Changeling (12 page)

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about the ‘sons’ part of Scott and Sons.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I have two brothers.”

Duh. I waited for more. He didn’t seem eager to give up information without a little prodding. “Do you get along with your brothers?”

A smile ghosted across his face. “Sometimes we get along. Jimmy is a year younger and Aaron is a year older, so we’ve been pretty close our whole lives.”

“Wow, three in a row. Your mom must have had some stamina.”

The smile fled, and I could have kicked myself.
He said his parents were dead, you idiot. From the looks of it, it’s still damned painful.
I leaned forward and squeezed his knee. “You don’t have to talk about your family if it makes you uncomfortable.”

His fiery green gaze met mine—family was definitely a
sore subject. I made a mental note to avoid it during lighthearted moments.

Headlights flashed through the windshield. I opened the door and jumped out on slightly wobbly legs. Our Sport followed a blue sedan into the parking lot and took two spaces behind our row. Pascal exited first, his nice suit somewhat wrinkled. He had a cup of drive-through coffee in one hand and his badge out in the other. Forney climbed out of the other side, as disheveled as her partner.

Tempest waved me over to the Sport.

“What?” I said when I arrived at his side. He tossed a clean uniform at me. I took the hint and got in the back, while Onyx exited from the front. I was glad to be out of Renee’s clothes and that ridiculous “Princess” sweatshirt. At least now the cops could take me somewhat seriously. I found a pen under one of the seats and used it to twist my icky hair up into a coil at the nape of my neck before I climbed back out.

“Who’s he?” Forney asked as we joined the detectives, jacking her thumb at Noah.

My lips parted to reply, but Onyx beat me to it with, “Civilian.”

Forney scowled.

Pascal shook his head, his angular face particularly harsh beneath the glow of the streetlights. “Then he stays here. I’ll vouch for you three, not for some kid I don’t know.”

Noah stiffened. “I’m not a kid.”

I flinched inwardly. Bringing Noah hadn’t been a smart move on my part. The detectives probably thought I was an idiot.

“Uh-huh.” Pascal strode across the street, suit coat flapping wide in the gentle breeze. Forney, Onyx, and Tempest followed.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“He’s right, Dahlia, I don’t belong in there. You still on for breakfast?”

“Can we make it lunch? I don’t know when I’ll get to bed tonight.”

“Lunch, then. Noon, same place.”

“I’ll be there.”

I wanted to be excited about our lunch date—my first real date in almost a year—but I couldn’t find it beneath the weight of so much uncertainty and fatigue. With a burst of waning energy, I bolted across the street and caught up with the others just as the outer door swung shut.

Stark’s skin lay
much the same way Jarvis’s had, crumpled like a pile of wet laundry. There was no blood and very little fluid of any kind. Fingernails, eyebrows, eyelashes, chest hair, all outer details were still intact. Muscle, bone, tissue, and organs were gone. No one else had shared the multiple-occupancy cell with Stark, and both cells directly across were empty.

Onyx took one look and retreated to the safety of the corridor. Pascal squatted and poked the fingers with the tip of a pen. Officer Miguel Ortega hovered nearby, a little green around the edges. Forney had remained in the front room to interview the night officers.

“No one saw a thing?” Pascal asked.

“Ramirez and Jones were on duty,” Ortega replied. “We checked on Stark twenty minutes before we found the body—er, skin—and they said he was fine. Sitting on his cot, staring into space. No one came in the front door, let alone down into holding.”

“They both still here?”

“Down the hall, front desk. What the hell does that, Detective?”

“That’s what we’re here to find out.”

“You said there was another—”

“Officer Ortega, thank you.” Pascal waved his hand, dismissing the younger man. “We’ve got it from here, but if we need you, we’ll call.”

Ortega flushed red and stalked out of the cell in a rush of warm air. I considered staying, but there was little I could glean from the small cell. It was empty, save three people and human remains. Remains that still contained every inch of leg hair and a mole on the left ankle—wait.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “He’s naked.”

Pascal nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“He was in a locked cell, Detective. Where did his clothes go?” Understanding dawned on his face, so I kept going. “All along, we’ve what? Been assuming that whoever killed Jarvis and our other guy—do we know who he is yet?”

“Still a John Doe,” Pascal said.

“Jarvis and John Doe, we’ve assumed they were skinned or gutted, and their skin left behind.” My stomach rebelled just saying it, but I tamped down the nausea. “No one was in
this cell with Stark. No one besides the officers on duty was even in the building to clean him out.”

Tempest let out a strangled sound. “Whoever killed him was already inside,” he said. “Stark brought him in with him when he was arrested.”

“What, he was possessed?” Pascal scoffed, standing. His skepticism, now that he was at his full height, seemed to fill the room. I wasn’t deterred. He was used to fighting regular bad guys who killed with knives and bullets. He was allowed to be skeptical.

“Something like that,” I said. “It could be some sort of telekinetic, at a level we’ve never seen before. Maybe the killer was finished with Stark, so it was time to go elsewhere.” The possibilities excited me almost as much as they terrified me. An incorporeal killer who inhabited bodies, sucked the life out of them, and then discarded the skin? Gross.

Pascal pursed his lips. “Why remove the clothes?”

“I don’t know.” I tapped my finger against my chin.

“They were restricting,” Onyx said. He stepped into the cell’s doorway, still seeming uneasy at the sight of the skin. He looked directly at Pascal. “Perhaps it cannot leave the skin while it is encased in clothing.”

“So where did Stark’s clothing go?” Pascal asked. He lifted the cot’s mattress—nothing. There was nowhere else to stash clothes and a pair of sneakers.

“Someone had to have carried them out, right?” Tempest said.

“Or put them on.”

Fear wormed up my spine and sent chilly fingers across the back of my neck. “Did Ortega say which officer specifically checked on him twenty minutes before they found the skin?” I asked, afraid to voice what instinct was screeching.

Tempest shook his head no.

I dashed out of the room to the sound of several shouted questions, all of which I ignored. Detective Forney leaned over the front desk, reading a report in a manila folder. Two officers sat behind the desk. A quick look at their name tags identified Ramirez and Jones. One person was missing.

“Where did Officer Ortega go?” I asked.

“He didn’t come back this way,” Forney said.

I turned and fled past three perplexed faces. Past the holding cells, I came to two doors. One said Locker Room. One said Exit. Someone was behind me. Onyx’s face started morphing into cat form. The nose flattened and darkened, and whiskers sprouted on his flat lips. He inhaled sharply, using his feline senses, then pointed at the exit.

I pushed through, noting two cut wires next to the alarm trigger. We came out in a narrow alley, less than six feet between us and the back of the next building. Strewn with trash, the length of the alley ran the entire block, with splashes of light from dozens of back doors and side alleys.

Ortega was our killer. Or was possessed by our killer. Same difference, at the moment, because we needed to find him.

Onyx loped past me to the south, completely morphed into a muscled, full-grown panther. Faster than I could run, he was soon out of sight, hanging a sharp left down an alley
leading back toward the main drag. Footsteps pounded the pavement behind me.

I hit the junction and turned, skidding in a puddle of slimy goo I didn’t analyze too hard—just caught my balance and kept going, panting, out of breath. I needed to get into a gym and work a treadmill. Onyx stood on the sidewalk, just outside the mouth of the alley. He sniffed, turned left, sniffed again. Paused.

The sheer ease with which he passed between forms amazed me. His feline body lengthened, black hair disappearing as mottled skin emerged. His face flattened, tail drew away, paws split into fingers. In seconds, he flexed his shoulders, human once more. He turned, breathing hard through his nose. His green eyes glowed unnaturally bright in the streetlight, brighter than normal. The same hurt—barely concealed annoyance—with which he’d gazed at me for the last six weeks was gone, replaced by . . . respect?

It lasted only a moment, but I bathed in its warmth for the time I was given. I had missed his calm acceptance, the friendly smiles and gentle jokes. I missed the friendship we’d shared. And in that instant, I believed we could have it again.

Tempest, Pascal, and Forney finally caught up, red-faced and flustered. Before anyone could ask, Onyx beat them to the punch line. “The scent is gone,” he said. “There is fresh oil here. Someone picked him up.”

“Ortega, you mean?” Forney said, panting.

I nodded. “He ran. He had to have taken the clothes and hidden them, and then done whatever it is this . . . thing, this . . . Skin
Walker does. He fooled all of us. I mean, I spoke to him back at the fire, we both did, Tempest.”

Forney’s eyes narrowed, and she looked up and down the street. It was deserted, those last lingering couples long gone home. We were two blocks down from the precinct. No one would have noticed a vehicle down here. She grunted and looked at Onyx. “You were chasing his scent?”

“Yes, his cologne and the burrito he had for dinner. It gave him gas.”

I scrunched my nose.

“Did you notice anything else?” Pascal asked. “Anything odd? Or even familiar?”

“No.” Onyx shifted his eyes, turning them into catlike slits. “I can try again, perhaps search for a scent shared by Ortega and the body.”

I bit the inside of my lip to keep from screaming in frustration. Ortega was missing, potentially possessed by a killer—what had I called it earlier? Oh, yeah—Skin Walker. Arnold Stark, the man who shot Trance while trying to kill me was, likewise, dead and all skin. And we still hadn’t heard news on her surgery.

Glaring at the Closed sign on the café across the street, I followed the quartet back to the precinct. I wanted coffee. It promised to be a long damned night.

Ten

News

J
ust when the constant motion of the car had rocked me into a blissful sleep, it stopped. I jerked awake and almost fell off the seat. I didn’t remember lying down, but I must have, because it took a conscious effort to haul my aching body back into a sitting position. It was after one in the morning and—chemical poisoning aside—way past my usual bedtime.

Ethan twisted around from the front passenger seat, started to say something, and stopped. He frowned. “Dal, you okay? You look really pale.”

“Long day,” I said. I could still smell smoke in my hair. A shower would be a blessing. “Where are—?” I recognized the hospital parking lot.

We used a side entrance and bypassed the reporters still hanging around hoping for a scoop—or at least an update on the condition of the wounded Meta. Their constant presence infuriated me. They were not there because they cared if she lived or died. They didn’t know her or want to know her. They wanted their story. It was that simple. Murder
played better than survival, so it was easy to guess their desired result.

I just wanted my mentor back.

The same uniformed officer still guarded the elevator, sleepier since the last time. He nodded as we passed. The waiting room door was ajar and low voices drifted out. Marco reached for it at the same time as Ethan’s com beeped. The door swung open, revealing Gage with his own com out, placing the call. He put it down when he saw us, eyebrows arching in surprise.

“Hey, you’re back,” he said.

Ethan snorted. “Did your supersight tell you that?”

“Why were you calling?” I asked, ignoring the sarcastic remark.

Gage didn’t, though. He took a moment to glare at Ethan, and then acknowledged my question. “The surgeon came by a minute ago. Teresa is out of surgery. He said she’s doing well, and they’ll know more after she’s rested awhile. We can see her when she’s out of recovery.”

A hand of joy squeezed my heart, threatening to burst it. Impulsively, I wrapped my arms around Gage’s shoulders and hugged. He surprised me by returning the embrace, hard and fierce. His body practically vibrated with tension, shoulders knotted, heart thrumming. He began to shake and inhaled a shuddering breath. And another. I blinked, then held him tighter.

He was crying. Actually crying. Releasing the pent-up frustration and consuming relief of knowing the hard part was over and recovery was just around the bend. That everything
would be okay. I held him, letting him cry silently on my shoulder. Ethan and Marco left us alone, and after a while, I realized they were the only other people in the room.

Renee was missing.

She returned to
the waiting room halfway through our story, right around the part that made me look pretty smart for figuring out Ortega was the new host. Renee slipped through the door, eyes on the floor, straw-blond hair falling in a loose curtain across her pale blue face. Only Marco raised his head to acknowledge her arrival; I just kept talking.

“He had a head start, though, and we lost him,” I said. “Marco said his scent trail stopped back on the street, so he must have gotten into a car and driven off.”

Gage inhaled, held it, and then blew the air out through his nose. He scrubbed both hands over his face, through his hair. “Okay, so now we’ve got three victims. Jarvis was first, then our John Doe, and now Stark.”

“Jarvis is still our first link,” Ethan said. “Which is keeping Weatherfield near the top of my suspects list, evidence or not.”