“Ink’s so new it might smear,” I told Nadia’s raised eyebrows.
“Niece, quit flirting with the men and tell me what you see,” said Elizaveta sharply, without looking up.
Nadia blushed—not because she’d been flirting, but because her great-aunt had embarrassed her—and turned her attention to the body on the table. After a steadying breath, she was all business.
“I know her face,” she said in some surprise. “This woman has been in the papers. She disappeared when out for a jog last Saturday morning. I don’t remember her name—”
“Toni McFetters,” said Kyle. “You’re right. I didn’t recognize her before.”
“Not unexpected under the circumstances.” Nadia was clearly paying more attention to the dead body than she was to any of us; her voice was clinical. “Easiest way to get a corpse to raise is to kill her yourself.”
“Are you saying that she was killed just for this?” Kyle looked cool and composed, but I could smell his agitation.
“Probably,” said Nadia when her great-aunt didn’t say anything. “This kind of magic works best on a fresh corpse. Hopeless to try it with one a mortuary has filled with embalming fluid, and stealing a body from a hospital morgue is tough. Too many people at a hospital.” She glanced over her shoulder, saw Kyle, and clearly, from the consternation on her face, ran the past few minutes of conversation through her head. “I’m so sorry. I’m not used to discussing my work with a layman. I do know this is difficult for you. Whoever did this was willing to kill you—I’d imagine that murder doesn’t bother them much.”
“If it had killed Kyle,” I asked, “would it have died?”
“Deanimated,” said Elizaveta briskly. “It was already dead when it came here. It would be possible to give such a one a directive, and then dissipate the magic after that directive was accomplished.”
“So someone would have come in here and found Kyle dead—killed by this woman who would be dead, too,” I said. “Elizaveta, ma’am—” I tried to work a way around the question I wanted to ask without offending her. “Is there anyone in the Tri-Cities who knows how to animate a dead body like this?”
Elizaveta gave me a smile with teeth, so I guess she was offended. “Yes, my little bunny, I could have done it. But I am obligated to the Alpha of your pack and I am aware of your ties to the lawyer. I would not accept a commission to kill him.” She examined my face and saw that wasn’t enough for me. “No,” she said clearly. “I did not kill this woman, nor did I turn her into a zombie and send her after your lover.”
“My apologies,” I told her. “But I had to ask.”
“The magic keeps them warm,” murmured Nadia into the tense atmosphere. I couldn’t tell if she was blind to the tension between me and Elizaveta, or if she spoke to dispel it. “Almost at normal body temperature. Forensics wouldn’t give an accurate time of death. It would look as though she’d died at the same time he had. A murder-suicide, perhaps. Impossible to tell without further work—but I think she was killed with an overdose of something that overworked her heart. Cocaine, perhaps. Something of that sort.”
I don’t know about Elizaveta, but I was distracted from her by what Nadia said. There wouldn’t be a zombie to horrify the mundane public, just a mystery of why they’d killed each other. The use of the zombie as a murder weapon suddenly made more sense. No one would know about the magic—and no forensics to tie the real killer to the crime.
Nadia continued with her analysis. “In view of the fact that she was abducted while out jogging, her clothing is of some interest—no one jogs in a dress like this. The pearls are fake—good fakes, but nothing any insurance company or jewelry store would have a record of. The lipstick is of a common shade. The dress is more interesting. It isn’t new. Maybe it came from a thrift store—we should be able to check it out.”
“Shouldn’t we call the police?” asked Kyle.
We all looked at him.
“We have a dead body of a missing person on my conference table. Someone is going to notice,” he said.
“She has disappeared,” said Elizaveta, speaking to him for the first time. “There is no gain in making her reappear.”
Kyle’s face hardened. “She has a family. Two kids and a husband. They deserve to know what happened to her.”
“Can you fix her up?” I asked Elizaveta. “Repair the damages I did and then leave her somewhere she’ll be found?”
“It is safer and easier to dispose of the body entirely,” said Elizaveta dismissively.
“Well, yes, ma’am,” I told her, making a subtle motion with my hand to stop Kyle from saying anything more. If Kyle started demanding things, we’d be up a creek without a paddle and maybe with a few more bodies besides. He saw my gesture and let me take point. Of all the humans I’ve ever known, Kyle is one of the best at reading body language.
“Easier and safer,” I agreed with Elizaveta blandly. The witch shot me a suspicious look. “But if you did decide to put the body out where someone could find it—you and I both know that you could do it so’s no one would ever associate it with you, this office, or magic of any kind. Easier if the damage I did to her, which might be tough to explain, can be repaired.”
“There’s no bruising around the site,” said Nadia. “I could mend the flesh together, Aunt Elizaveta, so they could never tell.”
The old witch stared at me, torn between resenting my manipulation and preening under my confidence in her abilities. I meant it and made sure she could hear it in my voice.
“You know that you enjoy the tough ones more,” I coaxed. “Cleaning up another body is boring. This presents more of a challenge.”
“Another body,” said Kyle. But he said it real quiet and I think I was the only one who heard him. One of Elizaveta’s gifts was making bodies disappear—around a werewolf pack, even a well-run pack like ours, there are going to be some bodies that need to disappear.
The corners of Elizaveta’s mouth turned up, her shoulders relaxed, and I knew that I’d won.
“All right, sweet boy. You are right. Never could forensics unravel the mystery I can weave. If I wanted them to learn nothing, nothing is what they would learn. Still . . .” She smiled at me, eyes veiled with satisfaction. “It would be more challenging yet to show them evidence that doesn’t exist. You, my private detective, will help to find who did this. When it is known, I will point the police in the correct direction.”
“Thank you,” I said, dropping my eyes from hers as was proper. As I did so, I noticed that Kyle had dropped the hand that held the towel and I didn’t like what his wound looked like. I know about bite wounds; I’ve seen a lot of them. Bite wounds shouldn’t get black edges a half hour after they’ve been inflicted.
I took a step closer to him and pulled the towel down so I could get a better look, and my nose wrinkled at the scent of rot that had set up far too soon.
“Ma’am?” I said. “Would you look at this, please?”
She glanced at Kyle and pursed her lips. Looking back at me she said, “Not my business. Take him to the emergency room.”
I didn’t growl at her, but only because my control is very, very good. The hair on the back of my neck stood up as the wolf inside decided he didn’t like her answer.
“He is,” I said, staring at her. “He is my mate and that makes him your concern.”
Naming Kyle as my mate was a big step—but one my wolf and I were pleased with. I felt Kyle’s attention spike and heard Nadia’s indrawn breath, but kept my eyes on my target. Kyle’s agreement would be needed, but not now, not for this.
“Mate implies procreation,” Elizaveta said in prissy tones. “The two of you cannot have children. He is not your mate.” She couldn’t care less that I was gay, despite her words. I knew why she was behaving this way. I’d gotten my way with the body, and she wanted to win one of the battles tonight. She’d chosen
the wrong one.
“You can discuss that with Adam,” I said softly. The wolf would have torn out her throat happily—though that wouldn’t have gotten Kyle fixed up. “Kyle, do you still have my cell phone?”
“I’d rather go to the emergency room,” he said.
“No,” I told him sharply. “No emergency room.” I couldn’t afford to divide the battle between them. “Elizaveta, do you want me to call Adam?”
Kyle, bless him, stopped arguing.
“I will remember this,” she told me.
“That’s fine.” I worked at keeping my temper. “Remember that I’m only expectin’ you to live up to the letter of the agreement you have with my pack.” I’d won. Time to let her keep her pride if I could. A bit of flattery and a bone. “You know that the emergency doctors could do nothing with this—I can smell the gangrene. This is beyond them. If you don’t take care of it, he’ll die.” I was afraid that was the truth and let her hear it.
“Only for you, cinnamon bun, only for you would I do this,” she said. Then she reached out and pinched my cheek hard—the cheek on my face.
All business, she stepped between Kyle and me and pulled the towel farther out of the way and sniffed.
“Good whiskey,” she said, dropping the thick Russian accent and exchanging it for a hint of Great Britain. “Not as good as Russian vodka, but not the worst thing you could have done. Still, neither could fix this. For this you need me.”
• • •
I’d carried the body out to Elizaveta’s car wrapped in a rug. I know it’s a cliché, but a rug works pretty well to disguise a body because people expect it to be awkward and heavy. I used the rug from Kyle’s office and told Elizaveta to keep it—which pleased her because it was an expensive rug. Kyle wouldn’t want it back.
Kyle wasn’t in the reception area where I’d left him. I listened and tracked him to his office. He was looking out his window at the traffic below. We were three stories up—pretty high for the Tri-Cities, which were still able to sprawl instead of climb to deal with the pressure of expansion.
I couldn’t tell what he was thinking—but he didn’t turn around when I came into the office, not a good sign.
“Kyle? Do you want me to take you to the emergency room?” The blackness was gone from the wound, but Elizaveta was no healer. I didn’t think it would scar permanently, but it would hurt for a while yet.
“I want to find out who killed that woman,” he said. “Someone killed her to get me—a woman I didn’t even know.”
I heard it in his voice under the anger. No one else would have, but I have very, very good hearing.
I took a chance and stepped in close to him, putting my arms around him and pulling him into me. “Not your fault,” I said. “Not your fault.”
“I know that,” he snapped, but he didn’t pull away. After a moment, he leaned back against me and put his hands on my arms, holding them where they were. “I know that—who better? I see it all the time. ‘But maybe if I were a better cook, he wouldn’t hit me’ or ‘If I could just have bought that car she wanted, she wouldn’t have taken off with my best friend.’ It is not my fault that someone killed her—not your fault, either, if it turns out to be that way.”
I just held him.
“It feels like it, though,” he said in a much different voice, the voice that no one else ever heard from him. He didn’t let himself be vulnerable in front of anyone else.
“I’ll find him,” I told him, and then I leaned down and blew a teasing huff of air into his ear. “Or else Elizaveta will turn me into a toad.”
• • •
We went out to eat that night. Kyle likes to cook, but he takes too long and it was way past dinnertime. He didn’t talk much over the food, pausing occasionally to stare into space, as he did when working on a particularly difficult case instead of dealing with getting munched on by a dead woman.
I’d lost him once, when he’d found out what I was. It says something about Kyle that it wasn’t the werewolf part that bothered him, but the lies I’d told to keep the wolf from him. I hadn’t had a choice about the lies—I think that was the only reason he forgave me.
I’d gotten him back and I wasn’t likely to take him for granted anytime soon. The food tasted like sawdust as I waited for him to realize that he wouldn’t have zombies trying to kill him if I weren’t part of his life.
“Hey,” he said, his gaze suddenly sharpening on my face. “You okay?”
“Fine.” I smiled at him and tucked into supper with a little more effort. I wasn’t going to kill the chance I’d been given by brooding over losing him before it happened.
Of course, there was a note on the door to Kyle’s house when we drove into the driveway.
Kyle ripped it off and opened it. “He’s objecting to your truck,” he told me dryly as he read, giving me the abbreviated version. “He’s sent a duplicate letter to the city. With photos to illustrate his point.”
“Nothin’ wrong with my truck,” I said indignantly, and Kyle grinned. He lost his smile as soon as he looked back down at the note.
Three months ago, the nice family who lived next to Kyle’s house had moved to Phoenix and sold their place to a retired man. We hadn’t thought much about it at the time, not until the first note. Some children (three solemn-faced kids who, with their mother, were staying with us until their mother’s ex-husband quit threatening them) had made too much noise in Kyle’s pool after seven P.M., which was when Mr. Francis went to bed. We should make sure that all children were in their beds and silent so as not to disturb Mr. Francis if we didn’t want the police called.
We’d thought it was a joke, had laughed at the way he’d referred to himself as “Mr. Francis” in his own notes.
The grapes along the solid eight-foot-tall stone fence between the backyards were growing down over Mr. Francis’s side. We should trim them so he didn’t have to look at them. He saw a dog in the yard (me) and hoped that it was licensed, fixed, and vaccinated. A photo of the dog had been sent to the city to ensure that this was so. And so on. When the police and the city had afforded him no satisfaction, he’d taken action on his own. I’d found poisoned meat thrown inconspicuously into the bushes in Kyle’s backyard. Someone dumped a batch of red dye into the swimming pool that had stained the concrete. Fixing that had cost a mint, and we now had security cameras in the backyard. But we didn’t get them in fast enough to save the grapes.
He’d been some kind of high-level CEO forcibly retired when the stress gave him ulcers and other medical problems. He came here, to the Tri-Cities, because he was a boat-racing fan. Other cities had boat races, I’m sure of it. Maybe I could recommend some for him.
“This kind of thing is supposed to happen when you live in an apartment,” Kyle told me, crumpling the latest note in his hand. “Not in a four-thousand-square-foot house on three-quarters of an acre.”
“We need to have a paintball game in the backyard,” I told Kyle. “I could invite the pack.”
“Escalation is not a solution,” Kyle said, though he’d smiled at the thought. He’d seen some of our paintball games. “Right now the city is on our side. We want to keep it that way.” Since Mr. Francis moved in, the folks in city hall, the police department, the zoning commission, and the building code enforcement office had all grown to know us by name.
“I know,” I groused, unlocking the front door. “As long as we act like adults, there’s nothing he can do to us.”
Kyle followed me into the foyer. His house was the first place I’d ever lived that was big enough to have a foyer.
“I could move,” he said reluctantly.
“Nah,” I rubbed his head affectionately—Kyle loved his house. “You’d miss Dick and Jane.”
Dick and Jane were the life-sized naked statues in the foyer. The woman was currently wearing a Little Bo Peep bonnet he’d found s
omewhere and a green silk sari that had belonged to his grandmother. Dick was still sporting the knitted winter hat with the long tail and a poof ball on his pride and joy because Kyle hadn’t found anything he thought was funnier yet.
“We could move back into your apartment.”
That apartment was a point of contention. He said I was keeping it because I didn’t believe that he really understood he was sleeping with a werewolf. He also said I was being stupid because he was mine as long as I never lied to him again, werewolf or not. Kyle was a smart man. He was right about why I kept it—but I wasn’t sure he was right about the rest. So I hadn’t given up the apartment yet.
Proposing a move back to it showed that Mr. Francis was getting to him. If so, the time might have come to quit playing nice.
My cell phone rang. I pulled it out of my pocket and took a look. It wasn’t a number I knew, but that wasn’t unusual anymore—I was starting to get a little work from people unconnected to the law firm.
“Warren here,” I said.
“This is Nadia,” said the witch’s niece. “Listen, Aunt Elizaveta wants me to go talk to the dead woman’s husband tomorrow. I can do that, but I thought it might be useful if you came along. You can tell when someone’s lying, right?”
“I can,” I agreed. “But won’t that arouse the wrong people’s interest if you’re out questioning people?” Wrong people like the police. I’d thought she intended to do a little magical forensics and leave the questioning to me.
“That’s one of the things I’m good at,” Nadia said. “People don’t remember me asking them things if I don’t want them to. If no one reminds him, he’ll eventually even forget I came by.”
I thought about that a moment, not entirely happy about what she said.
“I can’t do it to you,” she said anxiously. “Or anyone who is alert for it. It’s an uncommon talent—that’s why Aunt Elizaveta picked me to be one of her students.”
“I was just thinking that I have a few people to question as well,” I told her. “How ’bout I go out with you and then take you with me? We can have a cooperative investigation.”