“Just a bit,” he said calmly, as if he staked me out every day. “Hadn’t seen the Fiesta in your parking spot lately. Had a friend run the plate, found out that your brother had it pulled out of a lot. Figured I’d just wait around tonight and see if I needed to go looking for you. Glad to hear I don’t.”
“I’m sorry, Matt. I should’ve called.” I immediately felt like shit. After three unconscious days, I’d never considered that Matt might’ve realized I was missing, and I hated that I’d worried him.
“No harm done, Fort,” he assured me with a wide, and very phony, smile that I’d never seen him direct at me before. “Funny thing, though,” he continued in that hearty tone that was now raising the hair on the back of my neck. “The car was towed out of a residential street in the same area of town that the Grann family killer torched himself in.”
“Really?” I asked, staring at him. I’d known him my whole life, yet now there was a weird opacity about his eyes. Those were his cop eyes, I realized suddenly.
“Yeah. Have you been following that case?” He was so friendly, so casual, but suddenly this conversation was filled with knives. I forced myself to paste on a bright, fake smile, to match that easy, just-boys-talking style of speech.
“Just what I’ve seen in the papers.”
“Odd case. That body was completely toasted, and the official report says that he fell asleep with a lit cigarette, but I talked to a forensics guy who says that the body was missing a few pieces, and not the kind that burn off. Talked to a first responder who says that the little girl was covered in blood that wasn’t hers. Bloody handprints all over her dress, like someone had picked her up and carried her somewhere. Good prints too. Too bad they couldn’t run them through the system. There was a funny little mix-up in the evidence locker, and the clothes were thrown out by accident. And then the brass came down really hard on this one, hushed everyone up and made sure that they stuck with the party line. Haven’t seen something like that since…well, not since your parents.”
“Pretty weird,” I said. I knew right then that secret agent was never a career option for me, because I was sweating so hard that my new T-shirt was sticking to me.
“Yep, it is that. Everyone shut up real quick. If I hadn’t already been asking questions when it first happened, I never would’ve gotten a peep.”
“Why were you looking into it?” I asked. I didn’t really want to know, but I had to ask.
“The way the Grann parents were killed was familiar. And when the body of the older girl turned up, it had a lot of similarities to the mystery girl who was found the same night as the original murders. Funny thing is, no one seems interested in connecting the two cases.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Matt.” That much, at least, was the honest truth. I couldn’t see a single way out of this conversation that wouldn’t end in Prudence on Matt’s doorstep, and because of that it was everything I could do to keep that big, dumb smile on my face.
“I know, buddy.” Matt paused, then dropped his own fake smile to give me a narrow, assessing look that seemed to go right through my clothes and measure every bruise on my body. “You know, that little girl said that a man rescued her.”
“Oh, really?” Oh, shit. My guts clenched even further, because now it wasn’t just Matt in danger, now it was Amy as well.
“Yep. You won’t find it in the official report. She was also talking about a fox that turned into a lady, and the higher-ups said that it was just a lot of nonsense from the smoke inhalation and the trauma, and they had it taken out. But I had a talk with her grandfather yesterday, and he says that she says a dark-haired man came and took her away from the monster. Says that she knows his name, but that the fox told her that it was important to keep it a secret. But she was a little worried, because he’d gotten hurt, and she hoped that he was okay.”
“What an amazing story,” I choked out. I couldn’t hold that fake smile any longer, and I was almost shaking when I looked at Matt.
“That it is.” He gave me a hard look. “Did you have a little trouble lately there, Fort? Got a nice cast on that arm.”
“Oh, you know me. Clumsy, clumsy.”
“All right, then, buddy. I’ll be seeing you soon.” He got back in his car and started the engine.
“Can’t be soon enough,” I told him through his open window, waving as he pulled out, and watched as he drove out of the lot. He knew that I’d been the one to rescue Amy, and now he was also suspecting what he’d never even dreamed of before, that I knew more about Brian and Jill’s murder than I’d told him. He’d followed that case relentlessly for almost twenty years, let it control his career, wreck all chances at a family, consume his thoughts. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop now.
The taillights of his car disappeared into the darkness and I knew that everything had just changed between us. I was no longer his partner’s kid to protect—I was a possible lead. That’s why he’d come to talk with me tonight.
Matt was the kind of threat that Madeline wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate. I didn’t know what I could do to stop him, to halt that headlong sprint toward death, but I’d have to do something. Brian and Jill had died because I hadn’t kept the truth from them—I wouldn’t let the same thing happen with Matt.
I thought about it as I walked up the stairs to my apartment. Now I had two big things on my to-do list—get a new job, keep Matt from getting killed.
The lights were off and the apartment was quiet, meaning that for once Larry was having sex at someone else’s place. But as I flipped on the lights and walked in, I stopped suddenly, and looked around. Something was different. Something was…missing.
Specifically, the microwave.
Shit, I thought, looking at the spot where it usually rested. We must’ve been robbed. But I’d had to unlock the door when I came in. I looked around again. The TV was still in place, all my DVDs were still there. Even the drums were still present, meaning that the Brown University drum circle was still using my apartment as free storage. Something was definitely missing.
I stared, and then it occurred to me—for the first time since he’d moved in, Larry’s clothes and stuff were no longer coating the floor of the living room. Seeing the bare floor again was a huge shock. I walked to his bedroom and gave the partially open door a nudge. It swung open easily to show a room that had been completely stripped. No bed, no piles of junk, no random floozies. Herpes germs probably still coated the entire room, so I’d probably have to wipe everything down with bleach, but even so…Larry had moved out.
Well, moved out after stiffing me for months of rent, minus sixty very-well-spent dollars, but still.
I walked back into the living room. It looked like he’d left all my stuff untouched, when I wouldn’t have put a little on-the-way-out roommate robbery and petty payback past him.
“Well, that’s interesting,” I said out loud. It was nice to hear only my own voice. Too bad I couldn’t just live alone.
Which added a nice big third item to my list. Get a new job, keep Matt from getting killed, get a new roommate who hopefully isn’t a shithead this time.
There was a pile of mail on the kitchen counter, and I flipped through it. Bill I couldn’t pay, bill I couldn’t pay, credit card offer that was probably a bad idea, oooh, Netflix, and one plain envelope that had my name written across the front in Larry’s crabbed, almost indecipherable handwriting. It was pretty bulky, and, curious, I opened it up.
“Well, fuck,” I blurted out to the empty room. Inside was his apartment key, plus all the rent money he’d owed me. In cash.
“Shit,” I said reverently. Now I wouldn’t get kicked out of the apartment while I scrambled to find another job and a new roommate. I would actually be able to buy food for myself—a wholly unexpected luxury. I thumbed through the wad of bills reverently.
I still didn’t doubt the validity of the life lessons that my foster mother had taught me, but I had to acknowledge that she’d fudged the truth on on
e of them. Sometimes violence did solve problems.
I considered the pile of money again. It hadn’t just been about threatening Larry, though that had certainly been great. It had been about finally refusing to let him keep dodging the issue. And with that particular lesson in mind, I headed toward my computer.
It was time to reply to Beth’s sixteen-page relationship manifesto.
* * *
A small scuffling sound at my window woke me up at just past three in the morning. I pried my eyes open and smiled at the sight of Suzume propped up on her elbows at the foot of my bed, wearing nothing except one of my T-shirts. It covered just barely enough to keep her from being arrested for indecent exposure, but that foxy smile on her face should’ve been enough for any judge to recommend incarceration.
“How did you get in?” I asked. It didn’t bother me how she got in; I just cared that she was here at all, but I knew that she’d love the chance to show how clever she was.
“You have a loose window screen and a really nice maple tree that is a few years overdue for a pruning. I’m surprised that you don’t have colonies of squirrels camping out under your bed.” She was pleased, and her eyes sparkled even in the darkness.
“You said something to Beth, or did something,” I said. It wasn’t even a question. I knew that had to be her, I just had to know how.
She was smug, almost wiggling. She always was happiest with an audience. “I might’ve convinced my cousin Noriko to make a few salacious posts on your Facebook page, photos included. A few of them ended up getting censored, but I think Beth got an eyeful before they were pulled.”
“Why would that make her call me for a date?”
Suzume laughed at me. “A girl like Beth only wants what other people have. A few pictures, some graphic posts, and suddenly you’re a challenge, and she must have you again.” She waggled her eyebrows.
“Assuming I still want her,” I pointed out.
She tilted her head. “Don’t you?”
“No.” I’d surprised her, and it filled my chest with warmth. “Before I went to bed, I let her know that we were over. That she should get her drums out of my living room and go cheat on some other guy.”
Suzume lifted her eyebrows. “Must’ve been a fun conversation.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t bother calling her.”
“Oh?” Suzume looked intrigued.
I smiled. “Facebook post.” I’d timed it for when I knew she would’ve logged off for the night, and there’d already been quite a few comments by the time I turned in myself. Apparently I hadn’t been the only guy she’d pulled that “open relationship” crap on, and now that I’d actually said something, it had opened the floodgates. She’d be in for quite an eyeful tomorrow morning, but the best part was that I really didn’t care. It was over, and I was better off for it.
“That’s cold,” Suzume said. “I like it.” Then she burst out laughing, delighted.
I watched her laugh for a moment. “I didn’t think you’d come for me, Suzume,” I admitted. “At Luca’s. You said that Amy Grann wasn’t worth risking your life.”
She crawled up the bed in a sinuous, almost catlike motion until her dark hair fell around my face like a cloud, and it was only because of my new, keener eyes that I could see that wicked smile on her face as she leaned down, so that our mouths were just a breath apart, and I could feel as well as hear the next words she said in little puffs of air, and the sweet smell of her filled my head.
“You’re an idiot,” she whispered lovingly.
I blinked. She smiled.
“And I didn’t risk my life for Amy,” she said.
And then a fox was on my chest instead of a woman, wiggling agilely out of my T-shirt and scampering off the bed and onto my windowsill.
She paused there for a moment, and a break in the clouds let out a small shaft of moonlight that allowed me to see what even my sharper eyes had missed in the darkness, the new, perfect snow white tip of her coal black tail.
She yipped once, high and amused, and with one last swish of her tail she was gone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M. L. Brennan cut her baby bibliophile teeth on her older brother’s collection of Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert, but it was a chance encounter with Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks as a teenager that led to genre true love. Today, she’ll read everything from Mary Roach’s nonfiction to Brandon Sanderson’s epic fantasies, but she’ll drop everything for vampires and werewolves in the big city. After spending years writing and publishing short works in other genres, she decided to branch out and write the kind of book that she loved to read, resulting in Generation V, her first full-length work of urban fantasy. Brennan lives in Connecticut with her husband and three cats. Holding a master’s degree in fiction, she teaches basic composition to college students. Her house is over a hundred years old, and is insulated mainly by overstuffed bookshelves. She is currently working on the second Fortitude Scott book.
CONNECT ONLINE
www.mlbrennan.com.
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