He took a donut and ate it in three bites, washing it down with coffee. “This announcement,” he said, sounding more certain than prophetic, “will be followed with one of several reactions.” He licked the sugar from a finger and held it up. “One. The press will go wild. That’s axiomatic, actually.” He held up another finger. “Two. More weres’ll come out of the closet. Three. The white supremacists and the xenophobic human extremists’ll join hands and vow to hunt down and exterminate the nonhumans.”
“And they call you a glass-is-half-full kinda guy.” I could hear the low timbre of concern in my voice.
“Hey, I’m an optimist, babe,” Rick said. But he still hadn’t taken his eyes off the TV; he still hadn’t looked at me. He chuckled and took another donut, gesturing with it. “It’s gonna be a zoo. You know. Wild animals. Zoo.”
I made the requisite groan over the humor. “You know something, don’t you?”
He lifted a shoulder, noncommittal.
Apprehension started to churn in the pit of my stomach, heavy, bitter tasting, a dark, recirculating whirlpool of possibilities. Wondering what he knew. Wondering if—okay, hoping that—skinwalkers would come out with the weres. Hoping that I finally wouldn’t be alone. And worrying what Rick might do when—if—he learned he had been sleeping with one. “Pretty cat,” he’d said of the black were-leopard, as if he had liked it. But it was a heck of a lot easier to be blasé about a theory; it might be quite different in a relationship reality. And, last, wondering what he had been doing undercover with weres.
I hadn’t smelled anything on him, but his sisters had cats, and there were at least a dozen barn cats at his parents’ place. If he’d been with were-cats, I might not have noticed.
Back on the BBC, Donald was chatting with the big-cat, Kemnebi, once again in human form, about how he became a cat, the interview we had missed. The were-cat spoke English, the dialect one of those liquid African accents that flowed like water down stone. “We reproduce much as human do, mating and having baby. But we have litter, some small, some large, some with cat baby that have potential to change to human, some with human baby that have potential to change to cat. Some with both. Potential is there, ready to be awakened.”
“You don’t bite to make a were-cat?” the anchor asked, clearly surprised.
“No. To bite a human, even in self-defense, is against all of our laws,” he said, his black-skinned face compelling. “To bite a human, hoping to turn him into one of us, is a death sentence. We may not mate with human, for fear of passing the contagion. For this crime, there is no mercy.”
Rick started to speak and stopped. A broken instant later he said, “Jodi’s gonna love adding that to the woo-woo files.” Jodi is Rick’s boss, in charge of all paranormal investigations in the party city of the South. “Especially the part about a human-shaped mother giving birth to a litter of kittens and humans all at the same time.”
I didn’t reply. We watched, switching channels between the networks and the cable stations as the sky lightened outside, despite the din of rain. We didn’t talk, though I wanted to ask questions, wanted to know what Rick was thinking. I had a feeling that a normal girl would have been pumping him for answers about his were-knowledge. But I had no idea what to ask or how to do it. Unlike most girls, I hadn’t spent my early years absorbing the social interactions between humans. Impossible to do while living inside the body of a mountain lion; nearly as hard to do while living in a children’s home, the amnesiac outsider with no English and no past. So I sat on the bed, my shoulder under Rick’s, snuggled close, with him, but alone.
Near six a.m., Rick changed to FOX, which was running an interview purported to be with one of the leaders of the U.S. werewolves, the Lupus Clan, based in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “What’d I tell you?” Rick said. We’d slid down in the bed, under the covers, mugs replenished and a box of cereal open between us as we ate it, dry. “Werewolves. B-grade movie version.” The purported wolfman was muscled but slender, strawberry blond, tough-looking, aggressive, angry, gesticulating in a hostile manner, his words being bleeped as he cursed at the reporter.
Rick said, “Bet it’d tick him off to hear this, but he’s mean as a pit bull.”It struck me as funny and I chuckled, mostly in relief. Rick slanted me a grin and I snorted, feeling better, though not sure why. On TV, the pit bull/werewolf was still going at it.
“He stands about six feet tall,” Rick mused, “and probably one eighty. How big do you think he’d be as a wolf?” There was something odd about his tone, but then there was something odd about Rick today altogether, so I didn’t know how to categorize this new odd.
“If the law of conservation of mass and energy holds true,” I said, thinking about what happened when I shifted into any animal that genetically might equal my body mass, “then he’d be a wolf weighing in at one eighty.” Rick looked at me in surprise. “What?” I asked. “I took physics in high school.”
“So did I but I’d never remember the name of a law. I didn’t know you had a brain,” he said, teasing. I made a fist and mimed socking him. He took my fist and kissed my fingers, one at time, which had my toes curling. I gripped his hand, holding it tightly, as if it might disappear. As if he might disappear. “Besides,” Rick said, his lips moving against my knuckles, “it’s magic. Why would the physical laws hold true?”
“Why wouldn’t they? Those black motes that floated around him when he changed looked like sparks of some kind, which is energy.” I muted the TV and rolled over so I could look up at him, and so he’d have better access to my fingers and any other parts of me he might want to reach, wanting to touch him, wanting him to touch me. I slid my other hand up his arm, his skin warm against my palm. “When the man became a black were-leopard, the cat looked big enough to weigh one eighty.”
“So if a fat guy got turned into a were, he’d be a fat were?”
I laughed at the mental image of a pudgy black leopard, rolls of fat undulating as he walked. Beast showed fangs, not amused. “No. Remember, that Micheika guy said the caloric requirements of shifting were enormous.”
“So fat people could get bitten by a were and lose weight every time the moon was full.”
“You’re a funny guy. Funny, funny guy.” But the mundane dull chitchat and the texture of his skin had relaxed me. “They get killed for biting a human. Not a good way to promote weight loss.”
“There is that. And they go furry once a month. Hard to hold down a job with that.” Rick returned his attention to the TV and switched between news channels to stop on CNN again, where they were playing an early-morning telephone interview with a Texas senator named Jones about the “problem with the supernatural creatures in our midst,” as he put it. Jones, his speech pattern stolen from small-town Southern Baptist preachers, said, “In species that live for cent-u-ries instead of decades, of what use are stat-utes of lim-i-ta-tion? And, how long is a life sentence for vampires, who live decades longer than real humans? How will we deal with the cost to the prison system in terms of prison cells that will be occupied for cent-u-ries? In terms of feeding the bloodsuckers? Keeping them safe from the sun? In terms of the confinement requirements to hold a creature that is so much stronger than humans. How do we control the foul things?”
“For vamps, you hire a vamp-killer,” I said to the screen, “and give them true-death, according to Mithran Law. Human law can’t apply. Which Congress will figure out sooner or later.”
“They haven’t so far,” Rick said, cynical and disparaging, “and it’s playing havoc with the legal system.”
Just to round out the hater of nonhumans, Jones added, “And these witches. The Holy Scriptures tells us that we ‘must not suffer a witch to live.’” He raised a finger toward the sky. “Our great coun-try has already fallen far from God’s i-deal by allowing—”
Rick lowered the volume and switched through the news channels, the TV glare flashing with each channel jump. He said, “Even money says Jones likes small boys, and that he’ll propose a law that allows law enforcement officers to shoot first and ask questions later when it comes to weres, vamps, and witches.”
“Did you hear that?” I rolled back upright and took the remote, found the channel and raised the volume on the TV to hear the wolfman say, “... killed my grandfather, Henri Molyneux, and stole our hunting territory from us. Murder and grand theft.” He snarled, “I can prove Leo Pellissier is guilty of it. And”—he glared into the TV camera—“there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”
“Oh crap,” I muttered, seeing a sidebar photo of Leo, vampire Master of the City of New Orleans, dressed in a tuxedo, looking gorgeous and suave and anything but dangerous. I’d seen him wearing his other face, his vamped-out, creepy, and dangerous as a rabid wolf face. Though the wolf thought may not be politically acceptable now.
Rick laughed, half mocking, slanting his eyes at me. “Vacation’s over,” he said. “Your boss is accused of murder. You know he’ll want his pet rogue-vamp killer at his side.” He looked at the time on the screen. “It’s ten minutes to dawn. He’ll call. Five bucks.” He held out his hand to shake on the offered bet.
“You knew all about this,” I accused. Rick shrugged, not denying it. “And you offer me awful bets,” I grumbled. “No, thanks.” Five minutes later, my new cell phone chirped. Rick rolled out of bed, hunting up his clothes.
I answered the phone, which displayed Leo Pellissier’s private number.
CHAPTER 2
A Fighting Ring
“Morning, Leo. I’m watching the news and the so-called werewolf accusing you of murder,” I said in my professional, all-business tone.
“Good morning,” he said, sounding urbane and wry, the slight hint of French in his tone. “Yes. Such an accusation is unfortunate in several respects.”No kidding, I thought. But I didn’t say it.