Gentleman Takes a Chance

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  Rafiel grabbed a quarter from the drink holder, where he normally kept parking-meter fodder. He flipped it at Tom, who grabbed it out of the air. Good to know he was getting the feeling in his hands back.

  He watched Tom get out of the car, very quickly, cross the high school campus semidiagonally, so that any witness would say he came out of the school. Sometimes—he thought, as he watched Tom cross the street and run, hell-bent for leather, towards the convenience store, so fast that he wasn't any more than a brief dark blur amid the snow—it was easy to believe the things Tom told him about his teenage years. Casual juvenile delinquence would impart that sort of knowledge. How to trick the police, 101.

  In less time than seemed possible, for what he needed to do, Tom was back, coming into the car through the back door and saying, "Drive, drive, drive."

  Rafiel drove. "Who answered?"

  "I think just the receptionist or dispatcher, or whatever. She told me she would transfer me to someone else, but I hung up." He grinned at Rafiel, a feral grin, and leaned forward on the seat. "I grabbed the phone with my sleeve. And I wiped the coin before putting it in."

  Rafiel sighed. "Probably overkill," he said. "We are not exactly the most advanced scientific police in the world." He took a bunch of turns, very fast, not so much seeking to be physically far away from the convenience store, as seeking to be in a place no one would associate with the convenience store. In no time at all, it seemed, he was driving through an upscale neighborhood of the type that used to be a suburb in the days when the main form of commuting was the trolley car. Eight blocks or so, in a direct shot from downtown Goldport, this neighborhood was all shaded, set-back, two- and three-floor houses, which managed to look much like Christmas cards under the snow. "As long as they don't catch you in the act of putting the coin in, or dialing them up, that's pretty much it. Oh, if it's anyone but McKnight, they'll exert due diligence, too, by going to the clerk and asking if they saw someone call."

  "Unlikely," Tom said. "I was at the back of the store the whole time. Unless he can see through brick walls . . ."

  "Yes," Rafiel said, and then, because the way that Tom was leaning forward over the seats was starting to give him visions of suddenly hitting a tree and ending up with Tom splattered all over his dashboard, "You know, we have laws about seat belts, in this state. As a policeman—"

  Tom didn't answer. He just leaned back and buckled the seat belt. Then he made a sudden startled sound. "Kyrie," he said. "I haven't called Kyrie."

  * * *

  Kyrie was bargaining with fate. She was working, steadily, as if nothing had happened, but behind her smile, her ready quips at the customers, she was bargaining with fate.

  She had started from the point of view that if Tom were to walk in, right then, she would only tell him how worried she'd been. She wouldn't make a big deal at all out of it. But since then, as the minutes passed and she heard neither from him nor from Rafiel, she'd started bargaining.

  Okay, okay, if Tom walks in right now, she told herself, I'll just smile and tell him how glad I am that he's alive. Aware that she'd actually paused to listen for the sound of the back door opening up, she let out a hiss of frustration at herself. It wasn't sane, and it wasn't rational, but the thing was that she'd been expecting Tom to come in in response to her silent concession. She sighed at her own stupidity, and looked at the wall. Okay, he'd been gone more than two hours. What if he was frozen by the side of the road?

  She could call Rafiel. She should call Rafiel. But what if Rafiel hadn't found him, yet? Or worse, what if Rafiel had found him? And he wasn't alive? In that case, the longer she took to find out about it, the better, right?

  No. No. She was being stupid. It was unlikely he'd be dead, and if he was ill or severely hypothermic, of course she wanted to know. Needed to know. She set down the latest batch of orders and nudged Conan, who was getting much better at tending tables, but who, despite lots of coffee, looked like death warmed over.

  "Take over my tables for a little while, okay?" she asked.

  He nodded. His gaze turned to her, said what he could not say in full voice. And it was something that Kyrie simply didn't want to hear. What if he's dead? What if I left him and then the Ancient Ones killed him?

  Kyrie shook her head at him, slightly, denying her own misgivings as well as his. And then she stepped behind the counter and reached for the phone on the wall, trying to figure out how she could ask Rafiel questions without either giving away the shifter thing, or alarming Anthony, who was looking at her curiously. She was sure he had decided that she and Tom had had a spat. He was giving her that look of concern and gentle enquiry friends give you when they don't want to stick themselves in the middle of your marital disputes.

  She took a deep breath. She could just ask Rafiel how it was going.

  The phone rang, so suddenly and loudly that it made her jump. She fumbled for it, almost dropped it, managed to get it to her ear and say, "Hello?"

  "Is that how you answer the phone for a business?" Tom's gently teasing voice was such a relief to hear that Kyrie felt her knees go weak, and tears sting behind her eyes.

  "Idiot," she said.

  "Um . . . that's also not the approved . . ." Tom said. She could see him grin as he spoke. And then, as though realizing he could only push his luck so far, he said, "Look, everything is okay. Sorry to take so long to call back, but we found Old Joe—"

  "Old Joe?" Nothing could be further from her mind than the transient alligator shifter. She saw Anthony give her an odd look. Clearly that had also not figured in his speculation.

  "Yeah. I'll explain when I get back. Look, it might be easier . . . if you can leave Anthony and Conan in charge and join us in the room at the bed-and-breakfast?" He chuckled softly. "I'd like to add girls to the repertoire of odd visitors I shower with."

  "Idiot," she said again, very softly.

  "Yes, I am. Conan made it back okay, right?"

  "Yeah. Conan is fine. He's getting better at waiting tables, too." Again, Kyrie was conscious of Anthony's baffled look at her. She did her best to brazen it out, as she asked, "So you met Rafiel?" At least she assumed so, unless he had now taken to using the royal we.

  "Yeah. He'll be coming back with me. We're going by a doughnut place first, though, apparently."

  "What?"

  "I don't know," Tom said. Kyrie could hear another voice in the background, that she had to assume was Rafiel talking. "He says they have a tracker in his car, and if he doesn't go by a doughnut place at least once a week they kick him out of the force."

  "Ha ha," Kyrie said.

  "Yeah, I told him it was lame, too, but at least he's making an effort at making fun of himself. A few more years and he should be human. Hey. Stop hitting me. Police brutality. So, do you think you can make it to the room? In about fifteen minutes?"

  "I'll manage," Kyrie said.

  "All right. And, listen . . . I'm an idiot. Sorry if I worried you."

  She tried to deny that he worried her at all, but her mouth refused to form quite that big a lie. "It's okay," she said, instead, because she had bargained with fate, and she'd promised not to kill him, not to maim him even slightly, and finally that she wasn't even going to yell at him. "It's okay."

  * * *

  Tom thought the place must have been a Dunkin' Doughnuts in a previous life, but it had now become—according to the sign hastily painted on a facade in which the Dunkin' Doughnuts name was still readable from the too-white shadow of the letters that used to cover it—good morning doughnuts.

  The whole place had the sort of look of someone in limited circumstances and hiding out under a false name to avoid embarrassing the family. On the door, a hand-lettered sign read cash only please, which gave the impression that the people running it were planning to escape to South America at any moment, taking their ill-gotten gains with them.

  But inside, it was surprisingly cozy, with aged but well-scrubbed formica tables, around which gathered bevies of retir
ees and housewives. This was clearly a gathering spot for a working-class neighborhood.

  Behind the counter, a Chinese family made Tom tense, before he scolded himself that race had nothing to do with it. Yes, most dragon shifters might be Asian. But he clearly wasn't. And the dire wolf was just as bad as the Great Sky Dragon's triad. Perhaps worse, as at least it could be claimed that the Great Sky Dragon tried to protect all dragon shifters—while the dire wolf seemed to have very few loyalties but to himself. Tom wondered if Dire was representative of the Ancient Ones at all. Perhaps he'd just chosen to claim the role. There was no telling.

  Rafiel was clearly known here. He ordered a dozen doughtnuts, rapidly choosing the flavors, and grinning at Tom's bewildered expression. "I told you. We're required to visit these places. At least once a week."

  Tom shook his head, smiling a little.

  "Do you want coffee?" Rafiel asked. And when Tom nodded yes, he proceeded to order three. "I owe one to a guy in a doorway on Fairfax. He told me where to find you."

  "The guy in a khaki jacket?" Tom asked.

  "Yeah. He didn't seem to want to go to a shelter at any cost, and he had one of those Mylar blankets." Rafiel shrugged. "I wondered . . ." But never said what he wondered as he handed the bills over to the lady behind the counter.

  Later in the truck, Tom said, "I wondered too. But he didn't smell of shifter."

  "I know," Rafiel said. "Though to be honest, as cold as I was, I don't think I could smell anything."

  "That's possible," Tom said. He bit his lip. "But I think I or you would have smelled something . . . even just a hint."

  Rafiel nodded. He put a hand into the doughnut box, nudging it open in a way that bespoke long practice. He wedged a doughnut in his mouth, as he shifted into gear with his free hand. Then, with the doughnut still in his mouth, he backed out of the parking lot of the doughnut shop and onto the road.

  "Why a dozen doughnuts?" Tom asked. "Seriously. Don't tell me they'd kick you out of the force. Why a dozen doughnuts?"

  Rafiel took a bite of his doughnut, dipped into the box again for a napkin and wedged the napkin-wrapped doughnut into the cup holder on the dashboard, all while driving with one hand, in a way that Tom had to admit, given the snow and what looked to him no more visibility than about a palm beyond the windshield, seemed a bit cavalier.

  "Energy," he said. "I think I'm going to have a long night of it. I don't think I can go and interview the male employees now, of course. But if Old Joe was right, and if there really was a body at the aquarium, I should get a call any minute now. And that usually means a few hours securing the scene, sweeping for evidence and all that. It's not a five-minute job."

  "Right," Tom said.

  "But first," Rafiel said, in all seriousness, "we must take the coffee to Khaki Guy, whom we'll do our best to sniff out, if he is a shifter. And then we must meet Kyrie. There's a meeting I'm not looking forward to."

  "Why?" Tom said, surprised.

  "Because I didn't call her as soon as I found you." He grinned wider and added, with every appearance of enjoying the thought, "She's going to rip my balls off and beat me with them."

  * * *

  Kyrie was glad they arrived at the room almost exactly fifteen minutes later. She had just the time to pick up Not Dinner, who, being a cat, and faced with a surfeit of stuffed furniture and other comfortable sleeping surfaces, had chosen to fall asleep in the bathtub. But he'd woken up when she first came into the bathroom, and scrabbled up her petting arm, until she held him under her chin and petted him, while he purred ecstatically.

  She'd managed to get to the bed, with him trying to climb into her shirt, under the neckline, and install himself on her left shoulder, when she heard the key in the lock, and then Tom came in.

  He still looked like nothing on earth, with his hair floating around him, in a wild dark cloud. He was wearing a hoodie she'd never seen on him, and which must be Rafiel's, since it was dark grey and said "Policemen Do It More Forcefully" across the chest. He was also carrying a doughnut and a cup of coffee. And he stood, just inside the door, grinning sheepishly at her, while Rafiel came in, behind him, and closed the door.

  The weird thing, she thought, was that Rafiel looked scared, while Tom didn't. Tom looked more embarrassed, as if he'd done something horribly stupid. Which, of course, in a way, he had.

  "Sorry," he said. "I still can't understand how you could take it so calmly." A blush climbed his cheeks. "But I guess you're more grown-up than I am. You've always been."

  And she, who only a couple hours before was thinking exactly the same, shook her head. "No. I don't think it's a matter of being more or less grown-up. Truly. I think we're just . . . very different people." And then, for fear he'd interpret this as breaking up with him when, in fact, over the last hour or so she'd come to the conclusion she couldn't live without him, even if she tried, she added, "And that's okay. I mean, we're supposed to be. It would be very weird to fall in love with yourself, wouldn't it?"

  Tom looked slyly at Rafiel and for just a moment, Kyrie thought he was going to say that Rafiel managed it fine. But instead, he shrugged a little, and that, Kyrie thought might in fact be a function of growing up. He'd learned not to bait the policeman.

  "So . . . you said you needed to talk to me? Tell me . . . something?"

  Tom nodded. "At least right now," he said, "I don't need to shower." And smiled. "I keep thinking I'm going to catch one of those horrible diseases you catch from washing too much. A fungus or something, because I destroyed the normal balance of the skin."

  He walked to the vanity, and grabbed his hairbrush and started vigorously brushing his hair back, tying it neatly again, in his normal ponytail. While he did so, he talked. He told her of walking out—of thinking about a lot of things, though he wouldn't specify what those things were—of hearing that Old Joe might be at the aquarium and of wandering there. Then he told her about the phone, and how his father had thought he'd eaten someone.

  Kyrie had to clench her hands into fists at this point, and make an effort not to speak out loud. Because she who never had parents, at least had an idea of what parents were supposed to be. And what they weren't. And she was fairly sure they weren't supposed to be like Edward Ormson. Oh, surely, his son was a strange creature. An enigma that they couldn't quite solve. But he should know Tom enough to know he wouldn't—couldn't—murder anyone. Much less eat him or her. Yes, she knew that Tom claimed to always be afraid of that also. Which was silly. Perhaps she knew him better than he knew himself, but she was quite aware that he would never do anything like that.

  Thinking this she met his eyes in the mirror and they smiled at each other. He stepped back, slowly, to sit by her side on the bed, and hold her hand. "I shouldn't have gone away," he said. "Yes, I needed to cool off. But I needed to be with you as well. As is, I made you worry needlessly. Is . . . is Conan all right?"

  "Very worried about you," Kyrie said. "He kept thinking the Ancient Ones might get you, and then the Great Sky Dragon might come for him."

  Tom smiled, this time ruefully, and squeezed her hand a little. "I figured it was something like that."

  "Okay, my story now," Rafiel said. He had sat backwards on the vanity chair, facing them, his arms around its middle, his chin resting atop of it. Despite his obvious grown-up proportions, the width of his shoulders, the glint of a five o'clock shadow in a tawny color that matched his leonine mane, he looked much like a truant boy. He told them, clearly, and doing the expressions and the voices of both himself and his interlocutors about his three interviews with aquarium visitors. "The thing," he said, "is that she told me there was another shifter, in the aquarium. She thought he was one of the spider crabs." He sighed. "So maybe that was the other shifter we smelled." He explained about his earlier interview with Ms. Gigio.

  "Do you think she's the woman that Old Joe was warning you about?" Kyrie asked. "I mean . . ."

  "I don't even know if Old Joe hallucinated the whole thing," Tom said.
"Until there is proof to the contrary, I'd like to withhold opinion as to whom he was talking about."

  Kyrie nodded. Rafiel looked up and shrugged a little. "She doesn't smell like a shifter. If she's only a crazy person who is pushing people into the shark tank . . . then she's not my problem."

  "Rafiel!" Kyrie said, before she realized that she was going to say it, a note of indignation in her voice. "I can't believe you'd say that. What do you mean she's not your problem? You sound like . . . Dire . . . with all his talk about how ephemerals don't matter, how only shifters do."

  Rafiel shook his head, even if a slight amount of color appeared over his high cheekbones. "You misunderstand me," he said. "That's not what I meant at all. Only that it won't require anything special from me—just police work, which I would do for any other case. It's not my problem as a shifter; I don't have to skulk and lie and find a way to make it all come out right. Only . . . only make sure that we find the culprit and she has a proper trial. Or he, if it's not Lei, but it's still not a shifter. It's the shifter angle that has me worried. Right now, the more I hear and the more I probe into this, the more I get worried that there is a shifter angle—it could be anyone, from Dante Dire, to this unknown spider crab shifter to . . ." He shook his head. "I don't think it could be Ms. Gigio. But it could definitely be the Rodent Liberation Front, whoever they are. Any rodent shifters crazy enough to try Marxist theory must be ready for everything."

  "And crazy enough for anything," Tom said ruefully.

  At that moment, Rafiel's phone rang. He picked it up and answered. From their side, the conversation bordered on cryptic. Rafiel said, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I'll be there." And hung up, and got up to go.

  "They found a corpse?" Tom asked, his body as taut as a bowstring, his tension seemingly communicating itself to Kyrie via the hand he held.

  Rafiel nodded. "Yes. He's . . . He was almost not eaten at all—they'd . . . the sharks had just started on him, and they fished him out. Well . . . I don't know about not eaten at all." He looked a bit green and swallowed, as if the images his words evoked were getting to him, as well. "But he still has a face and lungs. And . . . well . . . they figure that they will be able to identify him, and look for signs that he was pushed into the tank while still alive. Or not."