A Terrible Fall of Angels (Zaniel Havelock #1)(46)

“It’s hard to explain,” I said, and knew it was the wrong thing to have said as soon as I saw his jaw clench.

“I am good at my job, Detective Havelock,” he said; his eyes darkened like gray clouds filling up with rain.

“I know you are, Adam, I mean Assistant to the Medical Examiner Thornton.” Something on the bandages had caught on the shirtsleeve so I couldn’t get it over them.

“I am not stupid, Detective.”

“I never said you were.” I tried to force the sleeve over, but it actually hurt to press on it. Scratches always hurt worse than deep wounds at first, more nerve endings exposed to the air.

“Then why is it hard to explain to me? Are you afraid I won’t understand the attack, the demon, or the magic involved?”

“No, that’s not what I meant at all,” I said, and tried to think of a way to save the conversation without hurting Kate. She’d been hurt enough for one day.

“I know more magic than you do.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said, and finally gave up getting the sleeve over the bandages, which meant I turned to the other man with the shirt hanging off my arms like I couldn’t dress myself.

“Then why are you insinuating that I won’t understand a simple demon attack?” he asked, his gray eyes the color of storm clouds. Apparently, he was one of those people whose eyes just got darker the more pissed they were; if they reached black, I wondered what would happen.

“First, there was nothing simple about the attack,” I said, but he wasn’t looking at me, or he wasn’t looking at my face. He was staring at my stomach.

He reached out to touch my stomach. I jerked back out of reach and that hurt, but I didn’t want him touching my bare stomach. Maybe I’d been too fast to say he wasn’t bisexual, because he tried to touch my stomach again.

“Stop it, Thornton. We don’t know each other that well.”

He frowned up at me. “I’m not trying to touch your abs, I’m trying to get a sense of the demon marks. Did anyone get pictures of your wounds or take measurements?”

“Pictures, yes, but no measurements,” I said.

“That was careless,” he said.

“This isn’t like a true physical beast,” I said. “The demon’s hands can change shape. Measurements don’t help with beings like this.”

“They do with some demons, Havelock; you have enough background in the Infernal to know that some of the demonic have set shapes.”

“This one didn’t,” I said.

“Let me take measurements now.”

“I’d have to remove the bandages for that.”

He looked up at me with a so-what? look on his face. “Thornton, you either need to get out of the lab more often, or never leave the lab.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked, frowning and ready to take offense.

“It means I am not ripping off a clean medical dressing in a locker room just so you can take measurements that won’t matter. The demon changed shape several times while we were fighting it; anything that mutable won’t be caught from physical measurements.”

Adam leaned closer to my bandages as if he could see through them. I tried to remember what his psychic talent was, but it was something to do with lab work, so why was he bent over like he could see through the bandages?

I finally asked, “What are you looking at, Adam?”

“Your wounds, they’re partially healed.”

“You can see through the bandages?” I asked.

He nodded and leaned in even closer like his nose was going to bump into me soon. “I can see that which is hidden,” he said, as if that explained what he was doing. I knew it was psychic and not magic because I felt nothing. Psychic gifts can be used unseen even around other gifted people, but magic is harder to hide; no one knows why it works that way, it just does.

“Help me get the cuffs unbuttoned and you can have the shirt,” I said, hoping to distract him from getting his face any closer to my abdomen.

Adam looked up at me, his gray eyes back to their usual color. He wasn’t angry anymore; he was interested. “I’ve seen bodies cut up by demons; you should be in the hospital, Havoc, not almost healed.”

“There was an angel, it helped heal me,” I said, and just reached across my own body to start trying to undo the cuff on my injured arm, because Adam didn’t seem to want to help. My arm coming across my stomach did move him a little back from me. He even stood up.

“I didn’t hear about an angel manifesting at the hospital.”

“It wasn’t exactly a manifestation,” I said. I was not sharing what happened with him, for the same reason I didn’t want to share Kate’s secret with him; he talked when he shouldn’t have about things sometimes. What had happened at the hospital would get around; there’d been too many witnesses for it not to become gossip, but none of it would come from me. They could make up what they wanted, but I wasn’t helping the rumors.

“Is that why the wounds are almost closed without scabbing, as if the skin is just closing back up?” he asked.

It was harder to undo the cuff buttons with the shirt inside out, but I finally got them, but realized the bandages still impeded me getting the sleeve off, which meant I needed the other sleeve off first. It’s funny that sometimes smaller injuries can surprise you with how inconvenient they can be.