Night Shifters (38 page)

“I still say this is all in the air,” Rafiel said. He sipped at his coffee as if he were angry at it. “You have no proof. There are probably dozen of couples—hundreds—with weird relationships, who started a month ago, and where one of them had some sort of injury on the neck that day.”

“I doubt hundreds,” Kyrie said. “And besides, you know, there is the fact that she has a very convenient burial ground.”

“What?”

“The castle. She bought the castle. You’ve seen the grounds. She could bury a hundred people there in shallow graves and be fairly assured they wouldn’t be found. That’s pretty hard in urban Goldport.”

“Not really,” Rafiel said. “You know, people have backyard lawns.”

Kyrie snorted with laughter before she could stop herself. “I suppose you could fit one corpse in my backyard lawn. Two if you put them very close together.”

Rafiel was jiggling his leg rapidly up and down. “Yeah, but some people have bigger lawns.” He frowned, bringing his brows together. “What do you want me to do about it, anyway? Do you want me to burst into the Athens and arrest them because they hold hands and don’t talk?”

Kyrie wasn’t used to getting upset at people. Normally, to get along, both as a foster child and as an adult, she’d learned to hide her anger from people. But she couldn’t even hide from herself that she thought Rafiel was being unreasonable. That she suspected he was being unreasonable because he felt thwarted in his pursuit of her affections didn’t actually make her feel any better.

“I want you to go in there and look around,” she said.

His mouth turned down in a dissatisfied little-boy scowl. It was the type of expression she would expect from a five- or six-year-old who had just seen someone else get the bigger piece of candy. “I can’t do that,” he said.

“For heaven’s sake, why not?”

“Because I don’t have a warrant.” Instead of getting louder, his voice had to lower and lower, until it was low and almost vicious, growling out its protest. “I’m a policeman. I can’t go poking around people’s property without a warrant. Citizens get all sorts of upset when policemen do that. They would—”

Kyrie didn’t think this behavior was more endearing because of its sheer irrationality. She finished her frozen latte, and picked up the cup, which she’d got as a take-out cup, as she’d been afraid of having to finish it on the way back to work. “Officer Trall, if you can hide evidence, lie to other police officers, and suggest that we, as shifters, need to take our law into what passes for our hands, then, yeah, you could and should be able to have a look-see in someone’s garden without a warrant. I mean, no one is asking you to go in with a police force. Just go there, shift, and have a good sniff. Death will out, you know?”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m trying to stay on the right side of the law. I’m trying to enforce the law. I’m trying to be a good person, Kyrie, and somehow balance this with being a . . . shifter. I don’t think you realize—”

“Oh, I think I realize it perfectly well. I just think you’d be far more energetic in pursuing this if I’d told you that the culprit in this case was Tom Ormson.”

“That’s underhanded. Tom is a friend. He risked himself to rescue me.”

“Oh, and how well you thank him.”

“I didn’t mean it that way. If you took it that way it’s because you chose to. Tom would be very bad for you, and just because—”

“As opposed to yourself? You would be great? What would your mother think of your dragging me home?”

He blinked, genuinely confused. “Mom would love you. I don’t understand—”

“I mean, Officer Trall, that your parents might not be so happy that the son they’ve protected, the son they always thought would need their protection the rest of their lives has a life outside the family.”

“That’s ridiculous. Did you just call me a mama’s boy? I don’t think there’s anything else I can say to you.”

“Well,” Kyrie said. She was leaning over the table, and he was leaning from the other side, and they’d been arguing in low vicious tones. Now she straightened. “That is very fortunate, because I don’t think I want to discuss anything with you, either.”

And with that, she flounced out the door, which—she thought, smiling to herself—the owners of this coffee shop must think was a normal thing for her.

She had gone a good half block before she heard him shout, “Kyrie,” behind her, but she didn’t slow down, just went on as fast as she could.

This time she didn’t go into the parking lot. Didn’t even think about it. Instead, she approached at a half run, toward the front door. While she was waiting to cross Pride, the cross street before the Athens, she was vaguely aware of a car squealing tires nearby, and then parking in front of the diner.

She didn’t turn to look. Which was too bad, because if she had turned to look, Rafiel’s hands on her shoulders spinning her around wouldn’t have taken her so much by surprise. And his mouth descending on hers might have been entirely avoided. Or, if not, she might at least have avoided the few seconds of confusion in which her brain told her to get away from the man while parts far more southerly responded to his strength, his virility, and the rather obvious, feline musk assaulting her nostrils with a proclamation of both those qualities.

As it was, she lost self-control just enough to allow him to pull her toward him, to allow herself to relax against him. She lost track of who she was and what she meant to do through the feeling of firm male flesh, and the large hands on her shoulders, both compelling and sheltering her.

He slid his tongue between her lips, hot and searching and forceful.

And in her mind, an image of Tom appeared. Tom smiling at her, with that odd diffident expression when Keith had asked about sex as a shifter.

She pushed Rafiel away. And then she slapped him. Hard.

Tom would probably have missed the kiss, if he hadn’t already been watching the door for Kyrie. But he was.

Okay, first of all, and stupid as it was, and as much as he was absolutely sure he didn’t actually stand a snowball’s—or a snowflake’s—chance in hell—of getting near her, he’d been indulging himself in quite nasty thoughts about Rafiel.

So, okay, Rafiel needed to discuss the case with her. But couldn’t he just have taken her on a quick walk down the block, then back again? Couldn’t he have talked to her out there, against that lamppost in front of the Athens? Where Tom could have kept track of them through the big plate-glass window?

And then . . . and then there was everything else. If Frank and his girlfriend were the beetle couple, where did that leave Tom? Truth be told, Tom felt a little guilty for even suspecting Frank of that. Frank had given him a full-time job when no one else would.

Yes, but why had he? Tom wouldn’t have hired himself, with his credentials at the time. And then there was his father. He’d told Kyrie not to go there, but it wasn’t entirely avoidable. For one, his father was sitting at a corner table, in the extension, getting intermittent warm-ups of coffee and ordering the occasional pastry. He seemed to be discussing comic books with Keith, a scene that, before tonight, Tom thought could only come from his hallucinations.

And his father had already managed to ask Tom if Tom was warm enough—warm enough!—in the Colorado summer, where the temperatures reached the low hundreds in daytime and the buildings gave it back all night. Warm. Enough. It wasn’t so much like this man’s behavior bore absolutely no resemblance to the father Tom had known growing up. That was somewhat of a problem but, it could be said that any father at all would be an improvement over that man.

On the other hand, this particular father seemed to do parenting by instruments. Like a pilot, flying in a thick fog, might read his instruments to decide his location, how to turn, and where to stop—and if the instruments are faulty might end up somewhere completely different—Tom’s father seemed to be trying to mend a relationship that had never existed in ways that didn’t apply even to that hypothetical relationship.

Maybe it was that the only relationships Tom’s father had ever taken seriously were courting relationships. At least that would explain his trying to win his way back to Tom’s heart with chocolates. It didn’t explain his thinking that Tom wore the same size pants he’d worn at sixteen though.

On the other hand, these pants were a great advantage, now he thought of it. He would no longer need to worry about siring an inconvenient shifter child—not if he wore them much longer. This, of course, brought his thoughts around to Kyrie again, and to the fact that she was five minutes over her break already.

Oh, he had no intention of telling Frank about it. Even if Frank were perfectly aboveboard and exactly what he claimed to be, there was absolutely no reason to let Frank know this stuff. He’d just get upset.

And so far Tom, moving rapidly from table to table, taking orders, distributing them, warming up coffee, was keeping on top of everything. In a little while, the crowds would drift back in again, and as long as Kyrie was in by then . . .

No. What he hated was the fact that he might be covering up for her necking time with Rafiel. Okay, he was willing to admit that Rafiel might not be exactly the scum of the earth. He could do worse. And she could do worse, too. In fact, any way he looked at it, Kyrie and Rafiel were just about a perfect match.

Despite her upbringing, Kyrie was fairly balanced. And Rafiel, after all, came from such a well-adjusted background that his parents knew about and abetted his shape-shifting. Surely, neither of them had anything in common with Tom, who had been thrown out of his house—at gunpoint no less—by the man who now thought he could heal it all with expensive chocolates and too-tight clothes.

They deserved each other. And neither of them deserved him in any sense. Which didn’t mean he had to like it. It didn’t even mean he had to accept it, did it?

He seethed, having to control himself to prevent slamming plates and breaking cups. He seethed partly at them, because he was sure they were taking advantage of his covering up for her to go and neck in some shady corner. And he seethed partly at himself, because, who was he to get angry at whatever they wanted to do?

And then, as he turned around, carafe in hand, he saw Kyrie come hurrying toward the door.

Alone. She was alone. He felt his heart give a little leap at this. Not hopeful. Oh, he couldn’t have told himself he was hopeful. But . . .

And then he saw Rafiel come up behind her. He grabbed her by the shoulders. He spun her around. His mouth came down to meet hers. She relaxed against him.

The teapot escaped from Tom’s grasp and fell, with a resounding crash and a spray of hot coffee onto the nearest bar stools and Tom’s feet.

It took him a moment to realize the shattering sound had indeed come from outside his head.

Edward had never seen Tom tremble. He’d held a gun to the boy’s head when Tom was only sixteen and he had never seen him shake. But now, he was shaking. Or rather, vibrating, lightly, as if he were a bell that someone had struck.

“I’m sorry I’m late with the warm-up,” he said, and his face was pale, and his voice oh, so absolutely polite. “I dropped the carafe and had to brew another one.”

“It’s okay,” Edward said. He’d been enjoying his conversation with Keith, partly because it distracted him from the fact that they might very well all be dead soon. And partly because in the middle of a lot of information about Keith—who apparently had parents and no less than four siblings somewhere in Pennsylvania—there was some comment and anecdote about Tom. Apparently Tom kept Keith’s key and usually could be counted on to give it back when Keith came home drunk and confused, having left keys and jacket—and often other clothes—at the last wild party he’d attended.

Keith had engaged in some self-mocking on the subject of the number of times Tom had shown up without a stitch of clothing on, and how Keith had thought that Tom went to even wilder parties than he did. Now, of course, he understood. “He must go through an awful lot of clothes,” Keith said. “They all must.”

And Edward had nodded. He’d been relaxed. And Tom had looked happy and in his element. Why was he shaking now? Was it just the coffeepot? Was Tom so insecure he’d get that upset over a broken coffeepot?

“It’s okay. I really don’t need a warm-up,” Edward said. “It’s excellent coffee, but I’ve probably already drunk too much. Don’t worry.”

Tom nodded, and looked aside, as if getting ready to walk away. Then came back and sat down. He put the carafe down, with some care, on one of the coasters and leaned forward. “Father,” he said.

It was the first time in five years he’d actually called Edward that. Edward took a deep breath. “Yes?”

“I need you do it for me, the delivery.”

“What delivery?” Edward asked, puzzled. They were going to find the beetles, weren’t they? What was there to deliver?

“The delivery of the Pearl,” Tom said, lowering his voice. “In a few minutes, when I get a chance, I’m going to go into the bathroom and get it, I’ll put it in the container before I take it out of the water, then put the container in the backpack. I assume you know where the center for the . . . Where their center is in Goldport, right?”

Edward nodded. “But . . . aren’t we going to do that later? I thought we were going to—”

Tom pushed back the strands of his hair that had gotten loose in the course of the evening. “No. I . . . It’s me. Look, it’s just me. I know there’s something wrong with me, but I just can’t take it. I can’t. I can’t be around to watch it. So, you take the . . . delivery to the people looking for it, and I’ll go, okay?”

Oh, no. This sounded far more serious than Edward had thought. And he didn’t quite know how to handle it. The thing had always been, since Tom was two or so, that if he got something in his mind, no matter how misguided or strange, it was almost impossible to get it out. And if you pushed the wrong way, he only got mad at you and more determined to do whatever he’d set his mind on.

He didn’t even want to ask about it in a way that would get Tom’s back up. So he spoke as gently as he knew how. “Tom, I don’t understand. What can’t you take, and why are you going? And where?”