34 
SOMEBODY’S BEEN PEEING IN MY BED
So, you need my help with a computer problem.” Carl had a laptop open on the small table in his breakfast nook, but he was turned away from it. He seemed to find it amusing that I had come to him with a technological problem after the crap I’d been giving him about his social media addictions. I was leaning against his kitchen island, surrounded by red coffee mugs and a wide variety of cooking utensils that dangled from the ceiling.
“You think I contradict myself?” I slightly paraphrased. “Very well, I contradict myself.”
Carl stared at me blankly, apparently not a Whitman fan. Well, neither was I, actually.
“I am large,” I said. “I contain multitudes.”
“Good for you,” Carl told me. “What do you want?”
Fine. “This Greg Apraxin guy uses a laptop at coffee shops and libraries and community colleges,” I said. “I need to know if you can hack into his computer remotely. I have all kinds of product numbers off his laptop and website addresses and a list of some of the wireless servers he’s used and the times he used them and numbers from a debit card and one of his credit cards.”
Carl began to take me seriously. “You do?”
“John here is a jerk of all trades,” Paul called from Carl’s den. His six-foot-two frame was half in and half over an armchair while he watched a golf game on ESPN. You don’t often see a werewolf with gray hair—the hearts of most people over forty can’t take the stress of the first change—but Paul had been a fit fifty when he was bitten by a werewolf. I’m pretty sure Paul’s job was to kill me on command, but other than that, we got along well. He liked to read about history and spar. Having grown up in Virginia Beach, he also thought tossing a Frisbee around was the perfect form of meditation, and I could see his point.
“He picks pockets,” Paul added. “So keep one hand on your wallet.”
The thick blue bathrobe Carl was wearing was open to show a T-shirt and red flannel pajama bottoms. He was sitting on a pull-out bench and drinking a beer with the steak and eggs he’d made for breakfast, which surprised me a little. “This doesn’t sound like you just want information.”
I removed a sheet of paper wrapped around a credit card from my back pocket. “If you can copy files from his computer without his knowing it, that would be gravy, but mostly I want you to order this item from a store in Poughkeepsie using this stolen credit card. There’s a PO box that I want it sent to on there too.”
Carl unfolded the paper gingerly and examined the card. “Why not just use this Greg person’s credit card if you’ve got the numbers and you’re trying to frame him?”
“Because Apraxin wouldn’t,” I said. “If I make it too easy, the knights will never bite.”
Carl carefully unfolded the paper and looked at it. “What is this thing I’m supposed to order?”
“It’s a kind of Etruscan crucible,” I said. “Trust me, it will send up some flags. Can you do this or not?”
“Bhoot-nee ka! How far have you fallen, John Charming?!?”
No one moved. The voice had come from Carl’s laptop.
“Parth?” I asked cautiously.
A window suddenly enlarged and engulfed Carl’s laptop screen. It was in fact Parth, one of the immortal serpent beings called naga from Hindu mythology who can assume human form. Parth had used his however many untold centuries to evolve into a software mogul. He had also somehow become a friend of Sig’s in the process. “Hello, John. Are you seriously going to entrust a task of this magnitude to this infant?”
“Not anymore,” I admitted, doing my best to pull off the unflappable thing. “How long have you been monitoring Carl?”
I only saw half of the dismissive wave on Carl’s computer screen. “A year, give or take a month.”
Carl smelled scared. Well, he should. He’d been lecturing me on how paranoid I was about technology since I got here, and he installed firewalls for a lot of the local clan members. Still, I wasn’t going to tear into Carl in front of an outsider, so I just gestured for him to move. He did so hurriedly. Paul had come around the kitchen island by this point and looked as if he wanted to draw his gun and shoot the laptop.
I sat down at the bench. “A year? I haven’t been in the Clan that long.”
“Not everything is about you, John,” Parth said smugly. “I like to stay informed. You know that.”
I showed him what would have been my fangs if I’d been a wolf. “Yes, I do know that. Are you offering to help me, Parth?”
“Carl, make me some more coffee.” Not all slaps to the face are physical. “Why should I trust you, Parth? The first time we met, you attacked me and wanted me to be your science experiment.”
“Are you still obsessing over that?” Parth acted astonished, and maybe he was. He was extremely intelligent, but life wasn’t something that Parth took personally.
“I hold grudges,” I admitted. “Why should I trust you, Parth?”
“That’s complicated.” Parth wasn’t in his house in Clayburg, Virginia. He was outside and somewhere sunny. “I do enjoy talking to you, John, but that conversation could take some time.”
“Highlight it for me,” I suggested.
Parth sighed. “I think what the knights are doing in regards to the werewolves is wrong. They are not respecting your true nature. I trust your geas and your own true nature will keep you from taking life unnecessarily. And Sig cares for you, and I am in her debt, as you well know.”
Sig cared for me.
“You are,” I agreed, my throat unexpectedly tight. Parth had violated the rules of hospitality when he attacked me, and Sig was the one he had been obligated to.
“We can’t work with this guy,” Paul objected. I understood the impulse. He couldn’t smell Parth, didn’t know Parth, and was trained to maintain operational security.
“There’s no point trying to keep Parth out of our business. He’s already up in it, so deal with that reality,” I told Paul. “And the main thing here is passing along information to the knights, which Parth will do one way or the other. The only real question is whether or not he’ll limit that information. Even if he doesn’t, the knights’ geas will compel them to go after the Apraxins no matter what we do.”
Paul was still thinking that through when I unfolded the paper and held up the credit card and ordering information to the laptop’s cam.
“Why aren’t you just handling this yourself?” Parth asked casually while he scanned the material. “Why involve the knights at all?”
Because part of my job was to get rid of the knights in Abalmar. Two birds. One bullet. But there was no need to spell that out.
“The house has some serious magical protections,” I said. “The knights won’t be affected by them. My people would be.”
“Your people?” It wasn’t a question so much as a comment, and I let it pass. Parth added: “Interesting. Since Greg Apraxin is still alive, can I assume he’s not working alone?”
“It’s a big house,” I said. “And there are a lot of people staying there.”
Parth laughed darkly. He was kind of scary for a professed pacifist. “I see. You want the knights to draw fire.”
“Something like that,” I said. “Will you help lay out some bread crumbs for the knights to follow?”
“I already am,” he said absently. “Would you like me to copy and send you Greg Apraxin’s e-mails or would you like me translate them first? They’re in Russian.”
“You might as well send them now,” I said. “Since you’re in Carl’s computer anyhow.”
We sat there in silence for a minute while Parth continued to work his own brand of magic.
I had to ask. Maybe I sounded casual. “So, how is everyone?”
“Choo is in contact with his ex-wife again. I don’t know if that is good or bad.” Parth still sounded preoccupied. “Molly is fasting for some reason, and I don’t know if that is good or bad, either. Cahill has become a dhampir.”
Cahill was a half-human, half-vampire? “How is he handling that?”
“He has left his wife and his job and moved to New York.”
Parth stopped there. The smug bastard was enjoying this.
“And Sig?” I asked after a noticeable hesitation.
“She is upset,” Parth said nonchalantly.
I was going to kill him. No, I’d skin him first, make boots out of his hide, put my foot up his peeled ass while wearing those boots, and then kill him. Very conscious of the two clan members listening in, I asked, “Why?”
“She developed feelings for Cahill.”
I didn’t say anything. Sig and I were over, and there wasn’t even an “it” to be over. A few kisses. Some lust smells and some common ground. Shared danger. Together for a few weeks, separated for months. Sig had told me she didn’t want to be with me.
“Can you still hear me, John?” Parth asked blandly. “I didn’t expect you to be so apathetic.”
I was plenty pathetic, thanks.
“You seem to be under the impression that I’m a safe person to mess with.” My voice was shaved ice. “I’m trying to figure out how you got that idea.”
Parth relented. “Sig is upset because she’s the one who made Cahill leave.”
“What?” Even while I said it, I knew I was being slow. Sig was a weak spot. She made me do things I knew were stupid. She made it hard for me to concentrate. Made me act like someone other than I was, or made me act like someone other than the person I was pretending to be. I still didn’t have a handle on that one.
Well, maybe she didn’t make me, but I did that stuff anyway.
“Cahill is a newly turned dhampir,” Parth reminded me patiently. “He has powerful hypnotic capabilities. And he’s been in love with Sig for a long time.”
Now my fists were clenching for an entirely different reason. Something went through me. I won’t call it fury, because it went deeper than that. I won’t call it a bolt, because it hung around.
“When Sig realized that she was suddenly in love with Ted, she broke his neck.” It was as if Parth were talking about seeing someone at the grocery store. “And the feelings suddenly went away. Of course, dhampirs heal fast, but Sig told him that if he didn’t leave Clayburg, she was going to end him no matter how she felt about it. He believed her too. That is what really hurt him, I think.”
My soul unclenched. “He tried to trance her.”
“I don’t know if he tried or not,” Parth admitted. “He swore he did it without knowing he was doing it, and he was newly turned. On the other hand, Ted always was a bit of a shit about women.”
Yes, he was. “But Sig’s feelings suddenly stopped when he left?”
“Well, not all of them. Ted was her friend,” Parth reminded me. “That’s why she’s upset. And it wasn’t exactly good timing.”
“Her friend. What he tried was rape.” There was something in my expression, or maybe something missing in my expression, that made Parth stop playing around.
“It really might have been an accident,” he said quietly. “And Sig handled it.”
I was still processing that when Parth asked, “Would you like me to pass a message on to her?”
Yeah, her and the whole clan, while I was at it. There wasn’t any doubt where Paul’s loyalty lay, even if mine was torn. I was still having trouble letting Sig—or my fantasy of her—go, but I wasn’t free and had no prospect of being free in any foreseeable future. Having my paw die in the forest reserve had changed things. My paw’s death… Mayte’s death… had opened up a lot of the old wounds and feelings of guilt that Sig had helped me start to deal with. Their deaths really weren’t my fault in this case, probably, but I was used to feeling that way.
The knights were only bound to leave Sig alone as long as she wasn’t acting against their interests. And even if none of that were true, I had other people whose lives were depending on me being focused, competent, and logical now. All of the things Sig made me forget how to be.
And she was better off without me.
Or maybe I was just tired of hurting every time I thought about her.
“No,” I said.