Iron Night (24 page)

“Avoiding stupid actions,” I assured him. “Lilah is going to poke around for us, see if she can learn anything. We'll keep you updated.”

Matt nodded, then collected his folders, piling them up haphazardly. Suze reached into her pocket and withdrew his car keys, pushing them across the table.

“Are you good to drive?” I asked him, nervous.

“Doctor cleared me,” he said, then dropped one hand to give my shoulder a light, reassuring squeeze. “I'll run home and get in a few hours of sleep. You should probably do the same.” He eyed Suze wryly, and she gave him her very best lasciviously self-satisfied grin and rubbed her foot deliberately up my leg to make me jump. Matt shook his head and left, muttering under his breath about so-called non-girlfriends.

When the door shut behind him I did my best to grab Suze's foot, intending a tickling in retribution, but she jerked it out of my reach. “Having fun?” I asked her sarcastically.

“Loads,” she said smugly.

“Funny.” I dropped the game and asked her point-blank, “So, what's your problem with your sister's boyfriend?”

“I'm incredibly racist, Fort,” she deadpanned.

I was irritated and didn't try to hide it. “Just say you don't want to tell me.”

She lifted an eyebrow at my tone. “I'll talk about my sister if you want to have a chat with me about Matt.” I looked away sharply and she nodded. “Whatever this cult story was that you told him, you know that all you did was stall him.”

“No, this one could really work. He believes me,” I insisted.

“And
when
that changes?”

“I'll keep him safe,” I said, glaring at her, my voice a warning to drop the subject. She opened her mouth to respond, then reconsidered. Snapping her lips closed, she toyed with the edge of her placemat. When she didn't say anything, I relaxed a little, then asked, “So, what did you really find in Matt's files?”

She was still miffed and didn't bother to hide it, but she let me change the subject. “For one, he did get the autopsy.” She pulled open a small notebook where she'd apparently been copying things from Matt's files and referred to a page. “Turns out that Gage's wrists, tongue, and genitals were all removed while he was still alive. Coroner was able to tell that the killer used a kind of surgical tool that cauterizes as it cuts, which is how Gage lived through it. What killed him was the cut on his throat. It wasn't a big cut, though; it probably took him at least twenty minutes to die. They also found ligature marks on Gage's ankles, and they think that Gage was tied upside down when he bled out.”

I closed my eyes and shuddered. I'd known that Gage's death hadn't been easy, but I was cowardly enough that I hadn't wanted to know the details. “Christ.”

“I also found a name.” Suze flipped a page, then pushed the notebook in front of me. I looked down and recognized the list of the four victims that I'd bought from Jacoby.

“I got that this morning.”

“Yeah, but I didn't look at it before you turned it over. Your buddy was a busy boy when he wasn't following us today. Franklin Litchfield died in a car wreck in June. It was a bad wreck, and there was a fire as well. Between the crash and the fire, no one really thought much of a few missing parts when they pulled out the corpse.”

“So that's how they disposed of the body. But what about the name?”

Suze lifted up her placemat, which had been concealing a Hello Kitty file folder. “The kitsune keep an eye on our neighbors, probably a closer eye than the Scotts do right now.” She opened the file, pulled out a stapled article, and handed it to me.

I skimmed the first paragraph, stopping when I recognized the name Dr. Lavinia Leamaro. Better known as Lulu, she'd been the first half-elf I'd ever met, introduced to me by Suzume when I'd gotten beaten up in a fight and needed to be patched up. “A Neighbor who is very familiar with medical instruments,” I said slowly, remembering the autopsy findings. “That fits.”

Suze's eyes glittered. “Keep reading.”

The article was about Dr. Lulu's incredible success rate at treating infertility. Most women who walked into her office were pregnant within a year. That part was actually a hedge for the article to avoid humans looking closer. The truth was that, thanks to a witch on her staff,
every
woman was pregnant inside a year. She had established her practice as soon as she had finished her residency, and had almost thirty years of experience helping the unwillingly childless women of Rhode Island, and those who drove in from the neighboring states of Massachusetts and Connecticut. There were some snippets of interviews with various happy parents talking about the children they'd conceived against all odds, from parents of a newborn to one mother whose son, conceived through Dr. Lulu's intervention, had just been accepted into Harvard. A son named—

“Franklin Litchfield,” I said, stunned.

Suzume nodded. “The ultimate success story. Miracle baby grows up, gets into Ivy League”—she tapped one finger on the list of victims—“dies seven months after that article is published.”

I leaned back in my chair, trying to wrap my mind around the implications. “The guys are changelings? But Gage—”

“No, I would've smelled it. He was human.” Suzume was certain.

I shook my own head, pulling myself back from my first response. “And the changelings are taken from their families around puberty. All these guys were with their families.” I pushed my hands through my hair, trying to will my brain into making sense of this. “Were all of them from Lulu's practice?”

“I don't know, but I do know a certain doctor we should have a chat with.”

I nodded grimly. “And I know a certain someone who will definitely know how to encourage Lulu to answer some questions.” I held up my cell phone, and Suzume nodded in agreement.

Prudence answered her phone on the second ring. “Ah, baby brother,” she said, sounding warmly pleased. “What is on your mind?”

“Suzume and I have a lead. Do you know Dr. Lavinia Leamaro?”

“Yes, she's a half-blood. Runs a very lucrative medical establishment.” Trust my sister to remember people based on how much money we extorted out of them in the name of tithes.

“We're going to question her tomorrow. Can you meet us at her clinic?”

“Of course. Shall we say eight in the morning? I've always found it useful to pay calls before the start of business hours. And that's a comfortable time for me.”

“That sounds fine,” I agreed. After all, she knew more about unfriendly investigation than I did, and she was old enough to avoid any exposure to the sun during its strongest hours. “See you tomorrow.”

Before I could hang up, she cut in smoothly. “Good work, little brother. I'm very much looking forward to seeing what you do with this lead.” Her statement was a conversational iceberg—superficially supportive, but with a lot going on under the surface. And with that, she hung up.

“Her being nice is creeping me the hell out,” I said to Suze as I tucked my phone back into my pocket.

Suze gave me a warning look. “Just keep on her good side.” I nodded.

There was a brief pause.

“So, a homicidal skinwalker knows my address,” I said. “Mind if I crash here?”

Suze snorted. “At this rate I'm going to have to buy you a toothbrush.”

•   •   •

Dr. Lulu's office of insta-preggo was in one of those medical plazas where an architect built one long gray rectangle and broke it up into a dozen different offices, distinguishable only by the different names written on the glass doors. Prudence was waiting for us when we arrived, and I saw her visibly wince as I pulled the Fiesta into the parking space beside her Lexus, like an automotive version of
Lady and the Tramp
.

“Your sister doesn't seem happy to see us,” Suzume noted quietly.

“About sixty percent of that expression is for my car,” I told her. At some point in my drive back from Newport the previous night, the already-present hole in the Fiesta's muffler had increased in size.

“So only forty is for you? That's so much better.” We were getting out of the car, and I had a solid respect for my sister's sharp hearing, so I just glared at Suzume.

Prudence was dressed in her best Audrey Hepburn–avoiding-the-paparazzi imitation, with a large fawn-colored wool coat partially buttoned over a black Chanel dress. Oversized sun glasses and a wide-brimmed hat blocked out the morning sun, even though it was slightly overcast. Had it been a sunny morning, I knew that she probably would've broken out her trusty parasol.

She gave me a noticeable once-over, but for once managed to restrain any comments about my jeans and flannel button-up.

“Perhaps you should wait a moment while I gain entry,” she said with a primness that indicated that my fashion choices for the day might be forgiven but would never be forgotten.

“You probably look a little closer to their usual clientele,” I agreed, and watched as Prudence tip-tapped her four-inch Louboutin heels up to the door of Dr. Lulu's reproductive endocrinology practice, which, given that they didn't open for another half hour, was probably still locked.

While my sister knocked imperiously on the glass, I looked over at Suze.

“You're being quiet,” I noted. I'd been amazed when Suzume had let that “usual clientele” comment pass without some kind of joke about Prudence's inclusion in the over-forty club that made the most use of fertility services.

“I'm being smart,” she replied seriously. I looked down, surprised, and noticed just how carefully Suze was holding herself and the way that she was eyeing my sister, as if Prudence was an angry rattlesnake. “You should be doing the same.”

Before I could respond, the little scheduling nurse I remembered from last time, a slightly anemic-looking blond woman in her thirties, had cracked open the door to talk with my sister, apparently lulled by her combination of femaleness and overt affluence. Even as she started explaining that the office wasn't open yet, Prudence was already pushing her way into the door. I scrambled quickly to catch up with her and slide in inside her wake before the startled nurse could close it, and Suze slithered in behind me.

“I have some very serious business to discuss with Dr. Leamaro,” Prudence said in a tone of voice that promised dire retribution for anyone who crossed her.

“As I was trying to explain to you, there was an emergency, and she will not be in today,” the nurse said. She probably wasn't even aware of how she was backing away from my sister like a nervous white rabbit, but some part of her had clearly recognized that she was facing a predator and latent survival instincts were clanging in her head. “I can reschedule your appointment, and you are welcome to leave a note for her, but I'm going to have to insist—”

“Insist?” Prudence asked, with enough
The
Devil Wears Prada
malevolence that the nurse made a little frightened noise and stopped talking. My sister smiled slowly. “That's much better,” she said. “Now be a love and call the doctor. Find out where she is. I know she left you a number.”

“But—”

“We're old friends,” Prudence said, dropping back into that voice that made the poor woman quake in her sensibly ergonomic footwear. “She won't mind.”

“I'm sure you are her friend,” the nurse said, her voice shaking. “But she said that her phone would be off all day. Everything will just be going to voicemail. Even if any of the women are going into labor, I'm supposed to refer them to one of the residents in the hospital. She's never done this before.”

Prudence frowned and clicked her tongue. “I'm very disappointed in you. It's never good for someone to disappoint me.”

I didn't like the expression forming on Prudence's face, and the nurse looked about ready to wet herself, so I broke in. “So Dr. Lu— Leamaro won't be in today. Is her assistant in?” Even if Dr. Lulu hadn't been a half-blood, elf magic didn't have any effect on fertility. When Suzume had investigated the practice's unnatural success rate earlier, she'd learned that the elves had hired a witch to ensure that every woman conceived. Of course, it was Lulu and her practice of semen switching that resulted in the women walking out of the office doors with the child of an Ad-hene inside them—and a whopping seven percent of those were born changelings.

The nurse looked intensely relieved to be able to answer something in the affirmative. “Oh yes, of course. Ambrose is in the back room, mixing prescriptions.”

My brain stumbled a little. We'd never been formally introduced the last time we'd encountered each other, but my memory of Lulu's witch was of a man built along the same lines as a badger, but with a beer gut and a heavily salted vocabulary. Ambrose was not exactly a name that fit him, though it did suggest highly optimistic parents. I recovered myself and nodded. “Ambrose can answer our questions today. Thank you.” I gave a small nod to Suzume. “Though my associate, Ms. Hollis, might have a few others that maybe you can help her with.”

The nurse nodded enthusiastically, relieved that I would be taking my sister anywhere other than here, to talk with anyone other than her. Compared to Prudence, who was exuding homicidal intent like pheromones, Suze seemed downright cuddly.

Suze took the woman, who looked as emotionally battered as a sparrow that had just been chased with a leaf-blower, by the arm and led her back to her desk, chattering innocuous questions that the nurse answered by rote. Something in the gleam of her dark eyes made me wonder if Suzume was using a little fox magic on the woman, but I knew that I could trust her not to hurt the nurse, which was more than I could say for my sister, who was best avoided by the easily broken when her tantrums were thwarted.

Prudence and I headed silently down the peach-colored hallway decorated with framed photos of mothers and infants to the last door, the only one that was closed. There was a hand-written sign taped to it that read
Stay the fuck out
. Remembering who we were looking for, that seemed promising, and with a small nod to Prudence, I pulled open the door and we both walked in.