He walked through the marbled entrance hall. It was hard to believe that only three months ago this house had been little more than a crater in the ground. Every thing was the same, right down to the knickknacks that lined the bookcase shelves.
Stephan closed the study door and walked to the bar. "Whisky?"
"Double. No ice."
Stephan raised an eyebrow. "Trouble with the case?"
"No."
"Then what?"
He accepted his drink and swallowed half of it in one gulp. The liquid burned its way down his throat, hitting his stomach with the force of a hot brick. "I hate being a bastard."
Stephan sat on the sofa and crossed his legs. "We're talking about your treatment of Sam?"
He nodded.
"Then the solution is simple. Stop being one."
"The solution is simple, all right. You can transfer her to another section. Or another agent."
"I've all ready told you that's not going to happen."
He met his brother's gaze. Stephan smiled, though it never touched his eyes.
"You work too well together, Gabriel. It's almost instinctive, the way you two interact, and that's extremely rare."
"My partners have a horrible tendency to die in the line of duty. I told you the last time it happened that I will not go through it again." He downed more whisky.
"If she is fated to die, it will happen, whether or not she's your partner."
He finished the whisky and shoved the glass down on the desk. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, unable to keep still, he began to pace.
"It damn well almost happened today."
Stephan frowned. "I read a report that mentioned her involvement in a disturbance at a nightclub. The owner's in intensive care." He hesitated. "Did she put him in there?"
"No. She went there to interview him, as he was apparently Harry Maxwell's regular Jadrone supplier."
Stephan's frown deepened. "Harry was human. Jadrone shouldn't affect him."
"Exactly what I said. But according to her, she was regularly picking up an overdosed Harry. The only reason he never ended up with a rap sheet was because Frank kept getting the charges dropped."
"But Frank's human, and I'm pretty sure his wife is, as well."
"And according to Sam's profile, she's also human, but she was given enough of the drug to kill an elephant changer, and it affected her the way it would affect any changer. The doctors who looked after her have no idea how she actually survived."
"The fact that she was given Jadrone suggests that whoever did the administering knew she was something other than human. And that begs the question, how?"
Gabriel paused, thinking back to what she'd said. "I think the answer to that is simple. According to Sam, she ordered the owner to tell his girlfriend to change to human shape. Yet the owner hadn't told her his girlfriend was amongst the other birds flying around."
"And usually, only changers that can sense other changers." Stephan paused. "But why she was given Jadrone rather than simply being left to die in the fire like the owner?"
"That I don't know, and I'm afraid she was too washed out by the Jadrone to really remember anything useful about the attack."
"But you'll question her when she's recovered?"
"Of course." He walked across to the window and stared at the moon-washed garden. "Something else happened today, though. Something that worries me."