I shifted to human shape and spat out a mouthful of earth. “Well, crap.”
Henry laughed. He was lucky that I wasn’t up there with him, because I would have damn well pushed him off the branch.
“It’s not funny, Henry.”
“No, it’s hysterical. Most fledglings at least learn to land with some dignity by this time. I fear you and Jack are two peas in a pod.”
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the blue sky that seemed as impossible to reach as ever. “If all this makes me go bald like him, I will not be happy.”
“You flew, Riley,” he said, amusement still evident in his voice. “It might not have been for long, but you flew. Soon you’ll get a grip on the mechanics of it all.”
“Even with my coordination? Or lack thereof?”
“Even with.”
I grunted and hoped like hell he was right. When I glanced at my watch, I saw it was nearly three. I’d been at this whole falling thing for nearly six hours, and I’d just about had enough.
Of course, a crash course in flying was the least of my problems. Jack wasn’t happy that I’d waited so long before telling him about the change, and lately he’d been taking every opportunity to chew me out. According to him, a broken heart was no reason for stupidity. I was beginning to think he’d never been in love. Or that it had happened so long ago that he’d forgotten the pain of it.
“I think I’ll call it quits for the day, Henry. My bones are feeling a little battered.”
“Go on up and help yourself to a shower, then. I think I’ll go for a fly myself, stretch some of the kinks out of my wings.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“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?”
“Cole and his team are there already. Kade will meet you out the front of the Martin and Pleasance building in half an hour.”
I glanced at my watch. It was nearing three-thirty, which meant the daily traffic snarl had already begun. “It’ll take me longer than that to get there.”
“Not if you speed.”
Amusement ran through me. I had a somewhat checkered driving history—the last car I’d actually owned I’d driven into a tree, and to this day I have no recollection of the event. Though given I ended up in a madman’s breeding center immediately after it, I very much suspected that particular accident wasn’t my fault. But I’d had several mishaps in Directorate cars since that were, hence my surprise at Jack’s order. Hell, it was only last week he was lecturing me about it, saying that any more accidents might send his budget into the red.
“If you’re ordering me to travel fast in a Directorate vehicle, this must be urgent.”
“Just don’t wreck the car any more than you already have.” He hesitated, then added, “Or yourself.”
“Gee, thanks for caring, boss.”
“Riley, just shut up and get there,” he said, and hung up.
I shut up and got.
It took me a good forty minutes to get into the city, then another ten to battle my way through all the traffic to the Paris end of Collins Street. I might have had permission to go super fast, but this particular Directorate car didn’t come equipped with lights or sirens. Which was a damn shame—I would have loved roaring through the city streets scattering pedestrians and cars alike. Although with my driving record, that probably wouldn’t have been such a good idea.
Kade was already waiting in front of the building, his jean-clad butt resting against the trunk of the car, his muscular arms crossed, and his long legs stretched out before him.
Just the sight of him sent pleasure shooting through me. I might be reluctant to get emotionally involved with anyone right now, but I was still a wolf, and still capable of admiring a good-looking man. Kade was that, and a whole lot more. He was a horse-shifter, and his coloring was that of a bay—a rich, mahogany bay that came complete with jet-black hair and wicked, velvet-brown eyes. And he was built like a thorough-bred, with broad shoulders, slim hips, and those wonderfully long legs. Legs that could hold a girl just in the right place as she drove him deeper and harder inside.
I blew out a breath, lifting the hair off my forehead, and tried to ignore the excited bouncing of my hormones. Even if I was back on the sexual merry-go-round, Kade would still have been out-of-bounds. Jack had made it perfectly clear the day Kade had finally finished training that he didn’t want workmates becoming bedmates.
Which didn’t stop Kade flirting one bit, but neither he nor I had pushed it any further. Jack was mad enough at me as it was.
I tugged my keys out of the ignition and climbed out. He made a point of looking at his watch, then said, “That was the longest half-hour on record.”