Shifting Shadows: Stories from the World of Mercy Thompson(116)


He walked into the hallway where I waited for him.

•   •   •

I crawled into bed, exhausted, weary to my soul.

“Warren?” He pulled me close. “Baby, you’re freezing.”

If he asked, I would tell him.

“Can you sleep?”

I nodded.

“Fine, tell me about it in the morning.”

I took the comfort he offered gratefully.

•   •   •

We were awakened by the ambulance.

Kyle went out to find out what he could while I showered. He came in while I was drying off.

“Mr. Francis died of a heart attack last night.” He had an odd expression on his face. Hard not to feel some relief, I guessed—and harder not to feel guilty over it. “I guess we won’t be getting any more notes.” He frowned at me, then donned his lawyer face. “Warren?”

Among the health issues our neighbor had retired with was a weak heart. Much easier to explain a heart attack than death by wild animals. This was the twenty-first century after all, not the nineteenth.

“I’d have gotten more satisfaction if I could have sunk my teeth into him,” I told Kyle, rubbing the towel over my hair with a little more force than necessary. “Apparently he decided that you’d never be a neighbor he could cow properly. He hired Nadia, Elizaveta’s niece, to kill you.”

“Mr. Francis?” Kyle said incredulously. I pulled the towel off my head to see him standing slack-jawed. “Mr. Francis hired a witch to make a zombie to kill me?” After a moment, he shook off his shock. “I thought for sure it would be Nyelund.”

“Covington said she’d pay for half if we told her who hired someone to kill you,” I told him. “It was Sullivan who shot me”—Kyle looked at the red mark on my shoulder that was all that was left of the wound—“but he won’t be a threat to anyone anymore.”

Nadia broke Sullivan—but she’d aimed that magic at me, too. I wasn’t supposed to think about Kyle anymore, I was supposed to leave off the investigation with the feeling that everything would be all right. And I wasn’t supposed to remember the magic she’d worked to ensure that result. She’d spent so long teaching everyone to underestimate her, she’d overestimated herself.

Kyle frowned at me. “Tell me.”

So I told him about Sean Nyelund while I got dressed. I paced restlessly and told him about Nadia while he sat on the bench at the foot of the bed and watched me.

“Justice was served, Warren,” he said when I finished. “I’m sorry it had to be you who served it.”

“I’m not,” I told him. I’d only done what I needed to protect my own. I’d do it again.

He smiled a little as if he knew something I didn’t. “If you say so.”

“She was right,” I said.

“Who was?”

“Nadia. She said the red dress might be useful in finding out who’d killed Toni McFetters.”

He reached up and caught my hand, pulling me down to sit beside him.

“You liked her,” he told me.

“She had a prom photo in her house.” On top of the curio cabinet. “Toni’s husband had taken Nadia to her high school prom. That red dress Toni was wearing? It was Nadia’s prom dress; so were the pearls and shoes, near as I could tell. He’d taken her to the prom and hardly remembered her.” She’d remembered him, though. I’d expected to have to search her house for Toni’s missing belongings or, if that hadn’t worked, wake Nadia up and question her. She’d made things easy for me.

“Elizaveta only objected that she’d exposed herself as a witch to the humans,” Kyle said. “If you hadn’t told her that, she would have left Nadia alone. You didn’t have to kill her.” He put his arm around me. “Tell me that’s not what you’re thinking now. Tell me that’s not what is bothering you.”

It wasn’t. Not quite. I was thinking that she had attacked Kyle and part of me would have been happier if I’d eaten her. It had taken more will than I’d thought I had not to eat the old man next door, who was even more to blame than Nadia.

I stared at Kyle. I know that the wolf must have been showing through, but he didn’t flinch, didn’t drop his eyes.

“She was escalating,” he said. “She killed for money and learned to like it. She killed Toni because Toni and her husband jogged past her house every day and they were happy. She tried to kill me because we are happy.”

He thought I was a hero. He needed to know better.

“I killed two people last night,” I told him. “Premeditated murder.” I swallowed, but told him the other part of it, too. “I enjoyed it.”

He kissed me. When he was finished, he told me, “You’re a werewolf—a predator. A skilled killer, but not an indiscriminate one. So am I. If my prey is still writhing when I’m finished, it doesn’t make me any less a predator.”

I looked at him and he gave me a crooked grin. “Ready to get rid of that apartment yet?”

I laughed and leaned into him.

“Maybe,” I said. “Just maybe.”

REDEMPTION

I knew, as soon as I brought Ben onstage in Moon Called, what his history was. I had to know so that his actions remained logically consistent throughout the series—though I didn’t know if I would ever bring them to light.

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