After Gail left, I read everything I could get my hands on about this strange other world—which wasn’t much as I was only eight. I thought I’d discovered a secret—that I’d stumbled upon something magical.
On Bailey’s ninth birthday, we were out to dinner with our grandparents. In the middle of devouring my meal, my brain began to tingle. It felt like tiny ants crawling inside my head. When the crawling suddenly morphed into a burning pain, I reacted. I’m not sure what I did, but whatever it was, it stopped the awful feeling. On the way out the door, I saw a man sitting alone at a table by the window. Our eyes met, and I felt that same crawling sensation inside my head. Don’t ask me how, but I knew he was the cause of it. I also knew that what he was doing was wrong. Staring defiantly at him, I spoke—not out loud but inside my mind. I called him a bad man and told him to stop bothering little kids. From the surprised look on his face, I thought he might have heard me. As I couldn’t see his animal, I thought he might have been a vampire. In truth, I had no idea what he was.
Nevertheless, I was beside myself with excitement. Not able to stand it, I told Bailey. Once again, she told my parents. I’ll never forget my mother’s words. In that imperialistic tone that I hated, she said, “You are a Duvail, and Duvail’s do not associate with those kinds of creatures. One more time, Diana, and Daddy and I will ship you off to live with your aunt Reba.”
Aunt Reba was old and mean. I was devastated. If my mother knew about those so-called creatures, then it wasn’t a secret. We never spoke of it again.
My father died when I was seventeen. Mother said the good lord took him, but we all knew it was the alcohol. The day after my eighteenth birthday, she drove me across town to the family attorney’s office. It was there that I learned I was adopted. Evidently, I needed this information to access my trust funds. There were two, to be exact, one from each side of the family. Both contained more money than I could spend in ten lifetimes. I should have been thrilled to discover I was loaded. Instead, I was angry. I felt betrayed, felt as if I’d been living a lie. If I wasn’t Diana Duvail, then who was I?
I was still trying to figure that out.
My mother passed away during my first year at the police academy—no doubt from shock that I’d chosen such a lowly profession. Once Mom was gone, Bailey, who’d been kept on a tight leash, set out to find herself. She met a guy while traipsing across Europe, and ended up marrying him. His name was Amos, and he looked like Shaggy Rogers from the Scooby-Doo cartoon. The three of us had dinner together once a month. I never told Bailey I was adopted. I also hadn’t told her about Mick’s death or my reassignment to the PHD. If I’d learned anything from living in that awful house, it was how to keep a secret.
One afternoon, not long after the spilled-coffee incident, Akeno was teaching me how to take down a shifter using tranquilizer darts, when Tymon suddenly appeared.
“Class over, I need to borrow Diana,” he announced.
His ominous tone caused anxiety to ripple through my belly, and I silently cursed Ayden. Last night, after a grueling star-throwing session—where he did most of the throwing, and I did all of the dodging—he invited me back to his apartment. Let’s just say the night started with beer and pizza and evolved into shots of cinnamon-flavored whiskey and him teaching me how to construct mini bombs out of dog poo. Yes, it was an incredibly juvenile thing to do, but it was also a hell of a lot of fun. Stupid Ayden said Tymon would find it funny. I knew better than to listen to him.
We were almost to the elevator door, when I blurted, “It was Ayden’s idea.”
Eyeing me sideways, Tymon asked, “What was Ayden’s idea?”
Okay, so maybe this isn’t about the poo bomb. Hedging, I replied, “Why did you need to see me?”
“What was Ayden’s idea?” he repeated.
I knew that tone. It was the one he used right before he brain-blasted me. In an attempt to preempt the inevitable, I threw up my shields.
His lips curled into a smile as the elevator doors opened. “Smart girl,” he whispered as I quickly scooted past him. He waited for the doors to close before saying, “A little advice, the next time you decide to act immature and idiotic, you might not want to sing about diarrhea at the top of your lungs while doing it.”
A snort of laughter shot from my mouth. I’d completely forgotten about that. At Tymon’s sigh, I laughed even harder.
We exited the elevator, and I followed him into his office. Once we were both seated, he finally told me why I was there.
“I received a disturbing call this morning from your old unit. It appears that a number of women have gone missing over the past few months. Last night, victim number six walked into the police station, asking to speak to you.” My stomach lurched. “I say victim because according to the officers who spoke with her, she was so emaciated and riddled
