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Heat skittered through me, but before I could fling my chair back and escape, something caught my eye.
A necklace hung forward. It was a simple golden chain with a moonstone the size of a dime. It turned and shifted between pale white with shades of pink, violet, and green.
Interesting. It reminded me of his hair.
“See something you like?” he teased with half-lidded eyes.
“Your necklace,” I blurted. “It’s pretty. Also, you’re way too close.”
Instead of backing off, he leaned forward conspiratorially, smile spreading. “Women do love me for my taste in jewelry. It’s only natural that you’re the same.”
“Gods, you really don’t seem to care about personal space.”
He stood and stretched his hands up. “Let the old man take care of the nonsense details, Gray. This is your time to let loose with your weird obsessive habits! Come to the school with me, and I’ll show you around.”
“That’s not how this works,” I argued. “I have to be as prepared as possible. After we make it through the contract, I want all the files on the students involved in the last four events. If I’m going to catch a killer before the month is over, I have to start immediately.”
“This is part of preparation!”
“Research is the only part that matters.”
“So, you aren’t interested in getting used to your new environment. You just want to wait for the first day of school, when it’ll be the most overwhelming and overrun with confused, hormonal, asshole students rampaging about the school. Got it. Gray? Gray. Did you know that it’s unhealthy to grind your teeth like that? Immortality will heal them, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be painful.”
I rubbed my eyes until I saw stars. “You’re just going to distract me until I agree. Aren’t you?”
He reached over and ruffled my hair, dodging my smack. “So, she does have a brain. Come along, Detective. Killers rest for no one.”
* * *
Since I couldn’t use the Volare without clinging to Razai, we took the subway. Razai complained the whole way, swearing to never take the boring underground death traps again and promising to find a human mage to charm me up some wings.
When he wasn’t complaining, he talked about random topics. As in, he did not stop or take my silence as anything but an invitation to continue.
Hand held up, gesticulating around to get my attention, he explained, “People get so irritated about mixing foods together. I’ll never understand the discourse around pineapple and pizza. Just let the public live. How does another person’s digestive choices affect me? Just nonsense. A waste of time. You’d be better off spending that energy buying yourself a souvenir, or a comfortable pair of sweatpants, or doing yoga, or infiltrating the Underground as an assassin spy, or trying new cheeses —”
I nodded numbly, vaguely realizing that I had only just checked into the conversation. What had he been talking about for the last ten minutes? Did it matter?
“Gray! Gray? Are you even listening?”
I blinked rapidly. “What was that?”
“Bad girl. Fluttering your pretty eyelashes will only get you so far with me,” he chided. The subway decelerated. Razai held onto the pole with one hand and let his body lean backward, swinging a little like he was about to start his own stripper routine.
No one else really noticed. No one ever did. There wasn’t a baseline for ‘normal’ on the subway.
He grinned at me, showing off his straight white teeth.
“You have some canines,” I noticed. “Longer than normal. Don’t tell me you’re a vampire in disguise.”
He licked one as if just noticing he had a pointy tooth. “Hmm. And how would a vampire hide oneself in the middle of the Divine Territories? Cross the Barrier Bridge without getting caught by Demonic or Divine guards?”
“Maybe the vampire could swim,” I reasoned.
“There are at least ten elite water Divines stationed on Barrier Island,” he countered.
The doors slid open, and we walked off the train. Brooklyn and Queens were dominated by the Demonic Territories, and the long strip of land bisecting the East River functioned like a border guard station for the Divine.
We climbed the steps as I replied, “Well, if vampires don’t require oxygen or heat, then it stands to reason that they can traverse the bottom of the river and make it across. No water Divine would sense them that deep.”
