Page 59 of Fire Dancer

I went over the factors, wishing I could come to a totally different conclusion. But I couldn’t.

Gorgeous young people. Check.

Well-paying jobs. Check.

Long hours on weekends, lots of time off during the week. Pampered conditions in their downtime, with a couple of security-types keeping an eye on them even then.

Check, check, check.

High-priced escorts, for sure. But who did they work for?

I had a hunch, but it made me sick.

Up until then, I’d been casually curious. Now, I really was actively curious in one of thoseI want to know, but I don’t want to knowstates.

None of your business,I reminded myself.

Still, I kept snooping away.

And, bingo. The third time I passed Delaney, a tiny detail registered. Not about how she picked at her food or how young she looked or how out of place she seemed. Something else. The tiniest, faintest detail I hadn’t noticed before.

Her scent.

My step hitched, but I managed not to gawk.

She had the same fresh, woodsy, mountains-in-springtime scent as someone I knew well. Ingo.

The same woodsy scent, in fact, as Ingo’s father and mother and my dad’s friend Howie, too.

Wolf shifter scent.

How did I know? I just did.

Maybe my mother’s dragon shifter genes made me sensitive to such things. Maybe it came from growing up around a mixed group of supernaturals, from warlocks like my father to the wolves of Ingo’s family. I could even identify vampires, though I hadn’t been around many, and I really hoped to keep it that way.

In Delaney’s case, the scent was faint. Barely there, in fact, unless I really piqued my senses.

Relic,the back of my mind said. A person with very diluted shifter — or other supernatural — blood, with no special powers other than a few faint hints. In some cases, that meant fierce loyalty, the way wolves were loyal to their packs. In others, it meant keen eyesight or sharp sense of smell or especially fleet feet. Other relics had no special abilities at all — truly zilch. All they got were a few leftover identifiers that highlighted how painfully ordinary they were.

Kind of like me.

Well, not entirely, because my supernatural blood wasn’t generations old. It just hadn’t bothered carrying over one measly generation to me.

At least, that’s what I’d thought my whole life. Recent events had made me wonder, though.

I blinked a few times, pushing the thought away. I could figure myself out later — or, more likely, never. Now was the time to figure out what was going on here.

Delaney was a relic. Was she the only one?

No, I decided a few minutes later. Saanvi — of Bollywood fame, at least in my mind — had a hint of shifter in her too, though I couldn’t identify what kind. And possibly Rob too — the big, handsome football player. Lion shifter, maybe, judging by his smooth, easy gait.

But what about Becca, the plus-sized beauty who spent most of her time in the hot tub? Her eyes were a striking, luminous green.

I worked my way closer to her. When I sniffed her scent, I thought of seashells, sand, and the ocean.

And, whoa. I turned away before she spotted my surprise.

A mermaid relic? I’d never met one, but my dad had, and she sure matched his description.