Night Shifters (52 page)

“I’m surprised there’s anyone here,” Rafiel said. “At least anyone who doesn’t need to be here. What possessed you to come in?”

“I shifted,” Tom said, slamming the last few plates into the dishwasher, shutting it and turning it on. “In our bathroom. There’s . . . uh . . . no bathroom left.”

He looked up, to see Rafiel staring at him, as he half expected, openmouthed. “In your bathroom? Why?”

Tom shrugged. “It will sound very strange.”

“Not as strange as deciding to shift in the bathroom. How could you possibly think you’d fit. Or that there would be—”

“Fine,” he said. “There was a voice in my head. The Great Sky Dragon’s voice.”

“The . . . ?”

“Yeah.”

Rafiel looked at Red Dragon. “Threatening?”

Tom shrugged. “I thought so at the time. Now I’m not so sure. He was talking about some Ancient Ones or others who were, supposedly, after me.”

“I see,” Rafiel said, in that way he had that made it clear he did not see at all. He ate his apple pie in quick bites.

“At the time,” Tom said, “I didn’t even realize the voice was in my head. It sounded like he was talking to me through the bathroom window. Considering the last time I met with him . . .”

“He almost killed you?”

“Yes. Panic had carried me halfway through the shift before I realized he was in fact in my mind, and for some reason this failed to be reassuring.”

“Ancient Ones,” Rafiel said. “Shifters?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say. I just . . . I’d had a weird dream about . . . very old shifters. Some with shapes that . . . well . . .” He felt stupid, but had to say it. “A saber-toothed tiger and all that.”

“Stands to reason,” Rafiel said. “We’re not easy to kill . . . so some of us would be very old.”

“Well . . . we don’t know if our longevity is any greater. Legends aren’t exactly clear on that, are they? Vampires, sure, but shifters . . .” He shrugged. “If we lived that much longer than normal people, wouldn’t the world be overrun by us? And wouldn’t it be far more obvious that we exist?”

“How do we know there aren’t a lot more of us than we thought? I mean, we know shifters are attracted to this place. Do you know how many of your customers are shifters?”

“Yes. You and Old Joe out back, though I’m not sure I’d call him a customer.” He added at Rafiel’s blank look, “The alligator.” He took a quick look around the diner. “Speaking of which. I should check on him. If Kyrie asks, tell her I just went out back and will be right back.”

He ducked out into the back hallway, hoping that Old Joe would still be there. The man seemed to be old and confused enough that he shifted shapes at all sorts of times for any reason or no reason at all. And Tom dreaded the thought of his being naked and lost in the snow, scared away by the cantaloupe that Anthony had thrown at his head.

Rafiel heard Kyrie behind him. No. He smelled her before he heard her—that sharp tang that indicated a shifter, followed by the symphony of scent that was Kyrie herself. She didn’t wear perfume—that would probably have covered up all other scents to him—but her smell reminded him of cinnamon and fresh cut apples and the smell of fresh mown grass. All of those were very subtle undertones overlaid on a smell of soap, but they twisted together in a scent that meant Kyrie.

“Tom went outside. Something about an alligator,” Rafiel said without turning back.

Kyrie gave what was not even a suppressed sigh, just a slightly longer breath. He could almost hear her shrug. He couldn’t tell if it was impatience or exasperation. “Yeah,” she said. “He’s one of Tom’s strays.”

There would have been a time when Rafiel would have pursued that hint of impatience with his rival. No matter how much Rafiel might deny it or what he might say, Kyrie remained his dream girl, whom he thought the perfect woman for him. The one he loved and could never have.

For a moment, a nonphysical ache seemed to make his heart clench, and then he shook his head. “Look, it’s just . . .” He shook his head again when he realized he was about to tell her that he couldn’t discuss Tom without appearing partial because he still wanted her and wanted her badly. Then he realized he couldn’t tell her that.

The problem with it, he thought, repressing an impulse to kick something, was that he liked Tom. They’d saved each other’s lives, more or less, a couple of times. They’d fought side by side. There was something in that for men—something older than time, older than human thought. It made them blood brothers; comrades at arms. But beyond all that, he
liked
Tom. Tom was odd and he did things Rafiel couldn’t fully understand but then, in a way everyone appeared like that to everyone else.

Tom came in the back door then. Because of the slight curve of the hallway, Rafiel couldn’t see him, but he could hear him, talking to someone who answered back in a raspy voice. This presumably meant, Rafiel thought, that Tom was bringing back the former alligator now in human form. Not that he put it past Tom to drag an alligator into the diner. And the fact that he could easily convince everyone in there that this was perfectly normal and nothing unexpected was part of what was unique about the man. Part of the reason Rafiel knew it was no use to try to seduce Kyrie. Not anymore. He had seen his competition and he knew he didn’t measure up.

Instead, he turned around, to look at Kyrie, who was staring down the hallway, towards the sound of an opening door. “He keeps old clothes in one of the storage rooms,” she said. “For Old Joe. Because he shifts for no reason, and it means he ends up naked a lot.”

Rafiel shrugged. “The reason I came,” he said, “is that we found an arm. At the aquarium.”

“An
arm
?” She looked at him blankly, with a horrified expression. “An
arm
?”

“There was a cell phone ring that came from inside one of the sharks,” Rafiel said. “The cleaning divers heard it. They thought, you know . . . the shark had swallowed a cell phone. People lean over—there’s an observation area—and they drop things in the water. But then they found the bones at the bottom of the tank. Human bones. That’s when we were called in, to determine if they were, in fact, human. They were. A couple of vertebrae. Some toe bones.” He waved his hand. For some reason the finding of those fragments of humanity at the bottom of a shark tank affected him more than finding a whole decomposing body, as he often had. They were more pathetic and more anonymous, demanding more of his pity, his outrage—and his justice.

He shook his head, to dismiss the image of the bones—a handful of them, no more. Kyrie looked at Tom, leading Old Joe—a man so old he was almost bent over, and whose skin and hair were not so much white as the curious colorlessness of the very aged—to one of the corner tables, and now Tom was ducking behind the counter and getting a bowl of clam chowder and taking it back to Old Joe.

“So they opened the shark,” Rafiel said, hearing his own voice sound toneless. “And they found a human arm, still clutching a cell phone.”

“Someone fell in the aquarium?” Kyrie asked, and now Rafiel had her full attention, and Tom had come up and was nearby, his eyebrows raised.

“Was it a shifter?” he asked. “Who fell?”

Rafiel shook his head. “No. It wasn’t . . . it’s just . . . we went over today, with a team, and did the full work-up, and while we were there, I kept smelling this shifter smell, around the shark tank and up to the little observation area. And then around the offices, too. So I made sure to forget one of my notebooks behind, and I went back to pick it up. There was only one employee there, closing up for the day, really, and she didn’t mind having me look around the crime scene.” He cringed inwardly, knowing exactly how many violations of procedure he had incurred, but knowing that procedure, somehow, failed to account for shifter criminals and the shifter policemen whose life might be destroyed by them. “If it’s even a crime scene, of course.”

“And?” Kyrie said.

“And there was a definite trail of shifter-smell winding around the observation area from which the vic could have fallen into the tank.”

“But surely,” Tom said, “it could also mean that of the many visitors to the aquarium, one was . . . you know, like us.”

Rafiel nodded. “Oh, it could mean that. Definitely. And that’s the problem. I couldn’t smell all around and . . .” He shrugged. “I wanted your noses on the case, as it were. I . . . stole a set of keys while the employee was busy.” That she had been busy on a wild goose chase for the wallet he claimed to have dropped somewhere only made him feel slightly guilty. He noted that neither Kyrie nor Tom looked shocked by his behavior, either. Tom chewed his lip and looked like he was thinking. “I truly can’t go,” he said. “Kyrie is not that good on managing the grill area. It’s new. The whole stove is. She’s not used to it yet.”

Kyrie looked as if she would protest, but was sweeping automatically back and forth across the tables with her gaze, even as she frowned. “Perhaps,” she said, “I can come with you if we do it briefly?”

Rafiel looked towards Tom. He knew very well that Kyrie didn’t need anyone’s permission and, in fact, he was perfectly well aware that Kyrie would resent his openly asking if Tom minded her going with him. Because it would imply Kyrie needed a minder and that she was less than a fully conscious participant in the relationship. Both of which were lies.

So Rafiel didn’t say anything, but he looked at Tom.

There had been times, only a few months ago, when Tom would have been very upset at thinking of Rafiel and Kyrie going anywhere together without him. But now he just looked towards the booth where Red Dragon sat and asked, “Can you take him with you?”

Rafiel raised his eyebrow, in mute question, wondering if Tom meant to use Red Dragon as a chaperone. But the look back was guileless and open. “It’s just I’d rather not have him around when I already shifted once today. And not in the diner. I don’t want to shift again, and I don’t want to do it here. And there are two of you . . .”

Kyrie nodded. She had that jutting-lower-lip look she got when she’d determined on a course of action. “Let me talk to him, first,” she said, and walked towards the booth, carrying the coffee carafe and a cup, in what might be a gesture of hospitality or, simply, the most discreet weapons she could carry in this space.

Red Dragon was still huddled in the booth where Kyrie had left him, and looked around with huge eyes, as if he expected everyone in the diner to shift shapes and devour him.

And he says he wants to protect Tom,
Kyrie thought, and shook her head slightly at the absurdity of it.
It has to be a joke. Perhaps not his joke, but the Great Sky Dragon’s.

She pushed a cup in front of him, and poured coffee into it from the carafe and just as she was thinking that no matter how many packets of sugar Red Dragon put in it, he needed protein and she ought to have thought of it, Tom set a plate in front of Red Dragon, containing two whole wheat buns and what appeared to be a triple hamburger and a whole lot of cheese.

Considering that she knew very well how Tom felt about Red Dragon, Kyrie felt her heart melt. Tom was like that. He would give up his own shirt to clothe someone else, even if it was his mortal enemy. This both scared her and made her think her boyfriend was the best person in the world.

Red Dragon looked sheepishly at Tom who said, “Protein. After shifting.”

The young man nodded at Tom and picked up the burger with shaking hands, while Kyrie looked up at Tom and gave him her warmest smile. He looked worried enough, but he winked at her, before returning behind the counter to fool with the grill or start preparations for the next dish, or whatever it was he did back there half the time. Kyrie was quite contented to leave the cooking to Tom, and most of their clientele seemed to approve of the decision.

She turned back to Red Dragon, who was wolfing down the burger.

“I can’t call you Red Dragon,” she told the creature who faced her, clutching the burger tightly as if he were afraid she’d take it away. “Do you have a name?”

Red Dragon blushed and paused, caught just after taking a bite, his mouth full, the burger awkwardly in his hand. “I’m . . . My name . . .” He blushed darker and looked down at the burger, setting it slowly down on the plate, as he hastily chewed what was in his mouth. “My name is Conan Lung.”