Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  The second corpse—or the bits of it the sharks hadn't eaten—had shown up in an aquarium closed to the public. The suspects should, obviously, be the employees or—if his superiors ever found out that Rafiel had abstracted a key—Rafiel himself.

  Only, having found out how easy it was to steal a key, Rafiel could argue—was arguing, with himself, just as he would with his superiors should they call him on it—that other people might have done so. And given his privileged knowledge that there were shifters and that two, maybe three of them, had been to the aquarium around the time of the first crime, he thought it made perfect sense to find out if one of those might have stolen the keys, as he had, and had copies made, and if the crimes were, somehow, being committed as part of a shifter imperative, driven by the animal half of some poor slob with less self-control than Rafiel himself had.

  "The police are pursuing enquiries?" Lei said, ironically.

  "Well, as a matter of fact the police are," Rafiel said and sighed. "You know"—he wiped at the table in what was more a nervous gesture than anything else—"it's amazing how often those words are true and how often they define most of what I do in my work. We pursue enquiries. We go from place to place and ask questions." He smiled. "All those TV series with heroic detectives who can flourish a gun and threaten a suspect just in the nick of time, or who have the ability to magically assemble pieces of evidence given by some amazing new scientific machine for analyzing skin cells, or whatever, do my job a great disservice. Most of what we do is just . . . patient, slow work. I'm sorry it's affecting your job. I'm sure it affected the job of the poor slob who got killed, also."

  "Yes, of course," she said, looking guilty as people had a tendency to when they complained about a murder disrupting their lives and somehow managed to ignore that it had ended someone else's life. "It's just . . ." she shrugged. "Of course I'm very sorry for the man. The TV says he was an out-of-town salesman, or something, but you know, I still need to work and I need a paycheck."

  "We will solve the murders as fast as we can," Rafiel said. "Trust me, I don't want some lunatic at large, pushing people into shark tanks."

  She looked up at him and her curiously opaque black eyes managed to project an impression of innocence and confusion. "Are you sure that is what happened? I mean, couldn't people just have fallen in? Or . . . or jumped in, even?"

  "Oh, sure," he heard himself say. "The first one, maybe. But this one? With the aquarium closed? Are you honestly suggesting that someone took it into his head to steal keys to the aquarium and go in to commit suicide by shark? What kind of person does that? Given how cold it was, it would have made more sense for him to stay outside and let himself die from hypothermia. Alternately, to jump from a very high building. But jump into a tank full of creatures with sharp teeth? Who views that as an easy way out?"

  "Well, not easy, perhaps, but quick," she said, hesitantly. "Or perhaps they just were drunk, and dropped into the tank? Who knows?"

  "Who knows indeed?" he said, thinking that it was very clear that Ms. Lei Lani knew less than nothing. "Do you often have drunken visitors who take the trouble of copying keys and come in after hours?"

  She opened her mouth, then closed it, then opened it again. A blush suffused her cheeks. "I don't know why you keep talking about people stealing keys," she said. "It's not needed, you know. When the restaurant company took over the aquarium, they never bothered to change the locks. They're the same we had when the aquarium belonged to the city and was so poor we had fewer fish than your average pet store—or at least that's what I've heard. I wasn't here, back then. But they never changed the locks and some of the . . ." She blushed darker, a very interesting effect on her tanned cheeks. The more he talked to her, the less he was confident identifying her as a native Hawaiian, and the more it seemed to him she was probably Mediterranean or generic white, who just happened to have dark hair and a generally broad face. "You know, some of the guys who work there, like, some of the ones who clean the aquariums, talk about how easy it is to pick the lock, and about breaking into the aquarium and bringing dates there. I don't know if it's true or if they just talk about it to . . . to tweak me. But I know when we clean that observation area just over the shark tank, we often find . . ." She looked away from him, past him, at the front window and the sparse traffic out there on Fairfax. "We often find used condoms in the planters."

  Rafiel raised his eyebrows. "Interesting," he said, while trying to sound, in fact, perfectly disinterested. Not that he was. She might simply be repeating salacious tales her male co-workers told each other. Most of the people who worked at the aquarium were high school or college age, and Rafiel knew better than to put any stock in the stories told by males in that age group. On the other hand, they might very well be true. And if true, they would open a whole other front of investigation into these crimes.

  At that moment, he heard Keith say, "Oh, thank God, Kyrie, you're here," and looked up to see Kyrie duck behind the counter, looking like she had been crying but noticeably in one piece.

  "Excuse me a moment," he said. "I'll go see if they still need me or if I can go back to my real job."

  * * *

  Kyrie saw Tom's clothes and boots at the back entrance to the diner, just under the overhang that prevented them from getting dripped on by the gutters filled with melted runoff. She picked them up, carrying them in with her. In her mind, she could see Tom shuffling out of them, hurrying to her rescue. She'd seen him do this before, and knew that he always kicked off his boots before he shifted.

  He was lucky, she thought, that no one had stolen his boots yet, as likely as he was to leave them in all possible—and some distinctly impossible—locations around town. But the thought that he had been in a hurry to come to her rescue remained, as she stepped into the warm atmosphere of the diner, perfumed with the homey scent of fries and redolent of basil, fennel and mint.

  Before they'd taken over, there had been an underlying bad smell to the diner, as though the old grease was never completely cleaned from the various surfaces. As they'd found in their grand cleanup and repainting before reopening under their management, this was by and large true. But now all that you could smell in the diner was the clean aroma of well prepared food. Tom was as fanatic about hygiene as he was about helping people who just didn't seem able to make it on their own. People and animals, she thought, as she remembered Not Dinner. Not that she resented Not Dinner. As someone who had long ago accepted it would be neither safe nor sane for her to have children, a pet might be as close as she came to motherhood.

  She put Tom's boots on the lower shelf of the space behind the counter, the shelf into which all of them shoved either uncomfortable or too-heavy shoes on occasion—as well as purses, or bags of purchases. She smiled at Keith's enthusiastic and somewhat shaky salutation, and wondered if Keith had been worried about her, or even knew why Tom had left.

  Grabbing an apron from beneath the counter, she said, "Tom will be in in just a second, and then you can go."

  "Good," Keith said, sounding even more relieved. "You know, I was supposed to bring Summer here, and introduce her to you guys, and then take her out for a movie, or something. I was not supposed to bring her here, duck behind the counter, and leave her all alone. I don't even know where she's gone now." He cast a panicked glance around the tables—of which only five were occupied, and none of them except the one table with the dark-haired woman who was talking to Rafiel, showing anyone even remotely in Keith's age range.

  "What does she look like?" Kyrie asked.

  "Blond. Wearing a pink coat."

  "Maybe she got bored and went for a walk," she said. Privately, she was thinking that if the girl got bored that quickly and went for a walk instead of, say, sitting at the counter and talking to Keith while he worked, she might not in fact be very interested. But she didn't say anything aloud.

  She didn't remember being Keith's emotional age. Chronologically, they weren't that far apart. They were both, roughly college
age—but Kyrie couldn't remember a time when she had felt so incapable of standing on her own two feet that she needed the props of a group, or of a friendship, or even of a boyfriend. In fact, until very recently, she had none of those. However, Keith clearly needed friends or a girlfriend or something and even in the months she'd known him, she had seen him assume that people liked him or even loved him on very scant evidence. It would be cruel to disabuse him of it.

  Instead, she said as tentatively as she dared, "So this was a date?"

  He shrugged. "Something like it. I mean, I told her I wanted her to meet some of my friends, but the idea was that I was going to take her to the morning showing of Monsters of the Deep at the Imax at the museum, and then we were . . . you know, going for coffee or something."

  Ah, yes, Keith, take the girl to the Nature Museum Imax, why don't you? Dazzle and seduce her. She'll never know what hit her, Kyrie thought. After all, who was she to judge the mating rituals of others. It wasn't like she had a great deal of experience with mating or dating. And Keith, being a confirmed geek, was probably following the right tactic in looking for a girl who could share his obsessions. "Sorry to leave you stuck here," she said. "Maybe she's just outside looking at shop windows or something."

  "Maybe," he said, sullenly. "But it's not even that. If Rafiel hadn't offered to help, I don't know how I would have managed both the tables and the cooking."

  "Well," Kyrie said. She looked up to see that Rafiel was indeed wearing the red apron of The George, and smiled despite herself. What would the police force think of its officer moonlighting in this way? "I'm glad he stayed, then."

  At that moment, Rafiel excused himself and sailed towards her across the diner, notebook in hand, a smile on his all-too-handsome face. "So glad you're here and okay," he said, in an undertone that couldn't be heard by anyone but Keith. "Are the two guys okay, too?"

  "Yeah. They're showering," Kyrie said. "They'll be here any moment, or at least Tom will." And then, rapidly, "Rafiel, Tom says you didn't call me and ask me to meet you at my place?"

  "Huh?" Rafiel said. "No, I didn't. I went by the bed-and-breakfast to get the key and when you weren't there, I came here to get Tom's. That's it."

  She had known it before, but hearing it now, made her heart sink. Hearing that Rafiel had never called, confirming absolutely that it must have been the dire wolf playing mind games brought on a slight shake, and caused her to reach for the counter for support. She must also have gone pale, because Rafiel said, "What's wrong?"

  She told him, rapidly, in just slightly above a whisper. When she finished, she realized that Keith too was staring at her. "You're saying this thing was in your mind? That it made you think things had happened?"

  Kyrie nodded.

  "Wow," Keith said. "That's like some supervillain. Much worse than the last time." He sounded vaguely fascinated and excited about it.

  "You know, Keith," Rafiel started. "This is not—"

  "I know, I know, it's not a game or a play. It's the true thing, and it's true for all of you. But the idea . . . It's just cool. So, how are you guys going to defeat him?"

  "I don't know," Kyrie said, as she looked over Rafiel's shoulder towards the door, where the bell tinkled indicating someone had come in. Her heart skipped a beat, and it seemed to her that her breath caught in her throat.

  The man who had come in was not wearing a silvery turtleneck or black pants. He was rather more elaborately dressed, in an impeccably cut pair of grey trousers and a button-down silver shirt mostly covered by a blazer that must be made of the finest fabric available and fashioned by master tailors. But he was undeniably the same creature who had just fought it out with her and Tom in their kitchen.

  "But he has just come in."

  * * *

  Kyrie stared at the dire wolf—Mr. Dire—in his neat attire, as he made his way between the tables, straight at her. Tom's fears came back to haunt her.

  What if Dire reached into her thoughts and made her follow him somewhere he could kill her? What if he reached into the minds of the ten or so people in the diner and made them not see or not remember anything as he dragged her off, or even savaged her right here?

  She remembered Tom hitting him repeatedly with the meat-tenderizing ax and the skewer, but Dire showed no sign at all of having been cut, or hurt in any way. His skin looked smooth, flawless, with only the shadow of beard marring its otherwise golden complexion. Had he been cut? Had that been an illusion? Or was this the illusion?

  The counter had a series of bar stools on the far end, away from the grill and stove. These were rarely used during the day, though they were often occupied at night by single males who came in for their dinner, or by people who couldn't find room at the tables and booths. At this time, just before the dinner rush, they were all empty—a line of chrome and vinyl stools, fixed in a silent row.

  Dante Dire flowed into one of these, straddling it. He smiled at Kyrie, revealing perfectly shaped and perfectly human teeth. She shook herself, realizing that she had been expecting him to reveal the saberlike teeth of his other form. "Could I have a coffee, miss?" he asked, just loud enough for his voice to carry to where she and Keith and Rafiel huddled.

  "Don't do it," Rafiel whispered. "I'll take care of it."

  But Dire smiled mockingly, and looked straight at Kyrie as he said, "Come on. It's not like I'm going to eat you."

  It wasn't as though he was going to eat her, Kyrie thought. He kept telling her that, and perhaps he meant it, or perhaps it was one of those things where people keep denying their deepest thoughts. In either case, what did it matter?

  Either he had no intention of killing her—and it seemed to her, now, on cold reflection, that given the time it had taken Tom to come and rescue her, he could easily have finished her before the cavalry arrived—and therefore was merely toying with them, or perhaps giving her some warning of what his true powers were, or he in fact intended to kill her, and had just fallen in the rather bad habit of playing with his food. This last speculation went well with the insanity behind his eyes, and with the resemblance that he seemed to show to some of the crazier Roman emperors, those who thought they were gods and treated all life around them with the suitable disdain of immortals for mere mortal, ephemeral creatures.

  So, he either could spirit her away from here, or kill her right here, without suffering any consequences, or he couldn't. In either case, it seemed to her it didn't make any difference to let Rafiel serve him. No difference, that is, except to make him despise her by thinking her a coward. And whether he intended to kill her or not, having him think worse of her would probably make it easier for him to treat her badly.

  "No, I'll take care of it," she told Rafiel, as she poured a coffee, grabbed a bowl of creamers and a handful of sugars from beside the coffee maker, and set it on the counter beside Dire.

  This—or the fact that despite herself her hand trembled as she set the coffee before him—seemed to amuse him. "Thank you," he told her. "I take my coffee black."

  She nodded to him and started to walk away, but he said, "Stay!"

  The voice was authoritative enough that she stopped walking and turned around.

  "Stay," he repeated. "I think it's time I talked to you and explained what is going on."

  "You don't need to," she said, her voice hollow. "You don't have to." She wasn't sure she wanted to know what Dante Dire thought was going on—at any rate she had a feeling his narrative would be highly colored and personal, and not factual or dispassionate.

  "I want to," he said. "Look, it's like this . . ." He paused and took a sip of his coffee and his eyes focused to the side and behind her. Kyrie knew, without turning to look, that he was looking at Rafiel and Keith who had, doubtless, abandoned the lit stove and all other duties to come and stand beside her, as if their mere presence could protect her against this ancient and powerful creature. She had to repress an impulse to giggle, as well as an impulse to turn around and shake her head at them for being ridicu
lous. Instead, she looked at Dire, her eyebrows raised.

  Dire looked from one to the other of the men, then back again at her. "Tell the ephemeral one to leave," he said. "This is shifter business. Not his. I want to talk but only to those who might understand it."

  Kyrie froze. She heard Keith draw breath, and she knew he was getting ready to make some protest. She was almost relieved when it was Rafiel who spoke: "He's our friend. He has saved our lives in the past. There is no reason for us to banish him from any conversation. We trust him. He's one of us."

  Dante Dire looked up. The gaze which he bent upon Rafiel was so coldly calculating that Kyrie felt as if she were frozen by proximity. "He is not one of us," Dire said, letting his eyes drift just enough to indicate he was surveying Keith disdainfully. "He can never be one of us. Nor can he ever truly understand us. Those of his kind who pretend to understand or like our kind, are only waiting to slip the dagger in."

  Kyrie opened her mouth, in turn, to speak, but Dire looked at her. "You are young," he said. "The young make mistakes. I am not young and I am not going to suffer for your mistakes."

  "But—" Rafiel said.

  "We don't really want to hear what you have to say," Kyrie said, finding her voice. "We don't know that you'd tell us the truth. So far you've attacked us, nothing more. We don't see why we should trust you now."

  He looked at her, eyes half closed. Slowly, slowly, his lip twitched upwards on the right side, as though she was a particularly clever child saying some interesting nonsense. "I have not attacked you," he said, didactically. "I have tested you. And having tested you, I've decided you are worthy of being told the truth. There are many of our kind," he said. "A great many more born than ever survive to their twentieth birthday let alone their hundredth. Some are killed by their own stupidity and others . . . find ways to die. Few find comrades worthy of them, or fight, as they should, for other shifters and themselves. Those that do are interesting. Interesting enough to deserve to be told . . . some things they should know."