Hayes’s eyes flashed and I sighed. “You can get down as a normal person—Nina calls ‘em breathers—if someone who can go down sends you down. They’re able to temporarily loosen the veil on the breathers.” I went back to stabbing at my salad, and glanced through my lowered lashes to see a look of utter relief flood across Hayes’s face—and then he panicked again.
“The chief is a demon?” he asked. “Is that how he knows Sampson?”
“I don’t know if the chief is a demon,” I said, mouth full of salad. “He and Sampson met in college, just before Sampson was bitten. They were college roommates.”
Hayes’s eyebrows rose expectantly.
“Sampson was bitten and changed into a werewolf in college. Now, can we just have lunch and then get to work? The sooner we crack this case, the sooner you can be done with the Underworld and go back to believing that the things that go bump in the night are just harmless human rapists, sadists, and murderers.”
“That’s all I ask,” Hayes said, sipping his coffee again.
Chapter Five
After lunch at the diner, we headed back to the police station. Hayes handed me a Styrofoam cup filled with horrible coffee, drank his down in one gulp, and told me to hold steady.
“I’m going to go grab our files from downstairs. Can I get you another cup?” He gestured toward my still-full cup, and I wagged my head, forced a small gulp just to be polite. When he left I dropped the greasy mess into the trash can and shuddered.
I was making myself comfortable in a cracked pleather chair in the police department conference room when Hayes came in, carrying a groaning cardboard box packed with file folders.
“This is all we’ve got on the case so far,” he said, dropping the box with a thud.
“Looks like a lot.”
“Looks like a haystack.” Hayes nudged the box. “It’s our job to go through here and figure out what’s pertinent and what’s not, what’s part of the case, what’s helpful, etcetera, etcetera. But”—he reached into the box and extracted a grease-soaked white pastry bag—“I did bring dessert.” He shook the bag with a grin.
“Well, aren’t you the gentleman?” I said in my best attempt at sultry.
“I am. But the jelly-filled one is mine.”
Hayes reached into the bag, extracted a sticky, glazed concoction, and stuffed the entire donut into his mouth, chomping down. I quickly shoved the file box aside, just in time to avoid a splat of blueberry jam as it dribbled from his chin and dropped onto the table.
“Be still my heart,” I said, feeling instantly sticky.
Hayes sat down next to me. “Try your best not to fall in love with me.” He pushed the bag toward me as he chewed. “Donut?”
I picked out a pink-sprinkled one and tried my best to nibble daintily.
“Pink sprinkles. I totally had you pegged,” Hayes said, smiling down at the table.
I rolled my eyes, shoved the rest of the donut into my mouth, and dug into the file box.
“Interesting,” was the only thing I could think of to say as I sifted through the first overstuffed folder. I pulled out a few yellowed newspaper clippings, some crime-scene photos, a Starbucks receipt, and a GO WITH GAVIN bumper sticker. “Don’t you guys have any organizational system?”
“Yeah,” Hayes said, gesturing toward the ragged box. “Put. In. Box.” He dipped his pincher fingers into the pastry bag. “Do you mind if I have another?”
I shook my head. “It’s no wonder you can’t find this guy,” I said, wrinkling my nose as I pulled out a folder covered in grease and coffee stains.
I’d struck a nerve. “Look, lady, we do the best we can. It’s not like we’ve got people lounging around the office, just waiting to file the latest. We’ve got a community to protect. A very large metropolitan community. What have you got? A couple of witches? The bogeyman? A vampire here and there?”
I pushed a neatly organized stack of UDA files toward Hayes and fished a few more out of my shoulder bag.
“I have just over twelve thousand actives. Twelve thousand and seventy-one, to be exact. Demons, vampires, witches, goblins …” I couldn’t help but feel a little smug as Hayes’s eyes went wide at the orderly stack I presented.
“Don’t worry; I didn’t bring in all our files. I’m pretty sure whatever is out there”—I suppressed the smallest shudder—“isn’t the work of any centaur, gargoyle, or troll. Those are generally our less volatile groups.”
“Wow,” he said, wiping donut grease on a nearby file. “You guys really are organized. That’s impressive.”
“Forms up the wazoo,” I said, shrugging. I eyed the stack, then picked out all the ones marked with a bright red flag. “These ones are the active vamps. Everything we need should be there—original birth dates, sires, crossovers—”
“Crossovers?” Hayes’s dark brows rose a millimeter.
“When a breather goes vamp,” I explained.
“Vampires remember that kind of stuff?”
“Initially, yeah. Five hundred years into their afterlife, the ‘rebirth’ details can get a little foggy. But at first it’s pretty easily traceable. You wake up one morning with no breath and bellbottoms on? You were crossed over in the seventies. Ditto if you’ve got go-go boots or love beads.”
“I see.”
“There is information on current residences, jobs, skill sets, languages spoken, etcetera. Everything should be listed in the file.”
Hayes swallowed thickly. “They work up here?”
I shrugged. “They work everywhere. The short order cook over at Fog City is a werevamp.”
Hayes’s eyes bulged. “Tiny? I thought he was a drag queen.”
“He’s that, too.”
Hayes paled a little bit, and I blew out a long sigh and cocked my head, eyeing him. “Listen,” I said, “there are a lot more magically inclined people out there than you think.”
“Oh no,” Hayes started. “I’ve seen a lot of weird things in this city—Elvis, the Easter Bunny on the Fulton 5, Mrs. Claus walking down the Haight with Santa in a dog collar in the middle of July. Even with that veil thing, I don’t think I would miss seeing a vampire on Market. Or a troll.”
“And what would you think if you did?”
“I’d think that I’ve definitely been working too hard.”
I smiled. “Well, there you go. You’re not expecting to see them, so you don’t see them. That’s how the veils work for the most part. It’s not really that big of a deal.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but Hayes’s complexion went a few shades lighter. I rested my hand on his. “They’re just like you and me.”
He opened his mouth to protest, and I held up one silencing finger. “Okay, maybe not
“And two-point-five demonic kids?”
I ignored him. “The majority really doesn’t want any trouble.”
“Except for the small minority that wants to rip out people’s throats, gobble up their eyeballs, and suck out all their blood.”
I crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Kind of like the small minority of the human population, right?”
“Touché. Okay,” Hayes said, a little bit of the color returning to his chiseled cheeks. “Where do we start, then?”
“Here,” I said, handing him a thick stack of files. “Red flags are vampires. Yellow, zombies; blue, hobgoblins;
