Free Charming by Elliott James Page A

Chunky Cheeks before I could respond. “This is one of my contacts on the police department, Detective Ted Cahill.” After the briefest of pauses, she then indicated the older man by moving her eyes sideways and tilting her head. “And this is Stanislav Dvornik, my… friend.”
    “Am I pleased to meet you?” I asked Cahill. I was addressing him because he was a police officer, but also because I instinctively knew that the best way to piss the older guy off wouldbe to ignore him. Something about the way Sig had hesitated before calling Dvornik her “friend” suggested things I didn’t even want to think about for a variety of reasons.
    Cahill smiled mirthlessly. “No you’re not, wolf-boy,” he said. “Any more than I’m pleased to meet you. But I’m not here to arrest you or kill you, if that’s what you mean.”
    Definitely the voice of the cop in the alley.
    “These are some of the people I told you about last night,” Sig said in answer to my expression. I’d given her a mild glare for form’s sake. “The ones who helped me clean up.”
    “Do Valkyries need permission to come into someone’s house?” I asked her.
    She smiled faintly. “No. But I’m not rude either.”
    I raised my eyebrows at that but didn’t comment directly. “I was just fixing breakfast. Are you hungry?”
    Her eyes lit up and an enthusiastic smile spread over her face. It made her look like the young woman she looked like, if that makes any sense. I stared at that smile until my heart pounded on my chest as if it were trying to get my attention. “Hey, you!” my heart yelled. “Breathe, stupid! The air-conditioning in here sucks!”
    “I’m starving!” she said. “These two would hardly let me eat anything at the IHOP.”
    “You had two plates piled high with pancakes and sausage!” Cahill protested. “The waitresses were looking at your figure and trying to decide whether to call an exorcist or a contract killer.”
    “Ted exaggerates,” Sig informed me primly.
    “Well, I made plenty,” I said, turning around so that they could follow me into my house. “Even for another bottomless pit.” It was true. I needed to empty my refrigerator anyway, and I wanted to stockpile as many extra calories as I could in case Steve Ellison really did have any surviving hive members.
    I watched them follow me in the silvered glass mirror in the front hallway. A rapt expression came over Sig’s face as the smells from the kitchen reached her. Ted was watching Sig with fond bemusement, and Dvornik was watching me watch him watch me with a look of undisguised loathing on his face. He wasn’t going to look away first, and we stared at each other until I ran out of mirror.
    “Those keys I took off the vampire… I guess you found his car somewhere nearby?” I asked nonchalantly as we made our way through the living room. We didn’t have much to weave through. What’s the point of strategically placing guns and ammunition under removable floorboards all over your house if you’re going to cover them with carpeting and furniture? The only things in the room were two bookcases and a rocking chair with a quilt over it next to the woodstove.
    “We did,” Sig confirmed. “His name is—was—Alex Faulhaber. We checked his apartment out this morning.”
    Meaning they’d used one of the keys on the ring to let themselves in. I paused and looked at Sig inquiringly. Dvornik had stopped and was staring at the katana I’d placed back on the wall after the sun came up. It wasn’t casual curiosity. Cahill was watching Sig and me. That wasn’t casual curiosity either.
    “The real find was above the apartment,” Sig continued. “There’s a huge attic space over the whole complex, no windows. They had turned it into a warren for human-size rats. They had cut doors in some of the partitions, nailed planks over rafters to make new floors, and cut out roof supports here and there to make headroom. We found a niche with four