I was not a big fan of being awake at six in the morning, especially during the winter months when the sun wasn’t even up yet, but it was the unfortunate downside in a temporary career option that revolved around the bladder control of canines. At least today the coffeepot was already going. Still dressed in my usual winter pajamas of a set of old sweatpants and a long-sleeved shirt, I propelled my zombielike self into the main room, where an already-dressed but still-rumpled-looking Jaison was pouring out the first coffee of the day. We exchanged the traditional pre-caffeine greeting of manly grumbles and commenced slurping.
Dan was parked on the sofa, feverishly flipping through a set of his flash cards, muttering things under his breath about alter ego liability and undercapitalization. Jaison and I shared a look of perfect understanding—no salary was worth that. The stressed-out ghoul broke off his prepping for a minute. “Fort, the dish-soap bottle has eyes. Is your girlfriend behind that?”
I shuffled over and checked beneath the sink. Sure enough, the Dawn container now had a jaunty pair of googly eyes. “She’s still not my girlfriend, Dan.”
“Whatever the hell she is, she’d better remember that whatever kind of grand finale she’s working up to had better not involve defiling common property.”
Silently, Jaison turned the handle of the coffeepot so that I could properly admire the eyes that were now affixed to it. By wordless agreement, neither of us mentioned it to Dan. I also decided that the addition I’d noticed on the ice cube trays the previous night could wait for a more opportune time.
* * *
The early morning passed in a quick series of doggy pee breaks. There weren’t that many of them—most dog owners, no matter how busy their work schedules, were able to run their dogs out for a fast poop before they had to head out for the day. But there were a few people who worked third shift and wouldn’t be home until almost noon, and one or two families had clearly gotten the dog as some sort of prop for their kid’s childhood and now attempted to farm out every inconvenient facet of the dog’s existence. Hank’s dog-walking kingdom was based on the very marketable importance of reliability—his clients might not always know who was going to be walking their dog, but they knew that someone would be showing up, and in a timely enough fashion that they wouldn’t be coming home to find a puddle of urine in the middle of their carpet. To make that possible, Hank required all of his clients to hang a combination-based keyholder on their doors, the same way that real estate agencies did. Hank changed all of the combinations himself every month, to cut down on theft concerns. Each walker was e-mailed their walking schedule, addresses, and the combination keys the night before their route started, and in all the houses where I’d shown up to collect a dog for Hank, I’d never been given the wrong combination code.
Once the morning sanitary checks were completed without a problem (though Venus, the elderly French bulldog, managed to take twenty minutes to locate her ideal spot before solemnly defecating on the front steps of a synagogue, while the very unamused rabbi watched to make certain that I collected every single particle of poop), I moved on to the exercise runs. For most of the dogs, a half-hour jog at a good pace was enough to ensure that they were left panting and happily mellowed out. Others, like Hercule, the Great Pyrenees, or Mogsy, the Rhodesian Ridgeback, ended up with a full hour. At two o’clock, my schedule temporarily shifted back to poop maintenance, giving several desperately grateful dogs a well-needed bathroom break to tide them over until their owners got home in the evening, but everything ran mostly on track, with the only hiccup being when Pip, the long-haired dachshund, attempted to attack, for no discernible reason, a mailbox. He ended up settling for peeing on it, but looked balefully over his shoulder several times as we departed. Whatever issues lay between Pip and the mailbox, they were clearly far from over.
Despite the ignominy of scooping up dog feces and having my crotch ritualistically sniffed by fifteen different snouts, I enjoyed the work. Jogging around the College Hill area of Providence, even during November, was far less soul-crushing than any retail job I’d ever held, and the dogs were always happy to see me, which made them a cut above most of my former coworkers. Plus, spending the majority of the day jogging was good enough exercise that I didn’t have to maintain a gym membership. While there were the occasional moments of watching a dog urinate and pondering the usefulness of my Ivy League degree and periodic spots of weirdness like the day Ella (apparently an inveterate trash eater) pooped out two elastic bands, some chicken bones, and a condom, I’d so far been very happy at how the job was working out.
I was on my last assignment of the day, jogging a matched set of brick red Pharaoh Hounds named Fawkes and Codex, when my phone rang. I checked the caller ID, then slowed down to answer when I saw that it was Loren Noka. The dogs whined pitifully, hauling against the leashes and looking back at me with wide eyes that begged me to ruuuuuun, but I ignored them and listened to Ms. Noka’s clipped delivery.
“I just got a call on the emergency line. The karhu of the metsän kunigas has been murdered. His niece discovered the body in his house, and they have requested an investigation.”
I was turning the dogs around before Loren Noka was halfway through. “Text me the details, please,” I said quickly, then disconnected as soon as we had exchanged good-byes. I tapped Suze’s number in and was relieved when she picked up on the second ring.
Halfway through whatever clever joke she was saying as a greeting, I broke in with, “The head bear was just found murdered. Chivalry’s still on bereavement, so this is all on me.”
One of the things that a lot of people didn’t realize about Suzume (probably because they had already fled in the other direction) was that when things got serious, she didn’t play around. Without a pause, she immediately dropped all the fun joking and said, “I’m working downtown today. Pick me up.” Then she rattled off the address and hung up. I shoved my phone back in my jacket pocket and pulled on the dogs’ leashes—Fawkes and Codex, sensing that their precious run was going to be cut short, were doing their best to tug me in the direction that lay away from home—and once I had snouts facing correctly, I broke into a full sprint.
While I dodged around pedestrians and avoided being run over at cross streets, my brain scrambled to get a handle on the hot mess that I’d just been deputized to deal with. Reported murders were very rare in the territory—in the months that I’d been officially a part of my family’s policing structure, I’d dealt with a few complaints and some minor disputes. Most things had been like my visit to the rusalka—fairly easy to look into and resolve. The most serious call to the emergency line that I’d been aware of was when I was still doing ride-alongs with Chivalry over the summer, and a member of the territory had tipped us off that some kobolds had gone from eating stray animals to snatching people’s pets.
Murder was much different, and this one was serious. I’d done my best to learn about all the major species that my mother ruled over, but I still hadn’t met a lot of them. Unfortunately that included the metsän kunigas, and I tried to go over what I knew about them in my head as I returned two very disappointed dogs to their home and headed directly to my car.
The metsän kunigas were bears. Or, rather, they were humans who could turn into bears. Unlike the kitsune or the Ad-hene, which had specific and very localized points of species origin (Japan and Ireland, respectively), werebears, like both of their natural cousins, had developed in a lot of different places. The two communities (the larger in Providence, and a smaller one in Maine) that were in my mother’s territory were Finnish immigrants who had come over in the early eighteen hundreds, but apparently there was also a variety of werebear that was indigenous to the United States, and lived in a few areas out West. They used different terminology, but the logistics were essentially the same. The Providence group typically didn’t cause trouble for the vampires, operating within the rules that had been negotiated when they settled, and they delivered very healthy tithes, since the ruling family operated a thriving local insurance company that employed many members of the group. Their leader was called the karhu, and basically served as the group’s monarch for life. The current karhu had been, until a few minutes ago, Matias Kivela. That, unfortunately, capped off most of what I knew about them.
One thing that Chivalry had been very clear on was that they universally hated the term werebear. Naturally, that was the first word out of Suzume’s mouth as she hopped into my car.
“You smell worse than the werebears, Fort. Did you really have to let every single dog mark you?”
I’d pulled the car away from the curb the moment she pulled her door shut, and was already merging into the brewing excitement of Providence traffic at four thirty on a Tuesday. We were both dressed in work clothes—my apparently dog-funked jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt now decorated with a few sweaty spots thanks to my active day, and a zip-up gray hoodie with bleach stains. In contrast, Suzume was poured into a knee-length black pencil skirt, a dark green silk blouse, heels, and a black wool coat. We were definitely about to present an aesthetically mixed picture, but I was hoping that punctuality would be valued over presentation.
“I’m pretty sure that metsän kunigas is the preferred term, Suze. How would you feel if people called you a fox?”
“I would praise them on their accurate assessment of my place on the hotness-slash-awesomeness scale.”
“And if they called you a werefox?”
“I would make them eat their own kidneys.”
“Consider my point made.” I turned onto Route 123 and glanced at Suze, who was glaring at me, the gears in her brain clearly working.
“You don’t understand,” she complained at last. “I’m a fox that turns into a human, which is awesome. They are humans who turn into bears, which is lame. It’s completely different.”
“I’m sure that the nuances of that are really important,” I said soothingly, then did my best to shift the conversation.
The town of Lincoln, where most of the metsän kunigas lived, had a number of nice things going for it. It was a mere twelve miles from the heart of Providence, Money magazine had named it the sixty-third Best Place to Live, and it contained the Lincoln Woods State Park, which covered 627 acres of protected forest. Route 123 curved right along the edge of the state park, which was where a number of the metsän kunigas, including their dead leader, had bought property and built their homes.
The house was a tidy little beige 1920s bungalow with a tall wooden privacy fence that hid all views of the backyard from anyone driving down the street. There were at least five cars wedged into the driveway, and more parked on the lawn. I pulled the Fiesta up to the curb, and we both got out.
“Someone’s watching us,” I said quietly as we started up the front walkway. I could see the blinds in the front windows twitching.
“A whole lot of people are watching us,” Suze corrected.
The door opened the moment my foot hit the steps. The man in his late thirties who opened it filled the doorway—he had one of those solid, square builds that can hide a lot of potpie dinners, but his was solid muscle, with no trace of fat. His dark hair was cut short, and the rich natural brown of his face suggested that one of the immigrant Finns had found love south of the border. He was scowling, and the expression brought to my mind so many bad grumpy bear jokes that my hand shot out without conscious thought to give Suze’s wrist a cautionary squeeze. Her quiet little “Hrmph” confirmed my instinct.
“So Chivalry Scott actually sent baby brother rather than stirring himself.” Even though he was half a head shorter than I was, the man at the door was capable of a very impressive rumbling bass.
“You asked for vampire help, and that’s what just arrived,” I said, feeling my temper spike. It’s not that I wasn’t used to being referred to as the baby of the family, but most people at least tried to phrase it more politely. And after a month of my handling my brother’s workload, fewer of the territory inhabitants were surprised to see me. “If you want the Scotts involved, then that means that you’re dealing with me.”
The man was suddenly and effectively hip-checked to the side by a woman whose age and facial features matched his too well to be anything other than a close sibling. Her chin-length haircut might’ve suggested Busy Professional Mother, but her expression clearly read Irritated Big Sister.
“Calm down, Gil.” Her dark eyes were carefully shuttered and her face scrubbed clean of expression when she looked at me. As she nudged her brother out of the doorway, she gestured for both of us to come in. “I’m sorry, we’re just a little surprised. We knew that Chivalry probably wouldn’t be able to come, so we were expecting Prudence,” she explained as we stepped inside and she closed the door behind us. Inside, the bungalow’s old floors gleamed with wood polish, and the decorating scheme seemed to revolve around the repeated theme of beige and beige—from what I could see of it. People packed the front hallway and spilled over into the adjoining dining room, all of them completely quiet and staring unabashedly at us.
Our apparent hostess offered me a handshake as professional as the navy blue pants suit she was wearing. “We haven’t met before. I’m Dahlia, and this is my brother, Gil. The karhu was our uncle.”
I returned the handshake. “I’m Fortitude Scott.”
Suze caught her hand next. “Suzume Hollis.”
Surprise flickered across Dahlia’s face, the first emotion I’d seen from her. “Oh, I already called the kitsune.”
“I’m not part of the cleanup crew,” Suze said, giving a quick smile that flashed all her white teeth and didn’t suggest anything friendly. “I’m with the vampire.”
“Why don’t you fill us in with what you know,” I suggested.
“Of course,” Dahlia agreed immediately, her expression quickly shuttering again. “Please, follow me.”
We were led into the living room, where the beige decor had received a splash of color, literally. The karhu had been a tall man in his sixties, still trim and fit, but whose blond hair was streaked with gray. Unlike his niece and nephew, he would’ve looked perfectly at home on the Finnish ski team—except for his ravaged chest and the large pool of dried blood that he was lying in.
I looked down, feeling very much out of my depth. I’d seen bodies before, and I’d hunted for murderers, but most of it had been on my own time, with my family looking at my actions practically as teenage rebellion. Now I was standing next to a corpse with at least twenty of the metsän kunigas watching to see what I would do. Worse, they were right to, since I was very suddenly in charge.
“How about I check the body while you get the background,” Suzume suggested beside me. I realized that she’d picked up on my discomfort and stepped in to cover for me. Gratitude filled me, and steadied me at the same time, allowing me to summon an inner Joe Friday as I looked at Dahlia and, in my best “Just the facts, ma’am” voice, ask, “What can you tell me?”
Her brother still a scowling mass beside her, Dahlia began, “He was alive last night when Carmen left the house—”
“Carmen?” I asked.
“His daughter,” Gil said roughly, his tone and face clearly stating that this was something I should’ve known already.
“Carmen is twenty-one,” said Dahlia, her cool voice cutting in. “She’s in the kitchen, but she’s having a hard time with this. If we can leave her alone for a few minutes, that might be best.”
“Her father was just murdered,” I conceded. “I can talk with her after you and I finish.”
Dahlia nodded. “She says that she left around nine last night to go to a party. She spent the night with a boy she met there, so she never came home. When she woke up, she had to go straight to work, so Uncle Matias would’ve been alone all night.” There was just the slightest waver in Dahlia’s eyes as she glanced away from me for the first time in the discussion. Her eyes went over at where her uncle’s body lay in a pool of blood and, from the smell that even open windows in November couldn’t completely disperse, waste. I wondered what this very contained woman was thinking, but then she controlled even that tiny deviation and looked back to me. “Uncle Matias didn’t come to work this morning.”
“The family owns an insurance business,” Gil said. “Most of us work at it.”
“I did know that, but thank you,” I said as politely as possible.
“Oh, I should’ve guessed,” Gil replied. “The business generates tithes, so that would be important to know. Not like whether or not my uncle had a daughter.”
I reminded myself that Gil’s uncle was lying dead five feet from us at the foot of his La-Z-Boy, and that misplaced anger and its corollary, misplaced dickishness, were a noted part of the grieving process. I therefore ignored Gil’s comment completely and continued looking at Dahlia, who elbowed her brother in the stomach with enough force to make him grunt slightly and take the cue to shut up.
“I assumed at first that Uncle Matias might not be feeling well,” Dahlia continued, “but he didn’t call, and when I tried getting through to him, there was no answer on either the house phone or his cell.”
“Was that unusual?” I wished that I had a pad of paper to take notes. It would’ve given me something official-looking to do. Beside the body, Suze had finished looking over the wounds on the front, and she now rolled it over with a soft thump that all of us pretended not to have heard.
“For him not to pick up the cell, not really. None of us carry cell phones when we’re roaming in our other forms. But it was strange for him not to let me know that he wouldn’t be coming into work. He’d had appointments and calls scheduled, which I had to cover. So when I left the office to go home, I swung by the house. I have a key, and I let myself in. That was when I found him, and I called everyone in.”
“It was just you?” I asked. Suzume was now giving the dead karhu a thorough sniffing—and since she was remaining in human form, that meant getting pretty close to the body. Fortunately no one seemed to be bothered by that—a benefit of dealing with people who spent a good amount of their time in natural fur coats.
“Yes,” Dahlia confirmed. “Gil was in the field all day, looking into a flooded-basement claim. My mother was watching my daughters, and I knew they were planning on spending the day in the woods, so I didn’t even try calling them.”
Suze rejoined us, her sniffing apparently concluded. Her clothing was now looking much worse for wear after crawling around the body—but since she didn’t seem to even notice the bloodstains now decorating the bottom of her skirt and her panty hose, I assumed that she had a plan for dealing with it. Since she was giving her hands a brisk wiping on her skirt, I wondered if that plan was dry cleaning or a Dumpster. “Too bad you didn’t stay on your own. I don’t smell anything on the body but bear, but since you’ve had half the metsän kunigas in the state kicking their heels in here, that’s not surprising. When the cleanup crew you hired gets here, we’ll give it a more thorough going-over, but did you notice anything when it was just you?”
Dahlia shook her head, her brown eyes giving nothing away. “Whoever did it was long gone. I couldn’t smell anyone who shouldn’t have been here. I just started making calls.”
Gil cut in again—and unlike Dahlia’s poker face, it was clear that Gil was angry at even the implication that his sister should’ve handled the body discovery differently. “Uncle Matias was in his sixties, but he was strong. What killed him could’ve killed Dahlia, so she was right to call the rest of us.” He pointed at the small but visible blood droplets that led from the body to the sliding glass door that led to the backyard. “When I got here, the two of us followed the blood trail. It goes to the deck, but ends in the outdoor shower. There are some containers out there with spare clothes—sweatpants, big T-shirts, just enough to cover anyone who wanted to walk over wearing their fur. Carmen looked through it, and she doesn’t think that anything is missing.”
“The killer would’ve needed a shower,” Suze agreed. “The karhu has a lot of stab wounds in his chest, and judging by what I’m looking at, it wasn’t much of a fight. The main blood pool is all in that one spot, with no drag marks. Everything beyond that is either spatter or what dripped off the killer on its way out the back door. Have you called in the ghouls?”
“I did. They’ll send the hearse after the kitsune shroud the scene and the police are dealt with.” Compared with her brother’s impression of a simmering pot, Dahlia was an icicle.
“They’ll do an autopsy for us, then, and see what they can pick up.” Suze’s tone was bland, but I could see her eyeing Gil, and specifically the vein currently throbbing in his forehead, as she waited for the outburst.
She didn’t have long to wait. “Well, we all know what caused this!” Gil bellowed, making my ears ring. “Something that could’ve caught my uncle by surprise and killed him before he could shift forms? Something that could hide their scent even from a kitsune? Something that would want to kill Matias? This is obviously the Ad-hene!”
A low murmur went through the general crowd, and I got the impression that Gil’s suspicion was a popular one, and that only my mother’s rules were preventing this group from heading over to the Underhill entrance with some torches and farm implements. I’d seen enough of the elves at work recently not to find that a very concerning prospect, but so far, nothing about this looked like the bodies I’d seen them leave behind before. “Why would the Ad-hene want your uncle dead?” I asked.
“Maybe they’re tired of their usual prey. We share the Lincoln Woods with them, and my sister and I have both seen what they do to the deer that they hunt. They’re dangerous, and now that they aren’t allowed to slaughter their own children anymore, who knows what they’ll be up to next? Maybe they thought Matias would be interesting prey. Or worse, what if the next Ad-hene population pipe dream involves metsän kunigas blood? How long before the Scotts bother to look into it, since according to our treaty, we can’t even ask them ourselves?”
Gil was definitely not a member of the Scott family fan club, that was for sure. I pushed him. “My mother just punished the Ad-hene for breaking our rules. Do you think they’d defy her again in less than a month?”
“There’s no reasoning with madmen,” Gil countered. “And they didn’t start breaking those rules overnight. From what I heard, the murders were happening for close to a year before the Scotts bothered to look into them—and only after a corpse got dumped on your doorstep! We use those woods—my nieces play in those woods. Our karhu is dead, and to me the most obvious culprit is sitting right in Underhill.”
Through her brother’s passionate tirade, Dahlia had been noticeably silent, and I shifted my attention to her. “You’re very quiet. What do you think about this theory?”
Her eyes narrowed, flicked to her brother, and I could see her weighing the possibilities before cautiously nodding. “The Ad-hene like to kill, and they’ve broken the rules before.” She asked Suzume, “Could an Ad-hene hide his scent from you with a glamour?”
Suze’s expression was reluctant and very unhappy, so I knew her answer before she even spoke. Nothing irritated her more than having to admit that her kitsune abilities had limitations. “I’m not sure. If we were talking just about the Neighbors, I’d say no—the nose is harder to fool than the eye, and most of them can barely hold a visual glamour. But I can’t say for sure about the Ad-hene, and I don’t think anyone in my family has had enough contact with them to know either.”
A blond girl with a kind of Swiss Miss prettiness who looked just out of her teens walked up to us, the first of any of the bears to break away from the observing throng. Her face was red and blotchy from very recent crying. “Dahlia, the kitsune just arrived,” she said, her voice low.
“Good.” Dahlia looked at me. “Mr. Scott, this is Carmen, my cousin.”
So this was the dead bear’s daughter. I felt horribly awkward being introduced to her with such icy politeness when her father’s body was still sprawled in the middle of the room. “I’m sorry for your loss,” I managed, getting a small nod in return. Then the moment was broken by the entrance of the kitsune.
There were three of them, a terrifying thought in itself, and they walked in a small phalanx to us, forcing several of the bears to stumble out of their way or be trampled. In the front was the smallest, an older woman whose dark hair was heavily streaked with gray but who bore a strong resemblance to Suzume. Flanking her were two kitsune in their early twenties who bore the clear signs of more localized parentage. All three were dressed in formal business wear, but it ranged from the older woman’s sedate gray slacks-and-sweater combo to the youngest woman’s brilliant canary yellow skirt paired with a black silk blouse.
“Suzu-chan, I should’ve known I’d find you here,” the older woman said, with that touch of exasperation that seemed to affect most people Suzume knew.
My partner gave a broad grin. “Right where I’d be most useful, right, Oba-chan?” As the woman gave a very definitive snort that expressed her feelings on the subject, Suze nudged me with a friendly elbow. “Fort, meet my Aunt Chiyo.”
Horrors, more introductions. “It’s a pleasure,” I said politely.
There was clear interest in the way Chiyo looked at me, but also a subtle wariness. “Hmm. The young almost-vampire my mother seemed so interested in. You’re taller than the White Fox described.” Her mouth pursed. “These are two of my daughters. Midori is my oldest.” Midori towered over the other kitsune by several inches. Her features and eyes were as Asian as her mother’s, but her skin was a very dark brown that had clearly come from her father, along with gorgeous curly hair that was not quite the true, deep black that Suze and her aunt had. She shook hands with me, her cinnamon-colored eyes solemn.
“And one of my younger daughters, Takara,” Chiyo continued. The yang to her sister’s yin, Takara had Irish-pale skin, and each of her cheekbones was covered in a series of freckles. I could only speculate what her natural hair color was since it was barely two inches long and dyed a bright blue that matched her eyes. Clearly Suzume’s aunt had not had a set “type” when she’d dated as a young woman.
Compared to her mother and older sister’s very dignified bearing, Takara was practically vibrating with energy as she looked me up and down with a keenness that made me feel just slightly objectified. Even worse was the very visible disappointment on her face as she said to Suzume, “I thought he’d be better looking, anego.”
Suzume was clearly amused by both my discomfort and her cousin’s pout. “Next time I’ll provide visual supplements, Taka. That way you won’t be let down.”
Now Midori joined in. “I don’t know; given how Keiko talks about him, he could be worse. At least the vampire smell isn’t too obvious. Of course, it could be covered up by all those dogs that apparently humped him.”
Chiyo cut the conversation short with a sudden barrage of Japanese that I somehow knew (just knew) had not been particularly complimentary to my personal aroma. “We can all chat later,” she concluded in English, then nodded to Dahlia. “After all, the metsän kunigas have hired us to perform a job.”
“We appreciate your time, Ms. Hollis,” Dahlia said formally. All three of the bears were watching the kitsune very carefully.
“Oh, I imagine that you do.” And then Chiyo gave a very foxy and predatory grin that was definitely not nice at all, and that I had seen several times before on Suzume’s face. “Forgive my lack of delicacy, but you are familiar with the price tag on what we’re about to do, yes?”
Gil was gritting his teeth. “We don’t have many options, do we?”
“That’s the beauty of holding a monopoly,” Suzume said serenely. She glanced at her aunt and flashed her own smile. “Thirty?”
Chiyo returned her niece’s expression in spades. “Yes. Thirty thousand. Cash only, if you don’t mind.”
Dahlia and Gil exchanged a significant glance. I noted with interest that Carmen was left to stand awkwardly on the side, not involved in her cousins’ exchange. A quick flicker of irritation managed to pass through the grief on her face—a flicker that I definitely recognized. It was tough when your relatives insisted on relegating you to the kiddie table during decision making. Of course, I’d certainly learned lately that being the one calling the shots wasn’t all it was cracked up to be either. Dahlia was the one to speak. “That might take us a few days.”
“More.” Gil was reining in his temper, but his tone was grim. I didn’t like him very much, but I could sympathize a little. My own sphincter had made an instinctive clench at the number being tossed around. “I don’t care how good you are. We’re going to have to be careful freeing up that much in cash right after my uncle’s death.”
“Of course we understand, darlings. You’re in your grief, after all.” Chiyo’s white teeth gleamed. “Three weeks, not a day longer. Don’t look for an invoice. We know where to find you.”
There was another silent exchange between the siblings; then Dahlia nodded. “All right. But it has to look like a natural death. Something that won’t be questioned or spur any kind of investigation.”
“Why else would you have called us in?” The older kitsune’s eyes narrowed in annoyance, looking moderately affronted. With another imperious sniff, Chiyo very deliberately looked away from Dahlia and shifted the subject. “Suzume, have you gotten a good enough look at the scene?”
“Mostly, Oba-chan. But if the murder weapon is here, I haven’t found it.”
“Easy to address.” Chiyo turned to her younger daughter. “Taka-chan?”
The blue-haired girl nodded, and began unbuttoning her blouse with a very businesslike air. Lacking an ingrained social response for how to react when the younger cousin of a woman I was doing my best to date started disrobing in the middle of a crowded room that happened to include a dead body, my higher thinking ceded completely to my lizard brain response. Almost simultaneously I flushed beet red, dropped my eyes to my shoes, and made a strangled noise in my throat that sounded like a turkey lure. I could feel the puzzled gazes of every shape-shifter in the room lock on me.
Had I not been fully dressed, I would’ve suspected that this was a nightmare.
“Oh, he is adorable,” Takara said delightedly as the unzipping of her skirt zipper filled my ears. A pair of now-bare feet deliberately peeped into my line of vision as I stared at my shoes, replaced a moment later by a small red fox with black legs and a white-tipped tail, whose jaw dropped in a vulpine version of laughter before her nose dropped to the ground and she devoted herself to her task.
Her sister seemed less impressed. “If you like the type. Honestly, though, Suzu, what have you not been doing with him that he can’t even take a little flashed skin?”
Whatever retort Suzume was about to make (and I’d known in my bones that I was not going to like it) was cut off by another explosion of Japanese scolding from her aunt, toward whom I was now starting to feel much warmer feelings. I looked up to see Midori’s full lips press hard together in response to whatever had been said, while Chiyo turned her attention to the bears, who had been standing by during all of this. “My dears, it might be useful if we didn’t have quite as huge a crowd.”
“Do you need them completely gone, or just out of the way?” Gil asked.
“On the back porch is fine.”
Even Dahlia’s stone facade broke enough to look somewhat relieved to be given an excuse to get away from the kitsune antics, and the two siblings immediately began herding the bystanders. Takara scampered through the legs of the moving people, somehow always avoiding getting her tail stepped on. Midori and Chiyo began circling the body. That left me and Suzume with Carmen.
I gave Suze a small nudge with my shoulder, then nodded at the girl. Suze arched an eyebrow, but stepped away to join her aunt and cousin at the body. That left me with the last person who had seen the karhu alive.
It was awkward as hell.
I did my best. “I’m really sorry that I have to ask you this now, with your dad right there, but—”
Carmen interrupted me. “No, it’s okay.” She rubbed her face hard with the sleeve of her sweater, gave a wet sniffle, and focused completely on me. She had none of Dahlia’s icy control, or Gil’s anger. What she did have when she focused those pale blue eyes on me was a clear, unhidden disappointment that made me feel about three inches tall. “So it’s definitely you who is going to be hunting for the killer? Not your sister?”
I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. Her father had just been murdered, and in her eyes, the person assigned to the job was the C-Team. But at the same time I had no intention of asking my sister for help—not after the fiasco of last time. “I know that Prudence seems like she would be the better person to look into this,” I said, keeping my voice firm, but also trying hard not to sound like a complete dick. “But my brother and my mother both put me in charge instead of her for a lot of reasons. I promise I’ll do my best.” Carmen’s huge blue eyes filled up with tears, and her lower lip started trembling. I managed to hold out for one long minute, until the tears broke and started streaking her face, and I knew that I was beaten. With a sigh, I capitulated, promising, “If I don’t make any progress, I’ll ask for her help.”
Carmen brightened immediately, like a rain-soaked daisy. “Thanks,” she said sincerely. Then she looked embarrassed. “I didn’t want to hurt your feelings, but it’s just—”
“I understand. It’s your dad.” She nodded gratefully. “Okay—well, did you notice anything at all that was unusual when you left home last night?”
Carmen shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, I’ve thought about it as much as I could, and it was just a normal night. Dad was reading when I left, and he usually would’ve gone to bed around eleven.”
“Would he have waited up for you?”
For a second she looked annoyed, and I wondered whether that had been something that had been a point of contention between the two of them. “I’m living at home to save on rent, but I’m twenty-one. Dad knew I’d be back when I was back.” Then her whole face crumpled again, and the tears let loose. “It was a stupid party. I should’ve stayed home. If there had been two of us, Dad would’ve been okay.”
I gave her shoulder an awkward patting as she sobbed, looking around desperately for assistance. Dahlia was just walking back in from the porch, and caught my expression. She immediately hustled over and collected Carmen, wrapping an arm around her. Gil followed at her heels, and the three ducked away into the kitchen.
That thankfully over with, I looked over at the foxes, and realized that the situation over there was not much better. Takara was back in human form, though still completely naked, and was now muscling the body of Matias up into a sitting position on the La-Z-Boy. Midori and Chiyo were helping, and I was very glad that all the bears were temporarily out of the room. The three kitsune were fighting against the effects of rigor mortis to sit the corpse into a natural-looking pose, and it was incredibly grisly to see Takara throw all of her weight onto the legs while the others shoved against the shoulders as hard as they could, while the body let out horrible cracking and gas-releasing sounds. It was also an extremely messy endeavor, and I could understand why Takara hadn’t bothered to put her clothes back on.
While the other three kitsune continued fussing over the body (now there seemed to be some disagreement about how his arms looked), Suze made her way back to me. She leaned, subtly moving me so that I didn’t have to look at what was being done with the body, and started talking quietly. “Taka found a nice big decorative geode the size of my fist under the sofa with a good blood smear on it. We think that’s what bashed in the back of his head, and it smells like it came from inside the house, so the killer probably just grabbed it. She couldn’t find the knife, but I checked the kitchen, and the butcher’s block is missing one of the big carving knives, and it wasn’t in the dishwasher either.”
“So the killer took the knife?” Another loud cracking sound filled the room as the kitsune apparently solved the problem of arm placement. I winced.
“Looks that way,” Suze agreed.
The noise had drawn Dahlia, Gil, and Carmen back in from the kitchen. They stared at the spectacle before them—Matias’s body was now positioned in his chair, his hands draped over the padded arms and his head pressing back against the cushions. The gory mess of his chest managed to look even more horrific in this positioning than it had when he was lying on the floor.
Gil headed straight for Suze, his eyes wild. “My sister just called the police to report that we discovered my uncle dead from a likely heart attack, just like that aunt of yours told us to.” A sound of complete and wordless outrage emerged as he pointed his finger at the scene before us. “That does not look like a heart attack!”
Suze gave a slightly superior smile, apparently completely unconcerned at the outraged metsän kunigas in front of us. “Are you sure? Why not take a second look?”
We all turned our heads, and at the same moment I felt my whole body cramp up with a pins-and-needles sensation, as if everything was a leg that was just falling asleep. A second later it was gone, leaving only the slightest soreness behind, but I knew that feeling, and I wasn’t surprised when I focused my eyes and saw a man lying quietly in the beige La-Z-Boy, his face gray and drawn, but with no blood or wounds anywhere visible. Smoothly inserted into my brain was the thought, Gosh, the poor guy must’ve had a heart attack. Not surprising, at his age. I wonder if there was a history of it in the family.
That was the power of the fox magic. Even knowing that it was an illusion, I couldn’t see through it. I knew that if I reached out and touched the exact spots where the knife wounds were on the karhu’s chest, my hand would tell my brain that there was unbroken skin. I’d seen Suzume do this once on her own when she needed to hide the body of a vampire’s host—it had exhausted her to the point where I’d had to carry her back to where we’d parked the Fiesta. Her aunt and cousins weren’t falling over, but they all suddenly looked like the opening scene of a five-hour energy commercial.
“All done,” Chiyo announced, and walked slowly over to us. Dahlia and Carmen had joined us—the former clearly fighting to hide her surprise, and the latter just staring with her jaw flapping open. The kitsune reached into her handbag and removed some blank pill bottles, the orange kind that usually had pharmacy labels attached. She held them for a moment as she glanced between the three bears, settling finally on Dahlia. “Everyone seems to be looking to you, Dahlia. So are you the new karhu that we’ll all be dealing with?”
Another of those lightning-fast and completely undecipherable looks was exchanged, and it was Gil who answered, in as controlled a voice as I’d heard from him yet this afternoon. “My uncle had indicated several times that Dahlia would be his choice, but the formal ceremony won’t be until after the mourning period is over.”
As if they had never stopped in the first place, Carmen’s tears began again. “Another month at least,” she choked out.
Chiyo nodded. “Of course. Well, then.” She handed Dahlia the pill bottles. “Put these in the medicine cabinet and on the kitchen counter. When the police see them, they’ll see exactly the medications they would expect to see in cases of heart trouble.” The sound of a siren began blaring in the distance, and she gave a small, satisfied smile. “Ah, that should be them right now. Since I’m sure you can handle them while they come to the obvious conclusions, we’ll adjourn to the kitchen.” A hard look tightened her tired face, and she glared at all three of the metsän kunigas. “The paramedics will rush in and make all sorts of fuss. Let them. They’ll see everything they expect in a fatal heart attack, and they’ll never see the blood even when they put their hands right in it. No one will see it. It won’t show up in any photos either. When they shower after their shifts, it’ll be washed down the drain and no one will be the wiser. Just look sad, shaken, but not very surprised, and when they ask you, say that your uncle had had some health issues for the last few years, but didn’t like to talk about it much. Once they realize that there’s no use bringing him to the hospital, and the police agree that it’s clearly just a natural event, let them ask if you have a funeral home to use. Then bring up the ghouls, and either of you can trot off and call them over.”
“Will the ghouls be able to see through what you’ve done?” Gil asked. “We were told that they would be able to do an autopsy.”
“My daughters and I will follow them over to Celik Funeral Home and break the illusion for them.” Her dark eyes dropped to the rug, which the fox magic had rendered seemingly beige and unmarked again. “Remember that once we do that, everything will break. You’ll need a carpet steamer, and definitely get a new cover for that ghastly chair.”
Dahlia nodded, her mouth pressed into a thin line. “We can manage, thank you.” The sirens were nearly at the house. “If you’ll excuse us—”
“Of course.” Chiyo motioned her daughters into the kitchen as the bears went out to meet the owners of the siren. Suze caught my wrist and towed me along.
The kitchen was, unsurprisingly, beige, with a few touches of dark wood trim that matched the cabinets. The three kitsune collapsed into the chairs that ringed the small breakfast table. I couldn’t help but notice that Takara was still completely naked.
She looked mentally fried, and I wondered whether she needed a reminder about her state of nature. “Um, Takara . . . the police are here, you know.”
Suzume snorted and leaned against the counter. “Don’t hassle her, Fort. A naked girl in the kitchen is the last thing the police or the paramedics will expect to see. I could pull this trick in my sleep—all they’ll see is yet another group of grieving relatives.”
“That’s very helpful of you, Suzu-chan,” Chiyo said in a tone that suggested that Suzume was often much less than helpful. “Speaking of helpful, I wish you’d do something about Keiko. It’s silly of her to extend her pregnancy like this. I can’t imagine why she would go nine months on two legs instead of seven and a half weeks on four legs.”
Suze darted me a quick look, and I suddenly realized that Keiko’s aunt apparently knew less about what she was actually up to than I did. “It’s hard to say, Auntie. Maybe she saw Yuzumi recently.” Suze’s voice was completely serene.
And apparently effective at muddying the conversational waters. Chiyo’s eyebrows knit together in irritation. “Suzume, really, how can you even—”
Takara’s head was cushioned in her arms, but she jumped in. “I don’t blame her. The triplets are about as destructive as the German Luftwaffe. Saving seven months can’t be worth eighteen years of that.”
“I was talking with Hoshi last week,” Midori added. “She thinks that Keiko has the right idea—she’s considering staying two-legged for her pregnancy. Thinks it’ll be easier in the long run, even with the cost of maternity clothes. Or maybe spending just two days a week on four feet—cut the pregnancy down a month or two, maybe just end up with a set of twins, max.”
“Hell, yeah,” her sister agreed. “Have you seen those stupid booster seats Yuzumi has to use? They wouldn’t all fit in my car when I was watching the girls, so I had to drive them in fox. Riko peed in a cup holder.”
Their mother now looked defensive. “Staying fox doesn’t always mean triplets.”
“Except for Yuzumi. And you. And twice for Kanon-obasan.” From Midori’s expression, these were some rather significant exceptions.
“Do you see what your sister has started?” Chiyo demanded of Suzume, apparently tired and aggravated enough to miss the slight gleam of satisfaction in her niece’s eyes at how well she’d distracted her aunt from the original topic. “I expect this kind of thing from you, not Keiko.”
“What kind of thing? Kits? Is that what you expect from me?” Suze sounded amused.
Her aunt shuddered dramatically. “Don’t even say such a thing, Suzu-chan. I don’t want to imagine the kind of demon-spawn you would produce.” She focused on me, and said, “My poor sister had to call the fire department three times before Suzume was six.”
I had no difficulty at all imagining that. The conversation lagged after that—Chiyo and Midori were both tired after hiding the body, and after a few minutes they were clearly struggling to keep up with a basic conversation about whether we could expect any snow this year before Thanksgiving. Takara was apparently given more slack as the youngest, because she simply shifted back to her fox form and took a snooze on the floor.
After forty-five minutes, Gil appeared in the doorway, his wide face bearing an expression of semi-appeasement. “You were right—they’re convinced,” he said bluntly. “One of the officers is staying around until the body is taken away, but it just looks like a courtesy thing. I called the ghouls, and they said they’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“Excellent,” Chiyo said, collecting her purse. “My daughters and I will meet them at the funeral home. No reason to continue cluttering up your kitchen.” Midori reached down and scooped her four-footed sister off the floor. Takara didn’t even wake up, but simply made a small whuffle in her sleep.
Gil focused on me. “And you?” There was a distinct challenge in the way he was looking at me, and I could feel my temper rising. For just a moment I pictured myself grabbing the other man by the throat and tossing him against the wall a few times, but even as my fist clenched in anticipation, I realized that this wasn’t normal. I bit the inside of my cheek hard enough to hurt, and my temper receded. Gil’s uncle was dead, I reminded myself, and I was the person he had to trust to find out who had done it. I probably wouldn’t be happy in his shoes either.
I should’ve fed from my mother yesterday, I realized grimly. Transition was bringing my heritage closer to the surface.
I pulled myself back together. “I have everything I need here for now. I’ll consult with my family this evening, and then I’ll begin investigating.” I also planned to feed while I was home.
Clearly reluctant, but having no other options, Gil nodded. “You will keep us informed, though, right?” Temper made his face flush darkly. “If it were up to us, we’d be finding the killer ourselves—”
“Gil.” Dahlia’s voice cracked from the doorway, interrupting her brother. He clenched his jaw, shot me one last searing look, and walked stiffly out of the room. Dahlia watched him leave, then turned her head just slightly to meet my eyes. “Please pass our thanks along to your mother, Fort. We appreciate your time.” Then she also turned and left.
“My, how deliciously awkward,” Chiyo said. Gleeful amusement fought with exhaustion on her face, and momentarily won out. “No wonder Matias passed over the brother. That one has no love for the vampires, and he’s not bothering to hide it.”
“It’s a difficult day for deference, Oka-san,” Midori said, with a bit more compassion. “If someone killed you, I would be pretty angry if I was robbed of the chance to rip that person’s belly open with my own teeth.”
Her mother gave a flashing smile. “Another reason to be grateful that we are kitsune, then, and not some half-rate were.” That brought a round of smug agreement from the other foxes. I hoped desperately that the bears had all been occupied and not bothering to listen—apparently Suze came by her attitude of superiority honestly.
We all slipped out of the beige house together, past the grim-faced metsän kunigas who once again filled the living room.
Outside, I took a deep breath, grateful for the cold air after the stifling emotions roiling inside. The sun had set while we were inside, but the karhu had been a fan of those nice little outdoor solar lights, and the curb and driveway were lined with soft blue glows. Suze gave my sleeve a tug, demanding my attention. Looking down, I could see from her expression that my brief struggle for control in the kitchen had not gone unnoticed. After a considering moment, she let it drop, and instead said, “If you’re going down to see your mother, Fort, I’ll go with them over to the ghouls.” She nodded to her family members, who were walking very slowly in our wake. “I’m probably a better driver right now.”
Chiyo and Midori expressed their happiness with the plan. Takara was still a bundle of sleeping fox, and had no opinion. Suze walked with me to where the Fiesta was pulled to the curb, and made a show of leaning against the car while I reached inside to fish out her duffel.
“So, what are you thinking?”
“Gil seems pretty set on the Ad-hene theory,” I noted. “What do you think?”
“The last time they got the attention of the Scotts, Prudence eliminated twenty percent of the remaining full-blood population. If I were them, I’d think twice about doing something that might bring the one-woman extinction event knocking on my door.” Suzume’s eyes gleamed. We’d both had a front-row seat when Prudence ripped the head off Shoney, a creature who’d been old during the Bronze Age.
“No one has ever accused the Ad-hene of being reasonable. I’ll get in touch with Lilah and see if she’s noticed anything.” After our encounter with the Ad-hene had ended with bodies on the ground, I’d made a battlefield appointment of the half-elf as the official liaison between the Neighbors and my family. I considered what we’d learned so far about the murder. “All you smelled was bear?”
“Nothing but.” Speculation was clear in her face. “Thinking that it might’ve been one of his loving subjects? The daughter looked broken up, the nephew was pissed off, but that niece was cold as ice.”
“Definitely something to keep in mind. There wasn’t even an attempt to cover this up, and the Ad-hene might be crazy, but they aren’t stupid.”
Suzume snorted. “Life is always easier when your opponents are idiots.”
We exchanged good-byes and parted. I turned on the Fiesta and headed south for Newport.