Moving on, I discover that Ruby wore cinnamon musk and burned sandalwood incense. She tucked a black-and-white snapshot of herself and Yoshi into the mirror over her dresser. They were about nine and eleven years old, and they’d posed, cheek to cheek, facing the camera, with their cheeks puffed out, blowing paper party horns.
I occasionally peek in on him, searching beneath couch cushions or under the kitchen sink. We’ve left dozens of fingerprints. We should’ve worn gloves.
I’m feeling between the mattresses when I hear something slam and rush to investigate. A cabinet door is swinging from the top hinge, and Yoshi’s shaking his hand.
“What happened?” I ask. “Did the kitchen cabinet mock your hair?”
Yoshi faces me, gripping the granite counter behind him. He broke the skin on his knuckles. “I’m no detective,” he says. “This is ridiculous. I feel like a goddamned werewolf, sniffing around.”
Is Yoshi usually a hothead — an unsettling quality in anyone, but especially a werepredator — or is it his fear for his sister making him act this way? “Focus,” I say.
Nodding, he pulls one of the drawers completely out and sets it on the table.
“Have you gone through these old receipts?” I ask, moving in to take a closer look.
There are a lot of them, mostly crumpled. I begin smoothing out each one in turn. Most came from boring places like the grocery store or gas station.
“Ruby spent a fortune on dry cleaning alone,” Yoshi says, batting at a little beige moth. “I can’t imagine how she afforded any of this.”
“She never pulled a paycheck at Sanguini’s,” I reply, “but Davidson Morris had been giving her money for a while.” That sounded sleazier than I meant it to.
Yoshi holds up a faded receipt. “Enlightenment Alley. Do you know it?”
“It’s a shop off Anderson Lane,” I reply, brightening. “The owner . . .”
“What about him?”
“Paxton!” I exclaim. “He has a college-age son by the same name.”
“Shh!” Yoshi goes still. “Someone’s coming. We should go.”
“Without being spotted?” I ask in a low voice. “How? There’s only one way out.”
“And I busted the lock,” he says. “They can come in without a key.”
Yoshi slips the shop receipt into his jeans pocket, takes my hand, leads me across the living room into Ruby’s bedroom, and locks that door behind us. Then he unlatches the one window that doesn’t open to the front of the apartment.
“Are you crazy?” I ask, gauging the drop. “We’re on the fourth floor. I’m a human being, remember? I don’t heal like a shifter.”
Yoshi shoves the window open wide. “That’s why we’re going up.” He ducks through, straddling the sill, and offers his hand again. “Do you trust me?”
Trust him? I wasn’t even willing to let him drive.
From the living room, I hear a man with a slight Mexican accent. Whoever it is has already come inside and started pounding on the bedroom door. “Ruby?”
Yoshi swings all the way out the window, grabbing onto who-knows-what for support. “Come on!” he urges. “Wrap your arms around me. Hurry!”
I latch on to his neck and hook my legs around his waist, hyper aware of the intimacy of our embrace. Using a gutter downspout for balance, Yoshi launches us up and grasps the roofline. A short, pained breath escapes him.
I whisper, “You all right?”
“Shouldn’t have punched the cabinet,” he replies through gritted teeth.
Yoshi takes a deeper breath and then raises us both to the top. We land in a heap on our sides in each other’s arms. Scared as I am, it feels good.
“Ruby!” the man shouts out the window. “Ruby, we can help you!”
I try to catch a glimpse of the intruder, but Yoshi holds me in place.
After a while, we hear Ruby’s front door shut. We crawl across the roof to peer over the parking lot. Below, a middle-aged Latino priest and a teenage guy large enough to wrestle professionally climb into a light-blue van and drive away. Appearances can be deceiving, but they don’t look like bad guys. I ask, “Is Ruby Catholic?”
Yoshi rubs his forehead. “She wasn’t when she left Kansas.”
I BLEW IT YESTERDAY with Yoshi. We faced off, eye to eye, man to man, Opossum to Cat. Which begs the question: What was I thinking, trying to use dominance against him?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not about to project “prey shifter,” but I went too far the other way. I went against my better instincts, against everything I know about the food chain. It was also self-defeating. I made a total idiot out of myself in front of Aimee, and for what? I didn’t learn thing one about Ruby in the process. And to think how I’ve been strutting around, talking large about battling evildoers in the name of justice.
Who am I trying to kid? I’m Clyde Leonard Gilbert, a dishwashing, babysitting sophomore marsupial. It’s so freaking unfair.
Wolves and Cats get all the girls. They get all the glory.
They don’t fail their dead best friends.
The mystery of the day? On her way home from church, Nora texted me, asking that I meet her at this abandoned construction site. I’m looking at a five-story metal-beam shell beside a huge asphalt parking lot, hidden from view of the steady traffic on Mopac by hills and trees. Nora asked that I come alone.
I don’t have long to chat. Aimee is stopping by later to help me take care of the quads while my parents “make an appearance” at a wererat retirement brunch.
Leaning against my SUV, I say, “I feel like I should know a code word.”
Nora gives me a hug. “How’re you feeling, Clyde? You really up to taunting strange werepredators in my kitchen?”
“I’m sorer this morning than I was yesterday.” I lift my leg, testing for flexibility. “I’ve tried to shift a couple of times. If I can make it all the way to full Possum, my human form might reboot when I turn back.”
What I don’t say is that any effort to transform hurts like a mother, and I don’t want to try it on painkillers or muscle relaxants. Wereopposums don’t stress over controlling our animal form the same way that Wolves or Bears or, for that matter, Cats do. Unless we’re cornered, our response to conflict is usually to bolt or play dead. But nobody likes to lose it. I have nightmares about showing tail in the boys’ locker room at school.
“You’re growing up,” Nora says, opening her car trunk. “Getting yourself into all kinds of trouble.” She pulls out shiny silver crutches.
“I have a pair at home,” I tell her. The crutches are supposed to be the step between the chair and walking normally again, assuming I ever can walk normally again.
The chair has dignity. Professor X has a wheelchair. Captain Pike has a wheelchair. A cane could be cool, especially a sword cane.
But the crutches just make my armpits ache.
Nora holds them out. “Humor me.”
I don’t usually let people boss me around, but Nora is the top chef in the state — maybe the country — and I work in her kitchen. Besides, her previous employer was a world-renowned undead badass. Under that homespun exterior beats the heart of a spatula-wielding warrior woman.
I make a show of using the crutches to swing around the parking lot.
“You need practice.” Nora gestures to a Dumpster about a hundred feet away. “Now, point one of those bad boys at that and squeeze the handgrip three times, quickly.”
One, two, three — suddenly, crackling blue energy blasts from of the tip. My arm flails up from the recoil and so does the charge. “Whoa!”
I hit pavement, let go, and it’s over.
“Enchanted or engineered?” I ask, gasping.
Nora offers me a hand up. “Both. Pump four times for a lethal charge — something that can level a hellhound. Three is enough to stun practically anyone with a living soul.”
“Is this because Yoshi’s in town?” I add, struggling to my feet. “I thought you liked him.” At least well en
ough to feed him and put a roof over his head.
“I do,” the chef replies. “But even the finest folks can be dangerous if they’re pushed too far. You may have the heart of a lion, Clyde, but you need a way to defend yourself. These are the latest model. Watch out for glitches, and use them only in case of an emergency.”
ENLIGHTENMENT ALLEY IS LOCATED in a quirky outdoor mall about ten minutes north of downtown. I note the dine-in movie theater. The sushi restaurant. The martial arts studio and the herb store. The economy is better here than in Kansas.
“The priest claimed he wanted to help Ruby,” Aimee remarks as we cross an arched wooden bridge over a lily pond. “Maybe we should have talked to him.”
“What if he was lying?” I reply. “We don’t even know if he’s really a priest.”
She has a point, though. I’ve got to watch out for my flight instinct. It’s stronger in Cats than most werepredators. If I realized earlier that Ruby’s home invaders were a guy dressed like a priest and an overgrown kid, I might’ve taken a chance on them.
The Enlightenment Alley storefront is not on an alley. It is a gleaming kaleidoscope of colors. Crystals hang from almost-invisible wires behind the glass, reflecting sunlight in a dizzying rainbow array.
Inside, I’m hit hard by the aroma of smudge and scented candles, the gurgle of dozens of wall and tabletop fountains.
“This is a gift shop?” I mutter.
“A New Age gift shop,” Aimee explains.
I note the wind chimes. The political bumper stickers. The poster celebrating endangered animals. Handmade signs point to “After Solstice Sale” items. I identify tiny speakers mounted in the corners of the ceiling as the source of croaking, chirping, and rustling noises. Confirming that they’re artificial helps squash my urge to give chase.
“Groovy,” I reply. It’s the word Grams would use.
I shoot a glance at the balding guy in the nearest plush chair. He’s reading up on Hinduism. Or what passes for Hinduism in a place like this.
Aimee gently elbows me in the ribs. “My mom and I come here all the time.”
The bookshelf labels include: HARMONY, COURAGE, ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE, NATURAL HEALING, SPIRITUAL, PSYCHIC POWER, YOGA, MASSAGE, ASTROLOGY, and PERSONAL GROWTH.
“Seriously?” I ask, pointing to the UFO section.
“You might try being more open-minded,” Aimee suggests. “There was a time when most people thought shape-shifters were mythological.”
I hold up Massage for Lovers. “Redundant, don’t you think?”
Aimee blushes to her blond roots. She’s definitely a virgin.
I haven’t considered before that a human could be knowingly attracted to a shifter as more than an exotic or in a fetish kind of way. But Aimee was, if not in love, then at least in like with the deceased Armadillo prince.
Plus, a Dillo? A beady-eyed, thick-bodied werearmadillo? She’s not a superficial girl, and superficial romances are the only kind I’ve ever had.
Aimee skims the spines on the “Angels” shelf.
“What?” she demands. “You’re staring.”
I can’t help myself. “Do you really believe in this stuff?” I ask. “Are you all that religious?”
Her smile is oddly serene. “More like spiritual, but I know what I know.”
I follow her across the store. The clerk is costumed like some kind of priestess, complete with gray lipstick and a flowing silver hooded cloak.
“Talk about living the cliché,” I whisper.
She recognizes Aimee as a regular. “Welcome back!”
“You look positively folkloric!” Aimee exclaims as we reach the jewelry case.
“Thank you, thank you!” the clerk replies, stepping back to spin for inspection. She has long snow-white hair. “I’m playing the White Witch this season in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe at the children’s theater.”
That’ll teach me not to make assumptions.
The clerk hands Aimee a promotional flyer. “This afternoon will be our last performance. How was your holiday? How’s your mama?”
Aimee introduces her as Sandra. They visit a while, and I’m getting impatient when Aimee asks, “Is Paxton around?”
“Paxton Senior and the missus are out of the country,” Sandra replies. “Shopping their way through Dubai. Paxton Junior is working days over winter break in the mail room at the law firm and . . .” She glances past us. “Excuse me a sec.”
Sandra comes around the counter to assist a customer.
A framed certificate hangs on the wall. It proclaims Sandra an honors graduate of a taxidermy school. That doesn’t seem to fit with her image, but this is Texas. Probably even earth mothers hunt here. “Ask her about Ruby,” I whisper.
“Breathe,” Aimee replies. “Go look at the CDs.”
I run a hand through my hair. “All I want —”
“Let me handle this. If you act all intense, she’ll get suspicious.”
I reluctantly wander to the racks of CDs. The labels read: WOOD FLUTES, CHANTING MONKS, AMBIENT, MEDITATION, HEALING, and NONPROFIT. I curl the hand that still aches from having punched the cabinet. Aimee gave me a squeeze of antiseptic lotion from her purse to clean it, and the broken skin on my knuckles has already scabbed over.
It’s not like me to lose my temper like that. Then again, my sister’s life isn’t usually on the line. Neither is mine, for that matter.
To cheer myself up, I check out Aimee’s cute hind end. When she shifts her weight, I take a sharp breath and choke on the scent of eucalyptus.
She glances back. “You all right?”
I nod, cough, and plop down on a beanbag beneath the wind chimes.
Probably as an excuse to linger, Aimee fills out an entry form for a chance to win dinner for two at Thai Garden. According to the sign, the menu is vegan and gluten free.
When Sandra returns, Aimee asks to take a peek at a yin-yang pendant in the case. “You know,” she begins, “I thought I spotted Paxton Junior at Sanguini’s a few months back. He was out with a petite woman. Asian with long —”
“That must’ve been Ruby,” Sandra cuts in, setting the necklace on the glass countertop. “Saucy little thing, if you get my meaning. I haven’t seen her in months, and as far as I know, he hasn’t, either.”
For the next few minutes, Aimee tries to finagle more information out of Sandra to no avail. That’s all we get. I have to admit, I’m more than a little disappointed.
On our way out, Aimee snags an orange flyer off the store bulletin board.
Studying the photo, I say, “This is a Bear band with some kind of Cat woman doing vocals.” Even in human form, Bears are easy to spot by body type. With Cats, it’s more subtle. How we move or, in the case of a photo, how we hold ourselves. The lead singer is too tall for a female of my specific breed. Beats me if she’s a werelion or Liger or part human, but she’s definitely smokin’. I’d love to make that kitty purr.
As Aimee and I once again cross the arched bridge over the lily pond, I ask, “Do we know where the law firm is? What it’s called?”
“Tornquist and Eastwick.” She does a quick search on her phone. “P. Tornquist is also the name of the owner of a local music-promotion company.”
Bingo.
JUST PAST THE WINDSOR EXIT, I’m about to check a text from Clyde when Detective Wertheimer pulls the car over. He ducks in Yoshi’s backseat like he’s worried someone might see us talking. “Well, well, well,” Wertheimer begins. “When did you two become such good friends?”
“Is there a problem, officer?” Yoshi asks, turning off the radio.
“Don’t play dumb, kid,” he replies. “Me and Zaleski told you to lay low, not prance around town, playing Nancy Drew with —”
“We’re not playing,” I say, though the Nancy Drew part is flattering.
“You’ve been tailing us,” Yoshi states. “I spotted you two exits ago.”
“No kidding.” The detective leans closer. “I wanted to warn you. Watch
out for the Tornquists. They’ve got deep pockets, and Daddy T is well connected.”
“Did you question him about Ruby?” Yoshi asks.
“The younger Mr. Tornquist came in voluntarily,” Wertheimer explains. “However, he chose to do so without any advance notice while Zaleski and I were away on a cruise retreat. A couple of other cops talked to him.”
Yoshi adjusts the rearview mirror. “Human cops?”
Wertheimer doesn’t take the bait, but I know what they’re both thinking. Many werepeople can gauge others’ emotions — fear, aggression, even passion. Even better, most can ID the species of fellow shifters by scent.
Or, as Travis used to joke, “The nose knows.”
Silence fills the car until Wertheimer finally relaxes. “So far as we’ve been able to figure, Tornquist isn’t guilty of anything except being your sister’s ex-boyfriend.” He rubs his eyelids. “We don’t even know for sure if they were romantically involved. But . . .”
“But what?” I ask.
Wertheimer clears his throat. “Several Austinites have been classified as missing over the past few months. We have a partial handle on what happened there.”
“Vampires,” I inform Yoshi. “Including the one Ruby staked.”
Wertheimer scowls at me for mentioning it (police cover-up) but goes on, “The number of total missing is higher than reported.”
“Because the rest of the missing people are shifters,” Yoshi suggests. “Their loved ones are less likely to go to the cops, at least through regular channels.”
“Vamps strongly prefer humans over werepeople for food,” I say. “And shifters can’t be cursed with their blood to become neophytes. This must be someone, something else that’s targeting the local wereperson population.”
“Which is why we all need to be extra careful,” Wertheimer concludes. “Yoshi, you scamper back to Nora’s, flip on ESPN, kick up your kitty heels, and let me and Zaleski find your sister. If you want to woo the young lady, do it out of sight.”
Does he mean me? Am I the one being wooed?
“I’m not big on turning tail,” Yoshi replies. “But I’ll take it under advisement.”