by Sharon Shinn
“Do we have to watch the rest of the ballgame?” I whisper.
“Well, I was really hoping to see if the Yankees could manage to win it,” he murmurs against my mouth. “But I suppose I can catch it all on DVR.”
I giggle. “There’s a TV in the palace of seduction.”
“Damn. It doesn’t work. We’ll just have to settle for a different kind of scoring.”
I’m still laughing when he sweeps me up in his arms and comes to his feet.
“My big strong hero,” I coo, wrapping my arms around his neck.
He drops a kiss on my mouth. “My sweet little darling,” he says, and he suddenly sounds serious.
“You asked me before,” I say. “I think I’m falling.”
His arms tighten as he negotiates around the coffee table and carries me down the hallway to the bedroom. “Oh good,” he says, “because it’s no fun to fall all by yourself.”
* * *
Joe loves like he dances. With all his heart and with a great deal of laughter. He doesn’t worry about seeming silly or being out of practice or getting it exactly right the first time. All he needs is a partner who looks like she’s having fun. Who looks like she can’t think of any place else she’d rather be.
Who loves him right back.
* * *
When my cell phone rings, I can’t for a moment orient myself. I know I’m with Joe—that part is vividly obvious, with his big warm body next to mine and my own body pleasantly sore from the exertions of the past few hours. But the room is dark and I don’t know where my purse is and I don’t know what time it is and I haven’t had enough sleep and who the hell would be calling me, now, when I don’t want to think about anything except Joe?
He stirs as I fight to extricate myself from his embrace and the sheets, which seem to be balled up around my shoulders. “What is—is that your phone?”
“Yeah—hang on—I have to find it—”
“I think you left it over by the dresser—” He stretches out to turn on a bedside lamp, and I catch a glimpse of the clock. A bit after five in the morning. This can’t be good. The ringing has stopped by the time I stumble across the room, grab my purse, and return to bed to snuggle beside Joe.
“Shit,” I say when the phone shows me that I have one missed call from Aurelia. Now I’m wide awake. Something must have happened to Celeste. My stomach is one big knot of terror when I hit redial, and Aurelia picks up within two seconds. “What’s wrong? Is it Celeste?”
“No,” she says, and her voice is as clear and hard as a statue of ice. “Bobby Foucault turned up dead, and the cops have arrested Ryan for murder.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The case against Ryan is about as solid as it could be, Aurelia tells us a half hour later. We’re all gathered in the kitchen at her house—Bonnie, Celeste, Alonzo, Joe, me—looking as shocked and confused as tornado survivors. Celeste, of course, looks like a survivor who was tumbled around pretty badly by the high wind, though the red welts and purple bruises are starting to modulate to shades of pink and green. Only Aurelia looks wide awake and at the top of her game. She’s dressed in a black pinstripe pantsuit and her red hair is perfectly styled; she’s wearing full makeup, down to the lipstick and eyeliner. She could walk into a courtroom right this minute and not be out of place.
When Ryan got his traditional one phone call from the police station, he picked Aurelia. Anybody’s best choice.
“It appears that yesterday afternoon around three, Ryan went to the property owned by Terry Foucault and entered the premises,” Aurelia says in a precise voice. “Neither Terry nor his wife were at home, but Bobby answered the door. Ryan shot him three times with a small-caliber pistol and immediately left the scene. Terry’s wife found the body when she got home a couple of hours later, and she called Sheriff Wilkerson.”
“How do they know it was Ryan?” Bonnie demands.
“Because it seems Terry has had a few robberies in the past couple of years, so he’s installed security cameras in strategic places.”
“You’d think Ryan would be smart enough to look for those,” Celeste mutters.
Aurelia gives her an unreadable look. “Apparently he was. Two of them had been disabled. However, there was a third one concealed in some piece of would-be junk sitting just outside the door. Sort of like a nanny cam that people install in their houses to check up on the babysitters.”
“And there’s no doubt that it’s Ryan?” Bonnie asks.
“I haven’t been permitted to see the video yet, but I’m guessing it’s pretty convincing footage.”
“Where’d he get the gun?” Joe wants to know.
Now she gives all her attention to him; again, her expression is impossible to decipher. “I believe it’s mine. At any rate, mine is missing.”
Joe’s eyebrows shoot up. “He knew where you kept it?”
She nods. “And yes, it’s always locked up. But the lock was forced.”
“Did they find the weapon at the scene?”
“No. And they didn’t find it in his car or his apartment, either. But that’s probably not going to matter much.”
“You’ve reported yours missing?”
“I had to. Might not be mine, but—” She shrugs. Probably is.
Now Joe looks at Celeste. “I suppose Ryan was here yesterday.”
She looks stricken. “Yeah. All morning. Everyone was gone but me, and I spent half the time sleeping. He could have stolen anything in the house.”
“Means and motive,” Joe says.
“Motive!” Bonnie exclaims. “For cold-blooded murder? I don’t think so!”
Now Celeste and I exchange glances. “It wasn’t cold,” I say. “Ryan was angry with them for what they did to Celeste. So incredibly angry.”
“So were we all!” Bonnie replies. “But we did not take that anger and go out in the world and commit unforgivable acts!”
“You don’t understand,” Celeste says. “With Ryan it’s all about—all about the dividing line between human and shape-shifter. The sting of being different. Of having to lie and connive and pretend that he’s just like everyone else when he’s not. It makes him angry. And it makes him proud. And it makes him look for ways to right the balance.”
“It’s more than that,” I say quietly. “He thinks he doesn’t have to operate by society’s rules because he’s not a part of that society. He’s special. He’s different.”
“Standard sociopathic markers,” Joe comments.
“He’s not!” Celeste cries. “Yes, he knows that he’s different, and yes, he doesn’t always play by the rules, but he’s not—evil. He’s not uncaring. He cares too much, and he feels rage when he feels helpless. Like he felt helpless when I was attacked.”
She’s sitting next to me at the table, and I can see her hands clenched around the brightly patterned cloth napkin that Bonnie set out when she made tea for all of us. Tea. As if we were having just any regular early morning confab among friends. I place my hand on Celeste’s forearm.
“Sweetie, that’s how you feel,” I say. “You’re angry and helpless because you’re different, but you do care. You do feel deeply. You get frustrated because you know the world can’t be changed—but he thinks the rest of the world doesn’t matter.”
Her eyes are full of agony; she didn’t look this wretched the day she was beaten up. No matter what the circumstances, she would be upset to learn Ryan had done something so impossibly awful. But she knows she’s the reason he’s done it, and she can’t bear it. “But we’re the same. Ryan and me. We always have been.”
Now I put my arm around her shoulders and hug her to me. “No, you’re not. You think alike, sometimes, but you don’t feel alike. You never have.”
There’s a moment of silence while we all try to marshal our thoughts. Then Joe starts questioning Aurelia again. It occurs
to me that they’re the only two who really understand what happened, in the sense that they’re the only two who have actually had conversations about and with murderers before. This has made them allies, I think. Unless it’s made them adversaries.
“So Terry’s wife calls the sheriff, shows him the tape,” he says. “When did they arrest Ryan?”
“Last night around midnight. Apparently they went by his place a couple of times but he wasn’t home until then. They had a search warrant, too, and they’ve impounded his car. Though I imagine he got rid of other evidence when he got rid of the gun.”
“Other evidence?”
“Bobby came at him after he’d been shot. There’s probably Bobby’s blood somewhere on Ryan’s clothing.” She pauses for a beat. “That clothing was not found in his car or apartment, but there might be traces of blood in the car.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Bonnie says.
“I have to say, this strikes me as being pretty stupid on Ryan’s part,” Joe says. “I’d take him more as the guy who’d wait for you in an alley and strangle you with his bare hands under cover of darkness when no one was around. Not the kind of guy who walks up to your house in broad daylight and shoots you when anyone could have seen him.”
“Nobody would have known anything without the nanny cam,” Aurelia points out. “That junkyard is in the middle of nowhere—unless someone happened to be driving by, no one would have witnessed a thing. And there would have been no other reason to suspect Ryan. Since neither the Foucaults nor our friends reported the shooting at the drive-by, there was no history of disagreements between them.”
I glance at Celeste and she nods. Sometime this morning she’d fessed up about what really happened when the three of us drove by the Foucault property. I can only imagine what Aurelia had said when she learned about the gunplay.
“Ryan was with Celeste the night Bobby got fresh with her,” Joe says.
“But he didn’t even have a conversation with Bobby that night, from all I hear. Never threw a punch. No, this would have looked much more like a robbery gone wrong, or a dispute between buddies who had a falling out. They’d have been looking for known associates who held a grudge.”
Bonnie opens her hands like someone who can’t even imagine how to hold on to anything anymore. “So what happens now? If Ryan killed him and there’s proof Ryan killed him—how can you even attempt to defend him?”
“I don’t have much maneuvering room,” Aurelia admits. “I’m trying to decide whether it’s a good idea or a bad idea to introduce Celeste to the case.”
Celeste looks apprehensive. “What do you mean?”
“If he was avenging your attack, that gives him motive. On the one hand, that’s bad. On the other hand, sometimes jury members are more lenient when they believe a man was protecting his loved ones. A passionate revenge killing plays better than cold premeditated murder.”
“But no one saw Celeste get beaten up,” Bonnie says.
“Right. So we might have to take her to that urgent care clinic after all. Get some documentation after the fact. It might weigh in our favor when it comes to sentencing.”
Joe gives Aurelia a long, considering look. “So you’re going to defend him.”
“It’s the American legal system, Mr. McGinty. Even the foulest criminals you can name deserve the best defense the law will allow.”
“And if there wasn’t this—this overwhelming evidence against him—would you try to get him off? Knowing he was guilty of murder, would you try to ensure that he went free?”
Alonzo, who has not said a word this whole time—who has, in fact, spent most of the hour staring down at the tablecloth—now lifts his head and divides a glance between Joe and Aurelia. He still doesn’t say anything.
Aurelia meets Joe’s narrowed speculation with a hard gaze of her own. “Fortunately, I don’t have to try to solve that dilemma. Because unless Sheriff Wilkerson and his men are staggeringly incompetent, I believe there is no way anyone could be convinced Ryan didn’t commit this crime. So my job now is to try to soften his sentence as much as I can.”
“I would,” Celeste tells Joe defiantly. “I’d try to set him free if I could. He did a terrible thing—but Bobby tried to do a terrible thing. Bobby’s worse than Ryan.”
Joe looks at her but he doesn’t answer, doesn’t press her. But I feel a little chill wiggle down my spine. Before the day is too much older, Joe’s going to ask me the same question, and I have no idea how I’ll answer.
Knowing Ryan deliberately killed a man, would I try to protect him from the consequences of his actions? Even if that man deserved killing?
Did Bobby Foucault deserve killing?
Even if he deserved killing, was it Ryan’s right to carry out his punishment?
I don’t know. I’m too horrified to think it through.
“We can all debate the ethical dilemmas another day, I suppose,” Bonnie says at last. She sounds weary, Bonnie who has enough physical energy to personally power the state of Illinois. “But what happens next? Will Ryan get out on bond? Will he stay here in Quinville or be sent to prison somewhere to await his trial?”
“I’ll ask for bail, but we won’t get it. My guess is they’ll keep him here at the holding cell for a couple of days, then send him to the Madison County jail to await trial. Which could take months.”
Alonzo looks up again and this time he decides to speak. “What happens when he changes?”
For a moment, there is absolute dead silence around the table.
“Fuck,” Celeste says at last.
You wouldn’t think we could have forgotten this central, this calamitous aspect of the situation. I have the fleeting thought that Ryan can’t be the first shape-shifter who’s ever been arrested, but he’s the first one I happen to know. He’s in jail, and within a few days he’s going to transform into an animal shape, and if we thought we had a crisis on our hands before, it’s nothing to what will happen to him—to all of us—once that occurs.
“He can’t change,” Aurelia says flatly.
“Good luck with that,” Alonzo mutters.
Celeste is looking at me. “He said—didn’t you make him a potion of some sort? To slow it down? To help him control his shifting?”
I nod. “I did. He said it was working. I can—I’ll go home today—right now—and mix up another whole batch for him.” I appeal to Aurelia. “Can I just take it to him at the police station? Will they let me give it to him?”
“You can try, but I doubt it. Some jails have awfully strict rules. Like, you can’t mail someone a book from your house—it has to come from Amazon.com or some recognized commercial outlet. And with drugs—well—it seems unlikely a private citizen could just waltz in and hand over a vial of something she claims is medically necessary. There could be anything in that bottle.”
“I’ll try,” I say. “The sheriff knows me. Maybe he’ll let me—” I don’t complete the sentence. Maybe he won’t. What then?
“When can we go see him?” Celeste asks.
“I wouldn’t go before eight or nine. The police station is open all night, of course, so theoretically the holding cells are, too, but they don’t like civilians cluttering up the place outside of normal working hours.”
Celeste clutches my arm. “You and me. We’ll go this morning and see what we can find out.”
I nod and look over at Joe. “And then will you take me back to my place so I can mix up some serum?”
Like Aurelia, he’s wearing an opaque expression, and I’m not entirely certain what he’s thinking. Let the bastard rot in jail, maybe? Hell, no, I won’t do a damn thing to make it easier for you to save your lying, murdering ex-boyfriend. But even if he thinks Ryan should be tried, convicted, and executed without delay, surely he realizes that the story gets exponentially more terrible if Ryan shifts shape while he’s in a small-town prison a
nd everyone starts wondering what he really is.
And what his friends are.
“Sure,” he says. “I’ve got to run some errands and pick up some stuff from Mark, but I’ll be back by three, will that be okay?”
“That sounds great,” I say. “See you then.”
He pushes himself to his feet and the rest of us stand up, too, though no one else seems to have the first idea of where to go next. “See you later,” Joe says, kisses me, and leaves.
The rest of us just stare at each other for a moment.
“Bad day,” Aurelia finally says.
I nod. “Gonna get worse.”
* * *
I look almost as rough as Celeste does when we leave the house a few hours later. I left most of my clothes at Joe’s, and the ones I threw on when the phone call came in aren’t entirely clean, so I end up borrowing pieces from Celeste and Aurelia and hoping for the best.
Aurelia walks out with us into the cold morning sunshine. “Are you coming with us?” I ask.
“Not right now. I’ve got an appointment with another client and I’m already late.”
Celeste insists on driving—“I’m not an invalid!”—though I have to Google the address of the police station because neither of us has been there before. Turns out it’s not that far from the Square, which makes sense, since the cops are probably constantly coming in to the area to pick up drunks or break up fights. It’s a squat brick building with shabby concrete sidewalks leading up from the parking lots on either side. There are a few bushes, a few patches of decorative grass, but they’re all dead. Three poles are planted out front—one holding the American flag, one the Illinois state flag, and one a pennant that I don’t recognize. Maybe Quinville’s own civic crest and motto, which I have never to my knowledge laid eyes on before.