Night Shifters (39 page)

Tom shook his head, as if answering some unspoken question. “Kyrie. And . . . Rafiel. I can’t take it. I know this is stupid, okay? I know it’s puppy love, okay? But I’ve never been close to another woman. Well, not since I was sixteen. And I’ve never even thought about another woman as I think about Kyrie. I know it’s stupid. You don’t need to tell me—”

“I wasn’t going to tell you that—” Edward started.

“But I know it’s stupid. I know I never had a chance. Being as I am. Who I am. And I don’t just mean the . . . shifting. I mean, just who I am. I know Kyrie deserves much better. I know that Rafiel is better. I’ve known that since I met him. But I’m too . . . I can’t watch. I should be able to because they’re both my friends, in a way, so I’m probably immature too, but there it is. I’m immature. I just can’t . . . I’d end up getting in a big argument with her or him, or both of them. And I can’t do that, because then . . . it would be worse than just leaving. So I’m leaving.”

The words had poured in a torrent, drowning out any other attempts at speech, any other attempts at questioning. Now they stopped, and Tom reached for the coffeepot handle, as if to get up and resume his rounds.

“Tom,” Edward said. “Where are you going?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just . . . somewhere. Somewhere till things cool with the triad and until . . . No, I don’t suppose I’ll ever forget. I’m not . . . good.”

“Perhaps you could consider coming home?” Edward said, and before Tom could correct it, “To my home. You can, you know. I don’t mind.”

He expected anger, or perhaps a huffing of pain. But instead Tom inclined his head once. “Maybe. After . . . when the triad isn’t looking anymore. Perhaps they’ll even give up on the idea of revenge, and calm down, and then, maybe.”

Edward knew Tom was wrong. He knew Tom was wrong about Kyrie and Rafiel. He’d seen the three of them together and while Rafiel might look a lot at Kyrie, Kyrie looked at Tom. Now, most of the time she looked at Tom with annoyance or borderline irritation.

But that was part of it too, wasn’t it? The ones who could annoy you most, the ones who could get under your skin most . . . He remembered what she had told him about how she knew that Edward still liked Tom, still had paternal feelings for him. How it was all about how he fought so hard to counter those feelings.

From what he’d seen, Edward guessed Kyrie had known from experience. She was, at the very least, seriously in lust with Tom. For a moment or two the day before, he’d thought she’d need a drool catcher to avoid staining the carpets of his hotel room. But he would bet there was more there, too. Because Kyrie was not the type to confuse lust with love.

He could let Tom go on believing this, being miserable. Tom would then probably end up in New York again and, knowing his intelligence and his new-found focus, be at Harvard or Yale within the year. And eventually he would find another woman.

But Edward looked at his son’s pale face, his set mouth, which looked rigid enough not to tremble. Rigid enough not to betray the desolation within.

“Tom, I’ve watched her, and I think you’re wrong. From her reactions, since I’ve met her, and from seeing her with him, I’ve . . . I don’t think she’s interested in him. And I think she likes
you
a lot.”

Tom shook his head. “No, trust me. I had some hope. Not a lot. I mean, I know our different standings. But she was nice to me, and I thought maybe . . . But then I saw them kissing.” He gestured with his head. “Up front. I know. I saw.” He shook his head. “And I never expected it to affect me so much.” He frowned, thunderous eyebrows low over his blue eyes. “I wanted to shift and flame something. Preferably his pants.”

Edward almost laughed at this, because it was so much like Tom, to want to flame his rival’s manhood right off. But he didn’t want to laugh, not while Tom was in pain.

“I just thought you should know. I think you’re wrong. But if you still think you must leave, then . . . I hope eventually you’ll come back to my home. And before that, call me, okay? Tell me where you are. I’ll wire you money. There’s no reason for you to be deprived.”

It was probably a measure of Tom’s state of mind that he didn’t protest the offer of money. Instead, he nodded and walked away.

“Man, he has it bad,” Keith said. “I didn’t realize it was that serious.”

“I suspected it,” Edward said. “I just didn’t know he would take it in his head to run away from it all.”

Was that what he’d taught Tom, when he’d thrown him out? To leave difficult situations behind?

Kyrie was shaking. Mostly with repressed rage. That Rafiel would dare grab her like that. That he would dare kiss her. And in front of half the diner too.

She put her apron on, and resumed serving her tables, but felt as if people were staring at her, and found herself blushing.
How could he?

She suspected Rafiel was the center of attention to his parents, the center of their lives. His “handicap,” the fact that he shifted, would make him far more precious to them, and they far more attentive to him. And he’d grown up to be the center of the universe.

Kyrie would bet too that with his body, his easy, self-assured personality, he would have girls falling from his hair and tumbling into his lap. She would just bet. So he probably was not too well aware of the meaning of the word no. Well, she would buy him a thesaurus at the first opportunity.

No, as in never. As in negation. As in I’m not interested.
And even if the girl hasn’t said it flat out, if she’d given him reason to think she was less than pleased with his interest, then Mr. Rafiel Trall would learn to keep his hands to himself. And his lips too.

She was so mad, that she banged a load of dishes into the dishwasher, after bussing the empty tables. This was the hour when people started leaving before the rush, and she’d bussed her tables, and Tom’s too. She banged the plates and cups in, and she gave Frank a dirty look when he glared at her.

The dirty look must have worked, because Frank didn’t say anything. Just turned away.

And Frank was, of course, a problem, as was Frank’s girlfriend. Kyrie couldn’t believe how obtuse and close-minded Rafiel had been. How could he not see that this series of coincidences, here, at the center of the Athens, was far more relevant than no matter how many couples who’d started dating a month ago, no matter how many men with bandaged necks elsewhere?

Damn the man. She couldn’t believe someone like that, who was clearly smarter than dryer lint, would attempt to solve crimes using parts of his anatomy that lay below the equator.

She closed the dishwasher and started it, and turned to face Tom. He stood just behind her, his arms full with a tray of dishes.

“Oh, Tom, I’m sorry. That dishwasher is full. Let me open the other one. I’ll put the dishes in for you if you want me to.”

He shook his head. He was keeping his lips together, as if he were biting them to keep himself from saying something. How weird. It was an expression she’d never seen on his face. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. “Just fine. I’ll put the dishes in. You can go.” His voice sounded lower and raspier than normal.

She went. She picked up tips, she tallied totals, she filled coffee cups.

On the way back from the addition to the main part of the diner, she saw Tom bussing a table, and thought that was as good a time as any to talk to him.

“I couldn’t get Rafiel to listen,” she said, in a whisper. “About Frank. He says it’s all coincidences, and he refuses to help. What are we going to do?”

For a while, she thought that Tom hadn’t heard her. He remained bent over the table, his hand holding a stack of plates to put on the tray, while the other hand held a moist cloth, with which he was poised to wipe where the plates had been. But he didn’t move. He just stood there.

“Tom?” she said.

He put the plates on the tray, very slowly. Carefully, he wiped the table. Then he stood up and faced her. His face was stark white. Not the sickly pale it had been in the parking lot the night she’d found him over the corpse, but white—the white of paper, the white of the unblinking heart of a thunderbolt. “I don’t know what you want me to do,” he said, his voice calm, emotionless. “If you can’t get Rafiel to listen to you, I fail to see where I can be of any use. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Tom, don’t be an idiot,” she said, in an urgent whisper, sure he had to have misunderstood it all. “I want to know what you and I are going to do about it.”

Tom shook his head. “No. You don’t understand. We’re not going to do anything. After tonight, I won’t even be here.”

“Where are you going?”

He twisted his lips and shrugged. “Somewhere.”

She watched him pick up his tray and his cloth and disappear toward the main diner, tray held at waist level.

What on earth was going on? First Rafiel had behaved like a lunatic, and now Tom. What had they been smoking? And why were they not sharing?

“What do you know about this?” she asked Keith and Edward, where they sat in their corner table. “Where’s Tom going? What is wrong with him?”

Keith sat back on his chair, looking vaguely scared. “Whoa,” he said. “That’s one of the few rules of safety I’ve learned. I don’t get in between this kind of stuff.”

“What kind of stuff?” Kyrie asked, her temper rising. “What kind of stuff? What is wrong with every male here tonight?”

“I think,” Edward said, his voice regretful, his tone slow, “that if I told you what Tom told me I would forfeit whatever trust I’ve been able to earn back from him. And you must see I can’t do that. He might need me. I have to . . . stand by to help him if he needs it. I’ve got to tell you I hope he comes to his senses, but I don’t think my explaining things to you would further this in any way.”

“Oh,” Kyrie said. “I see. He”—and she pointed at Keith—“Makes cryptic remarks, and you make longer cryptic remarks, with far better vocabulary. Whatever. Sure. What is this? Be Stupid Day for males?”

She glared at them a while, daring them to answer. When neither did, she huffed out of there.

They didn’t answer because they had no answer. They knew damn well—had to know—that they were acting like idiots. All of them.

Well, she would show them. Rafiel might be more practiced at smelling shifters, but Kyrie would bet that even she, herself, in panther form, could smell a rotting body in a shallow grave. If she knew what she was looking for. Even at the morgue, with all the preserving fluids and embalming whatnots, she had smelled it. She was sure she could smell it undisguised and in the heat of day under a thin layer of earth. The only reason she hadn’t smelled it before—if it was there—would have been that she was escaping beetles and cops with guns.

So, when her shift was over, she’d go up to the castle, and she’d shift. She’d sniff around. When she found the corpses, she would shift again, and she would call the police. Take that, Officer Trall. If someone called the corpses in, then Mr. Rafiel Trall would have to do something about it, would he not?

And as for Mr. Tom Ormson, she didn’t know exactly what was biting him, but she was in no mood to find out, either. It occurred to her that he might have seen Rafiel kiss her. But if that was what had put his nose so severely out of joint, then Tom needed to take a chill pill, that was what he needed to do.

After all, what fault was hers if an idiot male decided to kiss her? She had slapped him for it, too. Half rocked his head off of his shoulders. And if Tom hadn’t stuck around to see that, he was more of a fool than she’d ever thought, and she wouldn’t mind if he left and never came back.

She avoided him the rest of the shift.

Edward received the backpack from Tom’s hands, and pulled out his wallet to set the bill for the food he and Keith and Rafiel had eaten. He guessed Rafiel wasn’t coming back, but he wasn’t about to ask Tom. There was absolutely no reason to get the boy even more upset than he already was.

Instead, Edward put the backpack on his back, sure it looked ridiculous with his nice clothes. He got up, and Tom was turning away, putting the bill with the money in his apron pocket. Edward grabbed at his son’s shoulder. “Tom.” It was as close as he dared come to a hug.

Tom looked back, eyebrows raised.

“I just want you to know,” Edward said, “that if you need anything at all . . .” He gave Tom one of his cards. “You probably remember the home address,” he said. “But this is the new office address and my cell phone and work phone. Call. Anytime. Day or night, okay?”

Tom nodded, but there was just that look of dubiousness in his eyes that made Edward wonder if he would really call. Or just get into trouble and not tell anyone.

He walked out of the diner, and out into the cooler, exhaust-filled night of Fairfax Avenue. Under the light pole, he noticed that Keith was behind him.

“Can I come with you?” Keith asked. “To deliver that?”

Edward took a deep breath. “I don’t think so,” he said. “I’m going to deliver it in person, you see, not put it down somewhere and wait for them to find it. I’m afraid they’ll go after Tom again if I do that.”

“So . . .”

“So the triads are dangerous. And the Great Sky Dragon is not someone—or something—one tangles with for sport. I think I’m fairly safe, because they depend on me for legal representation. But I don’t think you’d be safe and I can’t allow you to risk yourself.”

“But . . .” Keith said. “I can take out dragons. With a tire iron.”

Edward couldn’t avoid smiling at that. “I know,” he said. “And I’m proud to have met you. But I really think this is something I have to do alone.”

Keith took a deep breath, and shrugged. Then frowned. “You’re not going to allow me to, are you? No matter what I say?”

“I’m afraid not,” Edward said. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be safe.”

“Okay. Then . . . I’ll stay and keep an eye on Kyrie and see in what direction Tom leaves, okay? I’ll tell you. When I see you.”

Edward nodded, and put out his hand, solemnly. Keith shook it just as solemnly.

Add to the things Tom had accomplished the fact that he seemed to make worthy friends. And that was something that Edward had never expected of Tom. But he was glad. He started walking up the street, to where Fairfax became a little better area. It would make it easier to hail a cab. Once he caught a cab, he would call Lung.