It’s been ten years since that day.
I can still feel his thoughts.
His past, present and future.
The things he had done.
The shifters he had killed.
Even those he planned to kill in the future.
My skin crawled like it still held his shape.
The blood of his victims on my hands.
The pure joy he felt in each moment.
The arrousal that peaked with every life taken.
He rivaled in it, took pleaser in watching it.
It took me a second to realise the ringing in my ears wasn’t in my past but in the here and now.
“Shifters investigations, Alrexia speaking?”
I listened to the histerical wife of a lion shifter as she ranted and raved over the phone.
Her voice rising in volume with each word she spoke.
Momentairily distracted as I wrote down the womans details.
Noting that she had signed a contract stating that her husband was free to persue other females.
Yet somehow she was still demanding we investigate the indentity of her and I qoute “rivals.”
“I understand ma’am. However our investigations are under strict no intent to harm legislative laws-”
Cutting me off she preceeded to double back with her clear intentions to dispose of whoever we found to be touching her man only to sweatly say she, “Just wants to hash things out.”
I struggled to hold back a laugh with that one esspecially after the, “That bitch needs to back off my man before she finds herself six feet under.” comment.
Suffice to say the click sounded after a tyrand of insults that we clearly were not real investigaters if we wouldn’t even help a woman in need of “Taming her lion.”
Lions who were noctorious for multiple partners.
Hence the contract.
More often then not though they marry shifters with the instincts of a manogamous relationship like missy here a prairie vole.
Most likely plucked right out of the slums and slammed into upper society with no idea what she was getting into.
It always ends the same.
All shifters seem to think that they have special powers when it comes to fighting animal instincts.
News flash, its not possible.
I should know.
Even in human form.
Lions are who they are and no shifter will ever change that.
Just like prairie Voles.
Niether one can combat what’s inbuilt into thier DNA.
This was not my first time having the same conversation nor was it the strangest.
Each client more crazier then the last.
Some so insane that I swear I couldn’t make this shit up.
One of the main reasons I continued to work here was because of an agreement I had made with Seth.
A wolf shifter and the owner of Shifters investigations.
Having no money he offered to look into my strange powers in exchange for helping him handle the large intake of clients.
I did everything from answer phones, to book keeping.
Even the ocassional stake out or two.
That was two years ago.
Since then he has even started paying me.
Not alot granted considering the clientelle.
I mean when your offices are located in the shady part of town you take what you can get.
The only residents being that of second class citizens the state deems to inconsequential to be seen amongst the upper class.
Meaning shifters that are of no use, like rodents and the occassional insect, or even people like me who have no idea what they are.
It doesn’t help that Seth has a soft spot when it comes to the down trodden.
Excepting good favours for payment instead of cold hard cash.
Now I’m not complaining, much.
(Hear me out before you judge me.) While I am greatful to at least earn enough to keep food on the table and a roof over my head.
Since the day I darkened Seth’s doorstep with pleas for some semblance of a normal life I have little to show from our original agreement.
So far Seth’s found nothing what so ever that could possibly help me understand my powers.
Some investigater he was.
I mean honestly not one useful thing in two years.
It wasn’t his fault though its not like there was a yellow pages for dark souls are us or a support group called, how not to turn into other people 101.
So far just one obscure text written in a dialect thats so old no shifter alive can translate it.
The only reason we know it has to do with me is by the illustrations of one human facing another with the same birth mark, two small orbs that swirl around each other with the words soul whisperer, hand written in the margins.
It was worse than obscure.
It was like the textbook was a torture device that existed just to tease me with its posiibilites.
The book in question burning a hole in my desk draw under lock and key.
Taunting my thoughts even now.
“New client?”
“Not unless you want to be an accessary to murder”
“Lion?”
“You bet cha.”
His laugh sounded off the paper thin walls as he shook his head.
“Every time.”
Walking towards my desk Seth folded his muscled arms across his chest and leaned against the edge.
Forcing me to roll my chair back on instinct my breath catching at the close call.
His hands now grasping the table edge like the wood beneath his fingers offended him somehow.
His dark hair just long enough to curl behind his ears with a touch of sunkissed streaks lightening the ends.
Blue eyes staring down towards me like they had the power to read my mind.
His forehead crinkled to the point of concerntration while his PI gears churned.
“Thinking about him again?”
I scowled looking straight ahead, suddenly more interested in the wall then his luming figure hating his acurate deduction of my current state of mind.
“Is there something you need?”
He sighed knowing me well enough that I had no intention of answering.
“There’s no way he survived Rexy. You need to believe that.”
The phone started ringing next to his planted rear end.
Since answering it would place my hand dangerously close to his still gripping fingers, I let it ring.
This being a mistake on my part since each ring sliced through the tension in the air like some biological weapon set to blow the moment I addressed it.
“Is somebody going to answer that?”
Seth’s foot jolted out kicking my office chair sending me flying in an almost comical office prank trend.
The final result ending in the client who had just walked through the door to be doubled over with laughter.
The sound a gurgled, grating mix of rat like squeeks.
The only thing stopping me was my hand jolting out to grasp the edge of the table just before I toppled over in a tangle of limbs on the floor.
I glowered at the rat shifter still chuckling before us as I rolled myself back into place.
“Sorry love, didn’t mean to startle you. Never thought I be stealthy enough to sneak up on a wolf shifter. Are you sure your a PI?”
Seth not one to let comments like that wound his inflated ego, laughed the mans words off already approaching with an outstretched hand.
“What can I say. Being around this one.” He indicates my way with a nod of his head.
“It’s no wonder I was distracted.”
Seth’s free hand caught the stappler mid flight between hand shakes.
“Spirited ain’t she?”
Seth’s wink was the last thing I saw before they disappeared into his office.
“Shifters.”
A growled sound beneath my breath.
The pinging chimed on the computer seconds later as a notifiction popped up on the screen.
Heard that.
That’s what it was like working with a PI.
Nothing was private.