Bobby followed in my wake, edging closer whenever I stopped to examine anything. By the time I reached the bookshelves Nathanial was scanning, I could all but feel Bobby's breath on my neck. Cringing, I rounded on him.
"Back off,” I warned.
His lips parted like he would say something, but then his jaw clenched. His eyes were a little too wide, too much white showing around the green irises, and his nostrils flared as he scented the air.
Was he still prying into what I'd done to Evan? I crossed my arms over my chest. Well, it wasn't like it was hard to figure out. I'd been a trembling mess before I'd ... I'd fed. I lifted my chin, meeting his eyes.
"Yes, I took his blood.” There, I said it. I waited for Bobby's face to show his repulsion. For him to back away from me, finally seeing the monster I'd become.
He didn't. He cupped the back of my neck with his palm. “If that is your nature now, so be it. You look healthy again. I'd give you every drop of my own blood to keep you that way."
His touch was an old and familiar gesture. A sign of affection he'd often used when we'd been young and foolish enough to entertain the idea of being together forever. Before Lynn had joined our clan. Before my father had pressed into me the reality that I'd never mate for love. That I'd be as good as signing Bobby's death warrant if I took him as mate. My mate would share the title of Torin of the Nekai clan with me. The purebloods would never accept a natural shifter, a shifter born to non-shifter parents, as Torin, and a bobcat wasn't a strong enough form to face off all challengers.
My throat constricted. Bobby had never cared about the danger. The night after I'd fought with my father, Bobby and I had talked until dawn, sitting on a forgotten rock face in the neutral lands outside the clan's holding. The warmth of his palm on my neck had been my touch point to reality, the only thing keeping me from spiraling into self-pity. I'd wanted to run away that night, to abandon my clan and my title, and he'd talked me out of it. Even if it meant we would never be together, he wanted me to be Torin.
He believed in me. He always had.
He was an idiot.
"Have you lost your mind?” I asked, the words a shaky whisper. “I'm a monster. What I did was barbaric."
His fingers flexed on my neck, a gentle pressure like he would pull me forward. Which would be too much, too intimate. Shifters weren't completely human and didn't show affection with the same kinds of touch humans did. Touching foreheads together or rubbing cheeks was the shifter equivalency to a kiss, and for a moment, I thought Bobby would lean into me. For a moment, he obviously did too. Then his eyes narrowed and his fingers trembled, loosening but not dropping away.
"Barbaric would not be my choice description,” Nathanial said, idly scanning a book. “I find it barbaric mortals kill animals to nourish their bodies for a few hours. Vampires need only a pint or two of blood for an entire night. We need not kill anything."
Though he didn't look up, I had no doubt Nathanial was watching us. I could feel it in the tension filling the room. Bobby's hand suddenly felt like a great weight on my neck, and I shrugged him away. He didn't protest, but shoved his fists into his pockets.
Gil walked back in the room and paused in the doorway. Her eyes swept over the three of us, and she screwed her mouth tight. “We're supposed to be investigating, not chit-chatting,” she snapped, crossing her arms over her chest. “Can any of you scent the rogue?"
Bobby's nostrils flared again before he shook his head. I breathed in deep, working to identify the tangle of scents in the air. My senses were no longer as overwhelmingly acute as when I'd first fed from Evan, but it was hard to determine if they were back to pre-vamp normal or a little sharper. Harder still to determine how much more and how quickly they would decline.
For now I could detect the salty scent of sweat clinging to Bobby. The bitter quality to the smell betrayed his nerves, which was odd because whatever was bothering him was new, and based on his calm acceptance when I admitted to feeding from Evan, his unease had nothing to do with me. Under the nerves and sweat were the familiar scents of wind, fur, and cat that were part of his personal base scent. Beside me, Nathanial smelled of his shower products, and under those, the spicy scent I was coming to identify as his base scent. Across the room, Gil still smelled faintly of vanilla, but also dried sweat. The unlit candles spread around the room each had a hint of cinnamon to them, and wafting in from the outside hall were various scents of cooked food. The room itself smelled dusty and stale—evidence it had been empty and closed off for several weeks. Not the faintest hint betrayed a shifter had been in the room anytime before Bobby and I walked in.
With a sigh, I shook my head. Gil frowned, but gave me a curt nod. Then she turned and headed down the hall toward the bedroom.
Nathanial stuck his nose back in a book, and I glanced at it around his shoulder. It was a weathered copy of The Canterbury Tales. Boring.
"Learning anything useful?” I asked.
"Phyllis was likely well-educated.” Nathanial made a vague hand gesture to encompass the bookcases. “Classics, histories, biographies, and psychology books."
I glanced at the books. “What fun is that?"
An oversized book with a black, felt binding and no writing caught my attention. I pulled it off the shelf and blew the dust off the cover. Bobby was still hovering, his tension radiating off him in waves. I took a step back, frowning at him. “What are you so nervous about?"
"I'm not nervous about anything,” he said, but jumped as the pipes in the walls roared.
"Someone flushed a toilet. Relax."
He didn't, but continued to scan the room like the walls might mutiny and crash down on him.
I suppressed a smile. Bobby had been in the human world, what, ten days? No wonder he was uncomfortable. He'd been sent here to drag me back home, so he probably hadn't received much training on what to expect. A building with people living on top, below, and both sides took time to get used to. I'd been living with humans for five years now, and had ample time to explore strange smells and sounds. Bobby hadn't had that adjustment time. Well, served him right for thinking he could show up here and drag me back to Firth.
Taking another step away from him, I opened the oversized book. An attractive, brown-haired woman of about twenty-eight smiled at me from a photo stuck to the first page. She was the recurrent theme in the album, sometimes appearing before a fountain or on the deck of a ship, and other times smiling at the camera from more mundane and unremarkable locations. Occasionally a pretty blond with hair cropped around her ears appeared in the picture, and once or twice they were together with a large group of people. “Look at this."
Nathanial turned and glanced over my shoulder.
"This one.” I turned a few pages back, and showed him a picture that had been ripped so that half was missing. “And these.” I flipped near the back of the album, where several more pictures had pieces torn from them, and the brown-haired woman looked a couple of years younger.
"She ripped someone out of her life. Probably an ex-boyfriend. I have seen it done before.” Nathanial turned to continue perusing the bookshelf.
Okay, so apparently I hadn't found a clue. I glanced at a couple more photos before shutting the book and sliding it back on the shelf.
I finished my circuit of the room, stopping at the stereo to check the last station played. Classical. The dead woman's video collection didn't shed much light on her either, a couple of chick flicks and some exercise videos. She wasn't very interesting, and far too tidy for my liking. If she'd been the type to consider having a pet, I could tell she'd have been one of those owners who wouldn't let the animal on any of the furniture and would always worry about pet hair. I'd never been fond of staying with such people.
"Hey, check this out,” Gil called from the back of the condo.
I headed in her direction. Gil's voice came from the door at the end of the hall, but I passed another door on the way and peeked in at an utterly bland bathroom with black-and-white fixtures. I missed kids; children always had interesting bathrooms.
The second I entered the bedroom, I knew it was the room where Phyllis had died. The rest of the house looked pristine, this room was in shambles: the bed was stripped and knocked crooked; the closet door was torn off the hinges; a lamp and a second TV were turned over, the pieces shattered across the floor; and patches of the carpet had been cut and removed. The carpet damage was most likely created by the police when collecting evidence. The area missing was roughly big enough for a body with a fair amount of blood pooling around it.
Something pulled at the edge of my attention, and I froze. It was that same “animal-but-different” scent I'd caught at Lorna's. Not shifter, but ... similar.
"There's something here I can't put my finger on,” I whispered as Bobby and Nathanial walked in.
They stopped and stared at me.
"Can you smell the shifter?” Gil asked.
Bobby breathed deeply. “There are lots of smells here. Death mostly; they didn't manage to clean that out, but I can't pick up the rogue."
No, there was something ... something in the room tickled the inside of my mind. I closed my eyes and let the sounds and smells wash over me. It hit me like I'd dug up a distant memory.
"I smell the rogue.” But the scent wasn't right. It wasn't like a regular shifter. I searched my mind on why I was so sure the animal-but-different scent belonged to the rogue, or a shifter at all. Slowly the reasoning filled in. “He's never been to Firth, never shifted there, so he doesn't smell like it. The rogue is definitely a city shifter.” How did I know that? As I realized the source of the knowledge, I looked at Nathanial with absolute horror holding me. It wasn't my memory, or anything I'd ever heard. I was using the knowledge of the hunter I'd fed from. Knowledge he'd earned in training and years of experience. He would have known how to identify a city-shifter's scent and known why the scent was different. I'd apparently stolen the information when I ran through his memories.