“Yes, I am. I lived on the street for a year. Remind me, where did you live?” Julie tapped her finger to her lips, pretending to think. “Ah yes, you lived in a religious commune, sheltered and coddled, where you spent your time trying to nail anything that moved—”
That’s enough of that. “Quiet!” I barked.
Two mouths clicked shut.
I looked at the check. It was a business check from “Gloria’s Art and Antiques.” Antiques. Why would an antique dealer visit a reclamation company unless she knew that they were bidding on a building that contained a vault full of antiques? Reclamation companies didn’t deal in antiques; they dealt in metal and stone. Not much else survived a fallen building.
“Here’s the address.” Ascanio handed me a piece of paper. “I looked it up.”
“Thank you. Very nice of you.” I looked at the address. White Street, Julie’s old neighborhood. Right on the edge of the Warren, a poor part of Atlanta where beggars, gangs of homeless kids, and small-time criminals of opportunity made their home. Most of them wouldn’t know what “antiques” meant, let alone buy them. This case was getting stranger and stranger.
“Please don’t leave me here with her,” Ascanio murmured.
I looked at him. “Did Kate tell you to stay put?”
“Yes.”
“Then stay put. Study your epic, get yourself straightened out, and I’ll take you with me next time.”
I turned and walked out of there before he did any more begging.
White Street received its name when an unnatural snowfall covered it with two feet of pristine powder. The snow refused to melt for a couple of years and most residents had decided that discretion was the better part of valor. If a street’s magic could sustain two feet of snow in the middle of the scorching Atlanta summer, there was no telling what else it could do. By the time the snow finally melted, most of the people living in its buildings had fled. As I drove down the crumbling pavement, the abandoned houses stared at me with dark rectangles of empty windows, like the black holes of a skull’s orbits. If I wasn’t a seasoned former member of law enforcement, I’d admit that the place gave me the creeps, turn my vehicle around, and drive away screaming like a little girl.
Gloria’s Art and Antiques occupied a large rectangular building. The front facade was a typical two-story brick affair, but the structure extended from the street, over a city-block deep. Enough space there to warehouse a lot of antiques. Or a small herd of tanks. Or some vicious magical elephants…
I checked my Sig-Sauers and tried the door. Unlocked. I swung it open. A little bell chimed with a silvery tone as I stepped inside. In front of me, a narrow room stretched, framed by twin glass counters. The floor was polished wood, the counters glass and steel, the walls a silvery gray. The whole place was the exact antithesis of antique.
The air smelled of jasmine, not the purified scent of the perfume, but real jasmine: dark, slightly narcotic, with a hint of indole. There was something ancient and savage in that scent and it set my teeth on edge.
I walked over to the counter on the right and examined the contents of the glass case. A magnifying glass with an ornate metal handle. A metal toy car with faded, half-peeled-off green paint. A small round box filled with blue and white glass beads. A cheap pocket watch. Some coins, an assortment of beat-up knives, a set of antique glasses, dark red at the bottom and gold-yellow on top, a glass punch bowl with a grape pattern on the side and an odd yellow patina…This was crap. You could find pricier stuff at a flea market. Did she have a warehouse full of this junk?
A tall woman strode from the depths of the store. She wore a brown and beige suit. Her light brown hair was coiled into a complex arrangement on her head. Her eyes behind black-rimmed glasses were dark and calm. Neat, trim, professional.
“Hello,” she said. “Can I help you find anything?”
“Hi. Are you Gloria?”
“Yes.” The woman nodded.
“My name is Andrea Nash,” I said. “I’m investigating a multiple homicide on one of the Pack’s business sites.”
Gloria stepped behind the left counter and walked toward the door. I had to turn to keep facing her.
“Multiple homicides?”
She was up to something. “Yes.”
“Who was killed?” Gloria set a large plastic bin onto the counter.
“Some shapeshifters. They were employees of a reclamation company.”
“That sounds tragic.” Gloria offered me a smile. “But I don’t know what it has to do with me.”
She stood, one hand on the bin, her muscles tense. Normally I’d make slow circles around her, pulling the evidence out of her a little at a time, but she was too keyed up for that. Strategic decision time. Anapa was likely after the ceremonial knife. She could be, too. She could be working for him even.
I took a gamble. “Give me the knife, Gloria.”
She hurled the contents of the bin at me. I ducked right, but not fast enough. A clump of ribbons hit me in the chest and fell apart into two dozen slithering cords around my feet.
Snakes.
The blistered bodies of Raphael’s crew flashed before me. Getting bitten meant death. I jumped up and to the right, trying to put some distance between me and the knot of terrified snakes, landed on the clear floor, and drew my Sigs. Behind me a heavy metal grate slammed in place over the door.
Trapped.
I spun and saw Gloria crouching on the counter. What the hell now?
Gloria opened her mouth. Her jaws unhinged and the mandible split in half, opening even wider. Her lips curled back, baring her teeth and turning her face into a grotesque mask. Twin fangs slid from the recesses in her gums, above her human canines.
Whoa.
Gloria crouched down.
“Don’t!” I barked. I couldn’t get bitten and I needed her alive, because whatever she knew would die with her.
Gloria jumped. It wasn’t a martial arts kick. She just leaped at me like there were springs in her legs, mouth open, fangs exposed.
I fired. Two shots bit into her stomach, the third and fourth took her in the chest, and then she crashed into me. Her hands crushed my arms, pinning them to my sides. Four bullets and she hadn’t even slowed down. She should’ve been dead or bleeding.
I tried to rip my arms free, but she clamped me down, her hands like steel pinchers, and bit down, aiming for my throat. Hell, no. I smashed my forehead into her face. She reeled back, her nose a broken mess of red tissue. I ripped my left arm out of her grip, the second Sig still in my fingers. Gloria bit my right arm, puncturing the skin straight through my shirt, and I put the Sig to her ear and pumped three rounds into her skull.
Blood sprayed the floor, littering it with chunks of brain tissue and shattered skull bone. Gloria sagged down and crumpled by my feet.
Well, that had gone great. Gloria and her secrets were dead, and I’d gotten myself bitten and was about to join her. How in the world had this gone wrong?
My arm burned. I ripped my sleeve off carefully, keeping my right arm still. A single puncture marked my arm near the elbow—she had only gotten one fang in, but one was enough. The tissue around the bite had turned bright red. The beginning of a swelling stretched the skin to hot hardness.
If Raphael’s people were any indication, I had minutes before the venom killed me.
The best method to prevent the spread of snake venom came from Australia and involved applying a broad tight bandage, complete with a sling and a splint to my arm. The venom had to move through the body through the lymphatic system before entering the bloodstream. The idea was to compress the tissue, preventing the lymph from moving to and from an injured limb.
I couldn’t bandage myself without moving my affected arm, and even then I couldn’t do it right and tight enough. All I could do was apply a tourniquet and hope my arm and I survived.
I pulled gauze from my pocket and bound my arm above the bite site, cutting off the flow of blood and lymph to my arm. It would have to do.
Gloria was still very dead on the floor. The rational, collected part of me took over. One, Gloria had giant fangs. Two, she was venomous. Three, she was connected to a reclamation company that bid on Raphael’s building. If she wasn’t part of the posse that had killed Raphael’s people, she’d definitely met them for brunch. I finally had my lead, except I was dying. If the venom finished me off, the cops would never release the crime scene to the Pack. I wasn’t an official member, and I wasn’t registered as a shapeshifter with the city, which made this crime scene fall into the jurisdiction of PAD. The Pack, and whoever would take over the investigation after me, would not get a crack at any evidence Gloria’s body offered. I had to preserve whatever evidence I could.
I took out the Polaroid camera from the pocket on my belt, pulled the woman’s lip back, and took a shot. The camera printed the photograph. I flipped it over, wrote “Property of Jim Shrapshire” on it, stuck it inside my shirt, and slid the camera back. If I died, the cops would find it and ask Jim about it, which would mean he would see it and make his own conclusions. Here’s hoping I hadn’t just killed myself.
I walked across the floor toward the phone. A couple of snakes struck at my combat boots as I walked past, but none of them connected. I reached over and pressed the lever on the wall, raising the metal grate over the door, climbed up on the counter to get out of their range, picked up the phone, and dialed the office.
“Cutting Edge!” Julie chirped into the phone.
“Give that to me,” Ascanio growled.
“This is Andrea. Put me on speaker.”
“Done,” Julie said.
“Listen to me very carefully. I’m at Gloria’s Antiques on White Street. I’ve been bitten by a poisonous snake, probably a viper, the same kind that killed Raphael’s people. I’m dying. Call the paramedics, give them Gloria’s address, tell them to bring antivenom. Next, call Doolittle and repeat what I just told you. Then call Jim and tell him the same thing. Tell him the paramedics have been called. Do not open the door of the office to anyone except Kate. Do you understand me?”