Edward was following his son with his gaze. Tom looked so … competent. He’d removed his leather jacket and was wearing a red apron with “Athens” on the chest, and doing a job his father had never, possibly, imagined a son of his doing. But he was doing the job competently.
There had been no complaints. On the contrary. People smiled at him and it was clear that several of the regulars were very fond of him. And he answered back and smiled, and seemed to be a part of this diner. A trusted employee. Which was more than—just five years ago—Edward could have imagined.
To be honest, he couldn’t have imagined it two days ago. If he’d thought of Tom at all, he’d thought of Tom as being in jail, or perhaps dead. He would never have believed his son was sane and responsible enough to hold down any job.
“Really,” Keith said. “I’d love to be able to shift, because it’s cool, but I’m not afraid of them. I mean, the nice ones are nice. The other ones would probably be just as dangerous as normal people.”
Edward frowned. That thought too would have been unbelievable five years ago. But he was looking at Tom, and thought Tom was not much different than he would have been if he’d never turned into a dragon. He was just Tom. And, on balance, a much better person than Edward had any right to expect.
Just then, Tom noticed him looking and arched his eyebrows. Edward looked away. He might have thrown Tom out from fear and confusion. Getting him back, however, was going to require a full and rational siege.
If only they managed not to get killed by any other shifters. Edward wished he had Keith’s certainty that they could fight against shape changers on equal terms.
“We need to talk,” Rafiel said. He pulled the chair out for Kyrie, and waited until Kyrie had sat down before going around to his side. He picked up both their orders too, her iced mocha latte and his tall cup of something profoundly foamy.
“Yes, I … Tom thinks—”
“Wait,” Rafiel said. “We don’t need to talk about the … creatures.” He looked around again, as though afraid someone around them might understand the cryptic comments. “We need to talk about Tom.”
“We—uh? What about Tom?”
“Well, he’s not as bad as I expected,” Rafiel said. “Not nearly. But he is … ah … Tom has issues.”
Kyrie nodded. “Yes, but—” She didn’t want to discuss Tom nor Tom’s issues, nor could she imagine what Tom had to do with any of this. Tom’s personality had nothing to do with the predicament they were in.
Sure, it would have been helpful if he could have managed to avoid tangling with the triad dragons. But that was, surely, just a fraction of his problems. The beetles loomed much larger in Kyrie’s mind, perhaps because she had experienced them up close and personal. And Tom was not a were-beetle. Of that she was sure.
“No. I just …” Rafiel looked flustered, which was a new one for him. “I just am going to say this once and be done, okay? I can’t help notice that he’s attracted to you, and I think I’ve seen you … I mean, you give the impression of being attracted to him too, sometimes.”
“I don’t think I am,” she said. “It’s just that we’ve been working together for a while and I think I’ve misjudged him horribly, and I feel guilty about that. So I’ve been nice to him, but I don’t think—”
“Good,” Rafiel said. “I mean, really. Tom is not a bad person, but I think he’s been through a lot in his life, and I think it makes him … well … I think he’s sometimes not as well-adjusted as he would like to be. And I wouldn’t want to wish that on you.”
He put his hand across the table, on top of hers. Kyrie withdrew her hand, slowly, not wanting it to seem like a rejection. If she was reading this right, Rafiel had just tried to clear the field of his rival in a most underhanded way, something she thought only women did. Perhaps because she’d seen it between women and girls in her middle and high school years.
Fortunately, she wasn’t sure she was interested in either of these men—or in any men. She’d seen too much of marriage and relationships through her time in foster care to think that she would ever take any relationship for granted or view it as a given. On top of that the kinks the shifters’ natures would put into any relationship just about had her deciding to remain celibate the rest of her life. The knife-in-the-back approach to friendship and love certainly didn’t incline her toward Rafiel.
“Tom thinks that Frank and his girlfriend might be the beetles,” Kyrie said, rapidly, before Rafiel could resume his wholly inappropriate talk.
“Frank and his girlfriend?” Rafiel asked. “Why?”
Kyrie told him. She told him about the woman who ordered pie every night and who said that Frank and his girlfriend had held hands a month back, and about the poet and the whole eyes meeting across a crowded room thing.
Rafiel frowned. “Don’t you think it’s all a bit in the air?” he asked. “I mean, they’re just a middle-aged couple, and perhaps they’re not so good on the relationship and getting along with each other front. Perhaps they aren’t very good at connecting with each other?”
“But …” Kyrie said, and seized on the one thing she was sure of. “But his girlfriend first met him around a month ago.” And then, with desperate recollection. “And, you know, he had a Band-aid on his neck the day after I speared the beetle.”
Rafiel sighed. “He and how many guys in Goldport? Think. Perhaps he cut himself shaving.”
“At the back of his neck?”
“Well, okay, so he scratched himself. Or had a pimple that blew up. It happens. Don’t you think if he’d been stuck with an umbrella, even in another shape, it would require more than a Band-aid?”
“Not necessarily,” Kyrie said. “We heal fast.”
“I still say this is all in the air,” Rafiel said. He sipped at his coffee as if he were angry at it. “You have no proof. There are probably dozen of couples—hundreds—with weird relationships, who started a month ago, and where one of them had some sort of injury on the neck that day.”
“I doubt hundreds,” Kyrie said. “And besides, you know, there is the fact that she has a very convenient burial ground.”
“What?”
“The castle. She bought the castle. You’ve seen the grounds. She could bury a hundred people there in shallow graves and be fairly assured they wouldn’t be found. That’s pretty hard in urban Goldport.”
“Not really,” Rafiel said. “You know, people have backyard lawns.”
Kyrie snorted with laughter before she could stop herself. “I suppose you could fit one corpse in my backyard lawn. Two if you put them very close together.”
Rafiel was jiggling his leg rapidly up and down. “Yeah, but some people have bigger lawns.” He frowned, bringing his brows together. “What do you want me to do about it, anyway? Do you want me to burst into the Athens and arrest them because they hold hands and don’t talk?”
Kyrie wasn’t used to getting upset at people. Normally, to get along, both as a foster child and as an adult, she’d learned to hide her anger from people. But she couldn’t even hide from herself that she thought Rafiel was being unreasonable. That she suspected he was being unreasonable because he felt thwarted in his pursuit of her affections didn’t actually make her feel any better.
“I want you to go in there and look around,” she said.
His mouth turned down in a dissatisfied little-boy scowl. It was the type of expression she would expect from a five-or six-year-old who had just seen someone else get the bigger piece of candy. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“For heaven’s sake, why not?”
“Because I don’t have a warrant.” Instead of getting louder, his voice had to lower and lower, until it was low and almost vicious, growling out its protest. “I’m a policeman. I can’t go poking around people’s property without a warrant. Citizens get all sorts of upset when policemen do that. They would—”
Kyrie didn’t think this behavior was more endearing because of its sheer irrationality. She fin
ished her frozen latte, and picked up the cup, which she’d got as a take-out cup, as she’d been afraid of having to finish it on the way back to work. “Officer Trall, if you can hide evidence, lie to other police officers, and suggest that we, as shifters, need to take our law into what passes for our hands, then, yeah, you could and should be able to have a look-see in someone’s garden without a warrant. I mean, no one is asking you to go in with a police force. Just go there, shift, and have a good sniff. Death will out, you know?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “I’m trying to stay on the right side of the law. I’m trying to enforce the law. I’m trying to be a good person, Kyrie, and somehow balance this with being a … shifter. I don’t think you realize—”
“Oh, I think I realize it perfectly well. I just think you’d be far more energetic in pursuing this if I’d told you that the culprit in this case was Tom Ormson.”
“That’s underhanded. Tom is a friend. He risked himself to rescue me.”
“Oh, and how well you thank him.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. If you took it that way it’s because you chose to. Tom would be very bad for you, and just because—”
“As opposed to yourself? You would be great? What would your mother think of your dragging me home?”
He blinked, genuinely confused. “Mom would love you. I don’t understand—”
“I mean, Officer Trall, that your parents might not be so happy that the son they’ve protected, the son they always thought would need their protection the rest of their lives has a life outside the family.”
“That’s ridiculous. Did you just call me a mama’s boy? I don’t think there’s anything else I can say to you.”
“Well,” Kyrie said. She was leaning over the table, and he was leaning from the other side, and they’d been arguing in low vicious tones. Now she straightened. “That is very fortunate, because I don’t think I want to discuss anything with you, either.”
And with that, she flounced out the door, which—she thought, smiling to herself—the owners of this coffee shop must think was a normal thing for her.
She had gone a good half block before she heard him shout, “Kyrie,” behind her, but she didn’t slow down, just went on as fast as she could.
This time she didn’t go into the parking lot. Didn’t even think about it. Instead, she approached at a half run, toward the front door. While she was waiting to cross Pride, the cross street before the Athens, she was vaguely aware of a car squealing tires nearby, and then parking in front of the diner.
She didn’t turn to look. Which was too bad, because if she had turned to look, Rafiel’s hands on her shoulders spinning her around wouldn’t have taken her so much by surprise. And his mouth descending on hers might have been entirely avoided. Or, if not, she might at least have avoided the few seconds of confusion in which her brain told her to get away from the man while parts far more southerly responded to his strength, his virility, and the rather obvious, feline musk assaulting her nostrils with a proclamation of both those qualities.
As it was, she lost self-control just enough to allow him to pull her toward him, to allow herself to relax against him. She lost track of who she was and what she meant to do through the feeling of firm male flesh, and the large hands on her shoulders, both compelling and sheltering her.
He slid his tongue between her lips, hot and searching and forceful.
And in her mind, an image of Tom appeared. Tom smiling at her, with that odd diffident expression when Keith had asked about sex as a shifter.
She pushed Rafiel away. And then she slapped him. Hard.
Tom would probably have missed the kiss, if he hadn’t already been watching the door for Kyrie. But he was.
Okay, first of all, and stupid as it was, and as much as he was absolutely sure he didn’t actually stand a snowball’s—or a snowflake’s—chance in hell—of getting near her, he’d been indulging himself in quite nasty thoughts about Rafiel.
So, okay, Rafiel needed to discuss the case with her. But couldn’t he just have taken her on a quick walk down the block, then back again? Couldn’t he have talked to her out there, against that lamppost in front of the Athens? Where Tom could have kept track of them through the big plate-glass window?
And then … and then there was everything else. If Frank and his girlfriend were the beetle couple, where did that leave Tom? Truth be told, Tom felt a little guilty for even suspecting Frank of that. Frank had given him a full-time job when no one else would.
Yes, but why had he? Tom wouldn’t have hired himself, with his credentials at the time. And then there was his father. He’d told Kyrie not to go there, but it wasn’t entirely avoidable. For one, his father was sitting at a corner table, in the extension, getting intermittent warmups of coffee and ordering the occasional pastry. He seemed to be discussing comic books with Keith, a scene that, before tonight, Tom thought could only come from his hallucinations.
And his father had already managed to ask Tom if Tom was warm enough—warm enough!—in the Colorado summer, where the temperatures reached the low hundreds in daytime and the buildings gave it back all night. Warm. Enough. It wasn’t so much like this man’s behavior bore absolutely no resemblance to the father Tom had known growing up. That was somewhat of a problem but, it could be said that any father at all would be an improvement over that man.
On the other hand, this particular father seemed to do parenting by instruments. Like a pilot, flying in a thick fog, might read his instruments to decide his location, how to turn, and where to stop—and if the instruments are faulty might end up somewhere completely different—Tom’s father seemed to be trying to mend a relationship that had never existed in ways that didn’t apply even to that hypothetical relationship.
Maybe it was that the only relationships Tom’s father had ever taken seriously were courting relationships. At least that would explain his trying to win his way back to Tom’s heart with chocolates. It didn’t explain his thinking that Tom wore the same size pants he’d worn at sixteen though.
On the other hand, these pants were a great advantage, now he thought of it. He would no longer need to worry about siring an inconvenient shifter child—not if he wore them much longer. This, of course, brought his thoughts around to Kyrie again, and to the fact that she was five minutes over her break already.
Oh, he had no intention of telling Frank about it. Even if Frank were perfectly aboveboard and exactly what he claimed to be, there was absolutely no reason to let Frank know this stuff. He’d just get upset.
And so far Tom, moving rapidly from table to table, taking orders, distributing them, warming up coffee, was keeping on top of everything. In a little while, the crowds would drift back in again, and as long as Kyrie was in by then …
No. What he hated was the fact that he might be covering up for her necking time with Rafiel. Okay, he was willing to admit that Rafiel might not be exactly the scum of the earth. He could do worse. And she could do worse, too. In fact, any way he looked at it, Kyrie and Rafiel were just about a perfect match.
Despite her upbringing, Kyrie was fairly balanced. And Rafiel, after all, came from such a well-adjusted background that his parents knew about and abetted his shapeshifting. Surely, neither of them had anything in common with Tom, who had been thrown out of his house—at gunpoint no less—by the man who now thought he could heal it all with expensive chocolates and too-tight clothes.
They deserved each other. And neither of them deserved him in any sense. Which didn’t mean he had to like it. It didn’t even mean he had to accept it, did it?
He seethed, having to control himself to prevent slamming plates and breaking cups. He seethed partly at them, because he was sure they were taking advantage of his covering up for her to go and neck in some shady corner. And he seethed partly at himself, because, who was he to get angry at whatever they wanted to do?
And then, as he turned around, carafe in hand, he saw Kyrie come hurrying toward the door.
Alone. She was alone. He felt his heart give a little leap at this. Not hopeful. Oh, he couldn’t have told himself he was hopeful. But …
And then he saw Rafiel come up behind her. He grabbed her by the shoulders. He spun her around. His mouth came down to meet hers. She relaxed against him.
The teapot escaped from Tom’s grasp and fell, with a resounding crash and a spray of hot coffee onto the nearest bar stools and Tom’s feet.
It took him a moment to realize the shattering sound had indeed come from outside his head.
Edward had never seen Tom tremble. He’d held a gun to the boy’s head when Tom was only sixteen and he had never seen him shake. But now, he was shaking. Or rather, vibrating, lightly, as if he were a bell that someone had struck.
“I’m sorry I’m late with the warm-up,” he said, and his face was pale, and his voice oh, so absolutely polite. “I dropped the carafe and had to brew another one.”
“It’s okay,” Edward said. He’d been enjoying his conversation with Keith, partly because it distracted him from the fact that they might very well all be dead soon. And partly because in the middle of a lot of information about Keith—who apparently had parents and no less than four siblings somewhere in Pennsylvania—there was some comment and anecdote about Tom. Apparently Tom kept Keith’s key and usually could be counted on to give it back when Keith came home drunk and confused, having left keys and jacket—and often other clothes—at the last wild party he’d attended.
Keith had engaged in some self-mocking on the subject of the number of times Tom had shown up without a stitch of clothing on, and how Keith had thought that Tom went to even wilder parties than he did. Now, of course, he understood. “He must go through an awful lot of clothes,” Keith said. “They all must.”
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