Eliza Ford: Cause of Death: Unnatural

Em was confused. She'd felt a new presence in town a few weeks ago, and she'd thought she'd known exactly who it was - one of her father's consorts, a ghastly woman known as Alina, someone Em had hated for a few hundred years or more. Em had felt Alina's arrival and almost shivered with a ghoulish joy. She was certain Alina had left her father's side without his permission. She grinned again at the thought. He would eat Alina alive as soon as he found her. And she completely deserved it. Em had just been waiting for the right moment to report back to the lord of the clan. She was biding her time, waiting to see what Alina was up to, and besides, she'd found she was reluctant to see her father again, hesitant about sinking back into her own realm. Too much time with the humans, she thought wryly.

She hadn't thought for a second Alina was doing something like this. And this throbbing in her head wasn't Alina either. It couldn't be.

She sighed again at the mess in front of her. They were such young men - fit, beautiful, full of energy. Whoever had done this had wasted them.

“Not pretty, is it?” said a voice behind her.

Nick.

Em looked at him. He looked crumpled, with a five o'clock shadow, like he hadn't slept at all. Anyone who looked at his rakish smile, his tussled hair, the way his upper arms so completely filled his shirt would think he'd spent the night at a club wooing some gorgeous young thing, but Em knew better.

Nick's sister had three young kids and the youngest was sick, really sick. When the littlest one and his mum were in hospital for days on end, Nick and the rest of his siblings took care of the other two, sleeping on the sofa, packing school lunches and delivering the pair to school and after school activities. Nick had obviously pulled the night shift tonight.

“Sorry I couldn't get here any quicker,” he said. “It was 3am. I couldn't get anyone else over to Lucy's to care for the kids.” He ran his hand through his hair and grimaced. “Is Robert mad?”

“Only a bit,” Em said. “I'll protect you.” She smiled, and Nick rolled his eyes.

“What the hell happened here?” he said. Em saw his expression tighten a little as he completely took in the scene. So, the violence here upset him too. In a way, the notion that both her men found this repulsive pleased her. She'd chosen them well. She just wondered who she'd choose if she had to choose between them.

“Something new,” Em said. “We'll figure it out. Can you work with Poll please, Nick. Robert wants us off the street by sunrise.”

Nick raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged into his crime scene jacket. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, with a slight smirk on his face. Em remembered how Nick enjoyed the dynamic of her being his superior in the workplace, how he enjoyed it in other locations too, but with this mental itch still tugging at her brain she wasn't in the mood to play along.

“Just do it, Nick,” she said. “I need to...”

Her phone rang. Em glanced at the screen and frowned. Jennifer? At five in the morning? What the hell?

“I've got to take this,” she said, and turned her back on Nick. She felt rather than saw him throw a hand in the air, in much the same way as Robert had done earlier, and stalk off towards Poll. At least he'd get some work done.

“Jenn?” Em said into the phone. “What's up?”

Her best friend was in an impressive state of hysterics. Through the sobbing Em heard, “We broke up. He dumped me. He said he never even loved me.”

“Who?” said Em, and then caught herself. She couldn't think with this pounding in her head. “He's a jerk, Jennifer. You're better off without him. Where are you? Jenn?”

There was more wailing on the other end of the phone. “We were at the Harbor Bar. It was supposed to be our anniversary.” She sobbed again and Em held her forehead again with her spare hand. “He's driven off and left me here. And...”

“What Jenn?”

“I haven't got any money for a cab.” Jennifer dissolved into tears again.

Em groaned. She told Jennifer to stay where she was and hung up. She'd take Jenn home, tuck her in and leave her to sleep it off. A gentle psychic nudge would set the girl up to sleep all day and Em would get a good day's work in at the lab. Now, how did the rest of routine go? Sometime in the afternoon, Em would take a tub of ice cream and a bottle of red wine over to Jenn's place. They'd watch Titanic and weep pathetically when Leonardo died (again), bitch and talk trash about whoever it was this time who had dumped Jennifer, and by the end of the night the girl would be as good as new.

“Gotta go,” Em called over to Nick. “Girlfriend duty.” Nick's expression asked the question, and Em's exasperated face gave him the answer. “I'll just get her home and safe, and I'll be in at the office soon,” she said. “Can you finish this one up without me?”

Nick looked affronted and Em cursed herself for stepping on his feelings. Men and their egos.

She checked to see if Poll was watching, then quickly dropped an apologetic kiss on Nick's cheek. “Sorry babe,” she said. “I'm not thinking clearly. This ...” She waved a hand at the mangled bodies. She saw that Nick thought she meant the carnage, and his expression turned from insulted to concerned. She kissed him again and then left for her car. “I'll see you later,” she called back.

She hadn't meant the carnage, she'd meant the whining pain in her head. Funny, it did seem to grow a little less intense the further she moved from the bodies. Almost like the entity who had committed the horrors had left the mental siren there like a calling card, a blazing trumpet of defiance. A psychic fuck you. Obviously not one of the Family, then. Alina? No, Em didn't think so. But what did that leave?

Em pointed her car toward the Harbor Bar and tried to remember the name of the ninth boy this year Jennifer was now calling a jerk.

It took three hours to get through the wine, the ice cream, Titanic and an angry tear fest. The better part of a box of tissues was strewn across the floor too. Jennifer was at the sniffing stage, and had moved so far through her little disaster that she could now think about things other than heartache and revenge.

“What about you Em?” Jennifer sniffed, and she slugged back the dregs of her wine. “What about the boys in your life? What about that gorgeous Nick?”

Em hugged her knees and shrugged deeper back into the sofa. Nick. What was she going to do about Nick? Jennifer was right, he was gorgeous, and he was fun too. In nearly a thousand years Em had never had so much … fun … with a lover. Sure, there had been lovers with greater skills, stronger bodies, darker desires, deeper passions, but Nick was … fun.

Em had a theory about this but it was a loose thought, one that had been flitting hopefully around her head waiting for Em to take it seriously. It was a tempting theory, and she was a little scared that if she gave it any considered thought, it might reveal itself to be something quite possible indeed. And she wasn't ready for that.

Nick was a good guy. Maybe the ultimate find. He was fit, he had arms that wrapped around her and crushed her to his chest, he had an ass she couldn't keep her hands off, and he had a laugh that made her grin like an idiot. He had a beat-up old car with a picnic blanket in the trunk, and laying in the sun in the park with Em with the weekend papers and some bacon and egg bagels was his ideal way to spend a Sunday morning.

Em thought it was his large family - the brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews, as well as the older generation, and the care and love they all obviously had for each other - that had created in Nick a form of love that seemed deeper and stronger than any she had experienced before. When she watched him with his sister's kids she saw a man she realized she could love. Really love. She had to admit she hadn't done love before. Lust, sure, but nothing like the confident, selfless love she saw in Nick. It was so very tempting.