Iron Kissed
Chapter 4

Kyle found a lawyer for me. He assured me that she was expensive, a pain in the neck, and the best criminal defense attorney this side of Seattle. She wasn't happy to be defending a fae, but, Kyle told me, that wouldn't affect her performance, only her price. She lived in Spokane, but she agreed that time was of the essence. By three that afternoon she was in Kennewick.
Once assured that Zee wasn't talking to the police, she'd demanded to meet with me in Kyle's office first, before she went to the police station. To hear the story from me, she told Kyle, before she spoke to Zee or the police.
Since it was a Saturday, Kyle's efficient staff and the other two lawyers who worked with him were gone, and we had his luxurious office suite to ourselves.
Jean Ryan was a fifty-something woman who had kept her figure with hard work that left taut muscles beneath the light linen suit she wore. Her pale, pale blond hair could only have come from a salon, but the surprisingly soft blue eyes owed nothing to contact lenses.
I don't know what she thought when she looked at me, though I saw her eyes take in my broken nails and the ingrained dirt on my knuckles.
The check I wrote to her made me swallow hard and hope that Uncle Mike would be as good as his word and cover the amount - and this was for only the initial consultation. Maybe my mother had been right, and I should have been a lawyer. She always maintained that at least as a lawyer my contrary nature would be an asset.
Ms. Ryan tucked my check into her purse, then folded her hands on the top of the table in the smaller of Kyle's two conference rooms. "Tell me what happened," she said.
I had just started when Kyle cleared his throat. I stopped to look at him.
"Zee can't afford for Jean to know just the safest part," he told me. "You have to tell her everything. No one knows how to sniff out a lie like a criminal defense lawyer."
"Everything?" I asked him, wide-eyed.
He patted my shoulder. "Jean can keep secrets. If she doesn't know everything, then she's defending your friend with one hand tied behind her back."
I folded my arms across my chest and gave her a long, level look. There was nothing about her that inspired me to trust her with my secrets. A less motherly looking woman I'd seldom seen - except for those eyes.
Her expression was cool and vaguely unhappy - whether it was caused by driving a hundred and fifty miles on a Saturday, defending a fae, defending a murderer, or all three, I couldn't tell.
I took a deep breath and sighed. "All right."
"Start with the reason why Mr. Adelbertsmiter would feel the need to call in a mechanic to examine a murder scene," she said without tripping on Zee's name. I wondered uncharitably if she'd practiced it on the drive over. "It should begin, 'Because I'm not just a mechanic, I'm a -  "
I narrowed my eyes at her; the vague dislike her appearance had instilled in me blossomed at her patronizing tone. Being raised among werewolves left me with a hearty dislike of patronizing tones. I didn't like her, didn't trust her to defend Zee - and only defending Zee would be worth exposing my secrets to her.
Kyle read my face. "She's a bitch, Mercy. That's what makes her so good. She'll get your friend off if she can."
One of her elegant eyebrows rose. "Thank you so very much for the character assessment, Kyle."
Kyle smiled at her, a relaxed, full-faced smile. Whatever I thought of her, Kyle liked her. Since it couldn't be her warm manner, it must mean she was good people.
I'd have felt better if she'd had pets. A dog or even a cat would have hinted at a warmth that I couldn't see in her, but she only smelled of Chanel No. 5 and dry-cleaning fluid.
"Mercy," coaxed Kyle in a tone he must have perfected with the women whose divorces he handled. "You have to tell her."
I don't go around telling people I'm a walker. Outside of my family, Kyle is the only human who knows.
"Freeing your friend might mean that you have to take the stand and tell a whole courtroom of people what you are," said Ms. Ryan. "How much do you care about what happens to Mr. Adelbertsmiter?"
She thought I was a fae of some kind.
"Fine." I got out of the sinfully comfortable chair and walked over to the window to look down at the traffic on Clearwater Avenue for a moment. I could see only one way to get this over with quickly.
"I'm not just a mechanic," I told her, using her words, "I'm Zee's friend." I spun abruptly on my heel so that I faced her and pulled my T-shirt over my head, using my toes to push off my tennis shoes and socks at the same time.
"Are you trying to tell me you're a stripper, too?" she asked, as I took off my bra and dropped it on top of my shirt on the floor. From her tone of voice, I could have been doing sit-ups instead of undressing.
I unsnapped my jeans and pushed them off my hips along with my underwear. When I stood wearing nothing but my tattoos, I called the coyote to me and sank into her shape. It was over in moments.
"Werewolf?" Ms. Ryan had scrambled out of her chair and was backing slowly to the door.
She couldn't tell a coyote from a werewolf? That was like looking at a Geo Metro and calling it a Hum-Vee.
I could smell her fear and it satisfied something deep inside me that had been writhing under her cool, superior expression. I curled my upper lip so she could get a good look at my teeth. I might weigh only thirty or so pounds in my coyote shape, but I was a predator and could have killed a person if I wanted to: I'd killed a werewolf once with nothing but my fangs.
Kyle was up and beside her before she could run out the door. He took her arm in a firm grip.
"If she were a werewolf, you'd be in trouble," Kyle told her. "Never run from a predator. Even the best behaved of them will have a hard time restraining themselves from chasing after prey."
I sat down and yawned away the last of the change-tingles. It also gave her another look at my teeth, which seemed to bother her. Kyle gave me a chiding look, but continued soothing the other lawyer.
"She's not a werewolf; they're a lot bigger and scarier, trust me. She's not fae either. She's something a little different, native to our land, not imported like the fae or werewolves. The only thing she can do is shift to coyote and back."
Not quite. I could kill vampires - as long as they were helpless, imprisoned by the day.
I swallowed, trying to get moisture to my suddenly dry mouth. I hated this sudden, gut-wrenching fear that assaulted me without warning. Every time I saw the little hitch in Warren's walk, I knew I would destroy the vampires again - but I paid the cost of their elimination with these panic attacks..
Kyle's calm explanation had given Ms. Ryan time to restore her calm facade. Kyle probably couldn't tell how angry she was, but my keener senses weren't fooled by the cool control she'd regained. She was still afraid, but her fear was not as strong as her rage.
Fear usually made me angry, too. Angry and careless. I wondered if showing her what I was had been such a good idea.
I changed back into my human self and ignored the growl of hunger that the two quick changes left me with. I put my clothes back on, taking time to tie my tennis shoes so that the bow was even before I resumed my seat, giving Ms. Ryan time to regain her composure.
She was seated when I looked up, but she'd moved to the other side of the table and taken the chair next to Kyle's.
"Zee is my friend," I told her again in measured tones. "He taught me everything I know about fixing cars and sold me his shop when he was forced to admit he was fae."
She frowned at me. "Are you older than you look? You'd have been a child when the fae came out."
"All of them didn't come out at once," I told her. Her question settled my nerves. It was Zee whose life was at stake here, not mine. Not just yet. I kept talking so she wouldn't ask why Zee had come out. The one thing I absolutely couldn't tell an outsider was the existence of the Gray Lords. "Zee only admitted what he was a few years ago, seven or eight, maybe. He knew that being a fae would keep people away from the shop. I'd been working for him for a couple of years and he liked me so he sold it to me."
I collected my thoughts, trying to tell her what she needed to know without taking forever about it. "As I told you, he called me yesterday to ask for my help because someone had been killing fae in the reservation. Zee thought my nose might be able to pick out the killer. I gather I was sort of a last resort. When we got to the rez, O'Donnell was at the gate and wrote down my name when we drove through - that is on record. I imagine the police will find it, if they think to look. Zee took me through the murder scenes and I discovered that one man had been present at each house - O'Donnell."
She'd been taking notes in a stenographer's notebook but stopped, set down her pencil, and frowned. "O'Donnell was present at all the murder scenes and you verified that by smelling him?"
I raised my eyebrows. "A coyote has a keen sense of smell, Ms. Ryan. I have a very good memory for scents. I caught O'Donnell's when he stopped us as we went in - and his scent was in every one of the murder victims' houses I visited."
She stared at me - but she was no werewolf who might rip my throat out for challenging her - so I met her stare with one of my own.
She dropped her eyes first, ostensibly looking at her notes. People, human people, can be pretty deaf to body language. Maybe she didn't even notice that she'd lost the dominance contest, though her subconscious would.
"I understand O'Donnell was employed by the BFA as security," she said, turning back a few pages. "Couldn't he have been there investigating the deaths?"
"The BFA had no idea there were any murders," I told her. "The fae do their own internal policing. If they had gone to the Feds for help, I'm pretty sure it would be the FBI who would have been called in, not the BFA anyway. And O'Donnell was a guard, not an investigator. I was told that there was no reason O'Donnell should have been in every house that there was a murder in, and I have no reason to doubt that."
She'd started writing again, in shorthand. I'd never actually seen anyone use shorthand before.
"So you told Mr. Adelbertsmiter that O'Donnell was the murderer?"
"I told him that he was the only person whose scent I found in all the scenes."
"How many scenes?"
"Four." I decided not to tell her that there had been others; I didn't want to tell her why I hadn't gone to all the murder scenes. If Zee hadn't wanted to talk about my trip Underhill with me, I thought it would not be something he wanted me discussing with a lawyer.
She paused again. "There were four people murdered in the reservation and they did not ask for help?"
I gave her a thin smile. "The fae are not fond of attracting outside attention. It can be dangerous for everyone. They are also quite aware of the way most humans, including the Feds, feel about them. 'The only good fae is a dead fae' mentality is quite prevalent among the conservatives who make up most of the rank and file in the government whether they be Homeland Security, FBI, BFA, or any of the other alphabet soup agencies."
"You have trouble with the federal government?" she asked.
"As far as I know, none of them are prejudiced against half-Indian mechanics," I told her, matching her blandness with my own, "so why would I have a problem with them? However, I can certainly see why the fae would be reluctant to turn over a series of murders to a government whose record for dealing with the fae is not exactly spotless." I shrugged. "Maybe if they'd realized sooner that their killer wasn't another fae, they might have done so. I don't know."
She looked down at her notes. "So you told Zee that O'Donnell was the killer?"
I nodded. "Then I took Zee's truck and drove home. It was early in the morning, maybe four o'clock, when we parted company. It was my understanding that he was going to go over to O'Donnell's and talk to him."
"Just talk?"
I shrugged, glanced at Kyle, and tried to decide how far I trusted his judgement. All the truth, hmm? I sighed. "That's what he said, but I was pretty sure that if O'Donnell didn't have a good story, he wouldn't wake up this morning."
Her pencil hit the table with a snap.
"You are telling me that Zee went to O'Donnell's house to murder him?"
I took a deep breath. "You aren't going to understand this. You don't know the fae, not really. Imprisoning a fae is...impractical. First of all, it's damned difficult. Holding a person is hard enough. Holding a fae for any time at all, if he doesn't want to be held, is near impossible. Even without that, a life sentence is highly impractical when fae can live for hundreds of years." Or a lot more, but the public didn't know that. "And when you let them go, they aren't likely to shrug it off as justice served. The fae are a vengeance-hungry race. If you imprison a fae, for whatever reason, you'd better be dead when he gets out or you'll wish you were. Human justice just isn't equipped to deal with the fae, so they take care of it. A fae who commits a serious crime - like murder - is simply executed on the spot." The werewolves did the same.
She pinched the bridge of her nose as if I were giving her a headache.
"O'Donnell wasn't fae. He was human."
I thought about trying to explain why a people who were used to dealing out their own justice would care less that the perpetrator was human, but decided it was pointless. "The fact remains that Zee did not kill O'Donnell. Someone got there first."
Her bland face didn't indicate belief, so I asked, "Do you know the story of Thomas the Rhymer?"
"True Thomas? It's a fairy tale," she said. "A prototype of Irving's 'Rip Van Winkle. "
"Uhm," I said. "Actually, I'm under the impression that it was mostly a true story, Thomas's I mean. Thomas was, at any rate, a real historical person, a noted political entity of the thirteenth century. He claimed that he'd been caught for seven years by the queen of the fairies, then allowed to return. He either asked the fairy queen for a sign that he could show his kin so they would believe him when he told them where he'd been, or he stole a kiss from the fairy queen. Whatever the reason, he was given a gift, and like most fairy gifts, it was more curse than blessing - the fairy queen rendered him incapable of lying. For a diplomat or a lover or a businessman, that was a cruel thing to do, but the fae are often cruel."
"Your point?"
She didn't sound happy. I guess she didn't like thinking any of the fairy tales were true. It was a common attitude.
People could believe in the fae, but fairy tales were fairy tales. Only children would really believe in them.
It was an attitude that the fae themselves promoted. In most folktales, the fae are not exactly friendly. Take Hansel and Gretel, for instance. Zee once told me that there are a lot of fae in the rez, if left to their preferred diets, would happily eat people...especially children.
"He was cursed to become like the fae themselves," I told her. "Most fae, including Zee, cannot tell a lie. They are very, very good at making you think they are saying one thing, when they mean another, but they cannot lie."
"Everyone can lie."
I smiled at her tightly. "The fae cannot. I don't know why. They can do the damnedest things with the truth, but they cannot lie. So." I sighed unhappily. I had tried to figure out a way to leave Uncle Mike out, but unfortunately there was no other way to tell this part. Zee and I hadn't talked since his arrest; that was a matter of public record. I had to convince her that Zee was innocent. "I haven't spoken to Zee yet, so I don't know what his story - "
"No one has," she said. "My contact at the police department assured me that he hasn't spoken to anyone since he was arrested - a wise move that allowed me to talk to you before I speak to him."
"There was another fae who went with Zee - he's the one who told me Zee didn't kill O'Donnell. He and Zee walked in and found the dead body about the same time the police showed up. The other fae was able to hide himself from the police, but Zee did not."
"Could he have hidden, too?"
I shrugged. "All the fae have glamour which allows them to change their appearance. Some of them can hide themselves entirely. You'll have to ask him - though he probably won't tell you. I think Zee did it so that the police wouldn't look too hard and find his friend."
"Self-sacrifice?" Maybe someone who hadn't been raised with werewolves wouldn't have seen the scorn she felt for my theory. Fae, she apparently thought, weren't capable of self-sacrifice.
"Zee is one of the rare fae who can tolerate metal - his friend is not. Jail would be very painful for most fae."
She tapped the end of her notebook on the table. "So the point of all of this is that you say that a fae who cannot lie told you Zee didn't kill O'Donnell. That won't convince a jury."
"I was hoping to convince you."
She raised her eyebrows. "It doesn't matter what I think, Ms. Thompson."
I don't know what expression was on my face, but she laughed. "A lawyer has to defend the innocent or the guilty, Ms. Thompson. That's how our justice system works."
"He isn't guilty."
She shrugged. "Or so you say. Even if Zee's friend can't lie - you aren't fae, are you? At any rate, no one is guilty until convicted in a court of law. If that's all you have to tell me, I'll go talk to Mr. Adelbertsmiter."
"Can you get me into O'Donnell's house?" I asked. "Maybe I can find out something about the real murderer." I tapped my nose.
She considered it, then shook her head. "You've hired me to be Mr. Adelbertsmiter's attorney, but I feel some obligation to you as well. It would not be in your best interest - nor in Mr. Adelbertsmiter's best interest - to prove yourself something...other than human at the moment. You are paying for my services, so the police will look at you. I trust they won't find anything."
"Nothing of interest."
"No one knows that you can...change?"
"No one who would tell the police."
She picked up her notebook and set it down again. "If you have been reading the papers or following the national news, you'll know that there are some legal issues being brought up about the werewolves."
Legal issues. I suppose that was one way to put it. The fae, by accepting the reservation system, had opened up the path for a bill to be introduced in Congress to deny the werewolves full citizenship and all the constitutional rights that came with it. Ironically, it was being proposed as an amendment to the Endangered Species Act.
Ms. Ryan nodded sharply. "If it comes out that you can become a coyote, the court might find your testimony inadmissible, which might have further legal consequences for you." Because they might decide I was an animal and not human, I thought. "Anything you find would be flimsy evidence even if it was admitted. The court is not going to have the same view on your reliability as Zee apparently did. Especially as you will have to declare yourself a separate species - which might be a very dangerous thing for you to do at this time." The werewolf bill wouldn't pass - Bran had too much influence in Congress - but I was neither werewolf nor fae, and the same protection might not cover me.
She frowned and moved her notebook restlessly. "You should know that I belong to the John Lauren Society."
I looked at Kyle. The John Lauren Society was the largest of the anti-fae groups. Though they maintained a front of respectability, there had been allegations last year that they had funded a small group of college-age kids who had tried to blow up a well-known fae bar in Los Angeles. Luckily their competence hadn't matched their conviction and they'd only managed to do a little minor damage and send a couple of tourists to the hospital for smoke inhalation. The authorities had caught them rather quickly and found an apartment full of expensive explosives. The kids had been convicted, but the authorities hadn't managed to build a case against the larger, wealthier organization.
I had access to information not available to the authorities and I knew that the John Lauren Society was a good deal dirtier than even the FBI suspected.
Kyle had found me a lawyer who not only disliked fae - she'd like to see them eliminated.
Kyle patted my hand. "Jean won't allow her personal beliefs to interfere with her job." Then he smiled at me. "And it will make a point, having someone so active in the anti-fae community defending your friend."
"I'm not doing it because I believe he is innocent," she said.
Kyle turned his smile to her and it became sharklike. He seldom showed anyone that side of him. "And you can tell the newspapers and the jury and the judge that - and it still won't stop them from believing that he must be innocent or you wouldn't have taken the case."
She looked appalled, but she didn't disagree.
I tried to imagine working a job where your convictions were an inconvenience that you learned to ignore - and decided I'd rather turn a wrench no matter how much better her paycheck was than mine.
"I'll stay away from the crime scene, then," I lied. I wasn't a fae. What the police and Ms. Ryan didn't know wouldn't hurt them. The coyote is a sly beastie and no stranger to stealth - and I wasn't about to let Zee's fate depend wholly on this woman.
I'd find out who killed O'Donnell and figure out a way to prove him guilty that didn't involve me telling twelve of my peers that I smelled him.
I picked up a couple of buck burgers and fries from a fast-food place and drove home. The trailer was looking as spiffy as a seventies single-wide could. New siding had made the porch look tacky, so I'd repainted it gray. Samuel had suggested flower boxes to dress it up, but I don't like living things to suffer unnecessarily - and I have a black thumb.
Samuel's Mercedes was gone from its usual spot so he must still be at Tumbleweed. He'd offered to come with me to meet with the lawyer - so had Adam. Which is how I ended up with just Kyle, whom neither of the werewolves looked upon as a rival.
I opened the front door and the smell of crock pot stew made my stomach rumble its approval.
There was a note next to the crock pot on the kitchen counter. Samuel had learned to write before typewriters and computers rendered penmanship an art practiced by elementary school children. His notes always looked like formal wedding invitations. Hard to believe a doctor actually wrote like that.
Mercy, his note said with lovely flourishes that made the alphabet look like artwork. Sorry, I am not here. I promised to volunteer at the festival until after tonight's concert. Eat something.
I followed his advice and got out a bowl. I was hungry, Samuel was a good cook - and it was still a few hours until dark.
O'Donnell's address was in the phone book. He lived in Kennewick just off Olympia in a modest-sized house with a neat yard in the front and an eight-foot white fence that enclosed the backyard. It was one of the cinder block houses that were fairly common in the area. Recently someone had been of the mistaken impression that painting it blue and putting shutters on the windows would make it look less industrial.
I drove past it, taking in the yellow police-line tape that covered the doors - and the darkened houses to either side of it.
It took me a while to find a good parking spot. In a neighborhood like this, people would notice a strange car parked in front of their house. Finally I parked in a lot by a church that was not too far away.
I put on the collar with the tags that gave Adam's phone number and address as my home. One trip to the dog pound had left me grateful for this little precaution. I didn't look anything at all like a dog, but at least in town there wouldn't be angry farmers ready to shoot me before they saw my collar.
Finding a place to change was a little more challenging. The dog pound I could deal with, but I didn't want to get a ticket for indecent exposure. Finally I found an empty house with a realtor's sign out front and an unlocked gardening shed.
From there, I only had to trot a couple of blocks to O'Donnell's house. Happily, O'Donnell's backyard fence ensured his backyard was private, because I had to change back and get out the picks I'd taped to the inside of the collar.
It was still close enough to summer that the night air was pleasant - a good thing since I had to pick the damned lock stark naked and it took me too long. Samuel had taught me to pick locks when I was fourteen. I hadn't done it a lot since then - just a couple of times when I'd locked my keys in my car.
As soon as I had the door open, I replaced the picks inside my collar. Bless duct tape, it was still sticky enough to hold them.
A washer and dryer were just inside, with a dirty towel laid across the dryer. I picked it up and wiped the door, doorknob, lock, and anything else that might have picked up my fingerprints. I didn't know if they had something to check for bare footprints, but I wiped the floor where I had taken a step inside to reach the towel, then tossed it back on the dryer.
I left the door mostly shut but unlatched, then shifted back into coyote, hunching under the gaze of eyes that weren't there. I knew, knew that no one had seen me go inside. The gentle, gusty wind would have brought the scent of anyone skulking about. Even so, I could feel someone watching me, almost as if the house was aware of me. Creepy.
With my tail tucked uncomfortably close I turned my attention to the task at hand, the sooner to leave - but unlike the fae houses, this one had seen a lot of people in and out recently. Police, I thought, forensic team, but even before they had come there had been a lot of people in the back hallway.
I hadn't expected an obnoxious boor like O'Donnell to have a lot of friends.
I ducked through the first doorway and into the kitchen, and the heavy traffic of people mostly faded away. Three or four light scents, O'Donnell, and someone who wore a particularly bad male cologne had been in here.
The cupboard doors gaped and the drawers hung open and a little askew. Dish towels were scattered in hasty piles on the counter.
Maybe Cologne Man was a police officer who searched the kitchen - unless O'Donnell was the sort who randomly shoved all of his dishes to one side of a cupboard and stored his cleaning supplies in a pile on the floor instead of tucked neatly in the space under the sink behind the doors that hung open, revealing the empty dark space beneath.
The faint light of the half moon revealed a fine black powder all over the cupboard doors and counter tops that I recognized as the substance the police use to reveal fingerprints - the TV is a good educational tool and Samuel is addicted to those forensic, soap opera - mystery shows.
I glanced at the floor, but there was nothing on it. Maybe I'd been a little paranoid when I'd wiped the place where I'd stood on the linoleum with bare human feet.
The first bedroom, across the hall from the kitchen, was obviously O'Donnell's. Everyone from the kitchen had been in here, including Cologne Man.
Again, it looked like someone had gone through every cranny. It was a mess. Every drawer had been upended on the bed, then the whole dresser had been overturned. All of his pants' pockets had been turned inside out.
I wondered if the police would have left it that way.
I backed out of there and went into the next room. This was a smaller bedroom, and there was no bed. Instead there were three card tables that had been flung helter-skelter. The bedroom window was shattered and covered with police tape. Someone had been angry when they'd come in here, and I was betting it wasn't the police.
Avoiding the glass on the floor as much as I could, I got a closer look at the window frame. It had been one of those newer vinyl ones, and the bottom half had been designed to slide up. Whatever had been thrown through the window had pulled most of the framing out of the wall as well.
But I'd known the killer was strong. He had, after all, ripped off a man's head.
I left the window to explore the rest of the room more closely. Despite the apparent mess, there wasn't much to look at: three card tables and eleven folding chairs - I glanced at the window and thought that a folding chair, thrown very hard, might break through a window like that.
A metal machine that looked oddly familiar had left a dent in the wall before landing on the ground. I pawed it over and realized it was an old-fashioned mail meter. Someone had been sending out bulk mail from here.
I put my nose down and started to pay attention to what it had been trying to tell me. First, this room was more public than the kitchen or first bedroom, more like the back door and hallway had been.
Most houses have a base scent, mostly a combination of preferred cleaning supplies (or lack thereof) and the body scents of the family who live in it. This room smelled different from the rest of the house. There had been - I looked again at the scattering of chairs - maybe as many as ten or twelve people who came to this room often enough to leave more than a surface scent.
This was good, I thought. Given the way O'Donnell had rubbed me wrong - anyone who knew him was likely to have murdered him. However - I took another look at the window - there hadn't been a fae or any other magical critter in the bunch that I could tell. No human had taken out the window that way - or torn off O'Donnell's head either.
I memorized their scents anyway.
I'd done what I could with this room - which left me with only one more. I'd left the living room for last for two reasons. First, if someone were to see me, it would be where the big picture window looked out onto the street in front of the house. Second, even a human's nose could have told them that the living room was where O'Donnell had been killed and I was growing tired of blood and gore.
I think it was dread of what I'd find in the living room that made me look back into the bedroom, rather than any instinct that I might have missed something.
A coyote, at least this coyote, stands just under two feet at the shoulder. I think that's why I never thought to look up at the pictures on the wall. I'd thought they were only posters; they were the right size and shape, with matching cheap Plexiglas and black plastic frames. The room was dark, too, darker than the kitchen because the moon was on the other side of the house. But from the doorway I got a good look at the framed pictures.
They were indeed posters, very interesting posters for a security guard who worked for the BFA.
The first showed a child dressed in a fluffy Easter Sunday dress sitting on a marble bench in a gardenlike setting. Her hair was pale and curly. She was looking at the flower in her hand. Her face was round with a button nose and rosebud lips. Bold letters across the top of the poster said: PROTECT THE CHILDREN. Across the bottom, in smaller letters, the poster announced that Citizens for a Bright Future was holding a meeting the November eighteenth of two years ago.
Like the John Lauren Society, Bright Future was an anti-fae group. It was a lot smaller organization than the JLS and catered to a different income bracket. Members of the JLS tended to be like Ms. Ryan, the relatively wealthy and educated. The JLS held banquets and golf tournaments to raise money. Bright Future held rallies that mostly resembled the old-fashioned tent revival meetings where the faithful would be entertained and preached at, then passed a hat.
The other posters were similar to the first, though the dates were different. Three of them were for meetings held in the Tri-Cities, but one was in Spokane. They were slick, and professionally laid out. Stock posters, I thought, printed at the headquarters without dates and places, which could be added later in Sharpie black.
They must have been meeting here and sending out their mailings. That's why there had been so many people in O'Donnell's house.
Thoughtfully, I padded into the living room. I think I'd seen so much blood the night before that it wasn't the first thing that struck me, though it was splattered around with impressive abandon.
The first thing I noticed was that, under the blood and death, I caught a familiar scent that was out of place in this room. Something smelled like the forest fae's home. The second thing I noticed was that whatever it was, it packed a tremendous magical punch.
Finding it, though, was more problematical. It was like playing "Find the Thimble" with my nose and the strength of the magic to tell me if I was hot or cold. Finally I stopped in front of a sturdy gray walking stick tucked into the corner behind the front door, next to another taller and intricately carved stick, which smelled of nothing more interesting than polyurethane.
When I first looked at the stick, it appeared unremarkable and plain, though clearly old. Then I realized that the metal cap wasn't stainless steel: it was silver, and very faintly I could see that something was etched into the metal. But it was dark in the room and even my night eyes have limits.
It might as well have had "A Clue" painted in fluorescent orange down the side. I thought long and hard about taking it, but decided it was unlikely to go anyplace, having survived O'Donnell's murderer and the police.
It smelled of wood smoke and pipe tobacco: O'Donnell had stolen it from the forest fae's home.
I left it alone and began quartering the living room.
Built-in bookshelves lined the room, mostly full of DVDs and VHS tapes. One whole bookshelf was devoted to the kind of men's magazines that people read "for the articles" and argue about art versus pornography. The magazines on the bottom shelf had given up any pretense of art - judging by the photos on the covers.
Another bookcase had doors that closed over the bottom half. The open shelves at the top were mostly empty except for a few chunks of...rocks. I recognized a good-sized chunk of amethyst and a particularly fine quartz crystal. O'Donnell collected rocks.
There was an open case for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang sitting on top of the DVD player under the TV. How could someone like O'Donnell be a Dick Van Dyke fan? I wondered if he'd had a chance to finish watching it before he died.
I think it was because I felt that moment of sorrow that I heard the creak of a board giving way beneath the weight of the house's dead occupant.
Other people, people who are completely, mundanely human, see ghosts, too. Maybe not as often - or in broad daylight - but they do see them. Since there had been no ghosts at the death sites in the reservation, I'd unconsciously assumed that there would be none here as well. I'd been wrong.
O'Donnell's shade walked into the living room from the hallway. As some ghosts do, he grew clearer in bits and pieces as I focused on him. I could see the stitching on his jeans, but his face was a faded blur.
I whined, but he walked by me without a glance.
There are a very few ghosts who can interact with the living, as much a person as they had been in life. I got caught once talking to a ghost without realizing that's what he was until my mother asked me whom I was talking to.
Other ghosts repeat the habits of a lifetime. Sometimes they react, too, though I usually can't talk to them. There is a place near where I was raised where the ghost of a rancher goes out every morning to throw hay to cows who are half a century gone. Sometimes he saw me and waved or nodded his head as he would have responded to anyone who'd approached him in life. But if I tried to converse with him, he'd just go about his business as if I weren't there at all.
The third kind are the ones born in moments of trauma. They relive their deaths until they fade away. Some dissipate in a few days and others are still dying each day even centuries later.
O'Donnell didn't see me standing in front of him so he wasn't the first, most useful kind of ghost.
All I could do was watch as he walked to the shelves that held the rocks and touched something on the top shelf. It clicked against the fake wood shelf. He stood there for a moment, his fingers petting whatever he touched, his whole body focused on that small item.
For a moment I was disappointed. If he was just repeating something he'd done every day, I wouldn't learn anything from him.
Then he jerked upright, responding, I thought, to a sound I could not hear and he walked briskly to the front door. I heard the door open with his motions, but the door, more real than the apparition, stayed closed.
This was not a habitual ghost. I settled in, prepared to watch O'Donnell die.
He knew the person at the door. He seemed impatient with him, but after a moment of talk, he took a step back in invitation. I couldn't see the person who came in - he wasn't dead - or hear anything except the creaks and groans of the floorboards as they remembered what had happened here.
Following O'Donnell's attention, I watched the path of the murderer as he walked rapidly to a place in front of the bookcase. O'Donnell's body language became increasingly hostile. I saw his chest move forcefully and he made a cutting gesture with one hand before storming over to confront his visitor.
Something grabbed him around the neck and shoulder. I could almost make out the shape of the murderer's hand against the paleness of O'Donnell's form. It looked human to me. But before I could get a good look, whoever it was proved that they were not human at all.
It was so fast. One moment O'Donnell was whole and the next his body was on the floor, jerking and dancing, and his head was rolling across the floor in a lopsided, spinning gyre that ended not a foot from where I stood. For the first time, I saw O'Donnell's face clearly. His eyes were becoming unfocused, but his mouth moved, forming a word he no longer had breath to say. Anger, not fear, dominated his expression, as if he hadn't had time to realize what had happened.
I'm not a terrific lip reader, but I could tell what he'd tried to say.
Mine.
I stayed where I was and shook for minutes after O'Donnell's specter faded. It wasn't the first death I'd witnessed - murder is one of those things that tend to produce ghosts. I'd even cut someone's head off before - that being one of the few ways you can make sure that a vampire will stay dead. But it hadn't been as violent as this, if only because I'm not strong enough to rip someone's head off.
Eventually, I remembered that I had things to do before someone realized there was a coyote running free in a crime scene. I put my nose down on the carpet to see what it could tell me.
Distinguishing any scents at all here proved difficult with O'Donnell's blood soaking into couch cushions, walls, and carpet. I caught a hint of Uncle Mike's scent in one corner of the room, but it faded quickly, and though I searched the corner for a while, I never caught it again. The Cologne Man had been in the living room, along with O'Donnell, Zee, and Tony. I hadn't realized Tony had been one of the arresting officers. Someone had been sick just inside the front door, but it had been wiped up and left only a trace.
Other than that, it was like trying to pick up a trail in the Columbia Center Mall. There had simply been too many people in here. If I was trying to pick out a scent, I could do that - but trying to distinguish all the scents...it just wasn't going to work.
Giving up, I went back to the corner where I'd scented Uncle Mike just to see if I could pick him up again - or figure out how he managed to leave only the barest trace for me to find.
I don't know how long it was there before I finally looked up and saw the raven.