The Shifters
Page 8

“Deal,” he said.
The key got them through two more back doors and a front gate, and then they were on St. Philip Street.
Ryder turned to Caitlin and presented her with the key with a mock bow. She narrowed her eyes again and then snatched it from his hand. To his delight, she pulled a little bag from her cleavage, which he recognized as a gris-gris pouch, a voodoo charm bag, and dropped the key in, before returning the bag to the enticing cleft between her breasts. First the key and then me, he thought, and felt himself stir in anticipation.
She suddenly blushed as if she’d read his thoughts. Before she could turn away, he grabbed her hand and felt her pull back from him—but just a little. “Now we talk, that’s the deal. How about Maguire’s?” he said, hoping the tavern was still there.
She looked startled. “It hasn’t been Maguire’s for almost a hundred years. It’s called the Mississippi River Bottom, now….” She frowned. “How did you know…?” Then she stopped, and after a moment she nodded warily.
The tavern had two entrances—one on the street and one off the side courtyard. Ryder moved through the side gates to the courtyard automatically; that had been the main door when last he’d visited the place.
He looked around curiously. There were neon bar signs hung on the brick, but the building was still the same, and the old twisted tree still grew out of an ancient brick planter, though bigger now than ever.
“Hasn’t changed,” he said aloud, approvingly.
“Since when?” she asked, watching him warily.
“Eighteen…” He paused. “Eighteen eighty-four, it was.”
Caitlin looked at him, jolted. Shapeshifters weren’t immortal, like vampires, but every time they passed through the astral it arrested the aging process, so a shifter who was able to shift often, providing he was able to stay out of other kinds of trouble, could live a long, long life.
If Mallory was telling the truth—always a big “if” when you were dealing with a shifter—he was very good and had been around for a very long time. It must be lonely, she found herself thinking.
He was still lost in reverie. “This used to be a brothel, you know. Sweet little thing named Marie hanged herself from that tree when her sailor man came back in a coffin.”
Another jolt. Caitlin knew that story—it was a staple of the local ghost tours. But Ryder actually sounded as if he’d known her….
“Some guides say you can still feel the energy from—” she started.
But she never got to finish, because he turned to her and said, “Let’s find out,” just before he pulled her toward him and kissed her.
Heat flooded through her instantly, from her lips to the very core of her; she felt she’d just burst into flame. She opened her mouth—to protest or sigh, she didn’t know which—and his tongue was inside her mouth, tasting, teasing, entwining with hers, and then plunging, sliding so deep that she lost her balance. He caught her, lifted her up and set her on the low wall around the tree, bending her backward so he could crush her mouth under his. Her back was against the trunk, and he was stepping between her legs, pulling her hips forward against his, as he kissed her, deep and slow and hot, cupping her breasts in his hands. Her nipples strained through her dress against his palms, and now he moaned, and lifted his head to kiss down her neck, biting, sucking, until she lost her breath and turned to jelly inside. Her legs were wrapped around his thighs, and the huge bulge of his arousal was rubbing against her. She heard herself making sounds she’d never made before as he kissed her cleavage, tongued her nipples through the thin cotton fabric, and she could feel him throbbing against her cleft, half inside her even through their clothes.
Someone spoke harshly somewhere near them, a deep, male voice, and Caitlin felt Ryder’s warmth move slightly back from her, leaving her dazed and wanting.
She heard her own name, and she looked past Ryder into the dark of the courtyard, too dazed to recognize him at first…and then her heart plummeted.
Jagger.
Caitlin felt a sharp jolt of dismay. She was beyond flustered. What had he seen? They’d been practically doing it against the tree. She slipped from the wall, but her legs were so shaky that they barely held her up; her mouth felt bruised, and inside, she was still throbbing.
Beside her, Ryder seemed completely unperturbed, even relaxed. “I believe it’s the Vampire DeFarge.”
Jagger took a sharp step forward and pulled Caitlin to his side. “Are you all right?” he demanded. Caitlin nodded, mortified, and saw his concern for her replaced by anger. “Do you realize you just left a crime scene?”
“You know very well if we’d stayed it would have been more trouble for you in the long run,” Ryder said calmly.
Through her embarrassment, Caitlin was becoming aware that the two of them were talking like old—well, not friends, but old enemies, anyway.
“I was watching out for her,” Ryder was saying.
“That’s what you call watching out for her?” Jagger said murderously, glancing at the tree.
“That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it? I hardly have to tell you about the allure of a Keeper,” Ryder shot back.
Caitlin could feel Jagger’s anger flare, and her own pulse spiked in alarm as she realized the men were a breath away from fighting. “Jagger. Jagger,” she repeated sharply. “He knows about the dead man. He’s a shapesh—”
“I know who he is.” Jagger bit off the words, his eyes never leaving Ryder’s face. “As I recall, you were run out of town on a rail.”
Ryder half smiled, and despite herself Caitlin was fascinated, feeling something ancient and powerful at work. These…beings, who were to all outward appearance men in their prime, had been alive long before even her parents had been born.
“A complete misunderstanding on the part of the girl’s family,” Ryder answered Jagger.
Caitlin felt herself freezing up at his words. That’s right, she told herself, pushing her feelings down hard. Always remember he’s a shifter. That’s his nature. Using people and leaving them. Stay away.
“You come back into town and people start dropping dead. That kind of coincidence doesn’t sit well with me,” the detective said icily.
“No coincidence at all,” Ryder retorted. “We have a mutual problem, and I’m on the job.” Jagger eyed him suspiciously, but Caitlin sensed a hesitation. Apparently Ryder did, too. “We might get farther by pooling information,” he suggested. “Our friend on the other block wasn’t the first death, was he? And the deaths are presenting as overdoses, right? You’re probably thinking a bad batch of meth.”
Now it was Caitlin’s turn to eye Ryder suspiciously. That was exactly what Jagger had said to her. It set off alarm bells.
“It’s not meth,” Ryder said.
“What, then?” Jagger said, the words clipped.
“I want to see the bodies,” Ryder said.
Even as they were walking through the doors of the morgue, Caitlin had no clear idea of how they’d ended up there. Saying “yes” to Ryder was the last thing she had expected Jagger to do; she could barely wrap her mind around it.
The medical examiner’s office was in the Central Business District, a five-story brick building.
The halls were eerie at night, shining linoleum reflecting the blue light from the streetlights outside the windows. The vampire, the shapeshifter and the Keeper walked together through the watery light.
Caitlin was uncomfortably aware of Ryder’s body beside hers; the hall wasn’t narrow, but he was walking so close beside her that their arms and thighs were constantly brushing. Getting in my space, she thought resentfully. Imprinting.
The truth was, her body was still buzzing from their…“kiss” didn’t even begin to cover it. She could feel him electrically beside her, and she could smell him in her hair, smell the leather of his jacket on her skin. He looked at her through the reflected blue light, and she turned to fire in the darkness, remembering his mouth hot and demanding on hers, his hands slipping over her breasts….
Jagger stopped in front of a door and unlocked it, pushing it open for Caitlin to step through. The room on the other side was chilly and uncomfortable—grim, dark, with two walls of lockers. Meat lockers, Caitlin thought morbidly, which, in the end, was exactly what they were.
Jagger flipped on the lights, a stark, too-white glow of fluorescence, checked a slip of paper in his hand and walked to a locker midway down the wall. He opened it and slid out the drawer. Caitlin and Ryder moved closer, and the three of them looked down at the stiff, gray-fleshed corpse.
“Victim number four. Stephen Boylan, a tourist from Biloxi. Car salesman. In town with his wife, celebrating their sixth anniversary. Dropped dead on Bourbon, October 20. Coroner ruled meth amphet amine overdose.”
Ryder bent over the body, all focus now. “No meth here. Normal, healthy-looking teeth, hair, skin. No scabs or sores. No malnutrition.” He took the corpse’s head in both hands and examined it, as well. “No irritation of nasal tissues.”
“Those are indicators of long-term use. You wouldn’t necessarily see that in a first-time user,” Jagger said tightly.
Ryder looked across the corpse at Jagger. “What about previous victims? Any of those indicators?”
“No,” Jagger answered.
“And the chemicals in the tox screens are close but just don’t add up, right?” Ryder said, his eyes steady on Jagger’s face.
“No,” Jagger said slowly. “They don’t add up.”
“What are the chances that…four?—now five?—tourists in a row decide to try crank for the first time and all end up OD’ing? Within two weeks?”
“Not good,” Jagger agreed—not happily, Caitlin thought.
“And what did the coroner say about the levels of adrenaline?”
Caitlin saw Jagger stiffen.