Seeker of Shadows Page 6

  “Jacques?”

  He cast a fierce look her way, then found his gaze caught by hers. Such soft, melting eyes.

  “Thank you.”

  Simple words, sincerely offered, shuddered through him like the delight of her pleasing scent.

  He got in the car without registering a response, slamming the door with unnecessary force, before tromping on Louise’s accelerator, leaving Susanna at the curb with her polite intentions wreathed in a sputter of exhaust fumes.

  Susanna had managed a full six hours of deep, dreamless sleep when an insistent knocking woke her. After peering through the peephole, she opened the door to let Nica breeze in.

  “I’m here to take you shopping.”

  Susanna just stared after her blankly as she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “I’ll make you coffee while you get dressed.”

  “Shopping? For what?”

  But Nica, who was rattling around in the cupboards, didn’t answer.

  With a weary and perplexed sigh, Susanna shuffled back into the borrowed bedroom where she was still living out of her open suitcase. She hadn’t gotten enough rest, and fatigue hung as heavily upon her shoulders as her guilt. It had taken only a few brief minutes talking to her daughter that morning to shake all her best intentions.

  She missed the little girl with an intensity none of her own kind would understand. She yearned for the morning routine they shared; brushing teeth, getting dressed, talking about the day to come. She longed for the soft scent of her child’s hair, for the delicate feel of her in her arms, for the unconditional love found in her hugs and kisses. They’d never been apart except for that terrifying week of forced separation, until Nica had returned her. After that, it was a daily agony to let her out of her sight even to attend her classes.

  She didn’t doubt that Damien was taking dutiful care of her. He would see to all the necessities, perhaps even fill in for her during their nightly reading from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. And perhaps that time alone, just the two of them, would foster a bond like the one he could never quite understand that existed between mother and daughter. That bond her own kind saw as unnatural.

  Moody and a bit melancholy, she followed the corrosive scent of scorched caffeine into the living room where Nica was waiting with her cup and a raised brow. Her gaze ran from neck to toe as she shook her head.

  “That’s why we’re shopping.”

  At the cryptic reply, Susanna glanced down at the beige silk blouse and matching tailored slacks she was wearing. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

  “Nothing if you live in that world of expensive bland up north. Jacques spotted you right away and the others will, too. You need to look a little less Lake Shore Drive and a little more N’awlins, if you know what I mean.”

  She did, and was angry at herself for not seeing it sooner. Her world was one of neutral shades all blending together into pale sameness. Everything in her wardrobe was built from that same palette of white, cream, and beige without the slightest shock of color, as if the life had been bled out of it. Of course she would stand out against the gaudy backdrop of the Crescent City, as glaringly as cultured pearls next to colorful shiny beads.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “Don’t feel bad,” Nica soothed. “I made my living learning how to become invisible. You want to look like you fit in, like you belong, not like you’re the cream rising to the top. I suppose that’s your favorite color.”

  Susanna took the mug she was offered and took a sip without making a face before she swallowed. “No. Actually it’s red.”

  “Then let’s go paint the town red.”

  Susanna had never shopped. All her purchases were done electronically. She’d never experienced the sensory overload of styles and color and texture, the feel of different fabrics brushing against her skin, the adventure of seeing herself portrayed in an entirely new light. It was like being reborn.

  Nica dragged her into large chain stores in the Canal Street mall for the basics, then through dozens of small boutiques on Chartres and Royal for just the right finishing touches.

  At first, Susanna balked at the startling suggestions but once she’d timidly tried them on and had gotten over the shock of viewing her transformation in progress, she plunged into the idea of making over Dr. Duchamps, Chosen scientist, into Susanna, a sensuous female stretching like a rainbow above the Quarter.

  The colors dazzled her. Peacock blue, emerald green, electric teal, hot fuchsia, a sunrise of orange and yellow. And reds, from daring scarlet to rich claret. Warm, bright, vibrant hues, making her feel alive—and free. Free to express all the emotions bursting inside her.

  And Nica was far too astute not to notice.

  They sat at a café table on high stools at Antoine’s Hermes Bar, surrounded by piles of packages, dining on Kobe beef po’boys and airy potato puffs. Susanna’s attention was pulled between watching those who strolled by the open doors, and watching her own reflection in the massive ornate mirror behind the bar. She looked like one of them, seated in her skinny jeans and strappy shoes, wearing a snug bloodred T-shirt with a spangly scarf draped about her neck to fill the plunging V of her neckline. In a quick dash through a hair salon, her severe cut had been softened by layers, shot through with highlights, and given a dash of attitude with spiky bangs. Instead of her usually perfect finish, her makeup was more natural, with a dusting of color across her cheeks, accented by liner and shadow that played up her eyes to almost anime proportions. She looked relaxed . . . alive. And she felt wonderful.

  “He won’t be able to ignore you now.”

  Nica’s comment came out of the blue.

  “Who?”

  Her companion chuckled. “Who, indeed. Who have you been fixated on since you got here? You’re stripping him with your eyes every time he’s in the same room.”

  Susanna’s jaw dropped.

  Nica simply laughed at her expression as she chased the ice about her glass with her straw. “I certainly don’t blame you. He’s an eyeful. If you’re considering a walk on the wild side, he’s the path I’d recommend.”

  “I’m not—he’s not—I never—” Susanna grabbed for her glass and took several quick gulps to cool the fire of embarrassment and sudden panicked arousal.

  “If you never, maybe you should,” was Nica’s calm advice.

  Susanna gripped her glass with both hands to keep them from shaking as she said, “I have a mate already,” as if that would put an end to Nica’s scandalous suggestion.

  Nica made a rude sound. “Mate. Pffft. You mean companion. Someone a computer picked for you for the purpose of breeding and compatibility. I’ve met him, remember. I can’t exactly picture him ripping off your beige separates to throw you down on the rug for some good, sweaty, screaming sex.”

  Susanna went as red as her new shirt, then pale. “He’s very good to me and to my daughter.”

  “My man is good to me, too. He makes coffee in the morning, picks up his towels in the bathroom, doesn’t drink out of the milk carton. He makes the perfect roommate, but that’s not what makes him the perfect mate. He wants me. All the time, anytime.”

  Susanna swallowed hard, thinking she should protest the intimacy of the conversation, but too fascinated to stop it.

  “I’ll come home from a hard day and he’ll have a glass of wine ready and massage my feet. He’s got the most unbelievable hands. We’ll be arguing over some little thing like folding my shirts with the design on the inside and the next thing you know, we’ll be naked on the floor panting like animals. Just thinking about him makes me so hot I can barely sit still. All the time, anytime. We touch, we snuggle, we have sex, we make love, we fuck each other’s brains out. Is that what you do with your mate?”

  Susanna’s silence was her answer.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured. Nothing says inanimate like a Chosen male. You might as well live with a very nice looking piece of furniture that�
��s not really all that comfortable.”

  “I didn’t come to New Orleans to have sex with someone other than the one I share my life with.”

  “Is that what you’re sharing with him? I rather doubt that. Don’t sit there looking all nervous and tell me that since you walked into Cheveux du Chien your blood hasn’t been boiling over imagining what it would be like to get naked with Jacques LaRoche.”

  Susanna couldn’t deny it. And she didn’t have to imagine what it would be like.

  She knew. That was the problem.

  But the fact was obvious. “He despises me.”

  “What you are, definitely, but not who you are. He’s got eyes and they’re all over you.”

  “They’re all over every female, from what I’ve observed,” was Susanna’s dry comment.

  “He’s a very healthy male animal without any ties. The perfect physical partner.”

  “Why not?” Susanna ventured carefully.

  “Why not what?”

  “Why no commitment to any of them?”

  “He’s not just a casual player, if that’s what you’re asking. There was someone in his past from what Amber told me.”

  Amber, the busty brunette with the foreplay gumbo. A reliable source.

  Nica frowned slightly. “He doesn’t talk about her, or about his past, but from what I hear, he was mated to some female up north and never got over her.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know, but she sure ruined him for anyone else. The heartless bitch. If I ever find her, I’ll make sure she regrets tossing him away.”

  That bit of savagery made Susanna shiver. A threat Nica had already made good on without even knowing it.

  Then the former assassin smiled. “You could be just what he needs.”

  A cynical smile in return. “Another female from up north to use him and dump him? That’s not what this doctor would order.”

  “He’s a guy. He’d enjoy the using as long as it’s mutual. And he’d enjoy the company of someone with an IQ in the triple digits. You’d both know it was a temporary thing so there’d be no expectations, no hurt feelings. It’s not like you’d be falling in love.”

  No, of course not. An exquisite pain shot through Susanna’s heart. She’d already taken that dangerous tumble.

  “So, your recommendation is that I just walk up to him and say, ‘Let’s do it’?”

  Nica laughed and finished her drink. “I think you should put yourself in front of him and let nature take its course.”

  Put yourself in front of him.

  Not a good idea. Not at all a good idea.

  Susanna sat at the keyboard in the empty club office, the data on the screen not as compelling as the muscular male behind the bar below. She watched him grin and laugh as he interacted with his customers and staff. He didn’t seem particularly heartbroken.

  She knew part of the problem was in her own nature. As a scientist, she weighed everything out to the microscopic detail and consequence until the question became clinical study. But in this case, she found it difficult to separate her feelings from the equation.

  What were the pros and cons of an uncomplicated fling with Jacques LaRoche?

  Sex would relieve the tension between them, but it was far from uncomplicated. She’d longed for the pleasure of his touch, had dreamed of feeling those sensations, those rewards again, but would rekindling that passion invite dangers that rendered the risk unwise?

  Would their union awaken memories buried in Jacques’s subconscious?

  And after experiencing the thrill, could she find the strength to leave him once again?

  Though Nica was right on target in her assessment of Damien, it didn’t lessen Susanna’s obligation to be loyal. He’d singled her out for his personal attention, to mentor her studies and groom a quick path for her career. He’d protected her interests and her reputation. He’d stood by her without judgment, without demands, when any other male of their species would have condemned her. She was treated with respect and kindness and given latitude in her pursuits. After all he’d done for her, could she betray him with the reckless release of emotions he feared and despised?

  Yet how could she be so near her every desire, her every dream, and not risk all for just a taste, just a reminder to last the rest of her lifetime? Could she ever forgive herself if she let that moment pass?

  Damien Frost held her allegiance but Jacques LaRoche owned her heart and soul. She’d given both to him, freely, gladly, without reservation or regret when young and foolish. But even now, when older and hopefully wiser, she couldn’t take them back. He would hold them forever.

  So which would rule her, conscience or emotion?

  “How are things going?”

  Charlotte’s intruding question had her nearly jumping out of her new shoes. Covering up her guilt with a smile of greeting, she turned to the detective who’d entered the room without her noticing.

  “I’ve gotten a lot of information from the new samples but that’s as far as I can go without an actual lab.”

  “Field trip time. Grab your stuff.”

  Medical examiner Devlin Dovion saw nothing strange in receiving company at two A.M. in the bowels of the hospital. A big man with a mass of curly hair that had begun to slide from the top of his head to gather at his ears and shoulders, he greeted the police detective fondly and her with a shrewd interest.

  “Busy night, Dev?”

  “What can I tell you, Lottie? You’re sending too much work my way.” He peeled the glove from his right hand to extend it to Susanna. “I’m Dev Dovion. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Susanna is my OB. She has some experience in the, um, particulars of my situation.”

  Dovion’s brows lifted as he studied her. “Interesting. A friend of Max’s?”

  “Not exactly. Let’s say the other side of that same coin.”

  From the cryptic dialogue, Susanna learned two things. Dev Dovion was to be trusted, and he knew about the Shifter presence in New Orleans along with something of their politics.

  “She needs access to a lab and I told her you might be able to help.”

  “I see.” His sudden caution said he did, indeed. “And what type of materials would you need processed, doctor?”

  “Genetic, mainly.”

  His brows hiked even higher at her reply.

  “I’m having Mary Kate moved back here from California, Dev, and placed in a private care facility,” Charlotte abruptly told him. “Susanna’s going to begin an experimental line of treatment she believes can reverse some of the physical and mental damage.”

  Dovion was quick. “The way Max brought you back.” When he noticed Susanna’s puzzlement, he explained, “Our fearless detective here tangled with some of your kind and ended up in the ICU with her bones and internal organs mashed like Sunday’s sweet potatoes. We were getting ready to administer last rites and pull the plug when she made a miraculous recovery. An inexplicable recovery. Is that what you have in mind with Mary Kate?”

  Neither woman answered.

  To Susanna, he said, “You know she’s human, don’t you? A nun. That she was burned over eighty percent of her body and still has a bullet lodged in her brain?”

  No, not precisely those details, but she did now.

  To Charlotte, he added, “And you have her permission to conduct these treatments that she might consider out of the moral ballpark?”

  “She’s my best friend, Dev,” Charlotte answered mulishly. “She’s there in that damned storage facility because of me. Because of me and Max. What am I supposed to do? Just let her die? You think it’s a better moral choice to let her go to hell? Because that’s what she believes. Dying by your own hand is suicide. I’m willing to risk her annoyance rather than her soul.”

  But maybe he wasn’t. That was what Susanna read in the impasse that followed.

  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. A doctor’s constant dilemma.

  “And
what does Max think about all this?” Dovion challenged.

  Charlotte’s eyes narrowed. “He’ll agree with me . . . when I tell him.”

  “Will he?” Dev challenged.

  Charlotte’s jaw squared and rose with an arrogant tilt. “Yes.”

  She was good, Susanna mused, using fierceness to conceal her uncertainty.

  Under other circumstances, that might have been her cue to take a cautious step back. In her tenuous position as an outsider, the last thing she needed was to run afoul of the leader of the New Orleans Shifter clan in a spat with his not-quite-human mate. But Charlotte’s covert agenda, as intriguing as it might be, wasn’t the one compelling her to set aside her reservations.

  She needed this opportunity for study. Desperately. And so, she remained silent, suppressing her misgivings regarding what they were about to do.

  Dovion finally broke the silence, heaving a big sigh and throwing his hands wide. “All right, Charlotte. You know there’s little I can refuse you. Let’s give your friend a tour and lay down a few ground rules. Rules not even you will be allowed to break.”

  “Whatever you say, Dev.”

  Susanna keyed in the entry code on the rear door of the club, her mind still racing with probabilities and pathways for her research.

  Though far from the sophistication she was used to, Dovion’s lab facilities were adequate, and what he didn’t have on site, he had access to. Reluctantly, he’d helped Charlotte create an identity for her, linking Susanna to an ongoing case so she’d have full run of the technology and testing she required, putting his own career on the line in doing so. If she had someone with his loyalty and dedication at her facility up north, how much smoother her studies would go.

  Here, with free rein, she’d have the opportunity, if not the time, to explore her hypotheses, and perhaps discover the breakthrough she knew in her heart was there just beyond the reach of her next idea.

  She couldn’t wait to get started.

  The club’s interior was pitch-black and quiet as she hurried down the hall toward the open office door. A faint light shown within from the recessed fixtures she’d left dialed low. It was five A.M. She’d have only a few hours to set up the appropriate protocols and was anxious to boot up and begin. As she crossed to the big desk, the overhead fluorescents flashed on, momentarily blinding her like a lightning strike, as a startling thunder boomed behind her.