Iron Night

by M. L. Brennan

  Neither of them even glanced at me. I started to get out of bed, then realized that at some point after taking off my shoes, which I remembered, Suzume had also relieved me of my pants, which I had no memory of at all. I tugged the sheet back up.

  Suzume rolled her eyes. “Christ, Keiko. Take a breath and use your nose. That’s Fortitude Scott.”

  Keiko looked surprised, and gave a genteel little sniff in my direction, still managing to avoid making any eye contact with me. She sniffed again, then raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t smell like a vampire. It’s there, but not like the others.”

  “He’s still on his vampire learning permit,” Suzume said.

  I was starting to feel really awkward as I sat in the bed and the two women talked as if I wasn’t there. “Uh, hi?” I tried. Neither even glanced at me.

  “Yeah, I definitely smell it now,” Keiko said, and there was a definite sneer in her voice. “That’s never coming out of the sheets. What the hell is wrong with you?”

  Suzume didn’t look any happier than her sister. “If you’d been here on four feet like you were supposed to be, we could’ve discussed it. But you were out running around on two, so I made an executive decision.” This was starting to sound like a personal argument, so I looked around. My pants were on the other side of the bed, crumpled up on top of my shoes.

  “It was Corrine’s bachelorette party. What was I supposed to do?” Keiko sounded defensive. I leaned down and snagged my pants, pulling them under the sheet.

  Suzume’s voice was very cold as she spoke to her sister. “Say no. Make any excuse, but say no. Don’t go, and definitely don’t spend the night with all your former sorority sisters.” I paused in the act of trying to pull my pants on under the covers. I’d never heard Suzume give a lecture before. I was used to hearing her coax, cajole, or just outright insist, but this was definitely new.

  “Fine. It won’t happen again,” Keiko said shortly.

  “So, you’ll be around the house today?”

  Putting pants on under covers involves a certain amount of contortion and rolling around, and the whole situation was feeling a bit like some bad French farce.

  Suzume’s question had apparently crossed some invisible line, because Keiko swung straight back to fully pissed off. “No, actually,” she snapped, “I’ll be at the office doing the payroll. Do you have a problem with that too?”

  “Takara agreed to handle that while you were—” She paused suddenly, and looked straight at me for practically the first time in the conversation. Typically she’d caught me at the worst possible moment, as I was just trying to wiggle my jeans up my ass, which had involved the kind of maneuver usually only seen when someone was drunk enough at a party to attempt to do the worm. I froze and looked back at her. Surprisingly, her expression was slanted and thoughtful, and she seemed to rethink whatever she had been about to say, and turned it into a very delicate and pointed “indisposed.”

  Keiko also looked over at me, and it was not a friendly look at all. It was probably the same look she’d give a cockroach right before stepping on it. I was suddenly missing the good times when they’d just pretended I didn’t exist.

  “I want to check up on her,” Keiko bit out, and there was a clear note of finality in the statement. “Now, if you can get the slumber party out of my room, I can change and head out.”

  That last part was actually directed at me. “Yeah, sure, sorry again. But if you can just give me a sec—”

  “OUT.”

  “Right.” And with no other option and still blathering apologies, I rolled out of the side of the bed farthest from Keiko, yanked and zipped in a way that not only set new records for time but also risked my own personal future happiness, grabbed my shoes, and hurried past Suzume and out the door, which Keiko slammed so closely behind me that I had to make a quick hop to avoid getting hit with it.

  I stood in the main room, breathing heavily and holding my shoes. This was definitely making my top-ten list of crappy ways to start the morning.

  Suzume was frowning at the closed door, but as I looked at her she seemed to shake something off. She turned to me, gave me a thorough up-and-down glance, and that sneaky little smile started spreading across her face.

  “Smooth, Fort. Smooth.”

  “Cram it, Suze,” I said, turning away.

  • • •

  Suzume’s amused heckling continued through both breakfast and a quick phone call to my mother’s lawyer, who told me that the police were completely done with the apartment and that I could go back whenever I wanted. She suggested sending over a cleaning service, but I said that I would be fine on my own.

  As much as Suzume could drive me up the wall, I was actually grateful for her ongoing jokes about the level to which I had completely dropped the ball on a situation that could have easily been misconstrued as the opening act of a porno movie. It distracted me from what we were driving toward. I think she knew that too, because as much fun as she’d been having, she dropped it completely as we pulled into the parking lot of my building.

  There was still some police tape on my front door, and we pulled it down. Inside, things looked eerily normal in my living room, other than enough dirty shoe prints to indicate that half the Providence police force had tramped around. I hesitated for a second, then went into Gage’s bedroom. Suzume followed closely behind.

  Someone had taped a garbage bag over the hole in the window before they’d left, but the glass was still in the carpet. In addition to the dirty shoe prints, I could see a few dull brown smudges on the floor where I’d found Gage. Again, though, I was struck at how little evidence there was of what had happened. The bed was still made, his laundry was still in the hamper in the corner, and his backpack was propped up against his desk, which overflowed with notes and textbooks. Everything was here, except Gage.

  I took a deep breath and blinked a few times. I didn’t have time to fall apart. Looking for a distraction, I glanced over at Suzume. She was looking up at one of Gage’s posters, a very thoughtful expression on her face. I nudged her with my elbow and raised my eyebrows.

  She gestured at the poster, which was a print of the painting Ecstasy. “You usually don’t see these outside the dorm rooms of freshmen girls with literary pretensions.”

  “Maxfield Parrish was his specialty,” I said. “He was getting his master’s degree in art history.” I looked up at the picture, which was of a woman standing on the edge of a mountain with her dress billowing in the wind. I’d asked Gage about it once, assuming that it was an artsy version of a pinup picture, but then he’d talked about light and composition for a solid hour.

  “Yikes,” Suzume said, sounding appalled. “What did he hope to do with a degree like that?”

  “Auction houses, restoration, appraisal. That kind of thing.” Depression sat like a rock in my stomach as I stared at the poster. “I told him that we could wait tables together. What a jackass thing to say.”

  For a second my vision blurred, and I had to close my eyes very tightly. I felt the weight and warmth of Suzume’s hand as she touched and then squeezed my shoulder.

  “He was your friend,” she said, and now she was utterly serious. “He understood.”

  I opened my eyes and saw that she was very close, barely an inch away. Her hand curled tighter, and now her arm was pressed against mine, a contact that seemed to resonate down into the bone. We both paused, and the air was charged.

  I swallowed, moistening my suddenly dry throat. Focus, I thought. I need to focus.

  “Suze—”

  “Yes?” Her dark eyes were unreadable.

  “Can you find who did this?” I asked. I’d spent my entire shower this morning trying to convince myself that Chivalry was right and it was just a coincidence. And that lottery tickets were great investments. I couldn’t help it—it still felt like what happened to Gage had been mean
t for me.

  For a second she looked surprised, then blinked and absorbed my request. “Sure, Fort. You know I can.” She lifted an eyebrow. “But your private-eye buddy is already on the trail. Aren’t you worried about us bumping into him?”

  “We’ll find out what he gets from the police; then we’ll handle it ourselves. The less he’s involved, the better.” I wondered what the odds were of cashing out my checking account and sending Matt to Bermuda. Then I thought of my current balance and readjusted that to a cheap bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire.

  “No arguments on that, but why you even stayed in touch with him in the first place is kind of beyond—” I glared at her, and she threw her hands up. “Fine, fine. Don’t regret the past—that’s my motto on this one.” She took a step back, then took a deep sniff. She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and sniffed again, this time dropping her mouth open and almost seeming to taste the air. I watched, always fascinated by how she worked.

  Then she sneezed twice and quirked her mouth up in bemusement. “This would’ve been easier before the room got stuffed with cops. All I can smell is cheap aftershave. This is going to take forever to pick out the humans who did it.”

  I felt a small tug of relief. “Yeah, it had to be humans, right?” It was small, venal, and stupid, but I desperately didn’t want to be the reason that Gage was dead.

  “No one else is dumb enough to mess with someone living with Madeline Scott’s son,” she agreed; then she shot me a cautious look. “If we find these dicks, you’re not going to get all Superman on me, are you?”

  “What?”

  “You know, wanting to leave them tied up in front of the police station and ready to confess their crime.”

  I snorted derisively. “I’m not an idiot, Suze. We find them, we kill them. The people who did that to Gage don’t deserve to be called human anymore.” And human murderers would mean that renting with me hadn’t killed Gage.

  She shot me a bright smile. “Excellent. Vigilante justice the way it was meant to be. Now give me a second while I slip into something a bit more furry.”

  Suzume went into the bathroom; then a moment later a fox trotted into the room, black everywhere except the perfect white tip of her tail. Her winter coat was coming in, replacing her sleek summer form with something reminiscent of a plushy doll. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she dropped her jaw in a fox version of a grin; then she immediately got to work.

  I’d seen Suzume hunt for scents before in fox form, but it still impressed me when she began methodically working her way across Gage’s room in a grid pattern. It was a slow process, and I sat on Gage’s desk chair to watch as she worked. Her nose was moving constantly as she walked around slowly, her body hunched down almost to the floor. When she got to the spot where Gage’s body had been, she slowed down even more, sniffing every inch of it. I swallowed and looked away when she rubbed her face carefully against one of the dried streaks of blood, reminding myself sternly that this was what I’d asked for.

  Suzume made a small whine, and I snapped my head back around to look. Her eyes were slitted almost shut in concentration now, but she made that whine in the back of her throat again, and began walking very deliberately toward the window.

  “Did you find something?” I asked.

  She gave a low growl and shot me a look that very plainly told me to stop bothering her. I grimaced but shut my mouth. It was hard to keep it shut, though, especially when she stood on her hind legs to get a closer sniff at the window ledge, and even licked one spot. There was a pause, and then her eyes popped open and her fur actually stood on edge. She dropped down onto all four feet and just sat there, looking as stunned as a fox can. She turned to me and yapped loudly.

  “What?” I asked, assuming that the interdiction on questions had just been raised.

  She yapped again, a shorter and somehow more irritated version, and bounced up and down twice.

  “Seriously, Suzume, I don’t speak fox. You’re going to have to mime this one.”

  She huffed out a breath, then got back up on her delicate hind legs, rested her front feet on the window ledge, and started wedging her head against the window itself.

  “The window? You want me to open the window?”

  She dropped down into a sitting position again and nodded her head slowly, rolling her eyes.

  “Don’t be like that,” I scolded as I walked over and unlocked the window. I raised it cautiously, trying to make sure that no more glass fell. Suzume waited impatiently as I did so, making little foxy grumbles at the delay, then jumped neatly out and onto the fire escape as soon as there was enough room.

  I leaned out and watched her as she gave the fire escape a thorough sniffing. It took a long time, and I noticed that she visited a few spots more than once, almost as if she was checking something. At last she seemed finished, and walked back to the window. She looked up at me and wagged her tail a little.

  “What?” I asked. “Come on in.”

  More wagging, and she made a little crooning sound.

  “Oh, no way.” I said. “You jumped out, now jump back in.”

  Now she bent down until her belly was on the metal of the fire escape landing and gave me full-on sad eyes.

  “Damn it,” I muttered, and leaned out the window to pick her up and haul her back in. “Lazy jerk,” I said as she wriggled happily, her tail beating against my leg. “Just wait until you’re human and can talk again.”

  As I set her on the floor she gave a rather dismissive tail flip and padded back to the bathroom. I followed her, waiting at the bathroom door. When I heard the sink turn on and knew that she had hands again (and presumably a human mouth), I asked loudly, “You found something, didn’t you? You found the smells of the guys who did this?”

  “Not exactly,” she said through the door.

  “What?”

  The door opened so abruptly that I nearly stumbled into her. Suzume lifted an eyebrow, and I stepped back enough for her to come out.

  “Seriously, Suze. Talk.”

  “Whoever broke the window and was carrying Gage’s body wasn’t human.”

  “Oh . . .” I paused for a long minute, trying to move past my initial gut reaction of Oh, shit. “Well, what was it? A vampire?” I’d known, known, that stupid vampire etiquette rules wouldn’t stop Dominic from trying to get payback, but did my damn superior family listen—

  “I don’t know.”

  I stared at her. “You. Don’t. Know.”

  She nodded grimly. “Yeah. Definitely not a vampire, but whatever it was, I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”

  I was so used to Suzume being an expert on all the supernatural stuff that I’d ignored for so long that this pretty much officially blew my mind. Also . . . “A creature you’ve never encountered before killed my roommate? Tell me that can’t be a coincidence.” Maybe Dominic was outsourcing vengeance.

  Suzume shrugged and wobbled her hand in a so-so gesture. “Hard to say. There are plenty of nasties that Madeline banned from the territory, and a lot of them leave body trails. If one slipped in, then it was probably just an accident.”

  “An accident?” I asked disbelievingly.

  “An accident in the way that a shark attack is an accident. A surfer is in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Now she made a little chomp-chomp gesture with her hand. I thought back to what I’d seen of Gage’s body and shuddered.

  If Suzume wasn’t able to identify this, then I knew who could. “Let me call Chivalry,” I said.

  She nodded. “Good plan. I’ll go take a whiff around the base of the fire escape and see if I can get a trail.”

  “Do you need to go fox again for that?” Foxes were definitely not something regularly seen in College Hill. The last thing I needed was to have my neighbors start calling animal control at the sight of Suzume in her furrier form che
cking out the scene of the crime.

  From the twinkle in her eyes, Suzume could clearly follow my train of thought. “Nah.” She tapped her nose and grinned. “I’ve got the scent now.” Then she wrinkled up her nose and made a face. “And I’m not worried about mistaking it for anything else. Whatever this thing is, it has a hell of a funk.”

  Suzume strolled out the door as I dialed Chivalry’s number. He picked up on the second ring, and it didn’t take long to fill him in on everything.

  “The kitsune is in all likelihood correct, Fortitude,” he said once I’d filled him in. “While most things that our mother has closed our borders to will stay out from a sense of self-preservation, there are some that still wander in and leave a few bodies. I have never personally encountered anything that kills in this way, so it’s probably something very rare. In my experience, creatures like that are always on the move. Even if you go looking for it, it will probably have already left the area.”

  “So, we’re not going to do anything at all?” I asked.

  I could hear Chivalry heave a rather deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Mother’s contacts with the police department have already located a pair of locals with rather unsavory pasts who have been convinced to confess to your roommate’s murder, so this is tied up. If you wish to spend the next few days chasing shadows, then I certainly cannot stop you. Bhumika’s doctor has advised that we stay in the hospital for at least four days, so I will be quite occupied for a time and sadly unable to either continue our training regimen or chaperone you on this endeavor. At least take along your annoying friend—I would hate for you to be all alone as you circle aimlessly.” He paused. “My earlier assumption of human origins might have been wrong, but a supernatural component does not change my underlying point: accidents happen. Your roommate ran afoul of something on his own and was killed. If you could accept that forming these kinds of guilt-ridden attachments to humans you come into tertiary contact with is futile and self-destructive, you could step back and realize that this death has nothing to do with you. Send a wreath to the funeral, hire a cleaning service, and move on.”