Dusty records and stale government building smells shoved themselves against Wade's nose until a headache started to form.

  It had been a while since the smells had bothered Wade. He was no amazing body shifter, but finding a way to dial down your senses was one of the basics of the basics.

  When he went all the way to wolverine form, it was easier to manage. But bringing those senses out in his human shape still gave him headaches. This body wasn't meant to handle it, and he was not good enough at tiny conscious shifts to make his body more capable of the task. So, he spent more time suppressing than actually using his senses.

  Today, that suppression seemed especially hard. Maybe it was the monster's sappy blood tickling his nose that was doing it. But he suspected it was more an emotional thing.

  He had not liked deceiving Shilloh. Especially when it had been so fun talking to her up until then. With her, ideas and connections had struck him like chain lightning.

  They examined concepts he had spent years taking for granted, and he felt like he was better just for having reassessed those thoughts. Sure, some of it was uncomfortable. He had grown callous and, though it was hard to admit, lazy in how he made decisions. But he still felt like she understood that there were reasons why it had happened. She absolutely had not implied that those reasons excused the actions. But it felt like she thought there was something wrong with his habits, not like there was something wrong with him.

  It was a distinction he had not realized could matter as much as it did.

  All in all, it had been one of the best patrols he'd had in years. Every blink filled him with new ideas and new avenues of research. There were books, guides, and new standard operating procedures that he was excited to work on. Excited. Not duty bound or dedicated to, excited.

  Even now, he would occasionally catch her scent lingering on him. Not much, just the traces left by offering a hand here, brushing a few nettles off his back there. But each time the smell came to him, he found his senses sharpening. Often without him noticing it until the angry ice-pick-in-my-eyes headaches started to build.

  It would have been nice to have told her what was really happening. The thought drifted through his mind, barely forming in his consciousness's peripheries. Still, he nearly froze in place, and it took all his will to keep his eyes from darting to Jasque.

  Telling her was impossible. It was also not something he should even consider wanting. It might even be a sign of decreased stability. Again, that tempted him to look at Jasque to see if he might somehow know. But that was crazy. So Wade cleared his throat and focused on the maps they were looking at.

  Once again, they were in the city's records building. They were poring over maps, planning more routes, and making sure they went over a variety of environments and magical anomalies that would test Shilloh's senses.

  At this point, she couldn't always detect the claimed areas, which meant all this planning was probably unnecessary. Neither of them were scholars or counterintelligence agents, so it was debatable if it was even effective. But Jasque wanted to figure out what was going on with her and had given Wade a very flat stare when he suggested it might be overkill.

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  The dark-haired man was sitting with perfect posture at a desk across from him. He had not moved from that position in at least an hour.

  "Jasque?"

  "What?"

  "Have you noticed the irony that most of the maps we're using were made by Shilloh?"

  Jasque frowned.

  "You know, like…" he trailed off.

  "Like what?"

  Wade wilted, "Sorry, I thought it was sort of grimly funny."

  "Like a joke?"

  God dammit, he should have known better. Especially when Jasque was in a mood like this. Now, he felt like the world's most awkward idiot.

  "No, just irony."

  "Hmm, well, next time, maybe tell me if we're switching from works to jokes."

  Wade's shoulders crawled up, and he nodded before throwing himself back into the papers, his ears burning.

  An hour later, they left. Wade stayed quiet. Jasque didn't say much either, but he could tell the man was still pissed that their contacts wouldn't allow them into Shilloh's records.

  His mood wasn't any better when they found the annoying woman with the unfaithful drug dealer boyfriend from a few nights ago, Kora, waiting by the car.

  "Wade! I was hoping you would park here again," she called brightly.

  She was wearing a bright pink button-down but wasn't wearing it right. The sleeves were rolled up halfway past her elbows. Then, through some origami witchcraft, she had managed to tie the body off the shirt so it was shorter than a crop top and knotted under her boobs as a means of adding structural support to a bra that looked like it was already trying to pressurize her cleavage until they formed a chin rest she could sleep on at the movies.

  But the thing that caught his attention was her macabre high heels. They were so high that he couldn't help but imagine her breaking an ankle running from the limb stealer they had just fought.

  "Hello, ma'am," he said, not letting himself think about her suicide shoes." Was there something you needed?"

  She giggled.

  What? That was not even close to an answer. He turned to his bodyguard, but Jasque just shook his head and drifted off to the side.

  "Really? 'Ma'am?'" she said, demonstrating all the faux effrontery of a nineteen-twenties housewife, but with five percent of the associated fabric. "Come on, Wade. Just call me Kora."

  "Of course. What was it that you needed? Have you seen any signs of cryptos you need to make us aware of?"

  "No. I was just thinking about that ride you gave me a little bit ago. That was fun. I thought it might be nice if I took you for another ride. Maybe get dinner sometime and get to know each other better, you know."

  Some gears and springs in Wade's brain broke. It seemed like she was asking him out. But it was also late-O-clock at night. He was probably misinterpreting.

  Especially since the last ride had not actually been fun. Nor was this the setting where you asked people out. They were in an unattractive parking lot, his arms were full of folders, and he smelled like armpits. Also, the last time he had talked to her, she had been screaming that she would fight an elderly woman. There was no sane person who could believe he'd seen that and think of her as anything other than a bundle of red flags stuffed into a push-up bra.

  "I'm sorry, ma'am. I think I misheard you."

  "You and me. Dinner. It'll be fun, and I have no plans for the rest of the night. That is, unless you have a date with Shilloh?"

  "No. Why would I?"

  "Exactly! Who would want to? I can also guarantee that I am so much more fun than she is," Kora winked and stepped right into the edge of his personal space. Wade found himself not sure what to do.

  The words came out of his mouth without having ever touched his brain. "Have you ever heard of de-gloving?"

  NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

  Piracy Notice: If you’re reading this anywhere other than Scribble Hub, Royal Road, or my Patreon then this is pirated. Please let me know by going to the Jeffrey Nix website’s contact area so I can get really annoyed, complain to my cat, have her tell me this never would have happened if I had just gone back for a Ph. D, send a takedown notice, and get back to writing.

  I feel like I could have had a better topic that was wince-inducing, earnest, and matched Wade's character, but I'm not sure what it would have been.

  As a heads up, is officially entering what I consider to be the start scene of the climax. There will still be some chapters where they are talking, but it should be non-stop tension from here to the end if you want to skip 2+ months ahead on chapters.

  Alias on their own author note.