Page 14 of The Turning of the Tables

“Yes. The same guy I picked up from the airport last week, nosy.” I knew my neck was heating up, which was totally going to give away to Noah that there was more that I wasn’t telling him.

“Why did a friend of Hart’s need a ride to the hardware store?” Noah asked.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I replied, “but because Hart is working the senator’s wife’s murder.”

“Oh.”

That effectively shut Noah up. The story had been in the news since the evening we’d been called in to the scene—I knew the FBI were trying to keep the details under wraps, but they were only going to be able to keep the press preoccupied with backstory without juicy details for so long.

Noah might like gossip, but he hated the news—especially when it involved shifter murders. I couldn’t say that I blamed him for that. I wasn’t much of a fan of the news these days, either. Protests, violence, hatred and bigotry, laws being passed across most of the South and parts of the Midwest that placed limitations or traces—like the new Virginia SID Registry—on shifters and other Arcanids. I might be human, but people I cared about were Nids. Noah, especially. But also Hart and Mason.

I paid attention because I felt like I had to know—I had to know how to protect my brother. It was instinctive. Even though Noah’s an adult—and is technically an hour older—because I was the bigger one, I’d always felt protective of him. So it was my job to know what was going to come after him.

Nevermind that if it came down to it, Noah could more than handle himself. Shifters are strong—very strong. To say nothing of his massive teeth.

“So Hart was busy,” I finished lamely. “And Elliot seems like a nice guy.”

Noah’s blue eyes sharpened. “A nice guy, huh?”

“One who lives in Wisconsin,” I said, as much for my own benefit as Noah’s. I needed the reminder that nothingwas going to come of our one-night stand. Or two- or however-many-nights it ended up being.

“Ah,” was Noah’s response. I could tell he knew that I liked Elliot, but that he also knew that I was trying not to.

Twins are like that.

“So you’re home today?” Noah politely changed the subject.

“Apparently,” I replied. “You?”

Noah nodded. “Chinese food and movies?”

“I’m in,” I agreed. “Although can we start with coffee and donuts? Six is a little early for egg rolls and General Tso’s Chicken.”

Noah laughed. “Gimme an hour, and I’ll get us some Sugar Shack.”

There’s a reason I love my brother.

I wasup at five the next morning—a full forty-nine hours after my initial exposure—to head over to the clinic to get tested. City employees, including those of us in the crime lab, the RPD, the fire department, emergency services, and everybody in the courts and city buildings, had their own clinic that was open twenty-four hours so that the city could maximize employee productivity. In other words, to make sure that we didn’t take an hour longer off work than was legally mandated.

At least a day off yesterday meant that my knee and my wrist hurt a little less then usual.

All of us had appointments between six and seven a.m., so I was about to get to go hang out with everyone else from the Johnston homicide. And yes, DNA had confirmed that Ms. Johnston was our battered victim. Unfortunately, noneof the other swabs had picked up any other DNA, which meant we still had no idea who our killer was. Not even a blood type or a general profile other than ‘probable male’ between five-foot-eight and six-foot-two. So… about half the adult population.

If we had a footprint in the mud, we could have told more—weight, probable height, gait. But a dirty shoe-print on the carpet only gave us shoe size, and that was only enough to very loosely guess height based on average shoe-size-to-height ratios. Which was only marginally better than having jack squat.

Maza and Quincy were sitting in the waiting area when I got there, both wearing the heavier respirator-style masks you were supposed to wear if you had or had been exposed to Arcana. Maza waved as I settled in the chair next to Quincy’s.

“How you feeling?” I asked her, nudging her shoulder with mine.

She rolled her light blue eyes over the top of her mask. “Fine,” she replied. “You?”

“Just peachy,” I reported. “Got a day off, though. That was kinda nice.”

Quincy snorted. “Not if you have to spend it cleaning.”

“True,” I agreed. “But at least you got paid?” The government’s solution to keeping people from coming to work sick was that they made it illegal to knowingly work if you had or had been exposed to Arcana, which meant that if you had an official trace or showed possible Arcana symptoms, your work had to pay you. Most places of employment also mandated that if you’d been traced but weren’t symptomatic, you had to work remotely. It was really hard to do CSI and police work remotely, though, so we got away with days off. Office workers, not so much.

Sure, there was sometimes a little paperwork at the crime lab, and I’d actually spent an hour filing a few things, but most of what I had to do required lab equipment or would have taken me to a scene, and that I couldn’t do from the isolation of Noah’s apartment. So we’d marathoned Indiana Jones, because why not?