At that job they’d told her to always smile while she was talking because people on the other side could tell. She’d never believed it till now.
The silence lengthened between them, stretched like taffy, feeling sticky and endless, thinner and thinner, but never breaking. “All right,” she said, at last. “Ask.”
This time there was a very masculine chuckle at the other end.
“I can always say no,” she said, tempted beyond endurance by the chuckle.
“You can,” he said, gravely. “But I hope you don’t. There’s a restaurant about … oh, two miles from your house. It’s the in-house restaurant at Spurs and Lace.”
Spurs and Lace was the one good hotel in a Western town plagued with cheap motels and improbable cabin resorts, which catered to those families too poor, too numerous, or too shy to stay at the one Holiday Inn. The nineteenth-century hotel was in a completely different class. Once used by moneyed Easterners coming for the benefit of the mineral waters and the dry Western air, it had been renovated within an inch of its life, furnished with antiques and updated. It was now the haven of moneyed business travelers and honeymooning couples. An executive resort, Kyrie believed they called it.
“The restaurant is called Sheriff’s Star, but despite the name it’s good,” Trall went on. “They serve brunch, which we’re just about in time for.”
Again, she said nothing. Oh, she could see where this was going, but she would let him come out and say it.
“I’d like to swing by your house to pick you up in about … oh … five minutes?”
“Why would you like to pick me up?” Kyrie asked, though her mind, and the recollections of his smell from the day before, gave her pretty good indications.
The chuckle again. “I’d like to feed you, Ms. Smith. Nothing worse than that. And if, during brunch, you should feel like talking to me about the diner, and what you think might have gone on in that parking lot in the dark, I will discuss the other cases we’ve had with you and—”
“Did you say other cases?” Kyrie asked.
“Indeed.”
“Other cases of …” She remembered his story the day before. “… attacks by Komodo dragons?”
“Possibly. Mysterious attacks, shall we say.”
“I see.”
“Well, I think if we discuss it, we’ll both see better,” he said. “So … I’ll pick you up in a few minutes, if that is acceptable.”
“No,” Kyrie said, before she even knew she was going to say it. But as soon as the word was out of her lips, she knew why. She knew she had to say it. Stranded at a restaurant with only this relative stranger and no way home on her own? No. She didn’t think so. She might have gone stupid last night, but now it was the next day and she wouldn’t be stupid anymore. “No. I’ll bring my car. I’ll meet you there. In twenty minutes.”
She could see him hesitate on the other end of the phone. She wasn’t sure how, or not exactly. Perhaps the letting out of breath, or perhaps some other sound, too light for ears to consciously discern. But it was there. And it was followed by a hesitant, “Your car …”
And now it was her turn to smile into the phone, “Why, officer. Would you be embarrassed to be seen with me, because of the condition of my car?”
“What? Of course not. It’s just that I thought with the broken window, you have a security liability and—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry, Officer Trall. After all, it’s a good part of town, isn’t it?”
After she put the phone down, she thought that it was a good part of town. And that her car might look ever so slightly embarrassing. But probably more so for Officer Trall, whom she doubted ever left the house without wearing pressed clothes.
She refused to be intimidated by him. Or scared by his obvious, open, clear sexuality. To begin with, whether he turned into a lion or not, he was—as she had reason to know, being a female counterpart—only human. Or possibly something less. How much the animal controlled them was something that Kyrie didn’t wish to think about. And second, there was very little reason he would be romantically interested in her. She’d guess his suit had cost more than she made in a month.
Chances were he turned on that feline, devil-may-care charm with every female in sight. And meant nothing by it.
Still, she wouldn’t look like a charity date. Not at the Sheriff’s Star, she wouldn’t. Too many times in childhood, she’d found herself dressed in foster sisters’—or brothers’—discards, cowering at the back of a family group, afraid someone would ask why a beggar was let in.
Now she might dress from thrift shops—her salary rarely extended to new clothes, except for underwear and socks—but at a size six that meant she got last year’s designer clothes, donated by women so fashion conscious they spent half their time studying trends. That and a bit of flair, and her naturally exotic features, made most people think her beautiful. Or at least handsome.
Before getting in the shower, she checked her wounds under the bandages, and was shocked at finding them completely healed and only a little red. There would be scars, but no wound. Interesting. Very interesting. She must make sure to figure out what that antibiotic cream was. She needed to buy more of it. She always kept a well-stocked first-aid cabinet—part of her trying to be prepared to survive any emergency on her own—but this had been the first time she’d needed it.
She rushed through a shower, dried her hair properly into position and slipped on a white knit shirt with a mass of soft folds in the front that gave the appearance of a really deeply cut décolletage—but a décolletage so hidden by the swaying material in the front that it was a matter of guessing whether it was really there or not.
Then she put on the wraparound green suede miniskirt. No fishnets, which she occasionally wore to work. There was no reason to look like Officer Trall was having brunch with a hooker either and—with this outfit—fishnets would give that impression. Instead, she put on flesh-tone stockings and slipped her feet into relatively flat shoes.
Fully dressed, she thought of Tom. If she was going to leave him here alone, in the house, without a car, she should leave him a note.
Backtracking to her dresser, she grabbed the notepad and pen she kept in her underwear drawer, and wrote quickly, I had to go out. There’s eggs and bacon in the fridge. Shapeshifting seemed to come with hunger and, from the way her own stomach was rumbling, Tom would be ravenous. Don’t go anywhere till I come back. We’ll discuss what to do.
She went to the kitchen and was about to put the note on the table when she heard a rustle of fabric from the doorway to the back porch.
Tom stood there, looking only half awake. But his blue eyes were wide open as they stared at her. “Whoa,” he said, very softly.
It was, in many ways, the greatest compliment anyone had paid Kyrie in a long time. If nothing else, because it seemed to have been forced from his lips before his mouth could stop it.
Tom awakened with the sound of steps. For a moment, confused, he thought it was his upstairs neighbor walking around in high heels again. But then he realized the steps were nearby by. Very nearby.
He woke already sitting up, teeth clenched, hands grabbing … the side and seat of a rough, brownish sofa.
He blinked as the world caught up with him—the night before and the events all ran through his mind like a train, overpowering all other thought and leaving him stunned.
And then he realized he could still hear steps nearby. Kyrie. He was in Kyrie’s house. She had put him up for the night, though he still couldn’t quite understand why. He’d have thought he was the last person in the world whom she’d want around. But she had given him the sofa to sleep on, and the sweat suit, and …
Still half asleep, and with some vague idea of thanking her and getting out of her house and stopping endangering her as soon as possible, he lurched to his feet and stumbled toward the kitchen.
Kyrie stood by the table, her hair impeccably combed, as it usually was when she came to work. The firs
t time Tom had seen her, he’d thought she was wearing a tapestry-pattern scarf. When he’d realized it was her real hair, he’d been so fascinated that he couldn’t help staring at her. Until he’d realized she was looking at him with frowning disapproval bordering on hatred. And then he’d learned to look elsewhere.
But this morning, in her own kitchen, she looked far more stunning than she usually did when she came to work. There was this folded down front to her blouse that seemed—at any minute—to threaten to reveal her breasts. He remembered her breasts and his mouth went dry. Beyond that, she wore this tiny suede thing that looked like a scarf doing the turn of a skirt. Below it her legs stretched long and straight to her feet, which were encased in relatively low heeled but elegant shoes, seemingly made of strips of multicolored leather woven together.
The whole was … He heard himself exclaim under his breath and she turned around. He had a moment to think that she was going to disapprove of him again. But instead, she looked surprised, her eyebrows raised.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not used to seeing you dressed up. You look … amazing.” He just wished her little feather earring hadn’t got lost. It would have looked lovely with that outfit.
“Thank you.” She smiled, and her cheeks reddened, but for only a second, before the smile was replaced by a worried expression. As if she thought he wouldn’t compliment her unless he had ulterior motives. “I was about to leave you a note,” she said. “There’s eggs and bacon in the fridge.”
He realized he was starving. But still, it felt wrong to impose that far. She was being too generous. There was something wrong. “I should go,” he said.
“Eat first. And then we’ll talk,” she said. She spoke as if she had some plan, or at least some intention of having a plan. She threw the note she had written to him into the trash, opened the cupboard above the coffeemaker. “There’s cups and coffee beans here,” she said. “The coffee grinder is behind the coffee beans. I’m going to go for brunch with …” She took a deep breath and faced him. “I’d rather you don’t leave because I’m going to go for brunch with the policeman.”
Tom felt a surge of panic. “You mean, he might want to arrest me?”
She looked puzzled. “No. I mean I might get some information out of him about what happened and what we can do, or even if there’s any danger at all.” She waved him into silence. “I know there’s still danger from the triad, but I’m hoping there is no danger from the police. If there is, I’ll call and let you know, okay?”
He nodded dumbly. Something in him was deeply aggrieved that she had dressed up to go to lunch with the policeman. But of course, there was nothing he could do about that. She wasn’t his. He had no chance of her ever even looking at him like less than a dangerous nuisance.
And then for a moment, for just a moment, she looked at him and smiled a little. “Wish me luck,” she said.
And she was out the door. And he silently wished her whatever luck meant to her. But he felt bereft as he hadn’t in a long time. As he hadn’t since that night he’d been thrown out of the only home he’d ever known.
Okay, and on top of everything else, the man is paranoid, Kyrie thought as she got out. Why would he think I wanted to turn him in to the police? In the cool light of day, her car looked truly awful, with its smashed driver’s side window. She would have to get a square of plastic and tape it over the opening. Fortunately it rarely rained in Colorado, so it wasn’t urgent. As for getting money to fix it … well …
She put the spare key in the broken ignition socket, thinking that would probably be more expensive to repair than the window. And she would make sure Tom paid. Yes, he’d done it to save their lives, but much too thoughtlessly. Clearly he’d either never owned a car, or never owned a car for whose repair he was responsible.
From the look of the sun up in the sky, it was noon and it was a beautiful day, the sidewalks filled with people in shorts and Tshirts, ambling among the small shops that grew increasingly smaller and pricier in the two miles between Kyrie’s neighborhood and the hotel.
There were couples with kids and couples with dogs dressed like children, in bandanas and baseball caps. Lone joggers. A couple of businesswomen in suits, out shopping on their lunch hour.
Again Kyrie experienced the twin feelings of envy and confusion at these people. What would they do if they knew? What would they think if they were aware that humans who could take the shape of animals stalked the night? And what wouldn’t Kyrie give to change places with one of them? Any one of them. Even the businesswoman with the pinched lips and the eyes narrowed by some emotional pain. At least she knew what she was. Homo sapiens.
She pulled into the parking lot of the hotel and, unwilling to brave the disdain of the valets, parked her own car. Wasn’t difficult to find a parking space during the week.
Entering the hotel was like going into a different world from her modest house, her tiny car, or even the diner.
The door whooshed as it slid aside in front of her, and the cold air reached out to engulf her, drawing her into the tall, broad atrium of the hotel, whose ceiling was lost in the dim space overhead, supported by columns that looked like green marble. The air-conditioning cooled her suddenly, making her feel composed and sophisticated and quite a different person from the sweaty, rumpled woman outside in the Colorado summer.
The smoked glass doors closed behind her. Velvet sofas and potted palms dotted the immense space. Uniformed young men, on who knew what errands, circulated between. This hotel was designed to look like an Old West hotel, one of the more upscale ones.
She could all too easily imagine gunslingers swinging from the chandeliers, a bar fight breaking out, and the uniformed receptionists ducking behind their marble counter.
Kyrie hesitated but only for a moment, because she saw the signs to the restaurant and followed it, down into the bowels of the atrium and up in the elevator to the top floor that overlooked most of Goldport. Light flooded the restaurant through windows that lined every wall. Kyrie couldn’t tell how big it was, just that the ceiling seemed as far up as the atrium’s, but fully visible—a cool whiteness twenty feet up. Soft carpet deadened the sound of steps, and the arrangement of the tables, on different levels and separated by partitions and judiciously placed potted palms, made each table a private space.
A girl about Kyrie’s age, blond and cool and wearing what looked like a business suit in pretty salmon pink, gave her the once-over. “May I help you?”
“Yes,” Kyrie said. “I’m meeting a Mr. Trall. Rafiel Trall.”
The girl’s eyes widened slightly. And there was a gratifying look of envy.
What, thinking I can’t possibly be in his league, sweetie? Kyrie thought, and reproached herself for her sudden anger and calmed herself forcefully, giving the woman a little smile.
“Mr. Trall is this way,” the hostess said and, picking up a menu, led her down a winding corridor amid wood-and-glass partitions and palms. From the recesses around the walkway came the sounds of talk—but not the words, the acoustics of the restaurant being seemingly designed to give tables their privacy—and the smells of food—bacon and ham and sausage, eggs, roast beef. It made her mouth water so much that she was afraid of drooling.
Then the hostess led her around a wooden partition, and stepped back. And there, getting up hastily from his chair, was Rafiel Trall. He was perhaps better dressed than the night before, when his pale suit had betrayed a look of almost retro cool.
Now he was wearing tawny chinos and a khaki-colored shirt. His blond hair still shone, and still fell, unruly, over his golden eye. The mobile mouth turned upward in what seemed to be a smile of genuine pleasure at seeing her. “Miss Smith,” he said, extending a hand. He tossed his head back to free his eyes of hair. There were circles of tiredness around his golden eyes, and creases on his face, as though he too had slept too little and not well.
He shook her hand hard, firmly. The hostess disappeared, silently, walking on the plush c
arpet as though gliding.
“Sit, sit,” Rafiel Trall said. “Relax. I was horribly hungry, so I ordered an appetizer.” He waved toward a platter on the table. “Seafood croquettes,” he said. “High on protein, though perhaps not the kind …” He grinned. The golden eyes seemed to sparkle with mischief of their own.
Kyrie sat down, bonelessly. What am I doing here? she asked herself. What does he want from me?
And there, she knew the answer to the first one. She was here because he had blackmailed her into coming. Regardless of whether a threat had been uttered, regardless of what the threat he might actually mean, Rafiel Trall had mentioned those bloody towels in the bathroom.
Kyrie didn’t own a television, but she had watched enough episodes of CSI on the diner’s television, during slow times of the day, that she knew that on the show, at least, they could tell if someone had wiped someone else’s blood off their skin with a paper towel. There would be skin and hair and sweat… .
But she remembered Tom and the way Tom had looked. What else could she have done then? Short of ignoring the whole thing and pretending it had nothing to do with her? And then what would have happened to Tom? She wasn’t sure what she thought was worse—Tom eating the corpse, or Tom getting killed by ambush in his bedroom.
So she’d used the towels, and now Rafiel Trall held the towels over her head. And Tom’s head. Which had brought her here.
But why did Officer Trall want her here? And what was the point of it all? Did he want to blackmail her for favors? No. If he wanted to do that, he would demand she meet him elsewhere, wouldn’t he? However secluded the table might be … it wasn’t that private.
Besides—she looked up at Rafiel Trall and refused to believe that he had that much trouble getting dates that he needed to force a girl into bed. Even if she admitted she didn’t look like chopped liver.
She became aware that he’d said something and was now sitting, his napkin halfway to being unfolded on his lap, while he looked at her, expectantly.
There was no point lying. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I have no idea what you said.”
Night Shifters Page 9
