Silver Kiss (8 page)

“
Likewise.” She released
me, flipping her thick brown hair out of her face. “I didn’t know
you were bringing your partner along, Ms Ryan.” There was distrust
in her voice. I supposed I couldn’t blame her, knowing how the Pack
had treated her.

“
I hope you don’t mind,”
Shannon said, smiling sweetly at her. “Shall we sit in the
kitchen?” Without waiting for an answer, she strode through. Tina
frowned, then followed.

I lingered in the hallway for a second,
taking in the clean décor, the photos on the wall. Pictures of Tina
with a girl at various ages, Molly, I guessed. She was the spitting
image of her mother, fine-boned for a wolf, with dark hair and
eyes. As the pictures went on chronologically, her expression
changed though: from open and beaming to closed and dark. Typical
teenage moodiness, I thought. I’d hated having my picture taken at
that age. Of course, it hadn’t driven me to run away from home.

I’d had plenty of other reasons to do
that.

“
Can I get you a drink, Ms
Hammond?” Tina called from the kitchen. It was an obvious hint to
join them, so I took it, wandering into the kitchen.

“
Black coffee, thanks,” I
said. Shannon was sitting at a small round table; her open folder
revealing more pictures of Molly. I sat down next to her, once
again taking in the décor. The kitchen was furnished country-style,
lots of pine and red-and-white check. Fresh tulips sat in ceramic
vases on the windowsill and the shelves were lined with porcelain
chickens and pictures of wheat sheaves. It was all strangely at
odds with the grim exterior of the house.

“
This is nice,” I
said.

“
My ex paid for it all,”
Tina said with a shrug. “If you’ve got to live in a shit hole, it
may as well be a nicely decorated one.”

“
Does Molly have much to do
with her dad?” Shannon asked.

Tina smiled thinly at her. “You asked me
that last time.”

“
I just want to reiterate a
few things, that’s all,” Shannon said. “It never hurts to go over
the details.”

“
She sees him a couple of
times a month. Weekends here and there. She wasn’t outcast, so
she’s free to mix with the Pack.” Tina glowered down at the kettle
she was filling, as if aiming all her bitterness at it. “But
they’re not very close. She blames him for…everything, I suppose.
The divorce, me being outcast.”

“
The abortion?” I asked, as
carefully as I could.

Her shoulders stiffened, then slumped. She
turned her head from us, letting her hair veil her face. “Fucking
Pack bullshit,” she spat. “You can’t fucking take a piss without
one of them poking their nose in to tell you you’re doing it wrong.
We’re better off without them!” She slammed the kettle down on the
sideboard. The lid jerked open, splashing water all over her arm.
She swore and reached for a tea towel. “Have you spoken to her dad
yet?” she demanded of Shannon, making a visible effort to curb her
anger.

“
He’s not back from his
holiday yet,” Shannon said. “I told you when we last spoke that I’d
contact him as soon as he was, but given that he was in Greece when
Molly disappeared, I don’t think he’ll be much help.”

“
Well if you don’t have
anything new to tell me, why are you bloody here?” Tina slumped
against the sideboard, kettle forgotten. “Why am I paying you if
you’re not actually doing anything to find her?”

I gritted my teeth, aggravated by her
manner. Shannon stayed impressively cool, simply shuffling through
her papers until she found a blank sheet. “When we first spoke, you
mentioned Molly had been in trouble with the police in the past. I
wanted to follow up on that. Does she have any friends you think
might have helped lead her astray? Any boyfriends who were
trouble?”

I watched Tina visibly struggle with her
reply. Maybe she was just curbing the urge to yell again, but it
felt like more. Like she was deciding whether to lie or not. After
a few tense seconds, she sighed and dragged her fingers through her
hair. “Look, I didn’t tell you this the first time because I didn’t
think it was important, okay? So don’t get all uptight with
me.”

“
I’m not here to judge you,
Tina,” Shannon said gently, rising to stand by her. “Anything you
can tell me that will help Molly is important.”

Tina nodded and did that noisy exhale again.
“She was seeing this boy—a human.” She raised her hands
defensively. “I don’t have a problem with that, I really don’t. I
didn’t think it would ever get serious, because Molly wanted a
family one day and well…you know.” She shrugged. “Anyway, this
boy—his name’s Marc Wright—lives a few streets away and he’s got a
reputation. You know.” She cocked an eyebrow at us as if we should
know. I didn’t.

“
A reputation for what?” I
asked.

“
Drugs, gangs, that sort of
thing.” She sniffed. “I suppose having a werewolf girlfriend is a
status symbol for kids like that. Anyway, I went round and spoke to
him after Molly ran off, in case she’d said anything to him or
they’d had a fight or whatever.”

Shannon was making notes, frowning. “You
should have told me this the first time,” she said. “These kinds of
details can be crucial in cases like this.”

“
Well he didn’t know
anything!” Tina said, folding her arms across her chest. “He told
me and I’d have known if he was lying. He swore he hadn’t seen her
and she hadn’t said anything to him about wanting to take off, so
why would I tell you when it was already a dead end?”

“
Then why are you telling
us now?” I asked.

“
Because I’m desperate!
Molly’s been gone for almost a month and nobody’s bloody doing
anything! The police, the Pack, nobody!” She burst into tears,
balling her hands into fists and hiding her eyes. “She’s never been
gone this long before. And I know things have been horrible and I
know she hates me, but she’s never been gone so long!”

Shannon wrapped her arms around the other
woman, pulling her into an embrace. Tina struggled at first, then
relaxed and leaned into Shannon, weeping into her hair while
Shannon stroked her back. I sat and watched awkwardly, at a loss
for what to do. I was embarrassed for Tina. I guessed she would
hate herself for this weakness afterwards—I certainly would—but I
also sensed she needed it right now and I didn’t know where to
look. It was all so weirdly intimate.

I stared at Shannon’s file while my partner
murmured comforting nonsense to Tina. I flicked through the photos
and notes. There were school pictures and holiday snapshots, a few
of Tina and Molly together, copies of the photos in the hall. There
was one that I guessed must have been taken at a Lupercali a few
years ago; a younger Molly posing in a smart green dress, a few
other cubs lined up with her. I frowned, recognizing one of them as
Oscar.

“
Tina,” I said.

She looked up from Shannon’s shoulders,
blinking red eyes at me.

I held up the photo. “Was Molly friends with
this kid?” I pointed out Oscar. He was a few years older than
Molly, but they stood close together, identical smiles of pride on
their faces.

Tina wiped her eyes and peered at the
picture. “She used to hang out with him a lot, before we moved
here,” she said. “Oscar Maxwell, that is. Rob—that’s my ex—is good
friends with his dad.”

I nodded and set the photo down. Did one
missing teenager and one erratic teenager make for a lead? I had no
idea, but I made a mental note to tell Shannon about Oscar
later.

As it happened, she began pressing me for details as soon as Tina
shut the front door on us fifteen minutes later.

“
So?”

“
Nothing,” I said. “Well, I
think it’s nothing. Just that I met Oscar at Lupercali and then saw
him again when I went to see Vince at the Fox on Tuesday.” I
explained Oscar’s wild mood swings and his argument with Vince.
Shannon nodded, pursing her lips thoughtfully.

“
It can’t hurt to ask any
of Molly’s friends if they’ve heard from her,” she said. “Although
it doesn’t seem likely that she would have been in regular contact
with any Pack teens since Tina was made outcast.”

“
Depends,” I argued. “The
outcast ruling doesn’t include Molly—she’d still be free to do wolf
things, go to Lupercali, all that. So she might still be in touch
with Oscar.”

“
I’ll look into it,” she
decided. “I want to talk to the boyfriend first.”

“
Want me to come?” The idea
of Shannon marching off to speak to a drug-dealing gang member by
herself put my wolf on edge. You never let your mate go hunting
alone.

“
Why not?” She smiled at me
and I relaxed a little. “If he really is as villainous as Tina
makes out, a werewolf bodyguard could come in handy.”

“
Oh yeah, especially a wolf
as fierce-looking as me.” I was shorter than Shannon, who wasn’t
exactly towering, and humans who didn’t know better thought that
made me a weak wolf. Shannon liked to say it gave me the element of
surprise. It just annoyed me. The first year after I left home, I’d
spent all my time getting into bar fights as I worked my way north.
Every drunken idiot who wanted to prove he was tougher than a
werewolf had picked me to prove it.

Shannon patted my cheek as she unlocked the
car door. “I think you can be pretty damn scary when you put your
mind to it.”

I thought of the feral wolf. “Not scary
enough.”

***

Marc Wright was a beautiful boy of about seventeen, with smooth
chocolate skin, huge liquid brown eyes and a knife as long as my
forearm. He brandished it at us through the living room window as
we approached the house, his eyes wide and wild, clearly warning us
off. Shannon, once again showing a level of calm I was sure she
must be faking, ignored the knife and knocked on the front
door.

His mother opened the door, a thin,
harried-looking woman with sharp eyes and a mean mouth. “You social
workers? Selling something? Church types?”

“
My name’s Shannon Ryan and
this is my partner, Ayla Hammond.” Shannon flashed her business
card at the woman. “We’d like to talk to Marc Wright about his
girlfriend, Molly Brady, if we could.”

The woman examined the card, brimming with
suspicion. After a few seconds, she nodded. “Marcus!” she bellowed.
“Come out here!”

Marc slunk to the door,
knife still clutched in his hands. “Coppers?” he asked in the
same
I ain’t done nothing
tone as his mum.

“
It’s about that girl of
yours. So make sure you tell the truth, now.” His mum shoved him
outside and slammed the door on him. Shannon and I exchanged
glances. This was going to be hard work.

Marc slouched against the front door and
fixed us with a mean, assessing glare. “Molly? I ain’t seen her in
weeks.”

“
But you were her
boyfriend?” Shannon asked.

“
Yeah, I suppose. We hung
out. She was a bit young for me, like.” He looked me up and down
and winked. “I like older women. Experienced women.”

I ignored his leer. “Have you heard from her
since she ran away?”

“
Nah. We weren’t serious or
nothing, we just saw each other for a laugh sometimes. She was
always going on about running off, you know? Starting a better life
for herself, that shit.” He sniffed, disdainful, and pointed at me
with the blade of the knife. “You a werewolf? I like wolf women.
They’re always up for a laugh.”

“
I’m not,” I said, the
faintest hint of a growl in my voice.

Shannon angled herself between us. “Did you
notice any change in Molly’s behavior in the days before she left?
Did she mention any new friends, anything like that?”

He scratched his nose as if genuinely
thinking about it. “She was smoking this new shit. Went right off
the weed, which was a pain, because she was buying her weed from my
mate and he always gave me a cut, didn’t he?”

Silver
Kiss
. I wasn’t sure why I was sure, I just
was. It was clearly the new big thing with humans and wolves.
Lawrence was addicted to the stuff and Vince had said most of the
kids at the Fox were into it. So it wasn’t too much of a leap in
the dark to assume Molly was too. Whether that was relevant, I
wasn’t sure. As Lawrence had assured Calvin, Silver Kiss was a
herbal cigarette, nothing illegal or dangerous.

“
What about new friends?”
Shannon persisted. “Where was she getting this new stuff from if
not your mate?”

“
I dunno, like, she did
mention this guy. I thought she might be banging him on the
side—she is a bit of a slut, you know? I can’t remember his name.
It was like Stuart, or Simon, or something. Something a bit
gay.”

I couldn’t help myself; a full growl escaped
me and Marc glanced at me in alarm. “You not gonna wolf out on me,
are you?” He held the knife up again in a more defensive
position.

Shannon laid her hand on my arm. “I think
you’ve told us everything you can, haven’t you?” she asked Marc. He
nodded, wide eyes fixed on me. “Great. We’ll get off then.” She
handed him her business card. “Just give me a call if you think of
anything useful. I know Molly’s family would be so grateful.”

He glanced at the card. “Is there a reward
or something then?”

“
Maybe.” Shannon smiled
brightly at him. “Thanks for your time, Marc.”

“
Yeah.” He looked back at
me, apparently satisfied I wasn’t going to rip his throat out.
“Yeah, and hey, you ever want some fun, you come find me.” He
winked again. “I know loads of fun stuff.”