Chapter 2: Chapter Two

Tuesday afternoon, I sat inside Café Eleonora, an eclectic nowhere next to SHAP headquarters. Lots of protein-packed salads and veggie-based shakes on the menu; although they also had a loaded pastry case I was having a hard time not licking. That would be unsanitary.

Despite the lunch rush, no one bothered to ask if the seat across from me was occupied. If I was in the café during business hours, it was for a meeting, a sentiment that didn’t help my social life. It’s what made me a great agent and a terrible friend.

When my dad’s assistant, Sienna, walked in, I set down my mug of black coffee and sat up straight. She smiled, her blood red lipstick almost as intimidating as her golden werewolf eyes. Despite being at least ninety years old, she could easily pass for forty. “I’ll bite him for you, if you want,” she offered.

I lifted an eyebrow as she sat down across from me. “You’d risk your job because he didn’t promote me?”

She smiled, exposing her perfectly white, and presumably very sharp, teeth. “It’d be worth it to taste that man.”

I shook my head once. “Nope! Do not want to hear this.”

She laughed. “Haven’t had human flesh in three decades. Not going to start now.” She winked at me. “Probably.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Is there a reason you’re interrupting my coffee break?”

“You don’t take coffee breaks.” She stood and smoothed down her perfectly crisp gray suit, then leaned close. “When Jim got the call about the accident, he cried. Known him longer than you’ve been alive. Never seen him cry.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re angry. He’s worried. Not a good combination. Keep your head down and solve your next case. I’ll make sure you get the promotion.” She straightened and stared at something over her shoulder. “We never had this conversation.”

She smiled, stood, then walked away, pausing only to wave at her sister Eleonora—also a werewolf—who owned the café. The two of them practically ran SHAP, between Sienna working with my dad and Eleonora feeding and decaffeinating us, and everyone knew it. They protected their SHAP family—their blood relatives long since dead—with their teeth. Literally.

“That looked ominous.” My partner, Jake, sat down across from me with a drink that resembled a Muppet more than coffee. There were sprinkles, chocolate chips, and myriad syrups drizzled across a dome of whipped cream, topped with cookie crumbles, and a bite-sized brownie. He was, unfathomably, in perfect shape despite his preference for future diabetes.

I sipped my coffee with one eyebrow raised, so he knew I was judging him. “She’d love you for saying that.”

“She loves me anyway.” He loosened his tie, the one he always wore to SHAP trials, then grunted as he stretched out his injured leg. “I got her Supernatural on Blu-ray for her birthday.”

“Suck up.” I gestured to his drink. “You’ll kill yourself drinking that shit. Then what am I supposed to do? Find a new partner?”

He glowered. “I’ve already had to work with a new partner for months after you tried to die.”

Ouch. “Jake, come on. You would’ve done the same thing.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have crashed.” Then the asshole winked at me. Winked.

How we were best friends, I’d never know. Though spending long minutes that felt like hours trying to keep someone alive until backup arrived tended to bond people. The cane leaning against his chair and the surgical scars on my back were physical reminders the last decade had been a wild ride.

Despite our injuries, both of us still qualified for active field agent duty. Unlike the human-only agencies, our physical strength and agility were only a small percentage of what made a person fit for duty. Jake may not be able to run a three-hundred-meter sprint, and I couldn’t do any pull ups or push-ups, but we had sharpshooter accuracy, could practically build a bomb out of chewing gum and a hair tie, and between his computer abilities and my knack for finding information, we had been one of the top teams for five years.

His blue eyes met mine. “I know you’re pissed, and it’s one hundred percent unfair. But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t happy the band’s back together for one last hurrah.”

“We make a great team.” Most of me was livid I hadn’t gotten the promotion because my father had some messed-up narrative in his head about how I should or shouldn’t solve cases, despite my impressive track record. But there was something comforting about joining forces with Jake again.

“How was today?” I asked, changing the subject.

He shrugged. “Straightforward. They confessed. In and out.”

“The best kind.” Every time we made an arrest, there was an arraignment. Sometimes the person would confess, sometimes we went to trial. Unlike a human trial, there weren’t randomly selected juries, but a panel of SHAP representatives, both human and supernatural, who reviewed the details of the case and assigned a punishment.

“You ready for our last case together?” He shoved the entire brownie bite into his mouth, then leaned down and licked the whipped cream. This elicited stares from neighboring tables. To the rest of the world, he was eye candy with his already darkening five o’clock shadow on his white skin, a jaw I could cut my hand on, almost-too-long dark hair, and like six percent body fat—probably seven percent after he drank (ate?) his coffee. To me, he was my weird little brother who could kill someone with a paper clip.

That knowledge didn’t stop me from pulling out my phone and putting it in video mode. After all, I could kill him with a spoon. “Do that again. I’m going to make a Tikhon and retire on the profits.”

“Want me to take off my shirt first?”

“Obviously. Pants, too.” He laughed and I smiled at the sound. I had missed it. Being around a living, breathing human again—one who wasn’t afraid of me—made my chest warm. No, had to be the coffee.

He took one more sip of his drink, then pulled a tablet out of his bag and slid it across the table. “I was assigned this case last Friday. Thought I’d need a new partner. Glad it’s you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Stop flattering me and give me deets.”

“What do you know about Thinner?”

“The weight loss company?”

He nodded.

A dozen celebrities had endorsed the program when it’d hit big six-ish months ago, the CEO being a former eighties exercise icon. The company promised any member who joined them for their revolutionary getaway experience would achieve permanent weight loss.

To say I was extremely skeptical was putting it lightly. “Overnight fame, likely due to the CEO’s platform and the fact she’s worth an estimated sixty million dollars. Membership has a ninety-nine percent success rate.”

Finishing the whipped cream, he ran his finger along the top of his mug, his tell for when he was thinking about something I would find very interesting. “Aren’t you curious about how they’re achieving that success rate?”

I shrugged. “People will try anything. My guess? It’s some surgery, a few facials, killer workouts, and a celebrity chef who creates impossible eating standards. Plus, whatever supplements they’re forced to take.” The Thinner “getaway experiences” were, on average, a month long—plenty of time to recover from a knife.

Jake bobbed his head. “Could be.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I don’t think so.” He leaned back, his chair tipped on two legs, nursing his drink. His eyes held mine for a long moment, and I leaned forward, practically vibrating with excitement. “That vamp from your place? No chip. But he had a work ID on his belt.”

“Uh-huh.”

Another sip, pausing for dramatic effect, no doubt. “He was a member of Thinner. Got back from a getaway two weeks ago. Left his office for a lunch meeting and never came back.”

I pressed my palms on the table, excited. “And the company he worked at?”

“Law firm. No supernaturals registered on their staff.”

He settled his chair on the laminate floor and leaned so close I could smell peppermint coffee on his breath. “Thought we’d check in with Thinner. Either they’re hiring supernaturals without proper credentials…”

I held my breath, waiting for the juicy part.

“Or…” He tapped the table with his index finger. “There’s something way more nefarious going on.”

“I love the way you flirt,” I teased. “What do we know?”

“Already sent in an agent posing as a reporter to interview the VP Carma Nicks. Agent determined she’s likely not a vampire or demon but couldn’t determine if she was only human.”

I tilted my head, running through my mental database of supernatural creatures. “So maybe a shifter? Or werewolf?” Werewolves could register as undetectable most of the month and some older shifters had mastered the human form.

“Why else would they have moved their headquarters to Applechester?”

“Affordable taxes? Access to four major highways?” I countered.

He nodded once. “Fair point. But could also be the fact that Applechester was literally founded by a werewolf.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, and Disney was founded by a mouse. It just makes a good story.”

“You’re such a cynic. And Disney was founded by Walt Disney, not a mouse.”

“Whatever.” While we did have a high population of werewolves and witches (and way too many ghosts), I was pretty sure the city sprang up here because it was on the railroad. There was still an Amtrak station a mile from my building. “I love a scavenger hunt. Gives me a reason to bother the research and development team.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You just think they’re pretty.”

I rolled my eyes. “Listen. Am I mad they hired a bunch of hot nerds? No. But I have a look-no-touch rule with coworkers.” If I was romantically involved with anyone connected to SHAP, it could come back to bite me as I moved up the chain of command.

He held up his hands. “As long as you keep getting me better detection tools, I don’t care.”

“Piece of cake. No, I hate cake. Piece of pie.” I bounced a little in my seat. “What’s our cover?”

“You’re looking at two future hires for Thinner. You’ll be playing Mina Madison, assistant to the CEO.”

I pursed my lips. “This name is payback for Jake Jakeson, isn’t it?” We got to pick our fake names for our cases—unless we needed specific identities—and tried to use our first names whenever possible for believability.

He shrugged. “Entirely possible.”

I play-kicked him under the table. “Fine. What’s it this time?”

“Jake Shelley.”

“Oh good, so we both have two first names.”

“I had like five minutes to pick names. Suck it up, buttercup.”

I shook my head. “I’ve missed your stupid face.”

He just rolled his eyes at me and continued drinking his coffee. I unlocked the tablet and swiped through the mission’s background information to get to the juicy stuff. Bingo. Background on Lucinda Nicks.

I glanced up to find Jake smirking. “How long did it take you to find the Jazzercise clip?”

“An hour. It was worth it.”

“You’re the weirdest person I know.”

He lifted his mug to me in a mock salute. “Right back at you.”

I gave him the finger and continued reading. Lucinda had been a pioneer of women’s dance exercise videos in the eighties, making a fortune which she then invested in a few lucky companies that made her ridiculously wealthy. She had no need to work, which likely made this a project of her heart. Those were always the most dangerous.

People often didn’t see logic when the heart was involved.

Lucinda launched Thinner officially in January with her daughter, Carma, at the helm as VP. I flipped the page and froze as summer-green eyes and long chestnut hair filled the screen. My heart did a weird double beat.

Whoa. I shook my head. She was…stunning.

She was also interesting. Her vintage black dress had pink flowers, wait…skulls? I zoomed in. Yep, skulls. And her winged eyeliner was flawless.

I swallowed hard. This woman was one hundred percent my aesthetic. Heat curled low in my stomach, a feeling I hadn’t had in years.

“Mina, what’s wrong?”

“Hmmm?” I looked up. “Nothing.” I’m going to have to stay away from this woman. “Just enjoying the eye candy.” Note to self: charge vibrator.

He narrowed his eyes. “Uh-huh.”

I cleared my throat and turned off the screen. “So, when do we start?”

He smiled. “We ‘interview’ tomorrow.”