I wished he hadn’t said it out loud, but I nodded in agreement.

“Well, try being a gay werewolf.”

To say I was stunned would be the understatement of the year. I’d never had any indication Dominick’s interests ran towards other men. With Genevieve, she was so bold about her preference for women it was something I had immediately accepted as being a part of who she was. It wasn’t Dominick’s homosexuality that shocked me; it was how I’d managed to be totally oblivious to it.

“Wow.”

Dominick grinned and ruffled my hair. “Did I blow your mind a little, McQueen?”

“Little bit.”

“But do you see why it’s so complicated for me?”

“I guess… But in this day and age? I mean, gay marriage is legal in most states now. The pack must be adaptable, right? They can’t shun you over something that isn’t your choice.”

“Being a vampire wasn’t your choice. How forgiving do you think they’d be if they found out?”

Touche.

“Does Lucas know?”

Dominick shook his head. “Desmond knows. My mom knows. I never told my dad, and that’s probably for the best. He was pretty old school about pack stuff. I would have hated to have him shun me before he died.”

“But your mom?”

“You’ve met Grace Alvarez, right?” he said with a sly smirk. “She doesn’t care who I love, so long as they make me happy and they eat their fair share of pot roast.”

“And…is there someone?”

“There might be.” His hand gripped the back of my headrest so hard the leather cried out. “But it’s hard to deal with. He’s a good man, but he’s human. It’s bad enough, the lies you have to tell your loved ones when you’re gay. It’s harder still when I have to keep all the werewolf stuff from him.” He closed his eyes and pursed his lips together in a tight line.

“Can we meet him? Me and Desmond, I mean.”

Dominick opened one eye and stared at me, probably trying to judge if I was pulling his leg. “And tell him what? ‘Hey, Cas, this is my werewolf brother and his girlfriend, Queen of the Damned.’”

I slapped his arm. “I’m not queen of anything. And just tell him the truth. That we’re family and we love you.”

He opened both eyes, and a fine haze of tears shone in them. “You know something, Secret?”

“What’s that?”

“For someone who isn’t human, you’re a hell of a woman.”

Chapter Seventeen

Desmond shook me lightly, ignoring my muffled protests and threats of violence until I relented and opened my eyes. When he shoved my cell phone in my face, I wished I’d pretended to still be sleeping.

“Too early,” I whined, batting the phone away and covering my head with a pillow.

Most people would say six in the evening was a perfectly normal time to call a friend, but for me it was barely thirty minutes after sunset, and I was in no mood to chat with anyone.

“It’s Mercedes,” he said, pushing the phone under the pillow. “She’s been calling here all damned day, and I can’t keep ignoring it. Your ringtone is driving me crazy.”

After he’d changed my ringer at Christmas to the annoyingly festive “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, I’d gotten my revenge by making my post-holiday call alert Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me”, which was potentially one of the most irritating and catchy earworms of all time.

In the middle of the chorus I hit talk and mumbled my greeting into the phone. “Fuckingwhat?”

“Nice to talk to you too, morning glory. Did you forget to have some fucking coffee? A cup or twelve might cure your attitude problem.”

I grunted.

“I will give you ten thousand dollars if you can guess what I’m going to say next.”

“‘Secret McQueen, your best friend is a psychopath who thinks you like guessing games. As a reward she is offering to never call you again.’”

“Close, but sorry, I guess I get to keep my retirement fund.”

“Point. Get to it.”

Desmond stood in the doorway wearing jeans and a gray cashmere sweater. There was a cup of hot coffee in his hand. Love is a beautiful man bearing caffeine. I sat up, letting the pillow fall to the floor, and held my hand out in the universal gesture for gimme. Desmond laughed and handed me the cup. Piping-hot and bitter-black as Satan’s soul. Just how I liked it.

“I’ve got bad news.”

“Cedes, the day you call me with good news I will die.”

“It’s about your boy.”

Gee, that narrowed things down. “Huh?” I took a big swig of coffee and made a face. A shot of whiskey had less potency.

“We found two more bodies. Columbia coeds. Same MO as Trish Keller.”

“Oh.” I finished the rest of the coffee and handed the mug back to Desmond. “But if you found them since he’s been in lockdown, wouldn’t that clear Gabriel?” My voice sounded a little too hopeful, and it made me feel stupid and guilty.

“It would if the corpses weren’t a week old.”

“Fuuuuuck.”

“A very concise summation, yes.”

“You need me to come down?”

“Tyler wants to see if Holbrook will talk to you, give something up. I know he was important to you, Secret, but we need to see if we can crack him.” The fact that she was calling him Holbrook instead of Gabe told me she’d already distanced herself from this case on a personal level. Cedes knew Gabriel. We’d spent time together when he and I had been a couple. They’d butted heads, but she’d only actively disliked him after he dumped me.

That made two of us.

“There’s still a chance he might be innocent.”

“I know how it works. Innocent until proven guilty. Remember which one of us is an officer of the law.”

“Then why are you so sure he did it?”

“Why are you so unwilling to admit he might be guilty?”

I sighed and wished I had more coffee. I scuttled out from under the covers and went to my closet in search of something suitable to wear to a lynching. “I don’t want to think someone I slept next to for months and months is capable of being a serial killer.”

“You should watch more Dexter.”

If I started to spend any more time at the police station, I was going to have to ask for a desk, a badge and a paycheck. This was, however, the first time in at least a year someone other than Barbie was perched behind the front desk. Instead of explaining myself and getting the frustrating runaround of “I’m sorry, did you say your name was Secret? I’m going to have to call someone…” I decided to try the path of least resistance.

I jerked my chin up in an abrupt greeting and marched past the front desk without a second glance or another word. Apparently the key to success was simply pretending you belonged somewhere.

Detective Tyler spotted me before I was halfway across the room, and instead of any kind of glaring or snide remarks, he gave me an amiable nod and waved me over to his desk.

Okay, this was just weird. Had I stumbled into some alternate reality where I was a normal woman and got to play cops and robbers for a living instead of eating blood and running a vampire government? If so, I was already loving it.

“McQueen,” Tyler greeted me as he sat down in his desk chair.

I took the seat opposite him and leaned back, balancing the wooden chair on its two rear legs. This was a move my grandmere lovingly referred to as Death Bait.

“So, Detective Tyler, how can I be of assistance? Or did you call me in because you missed seeing my face?” I gave him my most dazzling smile. He looked unamused.

“While it fulfills my deepest unrealized fantasies to sit here and trade quips with you all day, Secret, I’m afraid it will have to wait until I don’t have a triple-homicide case to solve.”

My chair dropped down, and a loud smack echoed through the relative quiet of the room. Tyler pretended to ignore it and handed me three folders, then took his opportunity to lean back. He loosened his tie, a blue-and-gold-striped number that brought out flecks of gold in his brown eyes I’d never noticed before. The blue also made the dark circles under his lashes take on the appearance of deep purple bruises.

He looked exhausted.

The first folder was all familiar information. Trish Keller’s photos, her class schedule, some statements from her roommate and a few family members, and the unfortunate crime-scene photos. Say what you will about the naked female form, but there’s nothing pretty about it when it’s gray-blue and stuffed in a Dumpster.

The next two folders were carbon copies, with minute variations to keep things interesting. Misty Fitzpatrick and Angie Ferris. Both in their early twenties, both matriculated at Columbia, and both looked like boozy, floozy party girls based on their personal photos. What was it with the young women of today thinking the more eyeliner you wore and the oranger your tan the better it made you look?

Sometimes I was thankful sunlight would kill me. I’d rather be pale than look like a walking pumpkin. In the back of my head I heard Grandmere scolding me to not speak ill of the dead. Even thinking ill of the dead would be poor form in her opinion.

I scanned the crime-scene photos of the two new girls, but they didn’t tell me anything. Both girls were found nude, their skin frozen by the bitter cold of winter, their lips blue and fingertips black. As I thumbed through them I felt the weight of Tyler’s gaze looming over me. My gaze darted up and caught him staring at me with a singular focus.

“What?” I asked as I closed the folders and placed them on his desk.

“I wonder about you sometimes.”

This wasn’t exactly akin to having a handsome man confess I think about you sometimes. To be frank, the less Detective Tyler thought about me, the better. Once upon a time I would have relished attention from him, because he was a good-looking, smart, funny man. He was also deliciously human, and much like being with Dominick, the time I spent with Tyler early in our acquaintance had made me feel grounded to the real world.