“In which case,” Tom said, listening to Rafiel munch, “it’s not so much a matter of maliciously pushing her—we’ll assume her, since Old Joe said so—victims into the tank. It’s more like your buying your doughnuts. A little snack to see her through the night.”
The munching stopped. “Ew. Not like my doughnuts.”
“Well, of course not,” Tom hastened to say. “Unless you eat cannibal doughnuts.” And then seized with sudden inspiration, “You know, Kyrie, we could do those next year for Halloween. Fill them with raspberry, or something, and put names on them … you know, like Joe or Mike, and call them cannibal doughnuts.”
“Sure, we could,” Kyrie said. “If our objective were to totally gross out and drive away our clientele. Besides, we can’t do doughnuts properly. Not without a dedicated fryer.”
“Maybe there will be enough money by the fall to buy another fryer,” Tom said.
“Uh,” Rafiel interrupted, “before you guys start arguing domestic arrangements, the other thing is, that I tried to find Old Joe, because, you know, since he was right about the last corpse—by the way, the name was Joseph Buckley; he was a software salesman—I thought he might be able to give me details and pinpoint who the woman might be he was talking about. But I can’t find him anywhere.”
Tom sighed. “He’s very, very good at hiding. I think he’s been doing it for centuries. If he’s right about having been alive since before horses …”
“Yeah. Probably. Anyway … I can’t figure out where he’s gone, so if you hear something let me know.”
And then he hung up, leaving them in the storage room, staring at each other.
“I wonder if John Wagner is a member of the Rodent Liberation Front,” Tom said, biting the corner of his lip, in the way he did when he was thinking of something unpleasant. “I think he’s one of our regulars. I remember the description, and also processing credit card bills for John Wagner.”
Kyrie nodded. “Yeah, he is. He usually comes in for breakfast on Wednesday. And he’s very fond of sweet bread, you know, Hawaiian bread. He always asks for a toast of that. Something about growing up in Hawaii.”
“Interesting.”
“Why interesting?” Kyrie asked.
“Because … if I remember correctly—and mind you, this is me remembering some cheap book or other that I read at some shelter for runaway teens, years ago—but if I remember correctly, Hawaii is the only place that has legends of shark shifters.” He frowned. “Well, the Japanese might too. But Japanese shifter legends are very difficult to understand. I mean … they’re not Western in structure. So even though I was very interested in all stories about shapeshifters, I don’t think I remember any Japanese ones.”
Kyrie nodded, but she felt her forehead wrinkle. “You know …” she said. “I … I don’t know. I can’t understand why I never smelled John Wagner. I mean, I serve him every week. You’d think I’d have sniffed him out.”
Tom frowned. “Rafiel and I were talking about that, because of sniffing out Khaki Guy, you know. Both of us tried and neither of us could get a scent, but really … it’s so cold, and then, the thing is … I’ve been homeless, but I washed. At least once a day. He clearly doesn’t. There were smells, you know, of food and stuff, which I’m sure he’s dropped on his clothes. And there was a smell of tobacco, too, and it was really hard to make out his smell amid all those, much less in the cold. So we don’t know if he’s a shifter, or just paranoid about shelters and closed-in situations. Which lots of people are, for reasons that have nothing to do with being shifters.”
“Obviously,” Kyrie said. “But John Wagner washes. I’m sure of it. He usually looks squeaky clean.”
“Yes, but then when does he come in? Early early morning, right, before six a.m.? Before we quit. And I bet you he works days. So at six a.m. or before that, he’s freshly washed, and probably has deodorant and aftershave on. Mix that with the smells of the diner—from fries to eggs and bacon—and you’d need to be looking for the smell of shifter to identify him. Or any other shifter.”
“Yeah,” Kyrie said. She nodded. “Well, I’m going to be looking for it, from now on. In just about everyone. Rodent Liberation Front and Ancient Ones and triads!” she said in a tone of great exasperation.
“Oh, my,” Tom said, and smiled apologetically.
The aquarium was probably noisier than when it was open to the public, Rafiel thought, as he stood back, watching the frantic activity around him. People were snapping shots of the tank area and McKnight, with remarkable efficiency, probably born of the fact that Rafiel was frowning vaguely in his direction, was directing three people—three of Goldport’s part-time officers, more used to breaking up drunken brawls among students than to doing crime scene processing—in combing through everything around there, including the planters by the side of shark tank.
And Rafiel, having quietly gotten away from the thick of things, had managed to sidle up to John Wagner, who was leaning against the far wall, under the plaque that explained the sharks’ habits—unpleasant—and habitats—more extensive than Rafiel was comfortable thinking about.
He was a young guy, light-haired. Probably in his twenties, and he looked like he devoted serious time to body building. His file, as well as the brief conversation that Rafiel had had with him, indicated that Wagner was in college. Rafiel wondered what he majored in. Perhaps physical education or sports medicine?
Rafiel leaned beside him, casually. He noted that the man gave him a brief, amused, sidelong glance, and he returned a friendly smile. “So,” he said, trying desperately to sound as if he was just making casual conversation, “you work out?”
The amused glance took him in again, and a lip curled ironically on the side. “A bit,” the young man said. “Now and then.”
And then Rafiel decided to go for broke, with the type of question that, should his interlocutor refuse to understand it or to respond, could be passed off as a joke of some sort—and which would certainly sound like a joke to anyone overhearing it. “In human form?” He had figured that Wagner’s was the shifter-smell all around the shark area.
If he expected Wagner to be discomposed, he missed his mark. The smile only became a little broader, and he said, “Sure. The other one isn’t really conducive to it. Unless I wanted to work on my ear muscles. And then there’s all the drool.”
“What?” Rafiel asked, unable to help himself. He cast a quick glance at the other people in the room, who were all surrounding something and taking pictures of it.
Wagner cackled, in unbecoming satisfaction. He muttered something under his breath that sounded disturbingly like “dumb ass,” then added, “If you can smell me, what makes you think I can’t smell you?”
“Oh,” Rafiel said, now totally out of his depth. “Oh.” He turned around to look at Wagner fully. The young man was grinning at him.
“Do you … do you know many of your … of our kind?” Rafiel asked. He’d never before interviewed anyone fully aware of what he himself was.
Wagner shrugged. “A couple. A friend back home, and then one more in college.”
“Oh. What … are they?”
“Uh?”
“What forms do they take?” Rafiel said, his eye still on his subordinates and colleagues to make sure no one approached to hear this very strange conversation.
“Oh. My friend, Keith Kawamoto, back home was a bear. Which was very weird in Hawaii. Oh, sure, we had lots of fun roaming the beach late at night in our shifted forms. And he used to hang out in the Aiea Loop Trail. Weird-ass reports to everyone who would listen—and a lot of people who wouldn’t—by the tourists. But who is going to believe tourists talking about a bear and a dog walking along the beach at low tide? Or a bear just hanging out? There was some enquiry once, to see if a circus that was passing through had lost a trained bear, but that was about it.”
“And then here?”
Shrug. “There’s a guy in the dorms who turns into a unicorn. Weird-ass thing to
turn into, and of course no one believes it even if they see him. Sometimes we get reports of a white horse hanging about, is about it. It’s assumed to be a prank.” He shrugged. “After I smelled him out, we became pretty good friends. I keep telling him he’s a unicorn so he can go in search of virgins, but he doesn’t look like he’ll ever have the courage, if you know what I mean.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Engineering student and a bit of a dumb ass, but a nice guy.”
His matter-of-fact approach to the situation and the way he seemed to have co-opted Rafiel as a buddy, whether Rafiel wanted to be one or not, were disconcerting enough that it took Rafiel a moment to collect himself. “So … you don’t … I mean … I’ve had reports from … from another shifter … of a spider-crab shifter here in the aquarium. So I take it that’s not true. I mean …”
“What? Because I didn’t include him in my count? Nah, I didn’t count him because I don’t really know him. I know of him, but I don’t know him. I think everyone in the aquarium—well, everyone who works here after-hours—has seen him. Weird-ass old Japanese guy, you know, all wrinkly and stuff. He looks like the Japanese guys in those reports they used to do where they found some old World War II soldier, who had been defending the same island in the Pacific for fifty years, ready to expel anyone who tried to land, only no one ever did.”
“Uh …” Rafiel said. “So, you’ve talked to him?”
Wagner shook his head. “Nah. He doesn’t talk to anyone. I don’t even know if he speaks English, or if he was brought here in crab form.” He shrugged. “I know he’s been here for about ten years. It must be weird, you know, to have a form where if you shift you have to be near or in water. I don’t know what I’d do if that were my problem. I mean, you can’t always control when you shift.”
Rafiel nodded. He couldn’t imagine it either.
“So no one has talked to him?”
“Not that I know. Of course, the other people don’t know he’s a shifter. Anyone who is not expecting it, and who sees a little old man climb the side of an aquarium and plop inside, and disappear, thinks they’re just seeing things, you know. So they talk about him as a ghost. If you go on-line, this aquarium is in Colorado’s list of most haunted places. Just because of the old Japanese man. And they’ve made up all sorts of weird-ass shit about him. You know, that he was eaten by sharks here or some shit like that.” He shrugged. “But as far as I know he’s never talked to anyone. He just sits there and watches.”
“I see,” Rafiel said, wondering whether he was being lied to, and if so why. Professional disinformation, he thought. You always wonder if they’re lying to you. And if they are, why. “So … did you smell him? The crab shifter? Is that why you know he’s not a ghost?”
John Wagner looked startled. “You can’t smell them. Not the water ones. Keith Kawamoto says he knows a dolphin one, and he said that, too. They don’t smell like the rest of us. Why should they? Their signals will go over water, not air—”
“But—” Rafiel said. “How do you—”
“I’ve seen him shift. Watched him. I know what that looks like. Don’t you?”
“Yeah … but … he doesn’t smell? Of shifter?”
John Wagner shook his head. “And that’s what worries me, you know? There could be others, in here.” He gestured broadly at the tanks all around. “We’d never know. So … how could I find them if I can’t smell them?”
“And do you have any idea?” Rafiel asked.
“Oh, sure,” Wagner said. “You know, how when you shift you’re always dying for a protein snack?”
Rafiel thought of Tom stuffing down pepperoni and cold cuts once, in a convenience store in the middle of Arizona. He thought of himself, dropping into the diner for bacon and eggs in the middle of the night, after a shift. He thought of sharks … “You mean?” he said, his voice sounding thick and queasy to his own ears. “You mean the sharks?”
John Wagner nodded. “Oh, yes,” he said. “The sharks. And you know …” He shrugged. “Ah, hell. You grow up with legends about this stuff, you know? In Hawaii it’s the beautiful girl who goes swimming with you at night and becomes a shark.” He frowned slightly. “One of my college profs said it was a gynophobic fantasy like the vagina dentata. Dumb ass.”
Rafiel, not sure he got the point, cleared his throat. “A girl,” he said, “who turns into a shark. A girl from Hawaii? Like Lei Lani?”
Wagner shrugged. “Eh. Don’t quote me on that. I have nothing against Lei. She’s okay by me. Pretty easy on the eye too. Besides, I’m not too sure she’s from Hawaii.”
“What do you mean you’re not too sure? I thought she was interning here, from the aquarium there or something?”
“Heard something like that too. ’Course, I didn’t look at her resume or anything, you know. But …”
“But?”
“But I, well … At the end of the day I told her, you know, Eh tita, pau hana?”
“You told her tit what?” Rafiel asked, flabbergasted.
“Exactly. And she said just that. And she thought I was getting fresh or something …” He frowned. “And no Hawaiian girl would. That phrase is … eh … So, strong sister, quitting time? Tita is … a strong woman. When a Hawaiian tita comes after you, you run. Very strong personality. But she didn’t get that at all. And anyone from Hawaii would know.” He paused. “And she didn’t know tako is a octopus. And …” He shook his head. “She’s just not right.”
Kyrie saw him hanging around, outside the door. Dire. He was wearing a dark suit, and he was smoking, outside, pacing between the door and the side of the enclosure, where the diner had been expanded over what, in pictures from the thirties, had once been a covered porch.
She wondered if he was pacing out there because he, thanks to the latest Colorado laws, couldn’t smoke inside. Or if he was pacing out there because he didn’t want to come in.
She followed his movements with her gaze—watching the dark silhouette, the trail of red cigarette end. He looked nervous in his pacing, she thought as she wiped down a just-vacated table. Or perhaps he looked like a predator about to pounce. She’d gone to the zoo once, when she was about five, with the family she was staying with at the time. She remembered they had the tigers in altogether too-flimsy-looking enclosures. And she remembered a particularly large tiger pacing like that, while staring at her, as if she were next on his list of minimum daily requirement. Fifty pounds of skinny little girl. That was what Dante Dire’s movement reminded her of, and she could feel his gaze almost burn through the window at her.
She looked over, as she took the tray back. Tom was cooking, his back turned. She was fairly sure he hadn’t seen Dire. If he had, he’d say something.
And there was tension in each of Tom’s muscles, in each of his movements. She wondered what he was thinking about. The murders? The newspaper article? The problems with Dante Dire? Or the semi-eternal, nearly all-powerful dragon who claimed ownership and full control of Tom, simply because Tom had been born with the ability to shift into a dragon.
She watched Tom flip a burger, and then he turned around to look at her. He raised an eyebrow, enquiringly. “Yes?”
“Nothing,” she said, blushing a little, and disguising it by setting down the tray and ducking behind the counter to set the carafe back in its place so it could refill. “Nothing. I was just thinking that … as bad as things are, I don’t want to lose this. I don’t want to let this go. This is … what … us … our place. The George. It’s …” She looked at him and was met with what looked like incomprehension, and blushed again. “It’s the only home I’ve ever had,” she said.
He looked blank a moment longer, and she realized, suddenly, that it wasn’t incomprehension. It was Tom controlling his expressions and his emotions. Perhaps he thought she’d seen his naked emotions too often? Perhaps he thought she had come to his rescue once too often? Perhaps …
Or perhaps this was beyond thought and feeling. Perhaps it was just what men did. They didn’t melt in
to tears at every turn. They didn’t want women to feel they had to hold their hands and protect them. Kyrie saw it with sudden, distinct clarity. Oh, perhaps, in this age of the sensitive male, it was an ideal honored most often in the breach, but Kyrie could see it. From the earliest times of mankind, men had protected women, right? Women had been weaker, or at least more vulnerable while pregnant. It was a physical thing. For women, security and reproductive success had depended on having someone big and strong to protect them. But that meant that women often had to hold the someone big and strong together emotionally. And it meant that the someone big and strong didn’t want to appear emotional to a prospective mate.
Tom swallowed. He managed to look perfectly impassive, but unbent a little as he said, “I know. I know. Me too. I don’t want to lose this. But I keep thinking, and I don’t know what to do. I can’t … Kyrie, I can’t ask the Great … I can’t ask the creature to protect us. And I don’t care if that’s what he thought he was doing when he sent Conan to us. If we accept … if we ask his help … I’ll never be able to call my own soul my own.” He frowned and spoke, urgently, in what was little more than a whisper. “It would be the same as admitting I belong to him. If I’m his to protect, I’m his to order around.”
“Yeah,” Kyrie said. “Yeah. We’ll think of something.” She was thinking of something. She was thinking that if anything was going to be done about Dire, she would have to do it, and that she wasn’t going to be able to tell Tom about it.
Oh, she could get angry about it. She could talk about stupid male pride. But what would it accomplish? She could see that he couldn’t ask for help in this, not without bartering his—for lack of a better word—soul in the bargain. She wasn’t even sure it was a male thing, but she was sure the male thing complicated it. Tom had to feel that he could defend home and woman. That much was obvious. He could not trade down on it.
“I’m going to take a break,” she said. “For a moment. Conan has the tables and there’s not that much.”
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