Free Angel: Private Eye Book One by Odette C. Bell

hire
coinvestigators.”
    “Coinvestigators?”
    “The police will do their investigation, and
we’ll do ours.”
    “Why would you hire two people to do the
same thing?”
    He switched his attention to me, looking at
me from underneath his eyebrows, making his gaze as dark and
shadowy as a grave stone cast into gloom. “Because we’ll get them
the answers they really want.”
    I balked at that, switching my gaze back to
the road as a massive unmarked van beeped at me wildly. I shifted
off and promptly stalled. Swearing, I started the car again and
inched forward.
    “You’ll have to drive faster than that. Come
on, show me it wasn’t a complete mistake hiring you.”
    “You hired me to find out what Mr Benson
wants and to piss him off,” I said. It was exactly the kind of
comment I would always keep to myself. Blame it on the fact I just
found out I’d become a homicide detective, but my tongue was a heck
of a lot looser and freer than it should be.
    Mr Marvelous grunted. “Not as stupid as you
look, are you? But those aren’t the only reasons I hired you.
Believe it or not, I see something in you, kid. Something I can
mold and shape until you’re exactly like me.” He grinned.
    I didn’t. I tried to sink my attention back
into driving this beast in the hopes it would distract me from what
would come next.
    It didn’t. Nothing could.
    Sooner rather than later, Mr Marvelous
pointed to the side of the street and told me to stop.
    I pulled up to the curb, body already a
shaking, sweaty mess. My gaze jerked to the side and locked on a
small apartment block. It was cordoned off with police tape, and
the fell wind that had been chasing through the city streets since
this morning batted it like an invisible army.
    Several strands had come completely loose
and whipped through the air in a manic dance.
    By the time I scrounged the courage to open
the door and pour my shaking form out onto the pavement, the wind
was so wild it sounded like 1000 wolves howling into a PA
system.
    Though I wanted to say Mr Marvelous walked
confidently towards the apartment block, that would be denying the
exact ashen quality of his skin. His face had lost all its color,
and he instantly looked at least 20 years older.
    He strode right through a section a police
tape, but his body didn’t break it. It shifted through the tape as
it suddenly became lines of magical light that hissed and sizzled
along his pot belly.
    Me, I stopped right outside of the tape,
stomach suddenly a knot of nerves and bubbling, gagging, churning
fear.
    My head jerked up towards the apartment
block as if someone had attached a string around the top of my
neck. Beyond the tape I could hear several hushed murmured
whispers. I assumed they were police officers, but as I tipped my
head from left to right, I couldn’t see anyone.
    “Who’s muttering?” I asked as I finally
gathered the courage to throw myself through the tape.
    It was a truly nasty feeling to have the
tape turning to magical lines of light that flickered and groped
around the exposed skin of my wrists and fingers.
    Immediately I brought my hands up and rubbed
them together as I ran to catch up to Mr Marvelous.
    “No one is muttering, kid. Now get your mind
on the game. You stay right behind me and you don’t touch anything.
You don’t say anything. And if you feel the need to throw up, you
hold on and you do it outside. You understand?” He flashed me a
look as he threw himself up the front steps and barreled through
the door. He was like a boulder gathering speed to ensure it had
the momentum to roll all the way down the hill.
    I had no momentum. I was flat, and there was
absolutely no chance whatsoever that I was going to get through
this without throwing up and crying.
    “Hurry up,” Mr Marvelous grumbled from
inside the apartment door, his voice echoing out like a clap of
thunder.
    I had no choice but to follow.
    Some humans fancied they had extrasensory
abilities – a dash of