“Are you sure?” Caine and Jace asked in unison.
She nodded, then rubbed at her nose with the back of her gloved hand. “I’m positive. I memorized that signature. The feel of it is the same.”
“But that’s impossible,” Jace remarked. “We got the guy, remember? Mel Howard confessed to the murders and he’s dead.”
She glared at Jace. “And I’m telling you it’s the same.”
Caine raised his hand to stop the impending argument. “Okay. We’ll file it as evidence and see what we get with the rest. There’s an explanation and we’ll find it.”
Nodding, Jace went back to searching the floor grid, but he couldn’t shake the sensation of dread rushing over him like adrenaline. If it was the same magical signature, then something was going on that none of them had faced before. Something outside even the Otherworlder realm. Which was not a comforting thought at all. If they were supposed to be the monsters, then what in hell had killed this girl?
Bending down to bag a dark fiber, the hair on the back of Jace’s neck rose to attention. A charged sensation skimmed the surface of his skin. He’d experienced feelings like this before, but only within the confines of Necropolis. And usually when he was around his lycan pack.
He stood and waited for the sensation to pass, but it didn’t. Instead, it seemed to intensify. Was there a storm in the area? The sky had been clear when they drove into the city.
Glancing around, Jace tried to determine where the sensation was radiating from. He looked at Lyra. Was she doing a spell? Is that what he was sensing, her magic? But when he watched her, he noticed that she was busy pulling fibers and whatnot from the mouth and nose of the victim, not incanting a spell.
So if not magic, what?
Captain Morales stepped into Jace’s periphery and cleared his throat. “When you’re done and need to go back to the lab, I have your police escort here. She’s on loan from another department.” He glanced behind him. “This is Tala Channing.”
A lithe young woman stepped around Hector and nodded toward the team. Her green eyes flashed like emeralds in the glaring spotlights.
Jace found he couldn’t breathe.
Chapter 3
N ot prepared for the situation, Tala Channing watched in rapt fascination as the members of the Otherworld Crime Unit gathered around the lycan as he dropped to his knees. Was he having a heart attack?
She had read up on lycan physiology, well, as much as she could find in the meager pickings of local libraries, and every text had claimed that lycans were physically superior and healthy. That they rarely suffered from sickness. They couldn’t have heart attacks, could they?
Jace Jericho certainly didn’t look like a man that would suffer from heart problems. He had a powerful body. Even in the shadows of the house, Tala could tell he possessed a fine form. His T-shirt clung to his wide frame. His arms bulged with muscles, as did his legs, even under the faded denim of his pants.
Not that Tala had been staring at him. Her gaze had fixed on his for only a brief moment. It was just that he was very hard not to notice.
The petite, dark-haired woman, the witch on the team, Tala assumed, put her hands on Jace’s forehead and on the back of his neck and closed her eyes. Tala thought the touch looked very intimate, something a lover would do. Not that she cared. She didn’t even know the lycan, let alone harbor any feelings toward him.
But deep down inside, a tiny flare of jealousy ignited.
“What’s wrong, Jace?” The vampire chief investigator asked.
Jace shook his head. “I don’t know. I feel strange.”
“Is it a spell, Lyra?” Caine asked the witch.
Opening her eyes, she removed her hands. “No. I don’t feel any conventional magic.” Her gaze swept the room and locked onto Tala.
Tala had the urge to back away. The witch’s stare was penetrating. But what was she looking at her for? Tala hadn’t done anything. She was merely following orders.
Jace pushed to his feet and rubbed a hand over his face and into his hair. “I’m fine. Must be all the smells in here.”
“Gather all the evidence you collected and put it in your kit. You can take a look at the barrel in the backyard. That’s probably where the perp burned her clothes. Then you can head back with Lyra to the lab and start processing with the lab techs Hector loaned us,” Caine suggested.
“I said I’m fine,” Jace growled back.
The hair on Tala’s arms rose with the lycan’s words. His voice made her shiver and not in an entirely unpleasant manner. There was a certain power in him and he affected her. She supposed she should’ve expected it.
“There’s nothing more here to collect. I’ll go back with the body.” Caine clapped Jace on the shoulder, then turned to go back to the victim. “I’ll see you at the lab.”