by Anna Leonard
She hadn’t, had she? Lily reclaimed the pillow and shoved it under her head, then gave up and rolled onto her back again. She stared up at the ceiling, thinking over the night.
No. She’d had two beers, well within even her limited abilities. Nothing she hadn’t had before, foodwise, and it had all tasted fine. She had gotten home at a reasonable hour…. Jon had followed her home in his newly acquired rental car, against her protests, waiting in his car until she had driven into her condo’s garage, gone inside and flicked the porch light at him.
Ridiculous. But she admitted to a faint glow at his concern nonetheless. She had spent her entire adult life looking out for herself. It was nice, even if just for one night, to feel that kind of concern from someone else.
“Don’t get too used to it, Lily Malkin,” she said sternly. “Mr. FBI made it clear he had career plans. You don’t get far with those sort of goals in Newfield.”
“Field profilers don’t get considered for management slots,” he had said over taquitos and Dos Equis. “We’re too valuable…so they use us until we’re used up. And then we go write books about the experience, see if we can con some new kids into picking up the skills to replace us, start the cycle all over again. I’m not interested in that.”
“You want a desk job?” It seemed impossible to imagine, an FBI agent bored with what he did.
“I want the ability to actually make a difference on more than a case-by-case basis. Make policy, make changes. And to do that, you need power.”
He had grinned then, that surprisingly boyish expression that wiped the intensity from his face and lightened the mood, and they had moved on to another topic of conversation that had nothing to do with the case, his job or cats. The rest of the evening had touched on football, politics, their birth order—she was an only child, he was the youngest of four—and other topics that could have passed for first-date small talk.
And then, outside the restaurant, she had broken their unspoken truce, leaning in to touch her lips to his again.
Sparks. Sparks, and more. Lava.
She had pulled away immediately, and he had let her, not saying a word. But his dark eyes had been knowing. And amused.
“Gah,” she said now, no more eloquent on the subject than she had been at the time. What was it about that man?
She was about to roll over yet again and try to get back to sleep, when the alarm clock went off. Already? She looked at the readout and realized that she must have fallen asleep for a few hours without realizing it—it was 6:00 a.m.
The temptation to lie in bed for another hour warred with routine. Routine won. Throwing off the blankets with no grace or dignity at all, Lily grabbed her sweatpants off the chair and staggered to the bathroom to become vaguely human.
Ten minutes later, she was outside her condo, dressed in black fleece sweatpants and a red-and-black hoodie, stretching out cranky muscles before she asked them to work. Her arms over her head, feeling the muscles pull in her back, she could practically feel everything from her heels to her ears align, like a cat stretching after a nap. She tilted her head to better take in the morning air, so much fresher and more interesting than the air inside the building.
She realized as she did so that she was pulling her lips back again, displaying the classic feline grimace as she tasted the air.
“Nancy was right. You need to hang out with people more, if you’re picking up habits from the cats.”
Finishing her stretches, Lily pulled her hair into a ponytail and secured it with a scrunchie, made sure that her sneakers were tied and set off down the street. Three miles, down to the park and back, four times a week, and she had a chance at keeping her hips inside her size eights.
She wondered, as she started to catch the rhythm of her footfalls on the pavement, if Jon was one of those guys who liked his women sleek, or if he had a thing about ribs and hipbones showing.
“Lily Marie, you get your mind out of the gutter,” she scolded herself, trying not to laugh as she crossed the street and headed into the park proper. Either she wasn’t interested in the guy, or she needed to jump him, but she had to stop wavering between the two.
And if she was going to do the latter, she needed to do it soon. He had gotten all the information available off the scene, and all the facts out of her brain; there was no reason for him to stick around on the taxpayers’ dime anymore. He’d be going home soon.
But he promised to find the guy. He promised.
The practical portion of her brain—the majority of it—warned the smaller voice: Not everyone can keep their promises. Even when they want to.
And he won’t stop working on it, even when he goes home. He won’t. He won’t. The words worked their way into the slap-slap of shoes on pavement. He won’t. He won’t forget.
The one thing she was certain of, although she could never have said why, or what drove that confidence: He’ll catch the guy. He’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone ever again.
The trees were black. The leaves were silver and gray. He remembered, once, the leaves being colored. They had faded slowly, until he could not remember what that color had been. Three years ago? Less. No warning, just a click in his head, like magnets coming together. Sometimes he could almost remember who he had been, before the wake-up call came, and he awoke into this dream. Sometimes, but it was so very difficult, and so very long ago.
He tried not to think about it. It hurt when he did anything other than focus on the ritual, and what he needed to do.
He had been wandering since before the sun rose, searching. He needed to find beasts. Seven beasts, and he only had four. They needed to be right, but he had no more time to breed the perfect ones, and the shelter had said they had no more proper ones to adopt. He could leave his name and number, and they would call him when one came in. But the question smelled cold, and he had hung up without responding.
They would try to stop him. They did not understand.
He would find what he needed. He would hunt them, as they hunted, in the between-hours. In the between-places.
Among the trees would be good. They sometimes could be found living in between the houses and the park, where food was plentiful from picnics and mice. Three more. Four and three would be seven. Seven should be the number. Seven, minus the four he had…
Something tugged at his awareness. There. Over there.
His thoughts scattered. Distracted from his numbers, but why? What…
A flash. Like a bird flitting from branch to branch, only at street level.
A woman, waiting at the corner for the light to change.
Gold. She was hammered gold, gilded like a statue.
His brain caught up with his fancy, and he was able to focus better on her.
No, she wasn’t gold. She was flesh and shadows, the same as all the rest. But he saw the glints in her, shimmering and shiny. Bright and sharp, moving quickly down the sidewalk, across the street from him. Into the trees.
Like the beasts.
It was Her.
No. His heart stuttered back down into a normal beat. It was just a woman, a normal woman. A mortal, human woman.
Beasts, he reminded himself. He was on a mission to find the beasts he needed. Not a woman. But he couldn’t look away from her as she moved away from him, moving away. Golden, glowing like fire. He felt himself yearning toward it, as though it would warm him the way the gray sun no longer did. The way his dreams, filled with heat and wind, told him he had once been warm.
She was important. She could be…Her, come to this world? One of Her handmaidens, perhaps, lost the same way he was?
Yes. Yes. Something inside him thrilled to the realization.
He took a step toward the curb, intending to cross the street and follow her, when something yanked him back, as though strings were attached to his knees and elbows. The clarity of her warmth was suddenly clouded by apprehension, the appeal matched by an equal resistance. Important, but wrong. Dangerous.
No! Th
e first warmth he had felt in so long, the first true connection to Her. He would not let it go.
Forcing himself forward, he followed the woman. Into the trees, down a path laid with dirt. She moved swiftly but with a steady pace; graceful, a predator on the hunt. Unable to do more than walk quickly without attracting attention, he was about to lose her, when suddenly she stopped.
What had stopped her? He drew to the side of the path, watching as she knelt. To tie her shoe? No.
A beast approached her. He jerked forward, instinctively ready to grab the beast, but it was not the right sort: red as clay, and useless to him. The revulsion he felt in the presence of the beasts overwhelmed him once the instinct fled, even with the amulet to protect him. He fought the urge to flee, to snatch the glowing woman away from the foul thing and destroy it before it could befoul her as well.
But the woman gestured, and the beast made obeisance as much as any beast ever could; tail erect and head forward, sniffing her proffered hand until it stroked its fur.
Something hurt inside, like a knife prying open a seal, and he stayed where he was, even as she rose from the beast and began moving again.
She confused him. She was beloved of the beasts, and therefore anathema to him. And yet, She was the most beloved of the beasts, wasn’t She? So this woman was a link, a true link.
And yet, the woman was also part of the danger he had sensed. Women like that were not to be trusted. They were to be removed, offered up to the greater goal, before they could confuse people, tell lies….
And yet, he was drawn to her. Needed her. The confusion bothered him. Worried him. He had to know why she alone had color and warmth, the same warmth his dreams promised him, if he could do this one thing….
He hit his forehead with the heels of his hands, willing his brain to stop whirling. He had no room, no time for confusion. He knew what he had to do. A female had no place in his goals, what he must accomplish. Especially not a best-beloved of the beasts. Seven beasts, proper beasts, three yet to be found…
Yet, if he could find an answer in her…
Perhaps he would not need the beasts, after all.
But he waited too long to decide. She was gone.
No. His head ached, but he was calm once again. She was a mirage, a taunt. The gold he had seen was a phantasm, a delusion. He would continue with his plan.
Chapter 8
“Yes, sir.”
Patrick paused in the middle of his note taking and twirled his pen, stretching his legs in front of him, wincing as his half-asleep leg twinged in protest. The narrow windowsill on the stairwell landing was not exactly suited to a tall man perching there for any length of time, but it was the only place in the warren of the police station where his cell phone could actually get reception. The bureau got pissy when agents were out of touch for very long; the fact that the entire country wasn’t wired for perfect cell reception didn’t seem to have sunk in to the powers that be in Washington.
“Yes, sir. I’m wrapping up my notes now. Yes, sir, I expect to be on a plane tomorrow morning. My report will be on your desk as soon as I’m in the office. Yes, sir. No, sir, I don’t believe this was—”
A shadow fell over him, and he looked up.
Petrosian, looking like the Doom of Gloom in rumpled flesh.
“Hang up.”
Patrick made a gesture to indicate the fact that he couldn’t do that. Hanging up on your direct supervisor was bad form. Not that he hadn’t done it a time or three. Or four. He needed more reason than a cranky cop to do it, though.
“Hang up,” Petrosian repeated. “We got another.”
“Change of plans,” he said into the phone, already standing and reaching with his free hand for his coat. “Another incident. I’ll check in later. Don’t wait up, don’t hold dinner.”
His boss, used to him after seven years, merely grunted assent, and hung up, doubtless already dialing another field agent to ream out for some cause or another.
“What do we know?” he asked the detective, tucking the phone into his pocket and following him through the hallways. Already his brain was sorting through the known facts, clearing way for new information.
“Not a lot. Some guy had a bunch of cats snatched from his cattery—he’s a breeder, down by Mazelle Park. Spotted cats,” he added, as though Patrick was too slow to figure that bit out for himself. “Some kind of special breed. Thief took only males, not a surprise. Uniform got a pretty decent description of the guy off the security cameras, so we can distribute it. Our first real damn break in this damn case.”
“How long ago?”
“The incident? Yesterday. We got news of it about three hours ago, more or less. The call went through animal welfare, and once they got a confirmation and checked it out they sent it on to us, and someone had to come find me.”
“Yesterday? And then it took them three hours to find you?” Jesus, what was with this podunk police department? He should have been informed immediately! If they had a description of this guy on file already…
Patrick felt himself literally getting hot under the collar, and pulled it down a notch. Petrosian made a weary-looking shrug as he held the door to the parking garage open for the agent. “Whaddaya want me to say? Not everyone reads their memos.”
The detective was right: there was no way everyone could have known to contact Petrosian just for a catnapping. He knew as well as anyone how departments didn’t talk to each other. “So we’re checking this guy out? Or do we have—”
“That’s where it gets interesting. We found the cats, yeah. Our boy’s been busy.”
That didn’t sound good at all.
By the time they got to the site, halfway across town in the opposite direction from the first three locations, Patrick had managed to start up a new page in his logbook for this incident, listing what little Petrosian had been able to give him, factswise. He had only the existing police reports on the first two; it would be important to see firsthand how similar—or not—this scene was to the one he had checked out. His notes were his usual precise and factual work, without any of his own personal interpretation—those went on another sheet, to keep them separate and not confuse the issue. He also had a pencil sketch of the suspect to go with the sketch the artist had done from Lily’s observations and extrapolations. All of which led up to…nothing. So far. The guy was careful, a planner. He—or she, don’t make assumptions, he cautioned himself—was working toward something, a something only he—or she—knew about.
But things were turning. Patrick could feel it. To actually steal cats, in full view, suggested desperation, and desperation led to mistakes.
It also, he knew, often led to increased violence. His theories aside, they had to stop this guy before he—she—screw it, he escalated. Before any humans got caught up in this guy’s fantasies.
“Oh great gobs of hell.” Petrosian pulled the unmarked sedan to the curb and swore in disgust, making Patrick look up. In addition to the three patrol cars marking off the area, there were two vans. Even if they hadn’t had the markings of the two local news stations on the side panels, the antenna rig on the roof of each gave the game away.
“The vultures have arrived,” Patrick said. “Damn them. Can you keep them off the scene?”
“I’ll do what I can,” Petrosian said. “You go on around; I’ll draw their fire up front.”
Good man, Petrosian. He could see why Lily liked the cop. The fact that the guy was old enough to be Lily’s dad, and looked like a particularly tired, overweight hound made Patrick inclined to like him even more.
The older cop stalked toward the flashing lights and cameras, waving his arms to catch their attention. “People! People, behind the tape, thank you very much. Geordie, come on, you know the damn drill, back behind the tape!”
While the detective corralled the news crews and started to feed them some line promising a full accounting of whatever dire disaster they were claiming this was—it had to be a slow news day, or thes
e were the scrub teams sent out for filler—Patrick moved up the sidewalk toward the alley where two uniforms were talking to an older man with a grimy white apron tied over jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Yeah, I heard him down there, and I seen him in the mornings. I dunno, he looked like a guy, ya know? Don’t bother me, go find the guy!”
The witness sounded as though he had watched too many episodes of Law & Order, Patrick thought as he came even with them. The agent wasn’t much of a linguist, but the coarse accent seemed horribly out of place here in far more proper Newfield. Even Lily’s West Coast lilt had been worn down over the years by the granite of New England into more of a drawl.
“Sir, if you would please answer the questions, that would be a great help.” The cop was clearly out of patience. Patrick could relate.
“What do we have here?” He hated flashing his badge, but this wasn’t his scene and Petrosian wasn’t here to vouch for him.
The senior of the two cops answered him, after scanning the badge and deciding he had a right to be there asking questions. “Roger Hooperman. Owns the store next door.”
“Not the owner of any of the stolen cats?” That guy was probably busy with insurance forms and client calls.
“Nope. I’m the guy as found ’em.” Hooperman was clearly glad for a new, hopefully more appreciative audience. “Sick bastard, whoever done that. I got nothing against animals, ya know. They’re fine, and a cat as is a mouser is a damn good thing to have, ya know? But they’re just animals. I don’t got nothing sentimental about them. But what that guy done, that’s just wrong.” Hooperman shook his head, the image of outraged citizenry.
The second officer gestured into the alleyway. “There’s a door there, leads down to the basement. The door was open when Mr. Hooperman came out, and he—”
“I smelled ’em. Used to work in a butcher shop, I know the smell of meat.”
“And you called the cops?” Patrick tried to keep his voice neutral, but his disbelief came through. Even the most upstanding of citizens didn’t call out the cops for a whiff of spoiled meat.