Lover Beware 04 - Only Human

that..."
    He shrugged. "Very little scent remains."
    "We already knew the killer was a lupus."
    "Perhaps you did. I didn't until now. There are some who might want to fake the slaying of men by lupi."
    Lily remembered their audience, a wide-eyed attendant who might talk to the wrong person, like a reporter. She jerked her head, indicating she wanted him to follow, and headed for the door.
    He thanked the attendant politely. She should have done that, she thought, upset and not knowing why. Had she counted so much on his sense of smell to give her a lead? That was foolish.
    He caught up with her at the door and took her elbow. “I want coffee. Something to get the taste of this place out of my mouth."
    Before she stopped to think, she'd agreed. Together they left that cold, bright room with its neatly filed bodies.
    INSTINCT TOOK HER to Bennie's Bar & Grill. Bennie's was large, dark, and noisy, known for its cheeseburgers. As soon as she stepped inside, Lily sighed. Usually her instincts weren't this lousy.
    Bennie's was a cop hangout.
    It wasn't crowded at this hour. She only spotted two faces she knew as they headed for the back, but everyone seemed to recognize the man with her. The looks she and Rule drew varied from startled to snarly. Cops were good with faces, and his was memorable.
    By the time they sat in a booth near the rest rooms, she was feeling self-conscious and prickly. "I wonder if this is how a white woman felt in Selma in 1960 if she went into a restaurant with a black man."
    He shook his head slowly. "Our fellow customers aren't going to take either of us out in the alley and beat us up for having dared to be seen in public together. The waitress won't even refuse to serve me."
    She grimaced. "I'm overreacting, you mean."

    262
    EILEENWILKS
    “There are parallels. If people hadn't started refusing to sit at the back of the bus back then, measures like the Species Citizenship Bill wouldn't be possible now. Have you given any thought to going out with me?"
    She blinked. "For a supposedly sophisticated man, you have lousy timing. I just watched you sniffing a corpse."
    "It's a subject that will keep coming up, good timing or not."
    A waitress drifted up—young, blond, and pierced. There was a ring in her eyebrow, three studs on one ear, and another ring in the belly button her midriff-hugging top exposed. She set Lily's water in front of her without glancing in her direction.
    Her eyes were wholly on Turner, huge with fascination ... and fear.And he knew. Awareness of the girl's fear was there in the flicker of his eyes, the softness of his voice as he ordered coffee.
    "I'll have a cup, too," Lily said, peeling the paper from her straw. "Make it blond."
    The waitress nodded and left.
    Lily crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. "Is it because you're a lupus? Or do you get all this attention because you're a celebrity?"
    He didn't pretend to misunderstand. "I'm probably the only lupus she'll ever meet—knowingly, at least."
    Lily nodded as a piece fell into place. “That's the reason for all the black, isn't it? I've never seen a photograph of you where you're wearing colors. Just black. You want people to recognize you. You want them to know they're meeting a lupus."
    Amazingly, a touch of color sharpened those hard cheekbones. "Black is good theater."
    "And your face is unforgettable. When people see you, they remember. You do the mystery bit well—a hint of glamour, the allure of the forbidden or the dangerous. That's the image you want people to associate with lupi. You're sort of a poster boy for your people."
    "Thank you."
    He was insulted. She grinned. "You don't like being called a boy or cocky, which is for puppies. I think you've started to believe your image."

    Only Human
    263
    All at once he grinned back. "Maybe I have."
    The grin transformed his face, turning it from dark and disturbing to someone outrageously appealing—but someone who wore ragged jeans on weekends, played baseball with the guys, and changed the oil in his car. Lily didn't even think about trying to reply. She was too caught up in that grin, what it did to his eyes and the way it lifted her heart
    "Here you go." The waitress deposited their coffee, dump-ing a couple of containers of creamer beside Lily's cup.
    Lily hadn't so much as glimpsed her approach. Shaken, she tore one of the creamers open and dumped half the contents into her coffee.
    Had he used some kind of magic on her? Or did it just spill