Hyde, an Urban Fantasy Read online

  Yeah, right. The perfect woman. He was a heck of a judge of that. Turns out, she was even more fucked up than he was. If that was possible. Which it wasn’t. Hell, maybe they deserved each other. Of course she was crazy—there was no way the same woman could be his perfect lover and be sane, too.

  He shouldn’t have gone out last night. He kept his liquor cabinet well-stocked. People in mourning over a family member should not get soused around other people. Or pick up strange, gorgeous women and have wild, hot, most-definitely consensual sex all night with them. Especially people like him. Not that there was anyone like him. Bad idea all around. But those few hours had given him a reprieve from himself, from who he was, what he was. And that was good. Very good.

  He’d even been nice to her. Holy shit, when was the last time that had happened? Nah, it was a good thing she was nuts. Certainly safer . . . for everyone.

  He got up, showered, dressed and headed out, stopping only briefly to stare at every place they’d been—walls, doorways, stairs. Why’d she have to ruin it with a lame excuse like she was sleepwalking? Fuck, the least she could have done was come up with a better lie. Sleepwalking, my ass.

  He hit the office at 9:15. Not too late. Jolie was already sitting at her desk, typing something. Her coffee-brown hair was wrapped into a bun that bounced slightly when she looked up at him. She raised an eyebrow, looked at her Gucci watch and went back to work. She had a knack for looking busy whether he’d given her anything to do or not. Maybe she really was working, he had no idea. He was just glad to have her running his life, since, obviously, he was doing a shit-poor job of it. Maybe he should have her vet any future women he planned on taking to bed. Get rid of the psychos before they had a chance to mess with his head.

  “Good morning, Mitchell.”

  “Do I look old to you?”

  “What?”

  “Old. Do I look like an old man?” He watched her expression change as she struggled to figure out what the hell he was talking about. “Is thirty the new sixty or something? What? You follow that kind of shit.” Damn it, thirty-one isn’t old. “Never mind. What’s doing today?”

  Jolie gave him one last look of “what the—” and then pulled out the day planner that held her brain and his life. She read off a short list of clients who had appointments today and what she’d arranged in terms of his travel itinerary for his upcoming speaking engagements.

  “They want to change the date for your speech to the MemCo execs. I told them it was impossible.”

  “Why?” He picked up the cup of coffee she brought him every morning and sat down on the edge of her desk.

  “The new date is the third.”

  “Oh. Yeah, that would not be good. Well, if that’s when they want to do it, they can find someone else.”

  “They wanted you. They’ve already given your book out to all the V.P.s in preparation for your talk.”

  “Golly, it’s too bad I can’t be there. I guess they’ll actually have to read it now, won’t they?”

  She tilted her head in annoyance. “Mitchell, I get that part of the reason you are so successful is because, for some reason, your clients respect the fact that you don’t give a damn about them, but there’s a limit.”

  “Is there? It seems to be working really well so far.”

  “Shockingly, you’re right. But, yes, there is a limit.”

  He shook his head. “No limits, Jolie. There are no limits in business. Or life. You should read my book.”

  She sighed and looked down to the planner. “MemCo is trying to reschedule the meeting—”

  “See? It works.”

  “They are trying. But aren’t happy about it. Something about wherever else you need to be cannot possibly be more important than they are.”

  “Well, I’d like to see their faces if I actually did show up on the third. Then we’d see how unhappy they can be.” Or how terrified. Or, possibly, how dead. He stood up and walked into his office.

  Jolie followed him in. “Mitchell, the police called.”

  His steps faltered. He rubbed his jaw. It was like a bear trap he needed leverage to open. “What did they want?”

  “They put a new detective on the case. He wants to ask you about her again.”

  He forced himself to quell the hiccupping of his breath. But the images of Shelly’s body—broken and bloodied, leaning against his back door casually as if she’d just sat down to wait for someone—for him—came flooding into his mind. He couldn’t make it to his desk. He sat down hard on the long, white couch against the wall and waited for his guilt to go away. Until the next time it appeared. Like in about ten minutes from now.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Jolie sat next to him, so close her knee hit his. She took his hand and squeezed it between hers. “Mitchell, they believed me. You’re not a suspect any more. The new guy probably just wants to start from scratch, or to ask about anyone who might have wanted to hurt her, since they’ve run out of leads. It’ll be okay.”

  He pulled his hand out of her grasp and stood. He owed her. Big. But he would never understand why she’d done what she did. She’d put herself on the line with her lie and sometimes he wished she hadn’t said anything at all.

  Every day part of him considered going down to the police station and turning himself in. Too bad there were those other parts of him—one that knew she’d be brought up on charges too, just for providing an alibi for a guilty man. Another that feared the carnage he would create if put in a prison cell with other men, before spending the rest of his life in a lab somewhere, being poked and tested.

  And then there was the side that, even knowing the evil inside him, still couldn’t believe he’d killed her. What kind of a man would kill his own sister? Whether he’d been something else at the time or not.

  CHAPTER II

  “What do you want?”

  “You need to work on your telephone etiquette. It stinks.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Tell me what you want.”

  “Your goody-two-shoes isn’t so goody anymore.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Eden Colfax—Jekyll0025. She switched. Should we start calling her Hyde now? What number are we up to?”

  “No, Eden Colfax isn’t a Hyde, she’s a Jekyll.”

  “She was a Jekyll, emphasis on the ‘was.’ I saw her last night. Her handler is out of town so, as a good little employee, I kept an eye on her. Last night she left her apartment. And she definitely acted more like a Hyde than a Jekyll.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “So pole-dancing and practically screwing someone in public is just another facet of her good side? Interesting.”

  “How long has her handler been gone?”

  “Ten days.”

  “She’s been without any serum for ten days?”

  “Tops. Before he left, he dosed a few jugs of milk. But who knows, maybe she suddenly decided she was lactose-intolerant.”

  “Ten days. That doesn’t make sense. Did you switch the serums? Give her handler the one meant for Hyde0016 by mistake?”

  “I would never make that mistake.” Oh, shit. Did I? No.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t. Mixing up the two serums would be colossally stupid. You’re not colossally stupid, are you, Cabot?”

  “No. . .” Asshole, I’m not.

  “Then I want a full report in my inbox in twenty minutes. Exactly what you saw, what she did, and who she spoke to.”

  “She did more grinding and pawing than speaking.”

  “Fine. Then tell me exactly who she . . . grinded.”

  “She seemed to hone right in on our boy, Mitchell.”

  “Turner? Now, that is interesting. He was in his human form?”

  “Obviously. Hyde isn’t due for another few weeks. And it’s not like I’d let him out on the town. ”

  “Did Turner recognize her?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Of course, I was hiding behind a curtain the e
ntire time.”

  “Poor you. What happened?”

  “He took her to his house. And, while I have no proof, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t to show her his decorating prowess.”

  “Are you suggesting that they went there to have sexual intercourse?”

  “Yes, that is what I am suggesting.” Idiot.

  “That just might be good news.”

  Not really. “Also, a new detective is investigating the death of Mitchell’s sister, Shelly.”

  “You mean the murder, don’t you? Or have you already blacked-out that little mistake?”

  “It was self-defense.”

  “So your very tardy report stated.”

  “A very tardy report that the board quickly signed off on. And, anyway, why do you care? You guys wrote her off years ago.”

  “She didn’t show any capacity for transformation, but we hadn’t written her off. She had the susceptibility markers and was being used.”

  “As a broodmare.”

  “A crude, but accurate, comparison.”

  “So find another.”

  “Do you think it is easy to find these people? People we can use for the trials? It took us years to find someone other than her brother to impregnate her.”

  Eww. “Wow, thank God you found another Hyde or your newborn guinea pig might have had some kind of defect.”

  “Your sarcasm is tiresome. Send me that report.”

  “Fine. But it will be short unless you want to hear all the gory details.”

  “I’ll speak to someone about the detective. Is that it?”

  “What about his dosing schedule? And what should I do about Eden until her handler comes back?”

  “I’ll check on it. Expect an answer later today. Oh, and Cabot? The next time you have something to report, follow procedure and write me an email. I don’t enjoy having my time wasted.”

  “You betcha, boss.”

  § § §

  Eden stormed into her apartment and locked the deadbolt behind her. For once, the tiny, two-bedroom, one-bath apartment didn’t make her feel claustrophobic. The walls that usually felt as if they were closing in on her were exactly what she needed. Something small and familiar to surround her with a sense of safety, regardless of the truth of it. This place had never been her home, though she’d tried to make it one for her and Carter. The cheap, second-hand furniture in various shades of greenish-brown and the appliances in 1970’s almond-yellow were a comfort compared to the modern chic she’d just left. The devil-you-know sort of thing. The devil-you-don’t-wake-up-naked-next-to sort of thing.

  After a quick glance at the door to Carter’s room, she ran through the kitchen to the bathroom. Carter wouldn’t be home for another two weeks, but she still shut the door before ripping off her clothes and tossing them into the trash. Despite the scalding hot water pouring down on her, she shivered, scrubbing her body clean.

  She took the showerhead off its clip, turned the spray from “rain” to “pounding”, and aimed it between her legs. The water punished that sensitive area he’d been inside of. What had she done to end up at a stranger’s house with no memory of any of it?

  The sleepwalking had started when Eden was thirteen and disappeared by seventeen. So much of it was lost in her subconscious. Even back then, what she supposedly did or said bothered her, but ultimately didn’t matter. It wasn’t as if she killed people in her sleep.

  She knew it had started again, but this? No. Six years. It had been six years with no more waking up in the kitchen with crumbs on her pajamas, surrounded by food that would normally have made her gag. Six years of knowing she’d still be in her bed in the morning and not in another room. And the entire twenty-three years of her existence of never waking up with anyone. While the life she’d thought she was living crumbled around her, she remembered what it used to be.

  Good times, good times. Four foster homes. A group home. Lots of tears. Confusion. Dread. She’d started sleepwalking in foster home number two. Or was it three? Shortly after it had become a regular component of her nights, her state-assigned social worker sent her to a therapist. The shrink had said that her particular sleep disorder usually occurred in younger children and disappeared by adolescence. Therefore, his theory was that Eden’s issues involved something deep and dark from her past. Apparently, by thirteen, kids in the system were supposed to have worked all that stuff out and be normal. Yeah, right. Eden had confessed that the deep and dark thing was probably the sound of her foster father slipping into her room after everyone else in the house went to bed.

  The therapist had cut the session short to make a phone call. Eden hadn’t even gotten to the ‘it’s all my psycho mother’s fault’ discussion. Isn’t that what one was supposed to tell a shrink—true or not? Granted, in Eden’s case, it was undoubtedly part of it.

  Eden had been placed in a different home immediately, but the sleepwalking came with her. Then, one more foster home and two group homes later, it just stopped.

  Until now.

  A few days before, she’d woken up fully dressed, the front door part-way open, mud on her shoes. It had scared the living heck out of her, but nothing in comparison to this.

  God, when will Carter come home? She slumped down against the edge of the bathtub and slid the rest of the way, curling her legs to her chest as the water shot up toward the ceiling. She didn’t even bother to wipe the wet strands of hair from her eyes.

  How could she tell him what she’d done? Their relationship wasn’t a romantic one, but for some reason she still felt as if she’d cheated on him. The idea that Carter had been with other women didn’t bother her at all—it was totally understandable. She had no claim on him, no reason to expect his fidelity. Of course, she’d never had any proof that he was sleeping with or dating anyone. He kept that part of his life to himself. They’d been ‘together’ for years as best friends, roommates, co-dependents, but she’d have to be completely delusional to think he was celibate. Like she used to be. Did it count if she hadn’t done it knowingly?

  She climbed to her feet and turned off the water. Wrapping a towel around herself, she trudged into her bedroom and put on some clothes. A turtleneck and long pants in the summer, as if covering her body would lessen her vulnerability.

  Carter might not answer his phone, but hearing his voice on the voicemail recording would be something. Something to reconnect her to reality. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hey, babe.” His voice felt like a blanket, a warm, thick cover to hide under.

  “Carter? Can you talk?” The shaking started again, forcing her to hold the phone tighter to her ear.

  “What’s up? Are you okay?”

  “I am now. I—I need to talk to you about something.”

  “I only have about two minutes. We’re heading into class. What’s wrong?”

  Two minutes to bare her soul, put some of this weight onto his shoulders and let him obsess about it until he got home . . . or decided not to come home at all. Pass the Crime Tech exam and stay in Key West. “I’m not sure you want to know. When are you coming back?”

  “A week and a half more of classes, and then we have the wrap-up sessions. I come home on a Monday, I think. Then I’ll be prepping for the forensics’ exam and hopefully be doing some slave-labor interning at the station in Ft. Lauderdale. My flight info is on the calendar. Is everything okay?”

  “Ye—No.”

  “What is it? You sound upset.”

  She couldn’t lie to him, the feeling of nausea she’d had since this morning gaining strength. “I’m having sleep issues.” Well, that’s the understatement of the year.