Night Shifters

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Night Shifters Page 15

by Sarah A. Hoyt


  “Well.” Keith nodded. “That was part of it, only … I went to pay the rent today and I got to talking to the building manager about what happened at your apartment and she said … The manager got a bunch of your things from the floor. Before she called the police to look at it.”

  “The police? To look at my things?” Tom asked. He was trying to imagine why the woman would do that. She was a little old lady who looked Italian or Greek and who had always seemed pretty nice to him.

  “No, you fool. She got the things before the police came over, because she figured they were your things and you might need them, and the police would just tie them up.”

  “Oh, what did she get?”

  “I don’t know. It looked like was some of your clothes, and your boots, and a credit card.”

  Tom blinked. “I don’t have a credit card.” Had one of the triad dropped his credit card behind? Tom hadn’t been impressed by the collective intelligence of the dragon enforcer trio, but that seemed too stupid even for them.

  “Your ATM card, then.”

  “Oh.”

  “The manager said it was none of the police’s business. She asked me to bring you by for your stuff.” Keith looked at Tom. “But maybe I should take you to emergency first. For your feet?”

  “No,” Tom said. First, because he had enough experience in his own body to know that any wound would heal up seemingly overnight. And second because if he could get some clothes on, and his hand on his ATM card, he was going to find some stuff to buy. Heroin, by choice, but just about anything else would do, short of baking soda. This time he was going to get high and stay high. He would be feeling no pain.

  CHAPTER

  5

  In jeans and a comfortable T-shirt, Kyrie went into the kitchen. She felt naked without the earring she normally wore. She’d found it in a street fair when she was fourteen and it had been her favorite piece of jewelry since. But there was no point crying over spilt milk or spoiled jewelry. She had lost it somewhere at Tom’s house, while becoming a panther. She would have to look out for another one.

  Meanwhile she needed to eat something, even if just bread and butter.

  She put the kettle on for tea, and opened the fridge to see if perhaps a couple rounds of her lunch meat had survived. And was shocked to find eggs and bacon still sitting on the shelf, where she had left them. Looking at the containers, she determined he’d eaten about a third of her provisions. Which meant she would still have enough for the rest of the week, even if she shifted once or twice.

  She’d long ago decided to make breakfast her main protein meal of the day. Even if she ate breakfast at the time other people ate dinner. Eggs and bacon, particularly bought on a sale, were far cheaper than meat for other meals.

  She got the microwave bacon tray, and noticed Tom had washed it very carefully. She put the pan on for eggs, and again noticed it had been scrubbed with a soft, plastic scrubber, per manufacturer instructions for nonstick pans. Sitting at her little table, washing down the food with a cup of sweet tea—which she preferred to coffee unless she felt a need to wake up suddenly—she felt vaguely guilty about throwing Tom out.

  Then she realized the source of her guilt was that he’d actually made an effort to wash the dishes and that, as ravenous as he must have been—she remembered what she’d felt like at the restaurant—he hadn’t eaten all of her food. She smiled to herself. So, it was fine if the man were a one-person demolition engine, as long as he had good household habits?

  She shook her head. Okay, she clearly was going soft in the head. Perhaps it was the shifter-bond. But if so, couldn’t she feel more tenderly toward Rafiel? Was the way to her heart to give as much trouble and cause as much damage as humanly possible?

  After washing her dishes, she grabbed her purse and hurried toward the Athens. She’d park up front. With the driver’s window in the state it was, she didn’t want to leave the car unwatched, anyway. She’d park up front, and keep an eye on it through her work shift.

  Hopefully the diner would be short-staffed for the dinner shift, the last few hours of the day staff. Hopefully. They usually were, but then things never went the way one wanted them to, did they? And she’d have to buy another apron from Frank’s stock, kept for when a staff member walked out of the job with the apron still on. Another expense.

  She checked the chair under the lock between the kitchen and the back porch before leaving the house.

  “We were all very worried something dreadful had happened to you,” Mrs. Rizzo looked at him, her sparkling black eyes narrowed in what might indeed be worry. Or suspicion. Though that wasn’t fair, because she’d never been suspicious of him.

  A small woman, so short that she made Tom feel tall, she stood in front of her desk in the little, musty manager’s office at the back of the apartment complex. Every possible inch of space on her wall was covered up in pictures—pictures of smiling brides, pictures of babies, and pictures of children looking sticky and sweet in equal measures and displaying mouths with a varying number of teeth in unguarded smiles. A set of pink booties, half knit, lay on her desk, with a gigantic ball of pink yarn and two green plastic knitting needles.

  Tom had often wanted to ask her if the pictures were all her children, but he was a little afraid of the answer, and not quite sure if yes or no would be the scarier reply. Instead, he threw back his head to move the hair out from in front of his face—he really needed to find something to tie it soon. A rubber band would do—and smiled at Mrs. Rizzo. “Fortunately I was staying with a friend.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “A girl?”

  “Yes. She works with me.”

  Mrs. Rizzo grinned, suddenly. “Well, and isn’t it about time you found someone to settle down. Is she a good girl?”

  “Yes, a very good girl,” Tom said. Or at least he’d thought that until today, and finding out about the sugar. But he wasn’t about to discuss that with his apartment manager.

  The lady nodded. “Good, maybe you can stay with her until we get your place fixed. It should only be a couple of weeks. Or we could move you to number 35, if you want. I talked to the owner, and he said it would be okay to give it to you. It’s a little bigger, but he said you could have it for the same price.”

  A few hours ago, this would have been an offer for Tom to snatch with both hands. He could have got into the new apartment without paying a deposit, and with no real inconvenience. Oh, his furniture and utensils were gone, but he hadn’t had all that much, and he could always replace them in a month or less from thrift shops and garage sales. A sofa first, until he could afford a bed, and a pan and a frying pan would do for cooking in, till he could get more complete utensils. And …

  But he stopped his own thought, forcefully. He would have been very happy to do that a few hours ago. It would have made him non-homeless again. But a few hours ago, he now realized, he’d still been under the mistaken impression that Kyrie was some sort of ideal woman, something to aspire to. Someone whom, even if he could never have her, he could imitate and hope to be more like. Now … “I don’t know what I’m doing, yet, Mrs. Rizzo. I’ll let you know in a couple of days, if that’s all right.” Of course he knew perfectly well what he was doing. He was getting heck out of Dodge before nightfall. He might come back later—if he could—for the … object in the water tank of the Athens’s bathroom. But he wouldn’t come back to live. He wouldn’t go back to working there—with Kyrie. No way, no when, no how. And no one could make him.

  Mrs. Rizzo sighed. “You’re staying with her, right? Well, I hope it works. But if it doesn’t, remember we have number thirty five. I’ll hold it for you for another week.” She smiled. “It’s the one with the bay window.” And sounded exactly like someone holding out a sweet to a kid.

  Tom nodded. “I’ll be in touch. But Keith said you had some of my stuff …”

  She reached behind the desk and brought out a box that was larger than Tom expected. Protruding out of the top were his boots, and h
e gave a deep sigh of relief upon seeing them. Then, as he dug through, he found a couple of pairs of jeans, one black and one blue, three black Tshirts, and—carefully folded—his black leather jacket. He felt suddenly weak at the knees. It was like losing half of your identity and then retrieving it again.

  At the very bottom of the box was his ATM card, and he found himself taking a deep, relieved breath. He wouldn’t need to wait till the banks opened to get out his money before he got out of town. Next to the ATM card was a library book—The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges. He could drop that off at the library depot on the way out of town. Good. The library was unlikely to make much of a search for him on the strength of a single hardcover book, but it was best to get out of town with as few things hanging over his head as possible.

  Between the book and the ATM card was a red object, which at first he couldn’t identify. And then he realized it was Kyrie’s red plumed earring.

  He should take it back. He should … His hand closed around it. Or not. Or not. He couldn’t see facing her. He couldn’t imagine her reproaching him for getting high and destroying her sunroom. He would have to tell her, then, that the least she could have done was tell him that the sugar wasn’t exactly sugar. She must keep the real stuff somewhere. After all, they’d had coffee the night before to no ill effects. So, why didn’t she tell him where it was? Tom would much rather have had it.

  His hand closed on the plumed earring and he shoved it into the pocket of his jacket.

  “You can change in the bathroom,” Mrs. Rizzo said, pointing to a little door at the back. “If you want to.”

  The bathroom was a continuation of the office. Oh, there were no pictures on the walls, which was a very good thing. Tom would have hated to undress completely in front of a mass of staring babies and prim brides. But the hand soap was pink and shaped like a rose, and, on the toilet tank, a much-too-tall crochet angel with a plastic face, squatted contentedly over three spare toilet paper rolls, as though hoping they would soon hatch into chickens.

  Tom had to watch that, and the mirror, and the vanity, because the bathroom was so small he could barely move in it. He removed Kyrie’s jogging suit, folded it carefully, and put it beside the toilet paper angel. Then he put on his jeans and T-shirt with a sense of relief. He wished some of his underwear had been preserved, but if absolutely needed he could do without it a little longer.

  Socks were something else—as was the need to put his boots back on. He hadn’t felt any pain from his feet recently, but then he’d been … busy. He sat down on the closed toilet lid, to look at his feet. And was surprised to find he’d shed most of the glass shards. Only a couple large ones remained, embedded in his skin, but his skin seemed to be … He stared at it. Yep. His skin was pushing them out, forcing them out and growing behind them. The other cuts were already closed, though angry red and likely to leave a scar.

  This was one of those changes that arrived when he started shifting into a dragon. All of a sudden, he could cut himself or scrape himself and it would heal in a day, or a few hours, depending on the depth of the injury. It was just about the only change that wasn’t completely unwelcome.

  He washed the bottom of his feet with damp toilet paper, and looked again. Nothing really. Just rapidly healing cuts. He slipped his boots on, wishing he had socks, but it couldn’t be helped. With all his belongings still in a box, he went back to Mrs. Rizzo. “I’m sorry to bother you, but could I borrow a plastic bag? It’s easier to carry than a box.” Meaning, it would actually be possible to carry while he was in dragon form. Which was how he’d kept most of his belongings, while moving all over the country.

  She nodded, and bent to get something from behind her desk. Tom wondered what exactly she kept back there, just as she emerged with a backpack, not a plastic bag. The backpack was pale blue and made in the sort of plastic that glistens. “The Michelsons left it behind, when they vacated number 22,” Mrs. Rizzo said. “It used to have wheels, but they’re broken. They left a bunch of the kids’ old clothes, too. Ripped and dirty.” She made a face. “When people do that, I wash them and fix them and give them to charities in town. Such a waste. People throw everything away these days. But the backpack I kept, if someone moved in with a school-age kid and needed it.”

  “It’s all right,” Tom said. “I only need a plastic bag.”

  “No, no. It’s okay. You can have it. There will be two or three others by September, when school opens. People throw them away.”

  Well, the backpack was more practical because it closed. Though, in dragon form, he would still have to carry it the same way—by wrapping the straps around his huge ankle—the backpack zipped shut. And there was less chance of losing stuff. “Well, thank you then,” he said, reaching for it.

  Up close, as he stuffed his remaining belongings—and Kyrie’s jogging suit—into it, he realized the full extent of his problem. The backpack had a little orange dragon with stubby wings on the back, and it said underneath, in fiery orange-red letters, “Scorchio.” He scowled at it.

  “Kids these days like the weirdest things, don’t they?” Mrs. Rizzo said.

  “Yes,” Tom said. And then, with everything in the backpack, he had to say goodbye somehow. Only he’d never said goodbye to anyone or anything, and certainly not to anyone who liked him and whom he liked. “I’ll be back,” he lied. “In a few days.”

  “You do that, dear,” she said. “I’ll hold number 35 for you, okay?”

  As he headed out, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the window of the next door apartment. Against the dark drapes, he looked like something out of a horror movie—unruly hair, tight black jeans, black leather jacket. Even with the stupid pale blue backpack on, he didn’t look like anyone that someone would want to bother.

  He stalked off, down Fairfax Avenue, away from the Athens and toward the nearest ATM that way. He had a vague idea that he should go back and pay Kyrie for the mess. He would have done it the day before. But now he told himself there was simply no way. Not any way in hell. She should have told him about the sugar. It was all her fault. Yeah, he probably still owed her for the car—but because of the sugar he was now headed out of town, with nothing but a handful of possessions. He was going to need all his money.

  He realized he was holding her responsible for the fact that she wasn’t perfect. And that was fine, as far as he was concerned. Wasn’t there someone—one person—in the world he could look up to?

  “When is your break?” Rafiel asked. He’d been sitting at one of the small tables in the extension room that used to be the sun porch of the Athens and had been enclosed, sometime decades away, to make more space for tables.

  Like a sun porch, it was informally furnished. Just plastic tables and chairs, of the type people used outside. On a Friday like this, and when the dinner hour was in full swing, it filled up fast.

  A family group or a gaggle of laughing and screaming students surrounded every other table. Only Rafiel sat alone.

  She’d smiled at him when first serving him, and the rest of the time she’d avoided looking too closely at him, as she served the noisy groups around him. But now she was pouring a warm-up of coffee into his cup, and he said, “Come on, please? I need to talk to you.”

  She would believe him a lot more and talk to him with a far clearer conscience if she couldn’t detect, as an undertone to his soap and aftershave smell, the lion’s spicy-hot scent. She didn’t trust herself around that smell. She behaved very stupidly around it. Instead, she made a big show of looking around, as if mentally counting people. “No way for the next hour or so,” she said. “I have to keep refills and desserts and all coming. They allowed me to work because they were two people short. There’s no way I can take a break.”

  To her surprise, he smiled. “Okay, then. I’ll have the bowl of rice pudding. A la mode.” He lowered his voice, “And then I want to talk to you. There’s some very odd autopsy results.”

  Stealing the car wasn’t hard. Tom walked
along the darkened working class neighborhoods first, looking at all the old models of cars parked on the street.

  It had to be an old model, because his way of starting a car without a key wouldn’t work on the newer models. And in those streets, around Fairfax, with their tiny, decrepit brick houses, the cars spotted with primer on the front, there was a prospect on every corner. He could steal a dozen cars, if he wanted to.

  Half a dozen times, he walked up to a sickly looking two-door sedan, a rusted and disreputable pickup and put his hand on the door handle, while he felt in his pocket for the stone he’d picked up from a flower bed near his apartment. The only other piece of equipment necessary to this operation was a screwdriver, which he’d bought from a corner convenience store.

  He had everything. So, why didn’t he just smash the window, break the ignition housing, start the car, and drive away? Most of these houses looked empty and people were probably still at work or already asleep.

  But he’d put his hand on the handle, and reach for the rock, and remember how hard it was to make ends meet from his job at the Athens. How he had never been able to buy a car, but used to read the Sunday paper vehicles for sale ads with the relish of a kid looking through a candy-store window.

  From those ads, he knew many of these cars would be a few hundred dollars, no more. But a few hundred dollars was all he had in his pocket, and it had emptied his account. And accumulating it had required endless small sacrifices, in what food he ate, in what clothes he wore. Hell, he didn’t even shop the thrift stores at full price. It was always at half-price or dollar-day sales.

  Oh, he wasn’t complaining. He was lucky to have a job, given his past work history and his lack of training. Correction. He’d been lucky to have a job. Now it was over and he’d be lucky to ever have another. What were the owners of these cars employed at? What did they do?

  Fuming, he turned away. Damn. This going-straight thing was like some sort of disease. You caught it, and then you had the hardest trouble getting rid of it. They probably didn’t sell honesty-be-gone tablets at the local drugstore.

 

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