Hot Demon Nights. Elle James

me. “Do I need to go to the police station to file missing persons reports on the clients that were stolen from here?”

      “I suggest you do that.” Now that I had what I needed, there was no point in sticking around. The place smelled of death and ash, cleverly, if not completely, disguised by a rose-scented candle burning on the man’s desk. “They will want a statement and any other information you might have.”

      Blaise followed me out the door.

      Once outside, I inhaled deeply, sucking in the polluted air of New York as if it was the nectar of the gods. The stench of death clung to my leather jacket, even as we hurried to the curb to hail a taxi.

      The employee who’d stolen or sold the bodies lived in Brooklyn, a short taxi ride away. As I lifted a hand to wave down a taxi, I brushed against a teenager who smelled distinctly of dog.

      “Werewolf,” Blaise confirmed.

      I spun to check out the young man who wore jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt, plugged into an MP3 player, like any other teenaged human. “Really?”

      The teen glanced my way. When he noticed I was watching him, he glared and turned his back to me, hurrying away.

      “Anyone tell you it isn’t nice to stare?” Demon partner hooked my elbow and dragged me around to face the street. “It’s not as though he’ll change in public.”

      Heat blossomed in my cheeks, and I forced myself to look away from where the teen had blended into the foot traffic on the sidewalk. “I can’t help it. This is crazy. You mean, all the years I thought my nose was playing tricks on me, it was right on the money?”

      Blaise’s brows drew together. “How long have you been aware of your extra-sensitive sniffer?”

      I shrugged. “My mother always said I liked to sniff my blankets when I was a baby. I could tell which one was my favorite, even half asleep and with my eyes closed. Why?”

      “Are you sure you don’t have were-blood in you? You’re not a demon with special powers or anything?”

      I snorted. “Hell, no.” I stopped. At least, I didn’t think I was.

      “Were you born in Chicago? There are plenty of paranorms there, as you probably already suspected. Can you trace your lineage back on both your mother’s and father’s sides?”

      My back stiffened. I didn’t like talking about my father. What had he ever done for me or my mother? “I don’t have a father.”

      “What do you mean?” Tall, dark and demon leaned casually against the back of the seat, but I could sense when he’d tensed.

      “He was a jerk. He left my mother when my brother was born. Not that it’s any of your business.” I turned away from him, in the opposite direction of the werewolf teen. Even after all the years of being alone, the pain I felt over my father’s desertion left me cold. The blow had been an especially tough one for my mother. She’d had to struggle to support me and my baby brother, working long, hard hours, barely able to afford a babysitter much less put food on the table.

      The heartache of my father’s desertion paled in comparison to my little brother’s disappearance when he was only five years old. There in the playground one moment, gone the next. My mother never got over his loss. I’d been twelve at the time. Mom had hung on long enough to see me graduate from high school before she passed away. I attributed everything wrong in her life to poor living conditions and a broken heart. If my father had been half a man, he’d have stuck around and helped her. But maybe my ideas about what a man should be were totally off base. Lord knows I’d never found one that lived up to my ideal.