Gil was definitely not a member of the Scott family fan club, that was for sure. I pushed him. “My mother just punished the Ad-hene for breaking our rules. Do you think they’d defy her again in less than a month?”
“There’s no reasoning with madmen,” Gil countered. “And they didn’t start breaking those rules overnight. From what I heard, the murders were happening for close to a year before the Scotts bothered to look into them—and only after a corpse got dumped on your doorstep! We use those woods—my nieces play in those woods. Our karhu is dead, and to me the most obvious culprit is sitting right in Underhill.”
Through her brother’s passionate tirade, Dahlia had been noticeably silent, and I shifted my attention to her. “You’re very quiet. What do you think about this theory?”
Her eyes narrowed, flicked to her brother, and I could see her weighing the possibilities before cautiously nodding. “The Ad-hene like to kill, and they’ve broken the rules before.” She asked Suzume, “Could an Ad-hene hide his scent from you with a glamour?”
Suze’s expression was reluctant and very unhappy, so I knew her answer before she even spoke. Nothing irritated her more than having to admit that her kitsune abilities had limitations. “I’m not sure. If we were talking just about the Neighbors, I’d say no—the nose is harder to fool than the eye, and most of them can barely hold a visual glamour. But I can’t say for sure about the Ad-hene, and I don’t think anyone in my family has had enough contact with them to know either.”
A blond girl with a kind of Swiss Miss prettiness who looked just out of her teens walked up to us, the first of any of the bears to break away from the observing throng. Her face was red and blotchy from very recent crying. “Dahlia, the kitsune just arrived,” she said, her voice low.
“Good.” Dahlia looked at me. “Mr. Scott, this is Carmen, my cousin.”
So this was the dead bear’s daughter. I felt horribly awkward being introduced to her with such icy politeness when her father’s body was still sprawled in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I managed, getting a small nod in return. Then the moment was broken by the entrance of the kitsune.
There were three of them, a terrifying thought in itself, and they walked in a small phalanx to us, forcing several of the bears to stumble out of their way or be trampled. In the front was the smallest, an older woman whose dark hair was heavily streaked with gray but who bore a strong resemblance to Suzume. Flanking her were two kitsune in their early twenties who bore the clear signs of more localized parentage. All three were dressed in formal business wear, but it ranged from the older woman’s sedate gray slacks-and-sweater combo to the youngest woman’s brilliant canary yellow skirt paired with a black silk blouse.
“Suzu-chan, I should’ve known I’d find you here,” the older woman said, with that touch of exasperation that seemed to affect most people Suzume knew.
My partner gave a broad grin. “Right where I’d be most useful, right, Oba-chan?” As the woman gave a very definitive snort that expressed her feelings on the subject, Suze nudged me with a friendly elbow. “Fort, meet my Aunt Chiyo.”
Horrors, more introductions. “It’s a pleasure,” I said politely.
There was clear interest in the way Chiyo looked at me, but also a subtle wariness. “Hmm. The young almost-vampire my mother seemed so interested in. You’re taller than the White Fox described.” Her mouth pursed. “These are two of my daughters. Midori is my oldest.” Midori towered over the other kitsune by several inches. Her features and eyes were as Asian as her mother’s, but her skin was a very dark brown that had clearly come from her father, along with gorgeous curly hair that was not quite the true, deep black that Suze and her aunt had. She shook hands with me, her cinnamon-colored eyes solemn.
“And one of my younger daughters, Takara,” Chiyo continued. The yang to her sister’s yin, Takara had Irish-pale skin, and each of her cheekbones was covered in a series of freckles. I could only speculate what her natural hair color was since it was barely two inches long and dyed a bright blue that matched her eyes. Clearly Suzume’s aunt had not had a set “type” when she’d dated as a young woman.
Compared to her mother and older sister’s very dignified bearing, Takara was practically vibrating with energy as she looked me up and down with a keenness that made me feel just slightly objectified. Even worse was the very visible disappointment on her face as she said to Suzume, “I thought he’d be better looking, anego.”
Suzume was clearly amused by both my discomfort and her cousin’s pout. “Next time I’ll provide visual supplements, Taka. That way you won’t be let down.”
Now Midori joined in. “I don’t know; given how Keiko talks about him, he could be worse. At least the vampire smell isn’t too obvious. Of course, it could be covered up by all those dogs that apparently humped him.”
Chiyo cut the conversation short with a sudden barrage of Japanese that I somehow knew (just knew) had not been particularly complimentary to my personal aroma. “We can all chat later,” she concluded in English, then nodded to Dahlia. “After all, the metsän kunigas have hired us to perform a job.”
“We appreciate your time, Ms. Hollis,” Dahlia said formally. All three of the bears were watching the kitsune very carefully.
“Oh, I imagine that you do.” And then Chiyo gave a very foxy and predatory grin that was definitely not nice at all, and that I had seen several times before on Suzume’s face. “Forgive my lack of delicacy, but you are familiar with the price tag on what we’re about to do, yes?”
Gil was gritting his teeth. “We don’t have many options, do we?”
“That’s the beauty of holding a monopoly,” Suzume said serenely. She glanced at her aunt and flashed her own smile. “Thirty?”
Chiyo returned her niece’s expression in spades. “Yes. Thirty thousand. Cash only, if you don’t mind.”
Dahlia and Gil exchanged a significant glance. I noted with interest that Carmen was left to stand awkwardly on the side, not involved in her cousins’ exchange. A quick flicker of irritation managed to pass through the grief on her face—a flicker that I definitely recognized. It was tough when your relatives insisted on relegating you to the kiddie table during decision making. Of course, I’d certainly learned lately that being the one calling the shots wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either. Dahlia was the one to speak. “That might take us a few days.”
“More.” Gil was reining in his temper, but his tone was grim. I didn’t like him very much, but I could sympathize a little. My own sphincter had made an instinctive clench at the number being tossed around. “I don’t care how good you are. We’re going to have to be careful freeing up that much in cash right after my uncle’s death.”
“Of course we understand, darlings. You’re in your grief, after all.” Chiyo’s white teeth gleamed. “Three weeks, not a day longer. Don’t look for an invoice. We know where to find you.”
There was another silent exchange between the siblings; then Dahlia nodded. “All right. But it has to look like a natural death. Something that won’t be questioned or spur any kind of investigation.”
“Why else would you have called us in?” The older kitsune’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, looking moderately affronted. With another imperious sniff, Chiyo very deliberately looked away from Dahlia and shifted the subject. “Suzume, have you gotten a good enough look at the scene?”
“Mostly, Oba-chan. But if the murder weapon is here, I haven’t found it.”
“Easy to address.” Chiyo turned to her younger daughter. “Taka-chan?”
The blue-haired girl nodded, and began unbuttoning her blouse with a very businesslike air. Lacking an ingrained social response for how to react when the younger cousin of a woman I was doing my best to date started disrobing in the middle of a crowded room that happened to include a dead body, my higher thinking ceded completely to my lizard brain response. Almost simultaneously I flushed beet red, dropped my eyes to my shoes, and made a strangle
d noise in my throat that sounded like a turkey lure. I could feel the puzzled gazes of every shape-shifter in the room lock on me.
Had I not been fully dressed, I would’ve suspected that this was a nightmare.
“Oh, he is adorable,” Takara said delightedly as the unzipping of her skirt zipper filled my ears. A pair of now-bare feet deliberately peeped into my line of vision as I stared at my shoes, replaced a moment later by a small red fox with black legs and a white-tipped tail, whose jaw dropped in a vulpine version of laughter before her nose dropped to the ground and she devoted herself to her task.
Her sister seemed less impressed. “If you like the type. Honestly, though, Suzu, what have you not been doing with him that he can’t even take a little flashed skin?”
Whatever retort Suzume was about to make (and I’d known in my bones that I was not going to like it) was cut off by another explosion of Japanese scolding from her aunt, toward whom I was now starting to feel much warmer feelings. I looked up to see Midori’s full lips press hard together in response to whatever had been said, while Chiyo turned her attention to the bears, who had been standing by during all of this. “My dears, it might be useful if we didn’t have quite as huge a crowd.”
“Do you need them completely gone, or just out of the way?” Gil asked.
“On the back porch is fine.”
Even Dahlia’s stone facade broke enough to look somewhat relieved to be given an excuse to get away from the kitsune antics, and the two siblings immediately began herding the bystanders. Takara scampered through the legs of the moving people, somehow always avoiding getting her tail stepped on. Midori and Chiyo began circling the body. That left me and Suzume with Carmen.
I gave Suze a small nudge with my shoulder, then nodded at the girl. Suze arched an eyebrow, but stepped away to join her aunt and cousin at the body. That left me with the last person who had seen the karhu alive.
It was awkward as hell.
I did my best. “I’m really sorry that I have to ask you this now, with your dad right there, but—”
Carmen interrupted me. “No, it’s okay.” She rubbed her face hard with the sleeve of her sweater, gave a wet sniffle, and focused completely on me. She had none of Dahlia’s icy control, or Gil’s anger. What she did have when she focused those pale blue eyes on me was a clear, unhidden disappointment that made me feel about three inches tall. “So it’s definitely you who is going to be hunting for the killer? Not your sister?”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Her father had just been murdered, and in her eyes, the person assigned to the job was the C-Team. But at the same time I had no intention of asking my sister for help—not after the fiasco of last time. “I know that Prudence seems like she would be the better person to look into this,” I said, keeping my voice firm, but also trying hard not to sound like a complete dick. “But my brother and my mother both put me in charge instead of her for a lot of reasons. I promise I’ll do my best.” Carmen’s huge blue eyes filled up with tears, and her lower lip started trembling. I managed to hold out for one long minute, until the tears broke and started streaking her face, and I knew that I was beaten. With a sigh, I capitulated, promising, “If I don’t make any progress, I’ll ask for her help.”
Carmen brightened immediately, like a rain-soaked daisy. “Thanks,” she said sincerely. Then she looked embarrassed. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but it’s just—”
“I understand. It’s your dad.” She nodded gratefully. “Okay—well, did you notice anything at all that was unusual when you left home last night?”
Carmen shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, I’ve thought about it as much as I could, and it was just a normal night. Dad was reading when I left, and he usually would’ve gone to bed around eleven.”
“Would he have waited up for you?”
For a second she looked annoyed, and I wondered whether that had been something that had been a point of contention between the two of them. “I’m living at home to save on rent, but I’m twenty-one. Dad knew I’d be back when I was back.” Then her whole face crumpled again, and the tears let loose. “It was a stupid party. I should’ve stayed home. If there had been two of us, Dad would’ve been okay.”
I gave her shoulder an awkward patting as she sobbed, looking around desperately for assistance. Dahlia was just walking back in from the porch, and caught my expression. She immediately hustled over and collected Carmen, wrapping an arm around her. Gil followed at her heels, and the three ducked away into the kitchen.
That thankfully over with, I looked over at the foxes, and realized that the situation over there was not much better. Takara was back in human form, though still completely naked, and was now muscling the body of Matias up into a sitting position on the La-Z-Boy. Midori and Chiyo were helping, and I was very glad that all the bears were temporarily out of the room. The three kitsune were fighting against the effects of rigor mortis to sit the corpse into a natural-looking pose, and it was incredibly grisly to see Takara throw all of her weight onto the legs while the others shoved against the shoulders as hard as they could, while the body let out horrible cracking and gas-releasing sounds. It was also an extremely messy endeavor, and I could understand why Takara hadn’t bothered to put her clothes back on.
While the other three kitsune continued fussing over the body (now there seemed to be some disagreement about how his arms looked), Suze made her way back to me. She leaned, subtly moving me so that I didn’t have to look at what was being done with the body, and started talking quietly. “Taka found a nice big decorative geode the size of my fist under the sofa with a good blood smear on it. We think that’s what bashed in the back of his head, and it smells like it came from inside the house, so the killer probably just grabbed it. She couldn’t find the knife, but I checked the kitchen, and the butcher’s block is missing one of the big carving knives, and it wasn’t in the dishwasher either.”
“So the killer took the knife?” Another loud cracking sound filled the room as the kitsune apparently solved the problem of arm placement. I winced.
“Looks that way,” Suze agreed.
The noise had drawn Dahlia, Gil, and Carmen back in from the kitchen. They stared at the spectacle before them—Matias’s body was now positioned in his chair, his hands draped over the padded arms and his head pressing back against the cushions. The gory mess of his chest managed to look even more horrific in this positioning than it had when he was lying on the floor.
Gil headed straight for Suze, his eyes wild. “My sister just called the police to report that we discovered my uncle dead from a likely heart attack, just like that aunt of yours told us to.” A sound of complete and wordless outrage emerged as he pointed his finger at the scene before us. “That does not look like a heart attack!”
Suze gave a slightly superior smile, apparently completely unconcerned at the outraged metsän kunigas in front of us. “Are you sure? Why not take a second look?”
We all turned our heads, and at the same moment I felt my whole body cramp up with a pins-and-needles sensation, as if everything was a leg that was just falling asleep. A second later it was gone, leaving only the slightest soreness behind, but I knew that feeling, and I wasn’t surprised when I focused my eyes and saw a man lying quietly in the beige La-Z-Boy, his face gray and drawn, but with no blood or wounds anywhere visible. Smoothly inserted into my brain was the thought, Gosh, the poor guy must’ve had a heart attack. Not surprising, at his age. I wonder if there was a history of it in the family.
That was the power of the fox magic. Even knowing that it was an illusion, I couldn’t see through it. I knew that if I reached out and touched the exact spots where the knife wounds were on the karhu’s chest, my hand would tell my brain that there was unbroken skin. I’d seen Suzume do this once on her own when she needed to hide the body of a vampire’s host—it had exhausted her to the point where I’d had to carry her back to where we’d parked the Fiesta. Her aunt and cousins weren’t falling o
ver, but they all suddenly looked like the opening scene of a five-hour energy commercial.
“All done,” Chiyo announced, and walked slowly over to us. Dahlia and Carmen had joined us—the former clearly fighting to hide her surprise, and the latter just staring with her jaw flapping open. The kitsune reached into her handbag and removed some blank pill bottles, the orange kind that usually had pharmacy labels attached. She held them for a moment as she glanced between the three bears, settling finally on Dahlia. “Everyone seems to be looking to you, Dahlia. So are you the new karhu that we’ll all be dealing with?”
Another of those lightning-fast and completely undecipherable looks was exchanged, and it was Gil who answered, in as controlled a voice as I’d heard from him yet this afternoon. “My uncle had indicated several times that Dahlia would be his choice, but the formal ceremony won’t be until after the mourning period is over.”
As if they had never stopped in the first place, Carmen’s tears began again. “Another month at least,” she choked out.
Chiyo nodded. “Of course. Well, then.” She handed Dahlia the pill bottles. “Put these in the medicine cabinet and on the kitchen counter. When the police see them, they’ll see exactly the medications they would expect to see in cases of heart trouble.” The sound of a siren began blaring in the distance, and she gave a small, satisfied smile. “Ah, that should be them right now. Since I’m sure you can handle them while they come to the obvious conclusions, we’ll adjourn to the kitchen.” A hard look tightened her tired face, and she glared at all three of the metsän kunigas. “The paramedics will rush in and make all sorts of fuss. Let them. They’ll see everything they expect in a fatal heart attack, and they’ll never see the blood even when they put their hands right in it. No one will see it. It won’t show up in any photos either. When they shower after their shifts, it’ll be washed down the drain and no one will be the wiser. Just look sad, shaken, but not very surprised, and when they ask you, say that your uncle had had some health issues for the last few years, but didn’t like to talk about it much. Once they realize that there’s no use bringing him to the hospital, and the police agree that it’s clearly just a natural event, let them ask if you have a funeral home to use. Then bring up the ghouls, and either of you can trot off and call them over.”
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