Inked

shone his flashlight inside. “See anything?”
    “No.” Nothing good, anyway. Water churned around a small area just inside, like acid in a stomach. It foamed along grimy walls, mixing with bits of trash that had made it past the grate, before being sucked down the dark gullet of a tunnel. I could feel the current growing, pushing relentlessly against my shins, trying to shove me inside the hungry mouth.
    And my doubts grew along with it.
    What if all the gang knew about was the death of the old man? Yes, I wanted them brought in for that, but waiting a little while wouldn’t do further harm to Wilkinson. The same couldn’t be said for Cyrus. And this little trip seemed less and less likely to yield results the longer I thought about it.
    With a setup like that, I was surprised Wilkinson hadn’t been murdered long ago. And although it hadn’t looked like anything had been taken, I didn’t know what he’d kept on hand. As for the Were, maybe he’d followed me from the first drain, waiting for the opportunity to reclaim his property. He might not have had anything to do with Wilkinson at all.
    Likewise, the fact that that body had been dumped along 91 might have nothing to do with the gang. Maybe the Hunter had placed it there at random. Maybe he’d learned that the gang was using the drain for a hangout and was taunting them. Maybe a lot of things. Because the other alternative was that a bunch of Weres were hiding a Hunter. And why did I have trouble believing that?
    I started to pull back, but stopped when the drain flickered out, like a T.V. switching stations. For a moment there was nothing, no rushing water, no dark tunnel. And then I was staring at Cyrus.
    He was standing in his living room, clutching a small plastic guitar. “I Love Rock ’n’ Roll” was blasting from the T.V. And a woman who looked a lot like me was standing in the kitchen behind him, holding a small casserole dish.
    “Okay, rock star. I think it’s done,” she said, sounding dubious.
    “I’m almost through,” he told her, fingers flying. He was going to win this with human speed, damn it. If every nine-year-old in the country could do it, how hard could it be?
    “You realize that’s only level one, right?”
    “You mean, sort of like making a soufflé?” She’d been at it all day, with much creative cursing. It still amazed him that a woman who brewed her own potions couldn’t cook worth a damn.
    “A soufflé is Freebird on expert,” she said crossly, as the last few notes faded away.
    Your mother doesn’t count as a fan, the screen informed him.
    Damn nine-year-olds.
    He joined her in the kitchen to find her staring into a small white container and biting her lip. They watched as the contents slowly melted, like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. “We could try it,” he offered manfully.
    “Try what? There’s nothing left!” She poked at the sad remains with a spoon.
    Cyrus threw an arm around her shoulders and kissed her flour-streaked cheek. She was warm and smelled like butter and spices and Lia. He was suddenly starving, but not for food.
    “You know what they say about the best way to a man’s heart?”
    “Yeah.”
    “They lie.”
    An hour later, she dropped a daub of sauce from the calzones they’d ordered in, and he leaned over the kitchen table and caught her wrist, putting his mouth over the pulse point. He slowly licked the sauce away, daring her with his eyes. The taste of her pulse under his tongue was enough to escalate the slow rolling pleasure of her company into something more. He wanted. Now.
    They’d been dating for months, but he sometimes wondered if she realized it. Lunches and dinners spent talking about her cases had slid into movie nights at his place, laundry dates at hers and weekends spent riding the motorcycles they both loved. Yet she still treated him more like a colleague than anything else.
    It was driving him out of what was left of his mind.
    She grinned, and it was purely her, the insolent charm that made him respond to her from the very beginning. “All right, rock star. Let’s see what you’ve got.” He just sat there for a moment, sure he’d misunderstood. Until she laughed and pulled him up from the table. “You keep looking at me like that, and we won’t even make it to the bed.”
    They did, although he was never quite sure how.
    The scene abruptly flipped back to the drain and I staggered, the water almost sucking me through the opening. A hand came down