal space well at the best of times—and this night certainly wasn’t that.
Agent Valley made his way further into the room, selecting the same chair he’d sat in last time he’d shown up unannounced, his feet not quite touching the floor.
“Are you going to sit down, so we can speak?” He opened the folder and drew out sheets of paper clipped together.
I folded my arms over my chest, tucking my bandaged hands away from sight. “No, I’ll stand.”
“So be it. But I will warn you, this is going to be a long conversation.”#p#分页标题#e#