Shifting Shadows

by Patricia Briggs

I’d met him a couple of times, and it was unlikely that he didn’t know me. But he gave no sign of it that I could discern, even when I introduced myself.

  He led us around to the back door of the big brick house—explaining that he didn’t want to track dirt inside. He showed us into his living room—a big space with hardwood floors, real Persian rugs, and antique furniture, some of it even older than I was. But the thing that dominated the room was a wall of windows that looked out over the Columbia River.

  We were both staring at the view when he shot me.

  It wasn’t silver, and a lead bullet wasn’t going to kill me—but it hurt a lot. I spun and snarled, a hand to my shoulder. He wasn’t a very good shot if he missed my heart at that range.

  It was the second time I’d had a gun pulled on me today—I’d expected something of the sort from Nyelund, though I’d hoped that meeting him at his work would preclude actual violence. The doctor I’d picked as someone who’d hire out his dirty work. At least he wasn’t a marksman.

  “Oops,” he said and adjusted his aim.

  “STOP,” said Nadia.

  Now, a dominant can enforce his will on a lesser wolf. I’d done something of the sort with Kyle yesterday when I’d made him quit pulling against the zombie’s bite. But this was something else again, ’cause not only did the doctor freeze, but so did I. And it wasn’t the kind of hesitation—the loss of will to disobey that my Alpha could hit me with—my body flat-out refused to move at all.

  Screw that.

  I drew in a deep breath and called out the wolf—who shook off the magic like water that wanted to cling where it wasn’t supposed to. He also healed up a fair bit of the damage the pistol had done. I took a step mostly to prove I could.

  She didn’t even notice me; she was too busy with Sullivan. “You won’t kill anyone,” she told him in that same black-magic voice. “You’ll leave Kyle Brooks alone.” I was really glad I’d broken her hold on me before that one. “You won’t remember this. You’ll just feel as though whatever we were talking about got solved. Everything will be all right.”

  “All right,” muttered the doctor, and my wolf saw that something was broken inside him, something that had been whole and well when we’d come here. In an elk, it was the sign that the animal was done for; next blizzard, next predator, and it wouldn’t fight to survive.

  Nadia turned and seemed a little surprised to see me so close. “Your shoulder?”

  “Healing,” I said. “I’m fine.” Sometimes things like that took a long time to heal, and once in a while they just closed right up. This was that once in a while. I looked around, but there had been surprisingly little blood; most of it had been absorbed by my clothes.

  The bullet had gone right though me and through the window, leaving behind a spiderweb of cracks. The doctor appeared to have forgotten about us and shuffled off with his gun, muttering to himself, “It’s all right. Everything is fine.”

  Nadia grabbed a damp towel from the kitchen and wiped the blood off the hardwood floor, leaving not a trace behind. Then she took the splattered towel and held it against the broken window.

  The wolf felt her magic and backed away. Not frightened, just cautious. When she pulled the towel away, it was clean of my blood and the window was intact.

  “Waste not, want not,” she said. “I thought I’d have to supply some of my own to finish it up—but your blood is potent.”

  I took her arm. “Let’s go before he breaks loose,” I said, though I didn’t think he’d really break loose. The suggestions she’d planted might fade. But she’d broken him, and my instincts said that was permanent.

  That’s the problem with witches; they don’t really care about anyone except themselves. Their power comes from pain, blood, and sacrifice—other people’s pain, blood, and sacrifice, when they could manage it. If they flinched away from doing harm, they wouldn’t have any power. Then other witches would take advantage of that and steal what little power they had. White witches were few, and tended to be psychotically paranoid. Elizaveta and her family skirted the edge of true black magic, but they did stand on that edge and look into the abyss with open eyes.

  The wolf could respect a predator like that, but neither of us were entirely comfortable with it. What she’d just done to the doctor was wrong: it would have been kinder to kill him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said softly as I drove back across the river into her part of Richland.

  “What for?” I asked. “Saving my life?”

  “You didn’t like it that I stole his will,” she said. “I admit I could have been more careful. But he’d shot you, and I used that, used your pain. It gave me a little more power than I’m used to. He’ll be all right.”

  If she wanted to believe that, who was I to tell her differently? Maybe I was wrong, but I didn’t think so.

  “So,” she said softly, “are you finished with this? Did you find out what you needed to know with Dr. Sullivan? Is it solved, then?”

  I opened my mouth, thought a bit more, and said, “Yes, I suppose I am finished.”

  We didn’t talk much more, but when she hopped out of the truck when I stopped in her driveway, she said without looking at me, “Maybe we could see each other again? I make a mean cherry pie.”

  I smiled. “Maybe so.”

  She relaxed, gave me a rare grin, kissed her fingertips, and blew the kiss my way before she ran into her house, looking about sixteen.

  Everything will be all right. I flexed my fingers on the steering wheel.

  • • •

  Kyle and I ate dinner at a Mexican restaurant kitty-corner from Kyle’s offices. The music was loud enough that human ears wouldn’t hear private conversations—one of the reasons I liked to eat at this place.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Kyle said. “Find something?”

  I looked at him. He looked tired. “Yes.”

  “Are you going to tell me?”

  I looked down at my food. “Yes. But not tonight. I have a few more things to check out—a couple of things to do.”

  “Illegal?”

  I gave him a half grin. “Like I’d tell you ahead of time.”

  “You’ll just make me an accessory afterward,” he grumbled.

  “I’ve a little justice to serve,” I told him.

  He thought about it while he ate a few bites of his fish tostada. “Toni McFetters deserves justice,” he said. “Are you sure you can’t go about it legally?”

  “I plan on using proper channels for some of it,” I said. “But there’s some of it that it’s not possible to do that with.”

  Kyle believed in the court system—one of the few traces of optimism in his cynical worldview. However—as his blackmail of Sullivan proved—he understood its limitations.

  “All right,” he said. “I can live with justice. Will I see you at home tonight?”

  “I’ll be in later,” I said. “Maybe very late.”

  He looked at me seriously. “Don’t get caught. Don’t get hurt. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you’re wearing a different shirt than you put on this morning and aren’t using your right arm to eat with.”

  “I won’t,” I said earnestly. “I’ll try not to. I would never try to get something like that by you.”

  He laughed, stood up and leaned across the narrow table, and kissed me, oblivious to the stares we got. The Tri-Cities is a pretty uptight town, and two men kissing in public is not a common sight.

  A girl in the next table gave a wolf whistle and said, “Can I kiss the cowboy next?”

  Okay, so maybe everyone wasn’t that uptight.

  Kyle gave her a cheeky grin. “Sorry. He’s my cowboy, you’ll have to find your own.”

  She sighed. “I have one. But he doesn’t look like that when he blushes.”

  “Maybe if I kissed him, he would?” Kyle arche
d an eyebrow.

  She laughed. And if some of the people might have made an offended scene about the kiss, she’d taken the edge off. I kissed her cheek in appreciation as I passed her table on the way out. Her cowboy might not blush, but she did.

  • • •

  From the office, I called Ben. A fellow pack member, Ben was also a computer geek. I can get by on the computer, but Ben makes me look like a complete Luddite. It took him the better part of an hour to run down the information I’d asked him for—it would have taken me a week or more. I put the hour to good use, pulling out the clues my instincts told me were there, running off some photocopies of sensitive files, and calling a few more people. After Ben called me back, I called George and then went out to do a little private detecting.

  • • •

  George, in addition to being a werewolf, was also a Pasco police officer. He was my link to the “proper channels” I’d promised Kyle.

  George met me at a fast-food place a few blocks from Sean Nyelund’s house in West Pasco. He drove his own car and came dressed casually, but he was on the job despite the late hour. We both ordered something to drink and sat down. It was nearly closing time and it wasn’t tough to find a place where no one would overhear us.

  “You said you have something on Nyelund.” His tone was eager. In addition to being a police officer, he was into the BDSM scene—which kept a very low profile around here. During Nyelund’s divorce, Nyelund admitted that he was into BDSM, and that tidbit made the news. George and his friends didn’t appreciate that one bit. Nyelund wasn’t a BDSM dom. He was a psychopathic, sadistic bastard who enjoyed breaking people.

  “Right,” I told George. “He’s got another victim.” I gave him the name of Nyelund’s receptionist. “These files you don’t have,” I told him, giving him copies I’d made in the office. “Confidential lawyer/client/doctor stuff. They’ll show you what to look for—but I promised the victim they would be for your eyes only.”

  I waited while he paged through Nyelund’s first wife’s medical files and transcripts of her therapy sessions. She’d given them to Kyle and then told him he couldn’t use them. I’d called her and told her about Nyelund’s little receptionist. It had taken me most of that hour I’d waited for Ben to talk her into it. She’d told me I could show George, but no one else.

  He whistled through his teeth. “Poor kid,” he said. But he wasn’t surprised. He’d known what the case was about, but Nyelund’s ex-wife’s refusal to bring charges against him had tied his hands. It was the details that were new to him.

  “He’s got a bunker, a secret room,” he said, sounding like a kid in a candy store. Secret rooms were pretty easily sniffed out if the one looking happened to have a wolf’s sense of smell. “And he likes to film things. Illegal things. How helpful of him.”

  “Is it useful?”

  “I need a reason for the search warrant.”

  I gave him a thumb drive. Nyelund thought his guard dogs would keep people from taking photos through his window. Guard dogs don’t bark at me if I don’t want them to, and Nyelund had been too occupied to notice me. His lights had been on, so I hadn’t even had to use a flash. My camera had helpfully recorded the time and date.

  I tapped the drive. “You’ll find the photos on that good for probable cause. You can even give my name as the photographer. I’m a private detective and I was sent out to take photos of this guy’s wife, only I got the address wrong. When I realized what I was taking photos of, I gave you a call.”

  A snake doesn’t change his spots. It had been only a matter of time before Nyelund tried his tricks on a new victim. Kyle and I’d been keeping an eye on him, but we’d missed the receptionist. Ben said she’d been working for him for about two months—right after she moved to the Tri-Cities.

  “She’s seventeen,” I told him.

  George grinned at me, his eyes enraged. “Is she, now? And look at him with that camera. Wrapped up like a great big birthday present. Thanks, Warren.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I tipped my imaginary hat to him. If Nyelund hadn’t been so obliging, I’d have resorted to being a credible witness, but this was better.

  • • •

  It was very late when I made it to my next stop. The back door wasn’t locked and let me into the kitchen. I waited a minute and listened. Only one person in the house, and that person was asleep.

  I walked into the living room, toward the stairs that led to the bedrooms. I’d been thinking about this all night, and I still hadn’t made up my mind what I was going to do.

  Instinct was one thing; proving what I knew was an entirely different proposition.

  I’d planned on a little sleuthing and then interrogation—but then the lights of a car driving past illuminated the top of a curio cabinet where there were a bunch of photos. One of them caught my eye and I went over and picked it up.

  I didn’t need the light to see it; one of the benefits of my condition is superb night vision. I stared at the photo of a pair of happy people for a moment, then replaced it.

  I went into the bedroom and did what I had to do. Nadia didn’t even wake up when I snapped her neck. It was easier than snapping the neck of the zombie she’d made of the woman she’d killed.

  I searched the room and found a few things. From the bedroom, I called Nadia’s great-aunt.

  “You call me late, my little sticky bun. Did you find out something I can use?”

  “No,” I told Elizaveta. “It was Nadia.”

  “You are wrong,” she pronounced. “Nadia does not have the skill to animate the dead.” She’d always underestimated Nadia. Everyone had. Everyone but me.

  “Nine thousand dollars was transferred into one of her bank accounts two weeks ago and another last week.” Ten thousand or over, and the feds start to pay attention. “Last year she made a hundred and ten thousand dollars; she listed her profession as artist. From her bank records, she made four or five times that much this year.”

  Elizaveta would not consider Nadia’s profession as an assassin an issue.

  “She worked exclusively for humans,” I told her. “She keeps copies of her contracts. Her employers all knew she was a witch. It was her edge.” That would be an issue. Mundane folks tend to get all frightened when they figure out they have monsters in their midst, and it results in things like the Inquisition and the witch hunts that wiped out the majority of the witch bloodlines in Europe a few centuries back.

  “You are at her house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Wait there for me. Do not do anything rash.”

  I looked at Nadia’s face. “No, ma’am. I don’t do rash.”

  • • •

  I waited in the dark, sitting in the little rocker in Nadia’s room, until Elizaveta came in.

  She stared at her great-niece for a moment and then said in a very chilly voice, “I told you not to do anything rash.”

  “It was already done,” I informed her.

  “It was my business to take care of,” she said.

  “Folks think that your grandson is dead,” I told her.

  I figured he wasn’t. Like I said, witches draw their power from suffering, from sacrifice, like Nadia using my blood to mend the window at Dr. Sullivan’s. I wasn’t providing Elizaveta anyone else to torture.

  Elizaveta stared at me, gray eyes sharp as a harpy’s. Witches don’t have much trouble seeing in the dark, either.

  “She moved against what was mine,” I told her. “That made stopping her my business. I’m a wolf, ma’am. Not a cat. I don’t play around with my prey.” I had liked Nadia, the Nadia I thought she was anyway. It was better that I killed her quickly.

  I reached out and handed her the ring I’d found in Nadia’s jewelry box. “This is Toni McFetters’s wedding ring. When you put out the body for the police to find, it will cause fewer question
s if she’s wearing that ring. The clothes she was wearing are in a paper bag in the closet—a pink running suit. Maybe she should die of natural causes. I’m sure you can figure something out.”

  She took it and sighed, her voice softening and the Russian accent gone. She sounded old. “You know, it is very difficult to raise a witch so that they do not self-destruct. I myself had six siblings and only two of us survived. My sister had no talent at all. The temptations are so great.”

  She looked at Nadia. When she looked back at me, the accent had returned. “She had a crush on you, my little Texas bunny. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so foolish as to do this where I might find her out.”

  “She knew that I’m gay,” I told her, startled.

  She laughed. “Forbidden fruit is the sweetest, Warren, my darling. She thought she could change that if you would just look at her. I imagine getting paid to kill your boyfriend was too much temptation for her to resist.” She smiled sweetly at me, waiting for me to understand that this was all my fault.

  She cared for Nadia, I thought, but she cared more that I’d robbed her of the opportunity to get more power. Maybe she was also ticked that I’d seen what was going on under her nose before she did.

  I hate witches.

  “Nadia made her choices,” I said abruptly, standing up. “I need to get home.”

  As I walked out of the bedroom, Elizaveta said, “Tell your Alpha that Nadia has decided that she wants to explore the world. She already has tickets to France. No one will much notice when she doesn’t come back.”

  Meaning that Elizaveta would live with my killing Nadia and wouldn’t break the deal she had with the pack. When I’d called Adam to warn him what I had to do, he’d told me that was what Elizaveta would do.

  I didn’t slow down or reply.

  • • •

  Despite what I’d told Elizaveta, I had one more stop to make. For this one I would be the wolf. It took me a while to shed my human form for the wolf, longer than usual. Probably because I’d been shot; physical weakness makes the transformation harder for me.

  The second-story window, the bedroom window, was open, and I jumped through it from the ground. I landed with a thud, but my victim, like Nadia, didn’t wake up. I needed this one awake. So I made more noise, letting my claws tick on the hardwood floor.