NEWMAN STARTLED SO badly, he sat down hard beside Bobby. I was beside Newman before I’d thought about it, grabbing him under the arm and pulling him to his feet and moving both of us toward the door. Even though he had been damn near crying over Bobby a second before, he didn’t fight me. He wanted to save Bobby, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t scared of him. Livingston moved smoothly away from the door so that the two of us could get out. Olaf closed the door behind us, and we all watched as Bobby coughed and sputtered awake.
“You broke my nose,” Bobby said in a voice that was thick with blood and all the things that happened when someone smashed your nose into their knee repeatedly.
“You’re alive,” I said from the safety of the cage bars.
“What the hell does that mean?” Bobby asked as he lay on his side, raising his manacled hands up to touch his face. He winced and jerked his hands back from his nose.
“Do you remember anything about the fight?” I asked.
He rolled onto one elbow, but apparently having his head hanging down was bad, because he moved so his face was pointed more upward. He pushed stiffly to a sitting position, wrapping the blanket around his shoulders. If we didn’t kill him soon, we really needed to give him some clothes.
“No,” he said.
“Nothing?” I asked.
“No.”
“You said, ‘You broke my nose,’” Newman said. “Who broke it?”
“She did.”
“Who’s she?”
“Her,” Bobby said, and pointed toward me.
“If you don’t remember anything, how do you know I broke it?” I asked.
That seemed to stop him, his blue eyes blinking confused in their mask of fresh blood. “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying, Bobby,” I said.
“Wait,” Olaf said.
I hadn’t expected him to join in much, so that one word made me look up at him. He was studying Bobby. “Wait for what?”
“Let me try.”
“Be my guest.”
“Tell us exactly what you see in your mind.”
“I don’t know,” Bobby said. “It’s darkness and flashes.”
“Tell us what you see. Do not edit yourself. Just talk.”
Bobby frowned and then winced again as if even frowning hurt. “Anger. I was angry, and then I started seeing in leopard vision.”
“What the hell does that even mean, leopard vision?” Leduc said from the doorway to the offices. I think he’d delayed the ambulance call now that our suspect was awake and talking.
“My leopard eyes don’t see color the way my human eyes do. That’s usually my first clue that I’m changing.”
“What do you remember next?” Olaf asked.
Bobby drew the blanket around him as close as he could and shivered. I wasn’t sure if it was from coldness or from what he saw in his own head. “I could smell the gun, feel it against my head. It scared the animal part, but the human part wanted it.” He stared up at Olaf with confusion in his eyes. “I tried to get . . . I wanted to die for what I’d done to Uncle Ray.”
Bobby tried to wipe his hands over his face like he was going to hide, but it hurt too much, and his blanket began to slide down. He seemed very serious about the blanket staying in place. Again, it made me wonder about some kind of abuse background. He could have just been that modest, but he was a good-looking, fit man in his early thirties. I hadn’t met many of them who were this modest. If he’d just tried to keep his groin covered, maybe. But he seemed equally intent on keeping his upper body covered, which was usually more a woman’s problem unless something had happened to make the man self-conscious of his body.
“Do you remember the fight now?” Olaf asked, his deep voice as serious and calm as I’d ever heard it.
“Yes, most of it. I’ll remember all of it in a few minutes.”
I looked up at Olaf. “How did you know to question him like that?”
He met my gaze with his own, but for once the eyes were thoughtful and serious, nothing more. “Even the best of us sometimes need a few minutes to reorient ourselves when we awake.”
“Are you saying that I didn’t knock him out? He just passed out from the change?”
“No, but even a partial change can be disorienting. Add several blows to the head and even a human might have trouble remembering the last few minutes.”
Olaf was right. “Damn it, you’re right. I was so busy thinking of him as a wereleopard that I forgot that his human half could be knocked silly, too.”
“If you hadn’t been here to help us question Bobby, I might have thought he was lying about not remembering,” Newman said.
“Which would have made us doubt his whole story,” I said.
Kaitlin piped up from the doorway. “Guess he’s not just a pretty face after all.”
It startled me that she was referring to Olaf. Pretty was so not an adjective that I would ever have used for him.
“I am not a pretty face,” Olaf said. He made it a statement.
“Handsome, then,” she said.
I nodded. “If you like.”
“I like,” she said, and I realized she was flirting with him.
He seemed to realize it, too, because he scowled; frown just didn’t cover that look. He’d reacted badly to compliments from women when I’d first met him, but I knew he could flirt and pretend because I’d seen it. I wondered if the reason he didn’t bother was that Kaitlin wasn’t his victim preference. I mean type. He liked petite women with dark hair, and preferred darker eyes. Yeah, I fit his type to a T. The only thing Kaitlin fit was the petite part, so she was safe and apparently held no interest for him. He didn’t even pretend to flirt back. He ignored her. Kaitlin would probably take that as a snub, but she didn’t know how lucky she was that he wasn’t interested in her. I wondered if dyeing my hair blond would make him lose interest. I’d never dyed my hair before, but to get Olaf off my back, I’d dye it Technicolor rainbow. If I did it before the wedding, Jean-Claude would never forgive me, but afterward he might agree. Anything to move me off Olaf’s dating menu seemed like a great idea.
“Thank you, Marshal,” Bobby said.
“Marshal Jeffries,” Olaf said.
“Marshal Jeffries, thank you for helping me remember.”
“You are welcome.”
“Now that we don’t need an ambulance,” Duke said, “what next, Marshals?” Again, I got that glimpse of the good lawman I would have seen if things had been different.
“I’ve done everything I can until someone calls me back,” Newman said.
“If we have all the pictures and samples we need from Bobby, I think he needs clothes and maybe a chance to clean up,” I said.
Livingston said, “Kaitlin, have you collected everything we need?”
“Yeah. He can clean up,” she said.
Duke shook his head, pushing back through the doorway so the rest of us had to adjust farther down the hallway to give him room. “Clothes we can do, but if you mean a shower, I can’t sign off on that. It’s too big a security risk.”
“Not your call,” I said.
“It’s my jail,” he said.
“If my vote counts, it would be awesome to wash all this blood off me, though I’m not sure about my face. That may hurt in the shower.”
“Don’t put your face directly in the water,” I said, “because that will hurt.”
Bobby touched his nose gingerly. “Did you really have to break it?”
“I could have just killed you.”
“You don’t have a mark on you, so it couldn’t have been that bad,” he said.
I pulled my pants leg out enough that I could put a finger through some of the holes his claws had made.
“Jesus, did I cut you?”
“A nick here and there, nothing major.”
Bobby closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay, I remember now.”
Something unhappy passed across his face, and since his eyes were still closed, it was like watching someone have a bad dream. You always had to debate whether you should wake them and end the nightmare. Of course, when Bobby opened his eyes, the nightmare was real.
“I’ve trained for years to remember what I do in animal form, but it’s always harder when it’s a memory that makes you look bad or frightening,” he said.
“I thought the amnesia was something that shapeshifters couldn’t help,” Newman said.
“At first, but later it’s like any traumatic memory or a memory that makes you feel bad about yourself. People edit it to make themselves look better or block it if it’s too painful. Shapeshifters aren’t any different.”
“You have a disease. It doesn’t make you into a different person,” Kaitlin said.
It was weird that I could hear her, but the others had moved, so I couldn’t see her. I wondered if that was how I was in a crowd, just a voice. Since I was about three inches shorter than she was, probably. Of course, everyone else in the hallway was tall enough to see her, so maybe it was just she and I who couldn’t see each other.
Bobby looked toward her voice, but I think from the cell he couldn’t see her either. “Yes, it does, because you’re not all human anymore.”
Kaitlin pushed her way in between the men so she could see him. “Of course you are. Don’t let anyone tell you that just because you have lycanthropy—Therianthropy—that you’re not human. That’s just prejudice.”
Bobby shook his head, then winced and stopped the movement. I think more than just his nose hurt. At least he was alive, and he’d heal if we didn’t have to kill him first. The more we did to take care of him, the harder it was going to be if we did have to pull the trigger.
“It’s not just prejudice,” Bobby said. “I carry a leopard inside me, and that’s not metaphorical. That’s just true. I become that leopard once a month or more, and while I’m in that form, I am that cat, just like I’m me now. I’m not a human being in a costume. I become something else that isn’t human.” He was so reasonable, with the blood, both old and new, spread across his face and into his hair. He looked like an accident victim trying to calm down a doctor.
“But you’re still yourself,” Kaitlin said.
Bobby looked at me. “Can I have a shower and you explain it to her?”
I almost smiled but wasn’t sure if Kaitlin would take it wrong. She was trying so hard to be liberal and progressive; she meant well. “Therianthropy isn’t like other diseases. It’s not a virus that makes you sick once a month. It’s literally another being inside you.”
“They change into their beast form once a month, but in between they’re still human,” Kaitlin said.
“Yes, and no,” I said.
Olaf said, “The beast is not separate and gone in between full moons. It is always inside waiting, watching, seeking a way out.”
“Do you have pets?” I asked.
“A cat,” Kaitlin said.
“Okay. Does your cat ever try to dart through a door and get out?”
She nodded. “Sometimes.”
“And what do you do to stop it?”
“I grab her. I push her away from the door.”
“Now, think about the cat being inside you. You’re the house that it’s trying to escape from. If it gets out the door, you turn into the cat, and the cat becomes the house now, and it wants to keep you inside so it can be free.”
“That’s a good analogy,” Bobby said.
“I can’t take credit for it. It’s Micah’s. He has to explain this a lot.”
“Micah Callahan, right? The head of the Coalition,” Kaitlin said.
I nodded.
“The analogy stops too soon,” Olaf said. “If you have the force of will to truly control your beast, then you keep your human mind in both forms.”
“So you’re the cat and the house and you all at once,” Kaitlin said.
“Yeah, it’s like a supernatural version of Schrödinger’s cat,” I said.
“Sort of,” Bobby said, “but if you force your human mind on your beast all the time, then you can’t be a good cat. You can’t hunt and jump and be a leopard if you keep trying to think human.”
“You must find a balance between beast and man,” Olaf said.
“Yes. Now can I have a shower, please?”
Duke said no and the debate or negotiations or argument began. We ended with Bobby getting to shower. Livingston suggested that Duke could go home and have breakfast with his family, and that seemed to be a deciding factor. Duke called one of his deputies who was still at the crime scene to bring clothes for Bobby, and then refused to leave until after they arrived.
“This is my place. That means one of my people needs to be here.” Duke was being so reasonable that none of us argued with him.
Newman escorted Bobby into the shower and took off the cuffs, but Olaf stayed in the room with him. I’d already beaten Bobby senseless with my bare hands. If I could do it, Olaf wouldn’t have a problem handling the prisoner. Duke insisted that the door to the bathroom stay open the whole time in case Olaf yelled for help. I think everyone but Duke was aware that Olaf wouldn’t need help, but it was Duke’s jail and Newman had to live here after I flew back home. It didn’t hurt us to concede enough to keep everyone happyish.
In all the moving around, I found a quiet moment to give Newman the name of the lawyer Micah had recommended for helping Bobby. “It’s your warrant, so I can’t invite Micah and the Coalition into this, but you can.”
“Duke is going to be pissed enough if I give Bobby a phone call to a lawyer. If I invite the Coalition in, he’ll never forgive me.”
“Do you care?” I asked.
He nodded. “I want to live here with Haley for the rest of my life, so yeah, I care.”
“Do you care about that more than Bobby’s life?”
“That’s not fair, Blake.”
“It’s not, but I’m stating that I need help if Bobby goes apeshit again.”
“You’ve got backup with Jeffries.”
“If we want to kill Bobby, sure. I want help keeping him in human form, keeping him calm. Otto doesn’t know how to do that.”
“And your fiancé does?”
“Micah does, yes.”
“If it was almost anyone else, I’d think they were trying to find a reason to get their lover into town.”
“I actually don’t want any of my lovers near this case.”
In my head, I thought, I don’t want them near Olaf without Edward here. I sure as hell didn’t want Micah near him. I loved him to pieces, but he was my height, within, like, a couple of inches or less. He was in good shape and trained to fight, but so was Olaf. If skills are equal, the bigger person will win a fight unless the smaller person gets lucky. Olaf wasn’t the kind of fighter who would leave room for luck. I realized I really didn’t want Micah here with Olaf.
“That case in Washington State where I met you for the first time makes this one look safe, Blake. You invited some of your people in for that one—maybe not Micah Callahan, but still people you cared about. So what makes this one scarier? What aren’t you telling me?”
I couldn’t tell him the whole truth about Olaf, so I was left not knowing what to say. I could have lied. I was even pretty good at it now, but I wasn’t good at complicated lies, and even the truth about Olaf was complicated.
I finally settled for a half-truth. “I know how to kill the monsters, but keeping them alive is harder, Newman. More things can go wrong.”
He shook his head. “No, Blake, killing them is harder. If I can help save Bobby, then maybe it will wash away some of the blood on my hands.”
“Newman, you knew what this job was before you took it.”
“I knew the facts, but nothing prepares you for killing people, Anita, for just killing them.”
“We save future victims by killing the predators,” I said.
“That’s a great thought. I even believed it once.”
“It’s the truth, Newman.”
“Maybe, but I don’t get to see the future victims we save. All I get to see is the people I kill now.”
“When a shapeshifter tries to kill you like they did in Washington State, do you think of them as people?” I asked.
“No, that’s survival, just like hunting vampires after dark. If they turn into monsters, it’s easier to pull the trigger, but when they’re like Bobby, it feels like murder.”
“You’re too close to Bobby to be on this warrant, Newman.”
“I know, but since so many of the newer marshals have refused warrants or quit, you need a good reason to pass on a warrant.”
“Being friends with the name on the warrant is a valid reason to pass on it,” I said.
“And if I had passed, then it turns out that Jeffries was next closest. Do you really think he would have waited to figure out that Bobby had been framed?”
I answered truthfully, “No, he’d have just executed him.”
“I took the warrant because I thought it was the right thing to do. I figured if Bobby was guilty, I could make sure his death was as quick and painless as possible. If there’d been a mistake and he was innocent, I figured that if I was the marshal in charge, I could help him.”
“It was good thinking as far as it went,” I said.
“I forgot the third option, didn’t I?” he said, face so sad.
“Yeah,” I said, “you did.”
“That he could be innocent, and I’d still have to execute him.”
“Yeah, that would be what you forgot.”
“What am I going to do, Blake?”
I started to say he should sign the warrant over to me, but I didn’t want to kill Bobby either now. He was too real to me. I’d put my body in harm’s way to protect him. I’d risked my life for him. Executing him now would seem wrong, like a violation of the natural order of things. There are three types of people in this world: those you protect, those who fight with you, and those who fight against you. You killed to save those under your protection and to defend your own life and the lives of the people who fought beside you. It was simple math until the monsters became your friends and the people who were fighting beside you still wanted to kill them. Then it all went to hell.