If Sheriff Wilkerson is dumbfounded at what he just saw, he doesn’t stop to bellow out his astonishment. If anything, he seems to pour on the speed until his body is almost a blur. The tan of his uniform glows golden in the sun—but it’s not a uniform, it’s a coat of fur—and he’s doubled over, as if he’s fallen to his hands and knees, but he’s still running unbelievably fast—
He’s changed. The sheriff has shifted shapes.
He’s a cheetah, and he is faster than any fox, any animal, any day.
Celeste shrieks and sprints after them, moving in such a pell-mell fashion that she slips and falls, slips and falls, twice before I can catch up with her. I’m terrified she’s going to take her own animal shape and go bounding after them, and I grab her arm and start shaking her like a madwoman.
“Don’t do it! Don’t do it! You can’t help him! Stay with me!”
“But he’s—but they’re— Kara, he’ll kill him—”
The sheriff will kill Ryan. The cheetah will kill the fox. I don’t know the upper size limit of the kinds of animals cheetahs can bring down, but a fox seems well within their range.
“Maybe you’d better look away,” Joe says suddenly from behind us.
But we can’t.
The cheetah is five yards behind the fox—two feet—he’s sprung onto the back of the fleeing red animal and he rakes the smaller creature to the ground. Celeste wails, breaks free, and starts running again, just as awkwardly, slipping and stumbling as she crosses the dirt road and plunges into the abandoned field. Joe and I lope after her. Just as well, maybe—while we’re in motion, our heads bobbing up and down, the scene ahead of us isn’t as clear. I see the big cat swipe its paws, once, twice, against the fox’s brushy red fur; I see the slim, sinewy legs of the fox scrabble against the air.
But we’re still half a field behind by the time the fox stops struggling, all its limbs falling nervelessly to the ground. From this distance, against the green-and-brown of the cropland, the vivid color of the fox’s fur, it’s impossible to see any blood. But its head is snapped back at an unnatural angle, and its four feet are splayed before it.
And then, while we are still too far away to touch him, the fox begins transmuting into the shape of a man.
Which means that Ryan is dead or dying.
Celeste sobs again and redoubles her pace, but I slack up and finally stop, letting her go to him alone. Despite the fact that Ryan and I had been lovers, in so many ways Celeste was closer to him. They’d always had that supernatural bond, that inexplicable connection, as if they were twins, or soul mates. On the one hand, it seems almost poetic that he died defending her honor.
On the other hand, it seems dreadful beyond description that she is the reason he is dead.
The cheetah has moved off a little distance by the time Celeste falls to her knees at Ryan’s side. I see her put one hand on his cheek, one on his heart; I hear her chant his name over and over. In his human state, the fatal wounds are easy to see, most of them centered over his jugulars, but his whole torso is bloody. Celeste doesn’t care. She puts her arms around Ryan’s shoulders and pulls him onto her lap, bending down to rest her dark curls against his pale face.
I stand back far enough to let her grieve in private, but close enough that, if she looks around for me, I can be at her side in two seconds. Joe comes up behind me and puts an arm around my shoulders. I lean against him for a moment, drawing in strength, drawing in warmth, trying to regain my balance.
I notice that he’s carrying something in his left hand, a bag or a length of fabric, and I squint down to get a better look. That’s when I realize he’s paused to pick up the uniform the sheriff shed in his mad chase after Ryan.
“Did you know about Wilkerson?” he asks quietly.
I shake my head dumbly. Janet knew, I think. It’s the only thing that explains how much she trusted him, how much he liked her. He had sworn her to secrecy, though, or so I assume, and being Janet, she was never even tempted to reveal what she knew.
I lift my eyes from the sight of Celeste still on her knees, still holding Ryan’s lifeless body, and I look for the cheetah again. Oh, but he’s a man now, beefy, confident, naked, striding purposefully in my direction. I can see traces of blood around his mouth, on the backs of his hands, but they’re smeared, like he’s tried to wipe them off in a patch of grass.
Joe leans forward to hand over his clothes. Wilkerson says, “Thank you, son,” and pulls on his pants and shirt and gunbelt. He doesn’t look anywhere near his usual trim and professional self, but he looks more normal, more human, more like a lawman. Less like a wild beast.
He angles his head to study Celeste and Ryan for a moment, then turns his attention back to the two of us. His gaze is absolutely steady as he meets Joe’s eyes and then mine.
“I’m sorry you folks had to see that,” he says in his molasses voice.
“Which part?” Joe asks.
Wilkerson’s smile acknowledges the hit. “I meant the death. Though I’m not too eager to have people see me changing.”
“Woulda been a lot more shocked by that a few months ago,” Joe says.
Wilkerson nods. “I figured you were hanging out with enough shape-shifters that you’d already learned the truth.”
“How did you know about us?” I demand. “When none of us knew about you? Did Janet tell you?”
He shakes his head. “I just guessed about you, because of where you lived and how you lived, taking on Janet’s work. I didn’t know about your friends here until that little incident at Arabesque. I mean, obviously Bobby was telling the truth and obviously you both knew it. But there seemed to be no need to say so out loud.”
“How’d you find us today?” Joe asks. “Follow us?”
The sheriff nods. “Ahuh. Figured something like this would happen, just didn’t know where Mr. Barnes planned to go next.”
“You let him go on purpose,” I suddenly realize. “At the police station. You didn’t pick up the wrong keys—you took him outside and left him alone so he could change. So he could escape.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am fully alive to all the disastrous consequences that might ensue if a shifter changes shapes in a public place.”
I put a hand to my head. Again, I’m having so much trouble thinking things through. I suppose I haven’t quite registered the shock of Ryan’s death, which is why I can stand here calmly having this surreal conversation. “But then you—you wanted him to be free. You didn’t think he should be punished. All this time—I’ve been trying to figure out what I should do—and I couldn’t decide. But you made that decision.”
“Well, now,” he says regretfully. “It’s a little more complicated than that. I did let him go, that’s a fact. But I kinda thought he’d pull a stupid stunt like this. So you could say I set him up for this very ending.”
Now I’m watching him with a cold and accusatory stare. “You murdered him,” I say in a hard voice. “Just like he murdered those others. Because you thought you had the right to decide who lives and who dies.”
His voice is as hard as mine. “I killed him in the line of duty as he was about to commit a capital offense. I’m paid to make those decisions as I carry out my responsibilities protecting the citizens of this state. If he’d never come here with the intent to commit murder, I never would have caught him. The choices your friend made are the ones that have seen him wind up dead.”
I’m too angry and too confused to tell if he’s right or not, so I look away. Joe gives my shoulders a squeeze and asks, “What happens now? Gonna be kind of hard to explain away cause of death on this particular body.”
Wilkerson sighs and nods. “I know. I think I’m just going to have to say that Ryan Barnes got away and tell my staff to be on the lookout for him. Not a bad thing, maybe—I’ll tell Terry he better leave Miss Celeste alone or Mr. Barnes will surely return to finish what he started. Aft
er today, I think he’ll believe me. That’ll be a way to help keep him in line.”
I gesture toward Ryan and Celeste. “So then what happens to the—to Ryan?”
“I’ve got some property over by Springfield—farmland, ’bout as isolated as this. I’ll take the body there and bury it.”
“No,” I say instantly. “We’ll bury him on my land. It’s where he belongs. Plenty of other dead shape-shifters on those grounds.”
Wilkerson gives me a keen look. “Including Janet, I take it?”
“She wasn’t a shape-shifter.”
“But she’s dead, isn’t she?” When I nod, he looks sad but unsurprised. “You’ll have to tell me all about it someday.”
“Maybe,” I reply. Probably not.
Wilkerson looks around, studies Celeste for a moment, glances back at Joe and me. “Well,” he says. “Not much else we can do here. I’ll go talk to Terry, see how bad he’s hurt, give him some story about what happened. You willing to put Mr. Barnes in your truck and take him back to Miss Karadel’s place?”
“Yeah,” Joe says. “I’ve got some tarps in back. Help me carry him to the truck? I’m parked behind the barn there.”
“Will do.” Wilkerson claps Joe on the shoulder. “Damn, boy. Sure wish you’d reconsider being on the force. It would be right helpful to have someone who knew and could watch my back.”
Joe glances at me. “Yeah,” he says. “Well, maybe. We can talk later.”
* * *
The men wait while I go talk to Celeste. She’s grown calmer but no less despairing. The look she gives me can only be described as heartrending. I bend over and put my hand on her shoulder.
“We’re going to take Ryan back to my place,” I say gently. “You have to let him go now, so they can carry him to the truck.”
Her hands and her cheeks are streaked with blood. Given that she’s still got bruises on her face and wrists, she looks ghastly. “I can’t stop crying,” she whispers.
I change my grip, trying to urge her to her feet. “You don’t have to.”
“How will I ever get over it? Ever, ever?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “You hope to remember the good and try to forget the bad. But I don’t know if that’s even possible. Come on, baby, stand up. Put Ryan down and let them take him.”
In response, she clings tighter. “I can’t—I’m not ready—”
I let go of her shoulder so I can use both hands to try to break her grip on Ryan. “We have to go. Before Terry and his family start getting curious. Before they come out of the house and look for us and try to figure out what happened. We’ve almost been discovered at every turn, but if we can just get out of here now without being seen—”
She fends me off with an elbow. “Maybe we should be seen,” she says angrily. “Maybe none of this would have happened if shape-shifters could come out of the shadows and just be. Maybe it’s time for us to step forward and announce who we are and let the world just deal with it.”
“Maybe,” I say, successfully wrapping my fingers around her wrists and pulling her hands away from Ryan’s body. “But we can talk about it later. When we’re home. When you’re calmer. When none of us are quite so sad.”
Abruptly, Celeste spins around on her knees to throw her arms around me. I sink to the ground next to her and pull her into an embrace, and feel her whole body shudder as she sobs into my shirt. I pat the wild curls, I whisper reassurance into her ear, I keep her face turned away as Joe and Sheriff Wilkerson slip up next to us and grab hold of Ryan’s body and haul it away.
I don’t know how to comfort her. I can’t possibly make it better, any of it—what happened today, what led up to these disastrous events. All I can do is hold her in my arms and let her cry.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A couple days later we have a sort of ceremony at my house. Joe’s already dug a grave and buried the body; I know Helena and Juliet saw him, but they don’t ask any questions. Well. They can figure out part of it on their own. Shape-shifter dead as a consequence of his precarious life. They know Juliet and Desi might come to such ignominious ends someday, and they can only hope someone takes care of them.
Celeste has stayed with me since the incident—not so much because she chooses to, but because we brought her back to my place on that awful day and refused to take her back to town and she doesn’t have her own car and she hasn’t bothered to steal the keys to mine. She’s as quiet and defeated as I’ve ever seen her and I’m not sure how to help her, but I hope she’ll eventually work her way through mourning to acceptance.
Which is where I am, I think. I want Ryan back—the Ryan I thought I knew—the dashing, unpredictable lover, the wayward but stubbornly loyal friend. But that Ryan had a shadow twin, an alter ego more dangerous than any of his wild shapes. And you cannot have one without the other. I miss him so much that there are moments I have to stop whatever I’m doing and wait out a spasm of dizzying grief. But there are moments a small whispering voice in my head expresses relief that Ryan is gone.
Bonnie and Aurelia and Alonzo come out for the memorial service. We’ve told them everything, of course. I’m guessing Sheriff Wilkerson would prefer that we didn’t disclose the truth about him to anybody else, but he’s not the only one in this particular drama who doesn’t get everything he wants. And if there’s anybody I trust with a shape-shifter’s secret, it’s Aurelia and Bonnie.
“I’m saving this up for someday when I really need leverage against him,” Aurelia says. I think she’s joking, but with Aurelia, you never know.
The day we’ve planned for the service is as bright and warm as the day Ryan died. Joe seems to realize that his presence would be awkward, so he stays back at the house making a meal while the five of us tramp out to the freshly dug grave. Celeste immediately sinks down and rests her hands on the churned earth, but the rest of us stand there, looking down, solemn and briefly silent.
Bonnie is the first one to speak. “He was a good man and a terrible man. Like all of us—flawed and striving. Generous and careless. Loving and cruel. Our lives are richer and stranger and sadder for him having passed through.” She drops a red rose on the grave.
Aurelia tosses a white rose on top of Bonnie’s. “He challenged me, he made me think, he never let me take the easy way or the first answer,” she says. “I will have to look a long time before I meet someone like Ryan again.”
I’ve brought a bouquet of five yellow roses, since that’s what Ryan gave me on our first date. “I loved him,” I say. “Even when I stopped loving him.”
Alonzo stoops over and slips something between the flowers. I think it’s a rock or a marble—something that has significance for him, but I don’t know what it is. “He saved my life,” is all he says.
Celeste places a wreath on top of the flowers, something she’s woven herself from branches and ivy she’s collected from my property over the past few days. “He was my first friend—my best friend—the person who understood me the most,” she whispers. “I don’t know who I am without him. I will carry him in my heart until I die.”
* * *
Aurelia falls in beside me as we walk slowly back from the gravesite to the house. Odd—of the two of them, I’ve always felt closer to Bonnie, but in these past few days it’s Aurelia I’ve relied on more heavily for strength and guidance. Maybe because this whole situation has come close to breaking Bonnie, but nothing could ever break Aurelia, and I’ve needed to lean against something that wouldn’t give way.
“There’s been one small bit of good to come out of this tragedy,” she says in a low voice.
“Oh, do tell me what. I need to hear something good.”
She nods to where Alonzo is ambling alongside Celeste and putting some effort into making conversation with her. Attempting, in his own way, to comfort her. I can tell she realizes how hard he’s trying and so she’s putting
equal effort into responding. Smiling, even. I think they’re talking football, but it hardly matters.
“He told us everything. About his dad. About Ryan coming to take him away. About Ryan killing his father. He said he was never sure if we knew and if we approved. So he never said anything before.”
I feel my eyes widen. “That’s huge. He’s never even talked about his dad before, has he?”
She shakes her head. For a moment, I think I see tears in her big gray eyes. “I think he finally trusts us. I think he finally believes that we’re never going to hurt him or let him down.”
I see Celeste put a hand on Alonzo’s shoulder, then lean in to kiss his cheek. He makes a yuck! sound and tries to pull away from the kiss, but he doesn’t shrug off her hand. They continue on like that for the rest of the way to the house.
“Never going to let him go,” I say softly. “None of us are ever going to let any of the others go.”
* * *
The meal starts out somber, but slowly, insensibly, we begin to cheer up. There are other things to talk about besides murder and betrayal, after all. The world blunders on whether you want it to or not, and sometimes it’s a relief to feel it dragging you in its orbital wake. Joe starts joshing Alonzo about something that happened at basketball practice, Aurelia tells Celeste about a case she’s working on, and I give Bonnie the skimpy information I have about Helena and her daughters. Now and then I see people smile. Twice I hear someone laugh.
It might take longer than we’d like. But we’ll all recover.
Aurelia is the one to push away from the table and say, “I have to go. I’ve got a client to meet later this afternoon and some paperwork to finish beforehand.”
Celeste grabs her arm. “Please, for the love of God, take me back with you. They’ve kept me prisoner here for the past few days, and I swear to everybody that I’ll be fine. Just let me go home.”
We laugh at her dramatics, but I realize that, between the assault and the calamity, it’s been more than a week since Celeste was at her own apartment. No wonder she’s going nuts.