He was joking--pretty much. But she didn’t so much as smile. No, she was taking this all very seriously.
Deathly serious.
Mathias glanced around the empty shop. “Anyway, I don’t see Ozzy now. It appears it’s just you and me, Nova.”
“He’s here,” she said. “He’s upstairs in his apartment. And in case you didn’t hear him the first time, we don’t appreciate anyone coming in here asking questions about our work or our clients.”
“I heard him. I just wonder if Ozzy’s got something to hide.”
“He doesn’t,” she replied tightly.
“Do you?”
“No.”
Mathias had to give her credit. The lie slipped off her tongue without a hint of hesitation. No doubt about it, this was a woman who’d learned to keep her cards close. But had she learned it from a cold absence of conscience, or raw survival instinct?
Against all better judgment, Mathias wanted to know the answer to that--almost as much as he wanted to know why his nerve endings were tingling with the psychic aftershocks of violence.
The reading he was picking up seemed to be at its strongest right where he was sitting now.
In Nova’s client chair.
She stared at him as he ran his hands over the worn black vinyl arms. Her blue eyes revealed nothing, her stance so schooled and careful, he almost began to doubt his ability to sniff out the scene of a crime.
But no, the imprint was there.
Sharp, sudden, unmistakable.
“We need to talk, Nova.”
She didn’t so much as flinch. “I thought we already had.”
He grunted, unsure if he should be amused or infuriated by the female’s apparent disregard for her own self-preservation. He hadn’t tried to hide what he was. She had to know that provoking one of his kind was a bad idea.
Hell, if he wanted to, he could trance her and drag her off somewhere vastly more private than this, instead of letting her try her best to stonewall him and dodge his questions.
The idea held an unnatural appeal, especially when she stubbornly backed away, her arms still crossed as if to physically block him from pulling anything out of her. “I’ve got your phone number. If I have anything else to tell you, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“I doubt that. I’ll bet you tore up that note the minute I was gone.”
She went silent, and he knew he probably hit the mark, or damn close to it.
Mathias studied her in that moment, soaking in the full picture of her now--all of the tattoos and metal on her smooth skin, the sharp cut of her hair and the bold color that saturated the silken strands. He had no clue what her natural color might be, but found himself both fascinated and determined to have that answer and a hundred more where this female was concerned.
As for her ink, each piece of art had been beautifully, painstakingly rendered. Ozzy, he supposed, having recognized an artistry that rivaled Nova’s in the old man’s work on his skittish client earlier that evening.
Most of the art was abstract, beautiful vignettes of flowers and imaginative design elements. Colorful flora and fauna wrapped her lean, muscular biceps, ink covering her from the tops of her shoulders to the backs of her hands, which were tucked beneath her crossed arms. On one of her forearms, a vine of small red roses climbed up the side of a medieval-looking wall in the vague shape of a tombstone, its rounded peak crowned with a circular window segmented by mullions and delicate tracery.
What did Nova’s tattoos mean to her?
He glanced now to the design that rode just below her collarbone. Across the pert swell of her small, firm br**sts, a fierce phoenix emerged from a flourish of bright flames. Its wings unfolded across Nova’s chest, each feather so realistic Mathias could imagine the indomitable bird lifting up from her velvety skin to soar up to the sky, free and unstoppable.
And there was something else about the phoenix that snagged his attention now.
“What the--” Mathias had to look again to make certain of what he was seeing.
Nestled within the breast of the rising phoenix was a mark that was no tattoo at all. The small red crescent moon and teardrop symbol was unmistakable.
A birthmark only a rare class of female bore somewhere on her body. “You’re a Breedmate.”
Nova blinked, the first time he’d noticed her composure slip since he arrived. “Does it matter if I am?”
Hell yes, it mattered. To him, at least. He got up from the chair on a low curse. “You know what you are, and yet you choose to live among humans instead of the Breed?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a risky choice. Especially when you choose to live here, among people like the drunk who came in here last night and tried to hurt you.”
“I never told you that.”
Mathias held her troubled stare. “You didn’t have to. I can sense something violent happened in this shop. Even if I couldn’t sense it, I’d know something more than what you described took place.” He moved closer to her, then. Swept some of her black-and-blue hair away from her eyes when she made no move to do so. “Looking out for people who need my help is my job, Nova. I’ve spent the better part of my life taking monsters off the street--Breed and human alike.”
She scoffed lightly and drew away from him, shoving her hands into the pockets of her black jeans. “A regular Galahad, is that it? White horse and a gleaming sword?”
He ignored her jab. She wasn’t the first woman to accuse him of having a hero complex. Usually the charge accompanied the angry tears of a neglected lover who didn’t want to believe him that his job, and the duty it demanded, came first. Above everything else.