"I'm sorry, you just missed him. He's gone back to bed."
"Gone back to bed?" Celluci glanced down at his watch. "It's ten to four in the afternoon. Is he sick?"
Nadine shook her head. "Not exactly, but his allergies were acting up, so he took some medicine and went upstairs to lie down." She placed the folded sheet carefully in the laundry basket, reminding herself to inform Henry of his allergies when darkness finally awakened him.
"I'd hoped for a chance to talk to him."
"He said he'd be up around dusk. The pollen count doesn't seem to be as high after dark." As she spoke, she reached out to take the next piece of clean laundry from the line and overbalanced. Instantly, Celluci's strong grip on her elbow steadied her. Almost a pity he isn't a wer, she thought, simultaneously thanking him and shaking off his hand. And it's a very good thing Stuart is out in the barn. "If you stay for supper," she continued, "you can talk to Henry later."
Allergies. Henry Fitzroy did not look like the type of man to be laid low by allergies. As much as Celluci wanted to believe that a writer, and a romance writer yet, was an ineffectual weakling living in a fantasy world, he couldn't deny the feeling of strength he got from the man. He was still more than half convinced the writing covered connections to organized crime. After all, how long could it take to write a book?
There'd be plenty of time left over to get involved in a great many unsavory things.
Unfortunately, he couldn't wait around indefinitely.
"Thank you for the invitation, but... "
"Detective?"
He turned toward the summons.
"It's Ms. Nelson. On the phone for you."
"If you'll excuse me?"
Nadine nodded, barely visible under the folds of a slightly ragged fitted sheet. Nocturnal changes were hard on the linens.
Wondering what had gone wrong, Celluci went into the house and followed the redheaded teenager into a small office just off the kitchen. The office was obviously the remains of a larger room, left over when indoor plumbing and a bathroom had been put into the farmhouse.
"Thank you, uh... " He'd met the younger set of twins not fifteen minutes before, when they'd appeared to help Peter and Rose get Donald upstairs and into bed, but he had no idea which one this was.
"Jennifer." She giggled and tossed her mane of russet hair back off her face. "I'm the prettier one."
"Pardon me." Celluci smiled down at her. "I'll remember that for next time."
She giggled again and fled.
Still smiling, he picked up the old black receiver - probably the original phone from when the line had been put in thirty years before. "Celluci."
Vicki, who'd learned her phone manners in the same school, had no problem with the lack of pleasantries. She seldom used them herself. "I just found out that Bertie Reid won't be in until five at the earliest."
"You going to wait?"
"I don't see as I have an option."
"Shall I come in?"
"No point, really. Stay around the farm so I can reach you and try to keep the we... Heerkens from going out to those south fields."
"Should be safe enough in the daytime."
"I don't care. No one else gets shot if I have to leash the lot of them."
She hung up without asking about Henry. Celluci found that a little surprising, as though she'd known he wouldn't be around. Of course, she could just be showing more tact than usual, but he doubted it.
Mulling over possibilities, he returned to the yard and Nadine. "It looks like I'll be staying around for a while, the woman Vicki needs to speak with is going to be late."
"No problem." Which wasn't the exact truth, but in Nadine's opinion, Stuart needed to work on tolerating non-wer dominants. This Toronto detective would be good practice for the next time Stuart had to go into the co-op; the last time had almost been a disaster. It was getting hard enough to keep their existence a secret without Stuart wanting to challenge every alpha male he met. And while she recognized her mate's difficulty in accepting outsiders as protectors of the pack, it was done and he was just going to have to learn to live with it. Or we all die without it. Like Silver. She passed Celluci a handful of clothespins. "Put these in that basket, please."
Frowning a little at her sudden sadness, Celluci complied, wondering if he should say something. And if so, what?
"Mom?" The perfect picture of six-year-old dejection, Daniel dragged himself around the corner of the house and collapsed against the step. "I wanna go to the pond, but there's no one to take me. Daddy's got his head stuck in a tractor and he says Peter and Rose gotta fix that fence up by the road and Uncle Donald's sick and Colin's gone to work and Jennifer and Marie are taking care of Uncle Donald... " He let his voice trail off and sighed deeply. "I was wondering... ?"
"Not right now, sweetie." She reached down and stroked his hair back out of his eyes. "Maybe later."
Daniel's ebony brows drew down. "But I wanna go now. I'm hot."
"I can take him." Celluci spread his hands as Nadine turned to look at him. "I don't have anything else to do." Which was true as far as it went. It had also occurred to him that children, of any species, often knew more than adults suspected. If Fitzroy was an old family friend then Daniel might be able to fill in some of those irritating blanks.
"Can you swim?" Nadine asked at last.
"Like a fish."
"Please, Mom."
She weighed her child's comfort against her child's safety with this virtual stranger. In all fairness, last night couldn't be weighed against him. Males were not accountable for their actions when their blood was up.
"Mommy!"
And the challenge had, essentially, given him a position of sorts within the pack. "All right."
Daniel threw his arms around her legs with what came very close to a bark of joy, and bounded away, throwing an excited, "Come on!" back over his shoulder at Celluci, who followed at a more sedate pace.
"Hey!"
He turned, barely managing to snag the towel before it hit him in the face.
Nadine grinned, tongue protruding just a little from between very white teeth. "You'll probably need that. And don't let him eat any frogs. He'll spoil his dinner."
"I dunno. He's been coming for my whole life."
Translation; three or four years. "Does he come very often?"
"Sure. Lots of times."
"Do you like him?"
Daniel turned around and walked backward down the path, peering up at Celluci through a wild shock of dusty black hair. "Course I do. Henry brings me stuff."
"Like what?"
"Action figures. You know, like superheros and stuff." He frowned. "They chew up awful easy though." A bare heel slammed into a hummock of grass and, arms windmilling, he sat down. He growled at the offending obstacle then, having warned it against further attempts to trip him, accepted Celluci's offered hand.
"Are you okay?"
"Sure." He ran a little bit ahead then came back, just to prove he was all right. "I've fallen farther than that."
Celluci slapped at a mosquito. "Is the pond far?" He pulled the squashed insect out of the hair of his arm and wiped the mess on his jeans.
"Nope." Three jumps proved that an overhanging branch was still too high and he moved on.
"Is it part of the farm?"
"Uh-huh. Grandpa had it dugged a gizillion years ago. When Mommy was little," he added, just in case Celluci had no idea how long a gizillion years was.
"Does Henry take you swimming?"
"Nah. I'm not allowed to swim at night 'less everybody's there."
"Isn't Henry ever here in the daytime?"
Daniel sighed and stared up at Celluci like he was some kind of idiot. "Course he is. It's daytime now."
"But he's asleep."
"Yeah." A butterfly distracted him and he bounded off after it until it flew high up into one of the poplars bordering the path and stayed there.
"Why doesn't he ever take you swimming in the daytime."
"Cause he's asleep."
"Just when you want to go swimming?"
Daniel wrinkled his nose and looked up from the bug he was investigating. "No."
The security guard at Fitzroy's building had already told Celluci that Henry Fitzroy seemed to live his life at night. Working nights and sleeping days wasn't that unusual but added to all the other bits and pieces - or to the lack of bits and pieces - it certainly didn't help allay suspicion. "Does Henry ever bring anyone with him?"
"Course. Brought Vicki."
"Anyone else?"
"Nope."
"Do you know what Henry does when he's at home?"
Daniel knew he wasn't supposed to tell that Henry was a vampire, just as he wasn't to tell about his family being werewolves. It was one of the earliest lessons he'd been taught. But the policeman knew about the fur-forms and he was a friend of Vicki's and she knew about Henry. So maybe he did, too. Daniel decided to play it safe. "I'm not supposed to tell."
That sounded promising. "Not supposed to tell what?"
Daniel scowled. This grown-up was real dull, all he wanted to do was talk and that meant no fur-form. Vicki had been lots more fun; she'd thrown sticks for him to chase. "You mad at Henry 'cause he's with your mate?"
"She's not my mate," Celluci snapped, before he considered the wisdom of answering the question at all.
"You smell like she is." His brow furrowed. "She doesn't though."
He had to ask. "And what does she smell like?"
"Herself."
This is not the type of conversation, to have with a six-year-old, Celluci reminded himself as the path opened out into a small meadow, the pond shimmering blue-green in a hollow at the far end.
"Oh, boy! Ducks!" Daniel tore out of his shorts and raced across the field, barking shrilly, tail thrashing from side to side. The half dozen ducks waited until he was almost at the pond before taking wing. He plunged in after them, splashing and barking until they were out of sight behind the trees then sat down in the shallows, had a quick drink, and looked back, panting, to see if his companion had witnessed his routing of the enemy.
Celluci laughed and scooped up the discarded shorts. "Well done!" he called. He'd felt a superstitious prickling up his spine when the boy had first changed, but it hadn't been able to maintain itself against the rest of the scene. Crossing the meadow, he decided to leave Henry for the rest of the afternoon and just enjoy himself.
"Is it deep?" he asked, arriving at the pond.
" 'Bout as deep as you near the middle," Daniel told him after a moment's study.
Over six feet was pretty deep for such a little guy. "Can you swim."
Daniel licked a drip of water off his nose. "Course I can," he declared indignantly. "I can dog paddle."
"Think we'll get this done by supper time?" Rose asked, scrubbing a dribble of sweat off her forehead.
"I didn't think Uncle Stuart gave us an option," Peter panted, leaning on the mallet. "He's sure been growly lately."
"In case you'd forgotten, the family's under attack. He has a good reason."
"Sure, but that doesn't mean he has to growl at me."
Rose only shrugged and started stomping the earth tightly around the base of the metal fence post. She hated the amount of clothing she had to wear for this - shoes, jeans, shirt - but fences couldn't be fixed in a sundress, especially not when every section seemed determined to support at least one raspberry bush.
"I mean," Peter clipped an eight-inch length of wire off the bale and began reattaching the lower part of the fence to the post, "everything you do, he snaps at you."
Everything you do, you mean. Rose sighed and kept her mouth shut. She'd been feeling so strange herself lately, she certainly wasn't going to criticize her twin.
He squinted up at the sun, burning yellow-white in the late afternoon sky, and fought the urge to pant. "What a day to be working outside. I don't believe how hot it is."
"At least you can work without a shirt on."
"So could you."
"Not right next to the road."
"Why not?" He grinned. "There's never any traffic along here and besides, they're so little no one'll be able to see them anyway."
"Peter!"
"Peter!" he echoed, as she took a swing at him. "Okay, if you don't like that idea, why don't you trot back to the house and get us some water."
Rose snorted. "Right. While you lean on the fence and watch the world go by."
"No." He bent and picked up the brush shears. "While I clear the crap from around the next post."
She looked from the post to her brother, then turned and started walking back to the house. "You better have that done... " she warned, over her shoulder.
"Or what?"
"Or... Or I'll bite your tail off!" She laughed as Peter cowered at their favorite childhood threat, and then she broke into a run, feeling his gaze on her back until she left the field and started down the lane.
Peter yanked at the waistband of his jeans. They were too tight, too constrictive, too hot. He wanted... Actually, he didn't know what he wanted anymore.
"This has been one hell of a summer," he muttered, moving along the fence. He missed his Aunt Sylvia and his Uncle Jason. With the two older wer gone, it seemed like he and Rose had no choice but to become adults in their place.
He suddenly wanted to howl but worked off some of his frustrations in hacking at the brush instead. Maybe he should get a life outside the pack, like Colin had. He tossed that idea almost the instant he had it. Colin didn't have a twin and Peter couldn't imagine living without Rose beside him. They almost hadn't made it through grade eleven when class schedules kept them apart for most of the day. The guidance counselor had no idea how close she'd come to being bitten when she refused to change things. She'd said it was time they broke free of an unhealthy emotional dependency. Peter beheaded a few daisies, working the shears like two-handed scissors. That's all she knew. Maybe if humans developed a little emotional dependency the world wouldn't be so fucked up.
The sound of an approaching car brought him over to the fence where he could get a look at the driver. The black and gold jeep slowed as it drew even with him, stopped a few feet down the road, then backed up spraying gravel. It was the same jeep that had been parked at the end of the lane Sunday morning when he'd gone to the mailbox to fetch Shadow. Hackles rising, he put down the shears and jumped the fence. Time to find out why this guy was hanging around.
Mark Williams couldn't believe his luck. Not only was there a solitary werewolf right up by the road where he could get to it, but it was one of the redheads. One of the young redheads. And in his experience, teenage any things could be easily manipulated into impulsive, reckless behavior.
Even in jeans and running shoes, the creature had a certain wolflike grace, and as Mark watched it jump the fence and start toward the car he became convinced that this was the other version of the animal he'd seen by the mailbox yesterday. The set of its head, the expression of wary curiosity, was, given the variation in form, identical.
He rolled down the window, having already determined how to take advantage of this chance meeting. He'd always believed he did his best work off the cuff. "You one of the Heerkens?"
"Yeah. What of it?"
"You may have noticed me around a bit lately."
"Yeah."
Mark recognized the stance. The creature wanted to be a hero. Well, keep your pants on, you'll get your chance. "I've, uh, had my eye on your little problem."
"What problem's that?"
He pointed his finger and said, "Bang. Hear you lost two members of your family this month. I have, uh... " The sudden noise startled him, especially when he realized what it was. The creature was growling, the sound beginning deep in its throat and emerging clearly as threat. Mark pulled his arm into the car and kept one finger on the window control. No point taking unnecessary chances. "I have information that might help you catch the person responsible. Are you interested?"
Russet brows drew down. "Why tell me?"
Mark smiled, being careful not to show his teeth. "Do you see anyone else to tell? I thought you might want to do something about it."
The growling faded and stopped. "But... "
"Never mind." Mark shrugged. Careful now, it's almost hooked... "If you'd rather sit safely at home while other people save your family... "He started to raise the window.
"No! Wait! Tell me."
Got him. "My uncle, Carl Biehn... "
"The grasseater?"
The disgust in the interruption couldn't be missed. Mark hid a grin. He'd been about to say his uncle had seen something through his binoculars while bird-watching but hurriedly rewrote the script to take advantage of the prejudice of a predator for a vegetarian. Even if it did throw his uncle to the wolves. So to speak. "Yeah. The grasseater. He's the one. But no one'll believe you if you just tell them, so meet me in his old barn tonight after dark and I'll give you the proof."
"I don't believe you."
"Suit yourself. But just in case you decide your family's worth a bit of your time, I'll be in the barn at sunset. I suppose you can tell your... people anyway." He sighed deeply, shaking his head. "But you know that without proof they won't believe you - A grasseater? Ha! - not any more than you believe me and if you don't come, you'll have missed your only chance. Not something I'd like to have on my conscience."
Mark raised the window and drove away before the creature had a chance to sort out the convolutions of that last sentence and ask more questions. A number of things could go wrong with the plan, but he was pretty sure he'd read the beast correctly and the risk fell within acceptable limits.
He glanced in the rearview mirror to see the creature still standing by the side of the road. Pretty soon it would convince itself that, regardless of the stranger's motives, it couldn't hurt to check out the proof. In the way of the young, it wouldn't bother telling anyone else, not until it was sure.
"Come on, save the world. Be a hero. Impress the girls." Mark patted the bundle of leg-hold traps on the seat beside him. "Make me rich."
Rose got back to the fence with the jug of water just as the dust trail behind the car began to settle. She'd seen Peter talking to someone but hadn't been able to either see or smell who it was.
"Hey!" she called. "You standing in the road for a reason?"
Peter started.
"Peter? What's wrong?"
"Nothing." He shook himself and came back over the fence. "Nothing's wrong."
Rose frowned. That was a blatant lie. About to call him on it, she remembered the advice Aunt Nadine had given her when she'd mentioned Peter's recent moodiness. "Let him have a little space, Rose. It's hard for boys around this age." They'd never had secrets from each other before, but perhaps Aunt Nadine was right.
"Here." She held out the jug. "Maybe this will make you feel better."
"Maybe." But he doubted it. Then their fingers touched and he felt the light caress sizzle up his arm and resonate though his entire body. The world went away as he drank in her scent, musky and warm and so very, very close. He swayed. He felt the jug pulled from his lax grip and then the freezing cold splash of water over his head and torso.
Rose tried not to laugh. He looked furious but that she could deal with. "I thought you were going to faint," she offered, backing up a step.
"If we could change," Peter growled, tossing his head and spraying water from his hair, "I'd chase you into the next county and when I caught you I'd... "
"You'd what?" she taunted, dancing out of his reach, suddenly conscious of a strange sense of power. If only she weren't wearing so many clothes.
"I'd... " A rivulet of water worked its way past the waistband of his jeans. "I'd... Damn it, Rose, that's cold! I'd bite your tail off, that's what I'd do!"
She laughed then, it was impossible not to, and the moment passed.
"Come on." She picked up the mallet and headed toward the fence. "Let's get this done before Uncle Stuart bites both our tails off."
Peter grabbed the bale of wire and followed. "But I'm all wet," he muttered, rubbing at the moisture beading the hair on his chest.
"Quit complaining. Mere moments ago, you were too hot."
She lifted the mallet over her head and the smell of her sweat washed down over him. Peter felt his ears begin to burn and all at once, he came to a decision. He would go to Carl Biehn's barn tonight.
He toyed with the idea of telling his Uncle Stuart and then discarded it. One of two things would happen, either he'd dismiss the information about the grasseater out of hand and want to know what this human was up to, or he'd believe the information and want to receive the proof himself. Either way, he, Peter, would be out of the action. That wasn't going to happen.
He'd tell Uncle Stuart when he had the proof. Present it to him as a fait accompli. That would show the older wer he was someone to be reckoned with. Not a child any longer. Peter's head filled with visions of challenging the alpha male and winning. Of running the pack. Of winning the right to mate.
His nostrils flared. If he came back with the information that saved the family, it couldn't help but impress Rose.
"You the young woman who's waiting to see me?"
Vicki came awake with a start and glanced down at her watch. It was 6:10. "Damn!" she muttered, shoving her glasses back up her nose. Her mouth tasted like the inside of a sewer.
"Here, maybe this'll help."
Vicki stared down at the cup of tea that had suddenly appeared in her hand and thought, Why not?
A moment later she had her answer.
Because I hate tea. Why did I do that?
She very carefully set the cup down and forced her scattered wits to regroup. This is the clubroom at the Grove Road Sportman 's Club. So this little old lady in blue jeans must be...
"Bertie Reid?"
"In the flesh. Such as remains of it." The older woman smiled, showing a mouthful of teeth too regular to be real. "And you must be Vicki Nelson, Private Investigator." The smile broadened, the face around it compressing into an even tighter network of fine lines. "I hear you need my help."
"Yeah." Vicki stretched, apologized, and watched as Bertie settled carefully into one of the gold velour chairs, teacup balanced precisely on one knee. "Barry Wu tells me that if anyone in this city can help, it's you."
She looked pleased. "He said that? What a sweetie. Nice boy, Barry, bound to be in the medals at the next Olympics."
"So everyone says."
"No, everyone says he'll take the gold. I don't. I don't want to jinx the boy before he gets there, neither do I want him to feel badly if he comes home with the silver. Second best in the entire world is nothing to feel badly about and all those armchair athletes who sneer at second deserve a good swift kick in the butt." She took a deep breath and a long draught of tea. "Now then, what did you want to know?"
"Is there anyone around London, not just at this club, who can shoot with anything approaching Barry Wu's accuracy?"
"No. Was there anything else?"
Vicki blinked. "No?" she repeated.
"Not that I know of. Oh, there're a couple of kids who might be decent if they practiced and one or two old-timers who occasionally show a flash of what they once had but people with Barry's ability and the discipline necessary to develop it are rare." She grinned and saluted with the cup. "That's why they only give out one gold."
"Shit!"
The old woman studied Vicki's face for a moment, then put down the teacup and settled back in the chair, crossing one denim clad leg over the other, the lime green laces in her hightops the brightest spot of color in the room. "How much do you know about competition shooting?"
"Not much," Vicki admitted.
"Then tell me why you're asking that question, and I'll tell you if you're asking the right one."
Vicki took off her glasses and scrubbed at her face with her hands. It didn't make things any clearer. In fact, she realized as the movement pulled at the bruise on her temple, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. She shoved her glasses back on and scrambled with her bag for the bottle of pills they'd given her at the hospital. There was a time I could make love to a vampire, walk away from major car accident, rush a client to the hospital, stay up until dawn, and spend the day arguing ethics with Celluci, no problem. I must be getting old. She took the pill dry. The only alternative was another mouthful of tea and she didn't think she was up to that.
"Cracked my head," she explained as she tossed the small plastic bottle back in her bag.
"In the line of duty?" Bertie asked, looking intrigued.
"Sort of." Vicki sighed. Somehow in the last couple of minutes, she'd come to the conclusion that Bertie was right. Without knowing more about competition shooting, she couldn't know if she was asking the right questions. Her voice low to prevent the only other occupant of the clubroom from overhearing, she presented an edited version of the events that had brought her to London.
Bertie whistled softly at the description of the shots that killed "two of the family dogs," then she said, "Let me be sure I've got this straight, five hundred yards on a moving target at night from twenty feet up in a pine tree?"
"As much as five, maybe as little as three."
"As little as three?" Bertie snorted. "And both dogs were killed with a single, identical head shot? Come on." Setting the teacup aside, she heaved herself out of the chair, pale blue eyes gleaming behind the split glass of her bifocals.
"Where are we going?"
"My place. One shot like that might have been a fluke, luck, nothing more. But two, two means a trained talent and you don't acquire skill like that overnight. Like I said before, there's damned few people in the world who can do that kind of shooting and this marksman of yours didn't spring full grown from the head of Zeus. I think I can help you find him, but we've got to go to my place to do it. That's where all my reference material is. This lot wouldn't know a book if it bit them on the butt." She waved a hand around the clubroom. The fortyish man sitting at one of the tables stroking the cat looked startled and waved back. "Gun magazines, that's all they ever read. I keep telling them they need a library. Probably leave them mine when I die and it'll spend ten or twenty years sitting around getting outdated then they'll throw it out. Did you drive?"
"No... "
"No? I thought every PI owned a sexy red convertible. Never mind. We'll take my car. I live pretty close." A sudden flurry of shots caught her attention and she strode over to the window. "Ha! I told him not to buy a Winchester if he wants to compete this fall. He'll be months getting used to that offset scope. Fool should've listened. Robert!"
The man at the table looked even more startled at being directly addressed. "Yes?"
"If Gary comes up tell him I said, I told you so."
"Uh, sure, Bertie."
"His wife's down in the pistol range," Bertie confided to Vicki as they headed out the door. "They come by most evenings after work. He hates guns but he loves her so they compromised; she only shoots targets, he doesn't watch."
Bertie's car was a huge old Country Squire station wagon, white, with wood-colored panels. The eight cylinders roared as they headed out onto the highway and then settled down into a steady seventy-five kilometers an hour purr.
Vicki tried not to fidget at the speed - or lack of it - but the passing time gnawed at her. Hopefully Donald's wound would remind the wer of why they had to stay close to the house after dark, but she wasn't counting on it. As long as the wer insisted on their right to move around their land, every sunset, every extra day she spent solving this case, put another one of them in danger. If she couldn't convince them to stay safe, and so far she'd had remarkably little luck at that, she had to find this guy as fast as possible.
A car surged past, horn honking.
"I wanted to get a bumper sticker that read, 'Honk at me and I'll shoot your tires out' but a friend talked me out of it." Bertie sighed. "Waste of diminishing natural resources driving that speed." She dropped another five kilometers as she spoke, just to prove her point.
Vicki sighed as well, but her reasons were a little different.