“Is Bhumika okay?”
“She’s doing exactly as we can expect, so do try to give your brother a bit of consideration. It’s very thoughtless of him to forget to call you, but this part of the process has always been difficult for him.” She paused, then scolded, “Oh, Fortitude, I can actually hear you biting your tongue.” My mother was right, and I was barely withholding several comments about her blasé attitude toward Bhumika’s failing health. “But he did tell me that you had your own bit of excitement with that renter of yours managing to get himself murdered. Bad luck, my turtledove, but, really, what do you expect when you rent in Providence? The city has been going downhill since the Irish arrived.”
“Mother! You can’t say that!”
“Really?” She sounded surprised. “Goodness, you should’ve heard the things we said just a century ago,” she mused. “Things do change, don’t they?”
I gritted my teeth. “I have to go now, Mother.”
“Have a lovely day, my precious. I’ll let your brother know that you called.”
Sadly, that was a better-than-normal phone conversation with my mother.
• • •
It was just after lunch that Suze and I stood in a lane at my usual gun range. Given that it was Sunday, we were surrounded by off-duty cops, guys with their acne-ridden teenage sons who were more interested in texting than shooting, and one very badass-looking nun who was definitely adding some of the Holy Spirit to her paper target.
Suzume freely admitted that she far preferred knives to guns, so she stood next to me (looking unnaturally adorable in her oversized ear protectors and safety glasses) and watched with interest as I made my way through three clips in my Colt. I’d spent many Saturday mornings in a gun range with my foster father as a child, but he’d always specifically trained me to aim for only one spot on my paper targets: the midway point between the shoulder and the neck, where one shot would usually break the collarbone and cause an excruciating but completely non-life-threatening injury. Several months before I’d discovered at a very inopportune moment that this might’ve been a great stopping shot for the average home burglar, but it did not exactly have similar effectiveness on a nonhuman opponent. Since then I’d begun working on training my aim into kill shots: head and heart.
Once I’d finished the clips I’d brought with the Colt, I hit the retrieval button and examined my target. In the black silhouette of a man I could see the holes where my bullets had gone through. The majority were right in the areas where I’d intended them. Not bad for twenty-five yards.
Suzume leaned over my shoulder and poked a finger at the one hole that was off in the far upper left of the target, in the white area that meant I’d missed entirely. “Bet that would’ve scared the crap out of some low-flying birds,” she said.
“It’s generally considered bad form to poke people in the ribs while they’re target shooting, Suze,” I said between gritted teeth.
She snorted, loudly enough that I heard her even above the shots being fired on either side of us. “Yeah, the next time you’re in a life-or-death situation, we’ll all make sure not to break your concentration or surprise you while you’re trying to make a shot. Besides”—she gestured to the rest of the shots—“you ended up doing fine. By the end of it I was seriously considering making things a challenge and giving you a wedgie.”
“Don’t even think about doing that on the next round,” I warned her as I reached into my duffel bag and pulled out my most recent financial investment, an Ithaca 37 pump-action shotgun that I’d sawed down according to the instructions I’d found on a rather disturbing Web site.
“Oh yes,” Suzume purred. “This is exactly what you should bring to a knife fight.”
“Just hang a new target for me,” I said as I checked it carefully, then loaded in four 20-gauge shells. I’d owned the Ithaca for just over a month, and it had taken suspending my Netflix, seriously scaling back my cable package, and then five straight weeks of eating nothing but ramen noodles and scraps from the restaurant to afford it.
Suzume put up my target, and I sent it out to fifty yards. The main attraction of the Ithaca was its ability to blow an impressive hole in something at a price range that was not completely unattainable for me. Other than one very interesting day during a father-son gun-safety course where we’d received an excellent visual demonstration on exactly how much damage could be inflicted on a human stand-in (in that case, some very ill-fated cabbages), I’d never used a shotgun before my purchase of the Ithaca. I’d been taking a lot of time getting used to controlling the kickback from it, and also trying to increase my speed of reloading, given that it held only two shells.
I spent thirty minutes on it, working my way down to a 12-gauge shell, the largest type of ammunition that the shotgun would accommodate. When I was finished my arms and shoulder were aching, my target was demolished, and Suzume was looking profoundly bored.
“Paper targets will tremble in fear as you approach,” she assured me as we drove home. Apparently I’d impressed her at some point in the day, however, either in my ability to be thrown around my living room or in my very masculine display of firearm prowess, because she not only chipped in for our delivery order of Chinese food that evening, but she even agreed to watch Avatar with me. She lasted halfway through the movie (admittedly only that long because of the presence of both Sigourney Weaver and the badass female helicopter pilot) before changing into her fox form and spending the remainder of the film playing with a balled-up piece of paper.
The next morning arrived without incident, despite Suzume again remaining on furry guard, and over breakfast we both agreed that whatever had killed Gage wasn’t coming back, and that unfortunately neither of us had any more ideas for how to pick up its trail.
“I really appreciate your sticking around this weekend, Suze,” I told her.
Chewing a mouthful of tofu bacon, Suzume gave me a very serious look. “What else are friends for?”
We looked at each other in silence for a moment, then she cleared her throat and we both occupied ourselves again with mastication.
The movers arrived just after ten to collect Gage’s boxes, followed quickly by the cargo truck that would be taking Gage’s car down to his parents in Florida. After it was done, I stood in what had been Gage’s room and looked around. Once again it was just an empty room with a bed frame, bare mattress, and wood floors that were a decade overdue for sanding and refinishing. There was nothing left to hint about who had lived there and been my friend.
Suzume came up behind me and carefully placed one hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked, and when I turned to look at her I was surprised to see something tentative in her eyes, rather than the usual brassy confidence that she seemed to bring to every situation.
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing the back of my hand against my eyes and clearing my throat. I gave her hand an awkward pat, and received a brief squeeze in return. For a second we both froze, holding each other’s hands. I registered how close she was, almost right up against me, her eyes just below the level of my shoulder. I could feel my pulse pick up and my breath catch.
Then we both let go and stepped apart at the same moment, resulting in a whole different kind of awkwardness. For a moment I almost thought that I could see a flush in Suzume’s cheeks, which I immediately shrugged off as impossible. I looked back at Gage’s room and sobered. “I just wish I didn’t have to start looking for a roommate right now,” I admitted. “It just feels really . . . disrespectful, you know? Like he didn’t matter as much as he did.”
Suzume walked over and brushed one hand lightly against the window. We’d replaced the trash bag with a sheet of plywood yesterday, but there was still a noticeable breeze. “Yeah,” she agreed. “It just sucks.”
I paused, then continued, voicing the nagging worry that had been rattling at the back of my mind for the past few days and that
had made it hard to fall asleep the night before. “I know you and Chivalry keep telling me it was just a coincidence, and maybe you’re right, but with me getting more involved with the family enforcement, how safe is any human who lives with me? I mean, really?” It hung in the air, and even though I’d been thinking about it, hearing myself say the words hurt. It was admitting that everything I was doing was getting me farther away from what I’d wanted to be for so long: just another guy.
“Would you like me to find you a roommate?” Suzume said suddenly.
“What?”
“Well, you’re not wrong. Renting with a human isn’t a great idea. You don’t know that many supernaturals, and you can’t exactly put up a Craigslist ad for what you need, so let me find you a roommate. I’ll even filter out the douchewads for you.” She looked uncomfortable again, and I realized that she was actually rambling.
I was honestly surprised and very touched. She had some very good points too; other than her, almost all the nonhumans I knew were those I’d met while doing ride-alongs as my brother enforced my mother’s laws. I didn’t think that any of them would welcome a social call from me—even if I’d actually met any who I would’ve been willing to live with, which I hadn’t. “That’s great, Suze. That would be a huge help.”
“Good, then. I’ll get on it.” She knelt down and fiddled with the zipper on her bag.
“I really appreciate it. Thank you—I mean it.”
The more I thanked her, the more uncomfortable she looked, so I dropped the subject and we headed out to my car so that I could drive her home before I had to get to work.
As I drove, doubts started seeping through my gratitude. Had I actually just given Suzume, prankster extraordinaire, carte blanche to find me a roommate?
I snuck a look at her out of the corner of my eye. She was looking back at me, and as I watched, she gave a wide, evil smile.
“Yes,” she said, clearly reading my expression, “you did just agree to let me pick your roommate.”
“Do not mess with me on this one, Suze,” I said warningly. “I’m serious.”
Her smile just widened, and I felt a distinct worry that I would end up regretting my impulsive agreement.
I dropped Suzume at her place and it was only by blatantly breaking the speed limit that I was able to get to work right before my shift started. As it was I had to run flat-out from where I’d parked my car to get into the restaurant, and I got several sideways looks when I arrived, sweaty and out of breath. But I lined up with the other waiters for the briefing, which was the part of the day where Chef Jerome explained each of the night’s specials to us and had us sample the dishes so that we would be able to properly describe them to the diners. We were also given the day’s set of allergy flash cards to memorize. Each card pertained to one of the major allergy groups, and it listed which dishes were safe to consume for someone with that allergy. Chef Jerome felt very strongly about people with allergies—namely that he didn’t want any of them dying. For all of his other major faults (and there were several very notable ones), I had to also respect that Chef Jerome seemed to view people with allergies as a very personal challenge to his skills, and that it was his duty to make sure that everyone could come into Peláez and leave full and happy, regardless of their dietary challenges.
Of course, that was his viewpoint of people who couldn’t eat something. For those of us who chose not to . . . well, that night Chef Jerome was clearly on a particular rampage, because I found myself being forcibly fed duck, turtle soup, and a sliver of foie gras. It was all amazing.
I had just seen Chef Jerome go thundering by me in the direction of poor Josh, holding a forkful of some kind of cheese, when someone shouted that there was a phone call for me. I frowned and hurried over to where Daria, the restaurant manager, stood at the door to the kitchen, holding the black cordless phone that usually lived at the reservation desk. Daria was usually pretty good about taking messages and then passing them to us during our shifts, but the policy about the phone being brought over was that it had to be a real emergency. The last time Daria had walked the phone over, it had been because the girlfriend of the guy who worked at the meat prep station had gone into labor a month early. So it was with a very real sense of trepidation that I took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Fort, it’s me.” Matt’s gravelly voice rattled over the line. The sound of it made me freeze, inside and out, and a deep sense of foreboding rattled through me.
“Matt,” I forced out between my numb lips. “What’s wrong?”
“I found something,” he said, and the bottom dropped out of my stomach. “We need to meet.”
Chapter 5
I finished out my shift in a haze and drove straight to Matt’s office.
Matt’s office was south of my own apartment, past Brown University and in the Fox Point part of town. Fox Point was an odd mix of older, gentrified houses and businesses and the remains of Providence’s heavy industrialization from the turn of the century. For the most part it was a fairly pretty area, with relatively safe streets and an assortment of businesses that catered to an upscale clientele. Matt’s office was actually a historic little house on Ives Street that a developer in the seventies had carved into four cramped offices, two on each floor. The second floor hosted a pair of perennially sparring realtors, and across the hall from Matt, a home decorator was ensconced in piles of fabric, tile, and floor samples.
At just past eleven I pulled into the back parking lot, which was empty except for Matt’s familiar Buick. I’d had a key to the building for years, and I let myself in the back door and headed down the small and creaky hallway. At Matt’s door I paused and knocked. I could hear his footsteps across the bare floorboards, and he unlocked his door and let me in.
From the looks of things, Matt was living in his office again. It was always easy to tell when that was happening, since his suitcases and a few open boxes were piled behind a small privacy screen that the home decorator had given him out of pity a few years ago during another of these periods. There were a few blankets and a battered pillow strewn across the old leather sofa that had come with the office, and some decades ago had probably belonged to an earlier owner’s gentleman’s library. Every surface in the office was covered in file folders, newspaper clippings, and yellow legal pads filled with notes and scribbles about various cases. Matt’s mini fridge was barely visible below the clutter as it sat in the corner—it was actually my old mini fridge from college that I’d given him when I moved into my first apartment. Even though I knew that he probably couldn’t afford to replace it, it made me feel better that he’d kept it even during our recent rift.
Matt was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, with a somewhat incongruous set of bright red slippers on his feet. I would’ve made some joke about them, but Matt’s expression was grim and the air was charged. He nodded at me.
“I’m glad you came, Fort.”
“Of course I did, Matt. You said that you found something.” I hid how worried that made me.
Matt didn’t speak for a long moment, just stared at me with a shuttered look in his brown eyes. “They made an arrest, you know,” he said finally.
I shifted uncomfortably under his piercing gaze. Once again I was reminded that it was a good thing that I’d never had dreams of being a covert operative. “I know.”
He walked closer to me, stopping well inside my personal space. “Do you think that those were the ones who killed your roommate?” he asked in a deceptively pleasant voice.
I knew that he was testing me and that what he wanted was for me to admit that there had been a cover-up orchestrated by my family. “They were arrested, Matt,” I said, refusing to go down that road. I couldn’t see any way that it didn’t end in his death.
“That’s not what I’m asking.” Standing in front of me, Matt should’ve looked tough, like a brick wall of muscle and
intent. Instead, all I could see was his very human fragility and just how breakable he could be.
“I know.” I looked around the apartment for a second, wishing I could think of a way to defuse this moment. I repeated, “You said you found something.”
Matt ignored my comment. “The Scotts have leverage in this town, Fort. It took a lot of work to get copies of the investigation, to get people to talk to me. If you’re not in on this, let me know and I’ll follow it on my own.”
He wasn’t going to drop this, I realized, and I was going to have to work past this in a way that retained the ignorance that protected Matt while at the same time got the information he’d uncovered so that I could figure out if it was putting him in danger. “Matt, the thing is . . .” I paused, racking my brain for something to say that could somehow circumvent the worst of the truth while at the same time give him enough to let us move forward. Finally I said, “I know what my family is”—and that was certainly a whopper dressed up like honesty, but nowhere near what Matt clearly read it as—“but this isn’t about them right now. My friend was killed, and now you’re telling me that you’ve found something.” I forced myself to look him straight in the eyes, and I reached deep inside myself, and when I asked it I meant it: “Can I trust you, Matt?”
I wished that I could really trust him. To tell him what I actually was and not have him look at me like a monster, assuming that he believed me and didn’t just look at me like a crazy person. I spent a lot of time purposefully not thinking about it, but one of the things I valued most about Suzume’s friendship was the fact that she knew what I was. There was no lying when I was with her, none of the deceit that was so treacherously and heavily entwined throughout every interaction I had with Matt.
But I’d told the truth to my foster parents, and they’d believed me. They’d died because they’d believed me, and I was determined that this wouldn’t happen to Matt.
Iron Night Page 11
