Chapter 3

Gage’s skin was icy under my hand, and I jerked backward instinctively. I’d been around dead bodies before, sometimes even ones that I’d been responsible for turning into corpses, but finding Gage like that was different. My brain felt foggy from the shock, and I sat down heavily on the floor, staring at what was in front of me.

Gage was lying on his chest with his face turned toward me. His eyes were open, empty and staring, and there were a bunch of cuts and dried blood around his mouth. His hands were gone, cut away with an almost disturbing neatness just below his freshly inked tattoo band. There’d been no hacking—his wrists looked like sliced salami at the deli counter.

Had I not already been a vegetarian, that image would’ve turned me off of salami for life.

For a second I had to battle nausea. I closed my eyes tightly, fighting the urge to vomit, but when I opened them up again Gage was still in front of me, still lying there. His surfer-blond hair was matted with dried blood. I’d just been making fun of his hair this afternoon, I remembered.

Somehow that thought broke through my shock, and I was scrambling out of the room, back to my bedside table and my cell phone. I’d dialed 911 and was talking to the dispatcher even as I stuffed the Colt under my mattress. That was definitely something that was not a good idea to have in hand when the cops showed up.

I hung up as soon as the dispatcher assured me that the police were on their way over. The next number was the one that I knew I should’ve called first, a fact that I consciously ignored as I punched it in. It wouldn’t matter to Chivalry or my mother what had killed Gage, whether deranged human or something less natural. What mattered to them was keeping our profile low, making sure that the Scott name didn’t come up any more than absolutely necessary. If my first call hadn’t been to the police, I knew without a doubt that Chivalry would’ve hopped in his car with the intention of walking me through a body disposal. Then there would’ve been some false trails, maybe a forged e-mail, something that made certain that when Gage’s family started looking for him, the trail led away from this apartment until going cold somewhere far, far away.

Gage had been my friend. He didn’t deserve that.

Chivalry answered on the second ring.

“My roommate is dead,” I said as soon as I heard his voice.

There was a brief pause. Then Chivalry asked, completely calmly, “Did you attack him?”

“What?” I yelped. “No! What are you— How could you think that?”

“You are getting older, Fortitude,” came his icy voice. “It is a reasonable question.”

“No, no, it is not reasonable. Something else killed—” Unbidden, the image of Gage’s empty wrists flashed in front of my eyes and I gulped hard. “Something else killed Gage. I don’t know what. There are cuts on his face, and his hands were cut off.” I paused again, taking a deep breath. “The police are on their way over.”

“Why?” Chivalry was no longer calm, and his voice lashed out sharply. “Did a neighbor see something? Hear something?”

“I called them.”

“What?” He sounded truly stunned.

“I panicked,” I lied. “I just . . . panicked and thought like a human.”

“This is most inconvenient.” There was a long pause, and I closed my eyes and slumped down onto my bed. “I am unable to come tonight, little brother. Bhumika’s health has . . . we are in the hospital, and will need to remain overnight.”

“I’m sorry,” I muttered. “Is she okay?”

“Nothing to concern yourself over,” he said, putting me sharply in my place. “I will call the lawyers; someone will be there soon to handle things. Don’t say anything to the police. And you might want to call that fox friend of yours—she’s annoying, but the kitsune know how to handle themselves discreetly. She can prevent you from any more of these problematic slips.”

I swallowed hard. “What about Gage?”

“I’ll call the mayor tomorrow morning,” Chivalry said, misunderstanding my question. “This will all be cleaned up quickly. Don’t worry.” I heard my brother’s concern for me in those last words.

“So, you’ll come over after you make the call?” Bhumika must’ve been in very bad shape if he wasn’t already in his car and on his way right now.

There was a pause on the other end, and when Chivalry spoke, he sounded confused. “Why? Is something wrong?”

I blinked. “Chivalry, something killed Gage.”

“A human sociopath, no doubt,” my brother said dismissively. “Or your roommate had unsavory ties.”

I slapped my head in disbelief and had to bite down the urge to snap at him. Instead I just drenched my voice in sarcasm. “Really, you don’t find it coincidental that out of all the guys in Providence, it’s my roommate who is gruesomely murdered?”

Chivalry sighed. “And what dire enemies have you made lately?” I could tell across all the miles that he had that Humoring Baby Brother look on his face—the one that always made me want to punch him, or, barring that, force him to watch the Justin Bieber movie for three days in a row.

I tried reason. “Oh, you don’t think Dominic doesn’t hold a grudge over me killing Luca?” Frankly I deserved a goddamn medal, a parade, and a fist bump from Patrick Stewart for killing that Eurotrash pedophile, but his father might not agree.

Chivalry actually made a pish noise over the phone. “Dominic is in Italy and wouldn’t dare risk such an act of aggression.”

“What about—”

My brother cut me off before I could start listing everyone else who lived under my mother’s rule and wasn’t blissfully happy—namely, everyone. “Fortitude, there is no creature in our mother’s territory that would be so foolish as to do this. Before you construct some martyr complex over this, remind yourself that, however distressing this has been, you merely rented a room to this human and this almost certainly has no more relevance than that you really need to conduct some kind of background check on your roommates.”

My free hand curled into a fist, and I pressed it into my leg as hard as I could, pushing down what I wanted to say to my brother. He was in the hospital with his dying wife, I reminded myself. It wasn’t entirely his fault at the moment that he was being an empathy-stunted prick.

Finally Chivalry gave another heaving sigh and said, “Fortitude, Providence is a big city. Big cities are riddled with crime and murder, and if you would just give up this childishness and move home, you would not find yourself in such unsavory situations—”

I cut him off before he could warm to one of his favorite topics. “I have to go. The police are here,” I said through clenched teeth.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Chivalry promised.

I hung up and immediately dialed another number. I’d lied to Chivalry—the police weren’t here yet, but I knew that I didn’t have much more time. I also had no desire to sit through another of my brother’s lectures about moving to Newport while Gage’s body rested a mere two rooms away from me.

And despite Chivalry’s confidence, his reasoning still felt wrong. What were the odds that Gage being murdered had absolutely nothing to do with him rooming with Providence’s one vampire?

No one in my family had killed him. I would’ve known if any of them had been in the city tonight. But once Chivalry called in a cover-up, even if he was right and it had been some human psychopath who killed Gage, that person would never be caught. My mother’s interests were in the political theaters, and there wasn’t a politician in this state who didn’t jump to attention when she made a phone call. My foster father had been a decorated policeman, but when Prudence murdered him and my foster mother, Madeline’s influence had made certain individuals falsify or destroy evidence, then pin the crime on a homeless man who was then, very conveniently, found dead in his cell.

Calling the police meant that Gage would go back to his family, and they wouldn’t wonder about him for years, but there wouldn’t be justice for him.

The first police car had just pulled up in front of the building, siren wailing, as I hit the Send key on my phone.

Suzume’s voice was raspy from sleep when she answered, but there was that usual layer of amusement that made me close my eyes and drink in that moment of normality. “Just to let you know, Fort,” she said when she picked up, “etiquette dictates that the woman has to initiate a booty call relationship.”

“What?” I asked, momentarily distracted.

“I know, it seems sexist to me, too”—her voice dripped reasonableness—“but Miss Manners is very clear on the subject.”

For half a second I smiled; then it was wiped away by the pounding on my door as the police reminded me of everything that had happened tonight.

“Suze, it’s nothing like that,” I said, and quickly filled her in.

“I’ll be right there.” All playfulness was gone now. “Don’t say a word to the cops. Let your mom’s lawyers earn their money for once.”

She hung up, and there was no avoiding it anymore. I went to the door to let the police inside.

•   •   •

I’d never known that so many people could fit in my apartment.

The first uniformed officers were joined by two plainclothes detectives, then a horde of even more officers. Beyond a few basic questions, people mostly left me alone. Apparently some big boss had already let it be known not to bother “the nice Scott boy.” I accepted it, knowing that I’d done what I could.

Twenty minutes after the first officer arrived, there was a ruckus in the hallway and then, to my shock, Matt McMahon rushed through the door. He must’ve been on a stakeout, because although he was several kinds of rumpled, he was dressed in slacks and a button-down. His eyes swept over the scene until he picked me out; then he said, “Oh, thank Christ,” loudly in that booze-weathered voice that I knew so well, and came straight over, completely ignoring the doorway officer’s futile efforts to herd him back outside—about as effective as a teacup poodle against a Great Dane.

I opened my mouth to say something—what, I had no idea—but the words (and breath) were knocked out of me as Matt swept me up in a rib-bruising hug.

I’d known Matt most of my life. He’d been my foster father’s partner, and he hadn’t been able to turn the other way during the murder cover-up. It had cost him his career as a cop, and become the obsession that had shaped the past seventeen years of his life. He’d become a private detective, working on a lot of other cases but always trying to uncover Brian and Jill’s real murderer. He’d also kept an eye on me, and we’d been close. That had all changed in the spring, when there had been vampire victims on the ground. He suspected that I’d been involved in the rescue of Amy Grann from her kidnapper, and seen the Scott cover-up machine swing into action again in a way all too reminiscent to be a coincidence. I’d lost his trust, and that had hurt. But even worse was that, I was all too aware that if my family realized that Matt was now a threat, none of them would hesitate to kill him.

The past four months were apparently forgotten as Matt broke off his hug and I began struggling for air.

“Matt,” I wheezed, “You’re here.” It wasn’t my most insightful commentary ever, but my brain was struggling after being cut off from its supply of sweet, sweet oxygen.

“Of course I’m here, Fort,” Matt snapped. “One minute I’m photographing some pharmacist getting her extramarital freak on and the next I hear over my police radio that there’s a body of a young male at your address?” He smacked me upside the head hard enough for me to yelp, then immediately dropped his hand to squeeze my shoulder tightly. “Call me, for Christ’s sake. I think I lost five years off my life during the drive over here.” His dark eyes were darting over me, cataloging my state of nondeadness, and there was a residual tightness to his jaw that sent a spark of shame through me.

I squeezed the hand that still rested on my shoulder, relieved despite everything that was going on at the proof that beneath his suspicions of me he still cared. I hadn’t realized until now just how much that had been hurting over the summer. “I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it on a lot of levels.

Matt cleared his throat, dropped his hand, and stepped back. Clearly we were back to being Men. Behind him the door cop, who had been shifting his weight awkwardly, gave up and headed back to his post, apparently deciding that we were clearly too well acquainted for him to toss Matt out. Or, more likely, ask the guy who outweighed him and clearly lifted a lot of weights to leave—politely. “So, what happened,” Matt asked, glancing around the room with a professionally cool expression.

I told him what I’d told the police—waking up suddenly, investigating the sound, finding Gage. I could see Matt’s eyes narrow as he listened, and I knew when the wheels started turning in his head. He shifted away from me, and I felt a pang as the reprieve and return to our old relationship ended. He’d been suspicious of me since Amy Grann had unintentionally implicated me to him, and now my roommate was dead. I could see him connecting some dots.

“I’ll check this out,” he said, and all I could do was nod as he slipped into Gage’s bedroom, currently cluttered with police and crime-scene personnel. I didn’t follow. I didn’t want to see any of that again. I just sat on the sofa in a pair of worn flannel pajama bottoms and a T-shirt so old and ratty that I’d had to retire it from day use, and watched as people moved around the apartment.

One of Madeline’s lawyers arrived soon after that, a no-nonsense looking woman in her late forties. I don’t know if she lived in Providence or had just happened to be in town, but from the looks of it she had interrupted a pretty fancy date. I’m sure she didn’t mind, of course. Billable hours and all that. The boss cop (either he or one of his superiors was apparently angling for some kind of bonus attention from Madeline) had already been doing a good job making sure no one went near my room, but the lawyer took over from there, fussing over me briefly, then stepping back to hover expensively at a distance, glaring at anyone in a uniform who even glanced in my direction.

Suzume slipped into all of this chaos with surprising unobtrusiveness for a woman whose preferred spot was the center of attention. Saying nothing, which was a shock in itself, she sat down next to me on the sofa and squeezed my leg once. I shot her a grateful look, and after that we just sat there, neither speaking, as everything swirled in motion around us.

After almost two hours, a long gurney with a black body bag was wheeled out the door. I glanced away, but there was no way to forget any of what I’d seen tonight.

Matt walked up to me. He’d never taken off his jacket, something I’d noticed with the rest of the people in my apartment. He fit in with these people, I realized. Not that I should’ve been surprised—after all, he’d been a cop for years. But I was so used to seeing him working on stuff alone, with only me for the occasional help with a stakeout, that it was weird seeing him in a crowd. That’s where he was meant to be, I reflected. With his own kind.

He glanced over at Suzume, who for once took a hint and cleared out, muttering something about hitting the bathroom. She didn’t go there, of course. Just walked over to stand in the kitchen and fuss with a cupboard. Far enough to give the illusion of privacy, but I was quite aware that her exceptional hearing was trained completely on our conversation.

Matt hunkered down a little, putting us on the same level. I gave a brief nod to the attorney, who had automatically started over to hurry him away from me, and she stopped, though there was an unhappy look on her face. Maybe she got a bonus for every person she blocked from talking with me.

“They’ve picked up everything they can from the scene,” Matt said. His voice was soft, but his eyes were very alert, darting over me, taking in everything about me. It reminded me again that I was on a high wire, and one false step could get Matt killed. My family had a very low tolerance for humans poking too close to unsavory truths. “I’m going to head out as well. I have a few friends in the department; might be able to call in a few favors.”

I nodded. “Do you think you’ll be able to get any information?” I asked.

He smiled grimly, less of a smile than a baring of his teeth. “I’m planning on it. Copies of everything I can get a hold of. After all, evidence has a way of getting lost around your family.”

I didn’t bother to try to deny it—a few calls from my brother or mother and files had a way of ending up in a shredder. “Can you tell me what you find?” Nothing short of a straightjacket would stop Matt once he started poking around. Better if I kept tabs on him, I figured. Besides, it wasn’t a vampire killing, I reminded myself. If Matt got involved, there was nothing here that should bring him in contact with my family. Madeline ran her territory with an iron fist—there wasn’t anyone living here in the supernatural community who would risk her wrath or my sister’s version of enforcement by doing something like this near me. Chivalry had been confident enough of that on the phone that he wasn’t even going to come out tomorrow to check up on me—that had to count for more than my own suspicions.

His salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up sharply. I’d surprised him. He gave me another of those considering, uncomfortably astute looks, then gave a quick nod and leaned closer, dropping his voice so that I was the only one who could hear. “There’s a lot that only the lab can tell,” he said quietly, “but your friend was killed somewhere else. If he’d been killed here, that room would’ve looked like a slaughterhouse, and it didn’t. The only blood they’ve been able to pick up looks like it had dried on the body, then got rubbed off onto the floor. He lost almost all of his blood wherever it was that they killed him, and he’d been dead for a while before they moved him, judging by the rigor. Between the broken window and a few smudges that a uniform found, the working theory is that he was carried up the fire escape. Your friend isn’t small—it would’ve taken two people to carry him. They broke the window to open it, threw him inside, and left. There are people waking up all of the neighbors right now, but so far it looks like no one saw anything.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it.

Matt looked me over again. “This wasn’t casual violence, Fort,” he said, and I could hear the undercurrent in his voice. “There’s a lot of damage here, and nothing that could’ve been accidental. Did your roommate have any enemies?”

I shook my head. “Gage was a good guy.”

Matt waited, and I knew what he wanted to ask me about. Any enemies I might have who would’ve done this. I wished that I could’ve been honest with him, but the last time I’d told the truth about what I was, my sister had slaughtered my foster parents in front of me. I stayed quiet, and after a minute of intense staring Matt’s lip gave a small curl that I’d seen a thousand times before when he was frustrated about something, and he walked out.

When he left I let out a deep breath that I’d barely been conscious of holding. I’d spent a lot of time in the past few months doing my best to ignore the situation I was in with Matt. Having him here, seeing his newfound suspicion of me, was hard.

A hand dropped on my shoulder, and I looked up to see Suzume back at my side. I waited for the onset of questions about Matt, but again she surprised me when all she said was “Pack an overnight bag, Fort. We’re getting out of here.”

•   •   •

In our odd little friendship, I’d never seen Suzume’s place before. But after loading me into her slick little Audi Coupé, that was where she took me.

I wasn’t certain what to expect, but I didn’t feel like talking, so we drove in silence completely across the city, from my nice little apartment in the aptly named College Hill section of Providence to the Silver Lake neighborhood. Silver Lake had its good sections and its bad sections, and it actually bordered Cranston, where my foster parents had lived. Suzume turned into an area filled with tidy little one-story houses that looked like they had all been built in the fifties. One thing I noticed was the significant increase in the greenery. All of the houses had at least a small yard, and most had a few trees in addition. We pulled into the driveway next to a small duplex. Judging by the position of the fences, the property extended about two feet beyond the driveway and the house, but looking out across it I could see nothing but darkness—definitely an unusual experience even in the more residential areas of the city.

I glanced around, then asked, “Are we near the park?”

The interior light came on as Suzume turned off the motor, so I could see her nod. “Yeah. The house is right up against one of the forested areas of the Neutaconkanut.”

It was a grim night, but I managed a small smile as we both got out of the car. The Neutaconkanut Hill park was eighty-eight acres of mostly undisturbed forest and a few walking trails. Deer ran freely, and every once in a while there would be rumors about black bears. “I bet no one thinks twice about seeing a fox run through the neighborhood, then.”

Suzume had walked ahead of me to unlock the door, but she tossed me a grin over her shoulder. “Definitely one of the perks of the place. You wouldn’t believe what I had to pay, but it was worth it. My neighbor is in her nineties, and my cousins keep leaving competing bids in her mailbox. They’re terrified that she’ll leave it to one of her kids when she dies and they won’t be able to get their hands on it.”

“Would you want to live next door to your cousins?” I asked.

Suzume shrugged. “It’s good to have family around. Besides, I’ve already talked the old woman’s son into agreeing to sell it to me when she goes. Then I can make my cousins get into a bidding war with me, and I know how high they’ll be willing to go.”

We walked inside, and I had to raise my eyebrows. As the outside had suggested, it was a small house. Someone had remodeled, opening things up, and my first impression was a long main room that combined the living room and kitchen. There were three doors on the left-hand side of the room that I could see led to two bedrooms and a bathroom between, but Suzume’s style of decorating had a heavy hand of whimsy, and I paused for a moment to take it all in.

The walls were a pale green, and silver leaves the size of my palm had been painted on them with no discernable pattern. The ceiling was blue, with painted fluffy clouds, something I’d seen before in some Newport mansions. The kitchen was extremely modern, with granite countertops and all the stainless-steel appliances that someone could wish for, but the cabinets had been liberally strewn with little white Christmas lights. There was a pair of comfortable-looking sofas set up around the television, both upholstered in bright red corduroy. At least a dozen pet beds of varying bold colors were strewn about, and there were enough throw pillows to build a working fort. An actual carousel horse was standing in the corner, painted black with gold flowers in its mane. Framed pictures were hung everywhere, containing everything from a really beautiful inked anime-style picture of a girl changing into a swarm of butterflies to a poster of, of all things, the periodic table. It was busy and energetic, the kind of room that I imagined would be hard to spend a lazy day watching TV in.

“It’s nice,” I managed. “Do either of those couches fold out?”

“Not the reaction I usually get,” Suzume said, giving me a thoughtful look. “I’d better give you some recovery time before I start making jokes about sleeping arrangements.”

“I’d really appreciate that,” I said honestly.

Suzume led me to one of the bedrooms and waved me in. I looked around, a bit surprised. It was a big change from the main room. Decorated in restrained tones of white and chocolate brown, it looked like nothing so much as a moderately expensive hotel room. Even the bed looked like a hotel bed—a standard double covered in pristine white sheets and elegant decorative pillows with a neatly folded blanket at the bottom that perfectly matched the color of the walls and looked like no human had ever slept in it.

“I hadn’t known you had a guest room,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Normally as a good hostess I would give you my room, since my bed is queen-size, but I thought you’d like something with boring décor, rather than awesome.”

I considered what the main room looked like and couldn’t argue with her reasoning. As I put my duffel bag on a chair, Suzume pulled down the covers for me. I glanced over, and she patted the bed, giving me an encouraging smile.

I shook my head. I was beyond exhausted but . . . “I don’t think I can sleep right now,” I said. The thought of lying in that inviting bed and having nothing to distract me from what had been done to Gage made me shudder.

“Give me one second,” Suzume said, and was out the door before I could stop her. I could hear her banging around in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets like she was looking for something. I shook my head a little and walked around the room. There were only two pictures in it, both framed black-and-whites. One was of a fox with two kits, and the other was clearly of Suzume as a young girl, maybe eight or nine, standing with another girl her own age who was too similar to be anything other than her twin sister, and an older woman who stood with a hand on each of their shoulders.

Suzume walked back in, holding a glass of pale green liquid that reminded me of Gage’s energy drink. I gestured to the picture to distract myself. “Your family?” I asked.

She nodded. “Both pictures. Me, my sister, Keiko, and our mom.”

I looked over at the fox photo. “Oh, so that’s—”

“Yeah, that’s us. I have a color version in another room, and you can see our fur. My mother’s fur was dark red, almost cinnamon. Really pretty. Keiko’s is the same.” She handed me the glass. “Here, this will help you sleep.”

“No, I’m fine.” I tried to pass it back, but she pushed it into my hands insistently.

“Seriously, you’re not going to do yourself any good by staying up and brooding. There’s plenty of time for that after the sun rises. Drink it.”

I looked down. The color had been a bit concerning at first, but up close it looked basically like the flavored water that my ex-girlfriend Beth had really liked. An exploratory sniff didn’t reveal anything except a slightly sugary smell, so I took a cautious drink. The first sip didn’t kill me—it tasted a little sweeter than I usually liked, but not bad—and Suze gave me an expectant look, so I shrugged and put the rest of it back.

I handed her the empty glass. “That’s kind of licorice-y,” I said. “Was it some weird kind of lemonade or something?”

“Nope, just absinthe,” Suzume said calmly.

My jaw dropped. “What?” I sputtered.

“It’s medicinal.”

“It makes people go insane!”

“Please,” she scoffed. “You barely had any.”

I sat down heavily on the bed and dropped my head into my hands. “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal, Suze.”

“Not since 2007,” she said in that blithe tone. “Stop being such a baby.”

“I’m never drinking anything you hand me again. And I cannot believe you didn’t tell me!”

“You didn’t ask.” She tugged my shoulder until I was sitting in the middle of the bed. “Get comfortable. Absinthe will sneak up you.”

“All I could taste was sugar and licorice. You don’t seriously expect that I’m about to pass out, do you?”

“With the night you’ve had, plus a drink that is twenty-five percent alcohol?” Suzume asked. “Yeah, I do.”

That was the last thing I remembered, except for the feeling of Suzume pulling off my sneakers and settling the sheet over me. I didn’t dream at all.

•   •   •

I was woken up suddenly again, this time by the sounds of a woman shrieking less than a foot from my ear. The sun was streaming in the windows now, so I’d been asleep for hours, but I felt bleary and disoriented, and it took me a few seconds to remember where I was and what had happened.

Standing over the bed was a woman who looked a lot like Suzume, but with a shorter and sleeker haircut, and she looked pissed as hell. She had one of those tiny purses that women carry in the evening, and she was winding her arm back in a way that made it clear that she was about to start smacking me with it.

Suzume appeared in the doorway, dressed in a pair of flannel sleep pants and a tank top, her long hair still rumpled from bed. She looked completely calm, though I noticed that she had a rather sizable knife in her left hand. She noticed me looking at the knife, and a moment later her hand was empty. I blinked, but couldn’t figure out how she’d managed it.

“You’re yelling like a bear who just found Goldilocks, Keiko,” she said to the woman. “Calm down.”

Keiko lowered her arm and glared at her sister. “I’m out for one damn night and you sublet my freaking room?”

“Oh, this is your room?” I said. “I’m so sorry. I thought this was the guest room.”

Neither of them even glanced at me. I started to get out of bed, then realized that at some point after taking off my shoes, which I remembered, Suzume had also relieved me of my pants, which I had no memory of at all. I tugged the sheet back up.

Suzume rolled her eyes. “Christ, Keiko. Take a breath and use your nose. That’s Fortitude Scott.”

Keiko looked surprised, and gave a genteel little sniff in my direction, still managing to avoid making any eye contact with me. She sniffed again, then raised her eyebrows. “He doesn’t smell like a vampire. It’s there, but not like the others.”

“He’s still on his vampire learning permit,” Suzume said.

I was starting to feel really awkward as I sat in the bed and the two women talked as if I wasn’t there. “Uh, hi?” I tried. Neither even glanced at me.

“Yeah, I definitely smell it now,” Keiko said, and there was a definite sneer in her voice. “That’s never coming out of the sheets. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Suzume didn’t look any happier than her sister. “If you’d been here on four feet like you were supposed to be, we could’ve discussed it. But you were out running around on two, so I made an executive decision.” This was starting to sound like a personal argument, so I looked around. My pants were on the other side of the bed, crumpled up on top of my shoes.

“It was Corrine’s bachelorette party. What was I supposed to do?” Keiko sounded defensive. I leaned down and snagged my pants, pulling them under the sheet.

Suzume’s voice was very cold as she spoke to her sister. “Say no. Make any excuse, but say no. Don’t go, and definitely don’t spend the night with all your former sorority sisters.” I paused in the act of trying to pull my pants on under the covers. I’d never heard Suzume give a lecture before. I was used to hearing her coax, cajole, or just outright insist, but this was definitely new.

“Fine. It won’t happen again,” Keiko said shortly.

“So, you’ll be around the house today?”

Putting pants on under covers involves a certain amount of contortion and rolling around, and the whole situation was feeling a bit like some bad French farce.

Suzume’s question had apparently crossed some invisible line, because Keiko swung straight back to fully pissed off. “No, actually,” she snapped, “I’ll be at the office doing the payroll. Do you have a problem with that too?”

“Takara agreed to handle that while you were—” She paused suddenly, and looked straight at me for practically the first time in the conversation. Typically she’d caught me at the worst possible moment, as I was just trying to wiggle my jeans up my ass, which had involved the kind of maneuver usually only seen when someone was drunk enough at a party to attempt to do the worm. I froze and looked back at her. Surprisingly, her expression was slanted and thoughtful, and she seemed to rethink whatever she had been about to say, and turned it into a very delicate and pointed “indisposed.”

Keiko also looked over at me, and it was not a friendly look at all. It was probably the same look she’d give a cockroach right before stepping on it. I was suddenly missing the good times when they’d just pretended I didn’t exist.

“I want to check up on her,” Keiko bit out, and there was a clear note of finality in the statement. “Now, if you can get the slumber party out of my room, I can change and head out.”

That last part was actually directed at me. “Yeah, sure, sorry again. But if you can just give me a sec—”

“OUT.”

“Right.” And with no other option and still blathering apologies, I rolled out of the side of the bed farthest from Keiko, yanked and zipped in a way that not only set new records for time but also risked my own personal future happiness, grabbed my shoes, and hurried past Suzume and out the door, which Keiko slammed so closely behind me that I had to make a quick hop to avoid getting hit with it.

I stood in the main room, breathing heavily and holding my shoes. This was definitely making my top-ten list of crappy ways to start the morning.

Suzume was frowning at the closed door, but as I looked at her she seemed to shake something off. She turned to me, gave me a thorough up-and-down glance, and that sneaky little smile started spreading across her face.

“Smooth, Fort. Smooth.”

“Cram it, Suze,” I said, turning away.

•   •   •

Suzume’s amused heckling continued through both breakfast and a quick phone call to my mother’s lawyer, who told me that the police were completely done with the apartment and that I could go back whenever I wanted. She suggested sending over a cleaning service, but I said that I would be fine on my own.

As much as Suzume could drive me up the wall, I was actually grateful for her ongoing jokes about the level to which I had completely dropped the ball on a situation that could have easily been misconstrued as the opening act of a porno movie. It distracted me from what we were driving toward. I think she knew that too, because as much fun as she’d been having, she dropped it completely as we pulled into the parking lot of my building.

There was still some police tape on my front door, and we pulled it down. Inside, things looked eerily normal in my living room, other than enough dirty shoe prints to indicate that half the Providence police force had tramped around. I hesitated for a second, then went into Gage’s bedroom. Suzume followed closely behind.

Someone had taped a garbage bag over the hole in the window before they’d left, but the glass was still in the carpet. In addition to the dirty shoe prints, I could see a few dull brown smudges on the floor where I’d found Gage. Again, though, I was struck at how little evidence there was of what had happened. The bed was still made, his laundry was still in the hamper in the corner, and his backpack was propped up against his desk, which overflowed with notes and textbooks. Everything was here, except Gage.

I took a deep breath and blinked a few times. I didn’t have time to fall apart. Looking for a distraction, I glanced over at Suzume. She was looking up at one of Gage’s posters, a very thoughtful expression on her face. I nudged her with my elbow and raised my eyebrows.

She gestured at the poster, which was a print of the painting Ecstasy. “You usually don’t see these outside the dorm rooms of freshmen girls with literary pretensions.”

“Maxfield Parrish was his specialty,” I said. “He was getting his master’s degree in art history.” I looked up at the picture, which was of a woman standing on the edge of a mountain with her dress billowing in the wind. I’d asked Gage about it once, assuming that it was an artsy version of a pinup picture, but then he’d talked about light and composition for a solid hour.

“Yikes,” Suzume said, sounding appalled. “What did he hope to do with a degree like that?”

“Auction houses, restoration, appraisal. That kind of thing.” Depression sat like a rock in my stomach as I stared at the poster. “I told him that we could wait tables together. What a jackass thing to say.”

For a second my vision blurred, and I had to close my eyes very tightly. I felt the weight and warmth of Suzume’s hand as she touched and then squeezed my shoulder.

“He was your friend,” she said, and now she was utterly serious. “He understood.”

I opened my eyes and saw that she was very close, barely an inch away. Her hand curled tighter, and now her arm was pressed against mine, a contact that seemed to resonate down into the bone. We both paused, and the air was charged.

I swallowed, moistening my suddenly dry throat. Focus, I thought. I need to focus.

“Suze—”

“Yes?” Her dark eyes were unreadable.

“Can you find who did this?” I asked. I’d spent my entire shower this morning trying to convince myself that Chivalry was right and it was just a coincidence. And that lottery tickets were great investments. I couldn’t help it—it still felt like what happened to Gage had been meant for me.

For a second she looked surprised, then blinked and absorbed my request. “Sure, Fort. You know I can.” She lifted an eyebrow. “But your private-eye buddy is already on the trail. Aren’t you worried about us bumping into him?”

“We’ll find out what he gets from the police; then we’ll handle it ourselves. The less he’s involved, the better.” I wondered what the odds were of cashing out my checking account and sending Matt to Bermuda. Then I thought of my current balance and readjusted that to a cheap bed-and-breakfast in New Hampshire.

“No arguments on that, but why you even stayed in touch with him in the first place is kind of beyond—” I glared at her, and she threw her hands up. “Fine, fine. Don’t regret the past—that’s my motto on this one.” She took a step back, then took a deep sniff. She tilted her head, narrowed her eyes, and sniffed again, this time dropping her mouth open and almost seeming to taste the air. I watched, always fascinated by how she worked.

Then she sneezed twice and quirked her mouth up in bemusement. “This would’ve been easier before the room got stuffed with cops. All I can smell is cheap aftershave. This is going to take forever to pick out the humans who did it.”

I felt a small tug of relief. “Yeah, it had to be humans, right?” It was small, venal, and stupid, but I desperately didn’t want to be the reason that Gage was dead.

“No one else is dumb enough to mess with someone living with Madeline Scott’s son,” she agreed; then she shot me a cautious look. “If we find these dicks, you’re not going to get all Superman on me, are you?”

“What?”

“You know, wanting to leave them tied up in front of the police station and ready to confess their crime.”

I snorted derisively. “I’m not an idiot, Suze. We find them, we kill them. The people who did that to Gage don’t deserve to be called human anymore.” And human murderers would mean that renting with me hadn’t killed Gage.

She shot me a bright smile. “Excellent. Vigilante justice the way it was meant to be. Now give me a second while I slip into something a bit more furry.”

Suzume went into the bathroom; then a moment later a fox trotted into the room, black everywhere except the perfect white tip of her tail. Her winter coat was coming in, replacing her sleek summer form with something reminiscent of a plushy doll. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth as she dropped her jaw in a fox version of a grin; then she immediately got to work.

I’d seen Suzume hunt for scents before in fox form, but it still impressed me when she began methodically working her way across Gage’s room in a grid pattern. It was a slow process, and I sat on Gage’s desk chair to watch as she worked. Her nose was moving constantly as she walked around slowly, her body hunched down almost to the floor. When she got to the spot where Gage’s body had been, she slowed down even more, sniffing every inch of it. I swallowed and looked away when she rubbed her face carefully against one of the dried streaks of blood, reminding myself sternly that this was what I’d asked for.

Suzume made a small whine, and I snapped my head back around to look. Her eyes were slitted almost shut in concentration now, but she made that whine in the back of her throat again, and began walking very deliberately toward the window.

“Did you find something?” I asked.

She gave a low growl and shot me a look that very plainly told me to stop bothering her. I grimaced but shut my mouth. It was hard to keep it shut, though, especially when she stood on her hind legs to get a closer sniff at the window ledge, and even licked one spot. There was a pause, and then her eyes popped open and her fur actually stood on edge. She dropped down onto all four feet and just sat there, looking as stunned as a fox can. She turned to me and yapped loudly.

“What?” I asked, assuming that the interdiction on questions had just been raised.

She yapped again, a shorter and somehow more irritated version, and bounced up and down twice.

“Seriously, Suzume, I don’t speak fox. You’re going to have to mime this one.”

She huffed out a breath, then got back up on her delicate hind legs, rested her front feet on the window ledge, and started wedging her head against the window itself.

“The window? You want me to open the window?”

She dropped down into a sitting position again and nodded her head slowly, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t be like that,” I scolded as I walked over and unlocked the window. I raised it cautiously, trying to make sure that no more glass fell. Suzume waited impatiently as I did so, making little foxy grumbles at the delay, then jumped neatly out and onto the fire escape as soon as there was enough room.

I leaned out and watched her as she gave the fire escape a thorough sniffing. It took a long time, and I noticed that she visited a few spots more than once, almost as if she was checking something. At last she seemed finished, and walked back to the window. She looked up at me and wagged her tail a little.

“What?” I asked. “Come on in.”

More wagging, and she made a little crooning sound.

“Oh, no way.” I said. “You jumped out, now jump back in.”

Now she bent down until her belly was on the metal of the fire escape landing and gave me full-on sad eyes.

“Damn it,” I muttered, and leaned out the window to pick her up and haul her back in. “Lazy jerk,” I said as she wriggled happily, her tail beating against my leg. “Just wait until you’re human and can talk again.”

As I set her on the floor she gave a rather dismissive tail flip and padded back to the bathroom. I followed her, waiting at the bathroom door. When I heard the sink turn on and knew that she had hands again (and presumably a human mouth), I asked loudly, “You found something, didn’t you? You found the smells of the guys who did this?”

“Not exactly,” she said through the door.

“What?”

The door opened so abruptly that I nearly stumbled into her. Suzume lifted an eyebrow, and I stepped back enough for her to come out.

“Seriously, Suze. Talk.”

“Whoever broke the window and was carrying Gage’s body wasn’t human.”

“Oh . . .” I paused for a long minute, trying to move past my initial gut reaction of Oh, shit. “Well, what was it? A vampire?” I’d known, known, that stupid vampire etiquette rules wouldn’t stop Dominic from trying to get payback, but did my damn superior family listen—

“I don’t know.”

I stared at her. “You. Don’t. Know.”

She nodded grimly. “Yeah. Definitely not a vampire, but whatever it was, I’ve never smelled anything like it before.”

I was so used to Suzume being an expert on all the supernatural stuff that I’d ignored for so long that this pretty much officially blew my mind. Also . . . “A creature you’ve never encountered before killed my roommate? Tell me that can’t be a coincidence.” Maybe Dominic was outsourcing vengeance.

Suzume shrugged and wobbled her hand in a so-so gesture. “Hard to say. There are plenty of nasties that Madeline banned from the territory, and a lot of them leave body trails. If one slipped in, then it was probably just an accident.”

“An accident?” I asked disbelievingly.

“An accident in the way that a shark attack is an accident. A surfer is in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Now she made a little chomp-chomp gesture with her hand. I thought back to what I’d seen of Gage’s body and shuddered.

If Suzume wasn’t able to identify this, then I knew who could. “Let me call Chivalry,” I said.

She nodded. “Good plan. I’ll go take a whiff around the base of the fire escape and see if I can get a trail.”

“Do you need to go fox again for that?” Foxes were definitely not something regularly seen in College Hill. The last thing I needed was to have my neighbors start calling animal control at the sight of Suzume in her furrier form checking out the scene of the crime.

From the twinkle in her eyes, Suzume could clearly follow my train of thought. “Nah.” She tapped her nose and grinned. “I’ve got the scent now.” Then she wrinkled up her nose and made a face. “And I’m not worried about mistaking it for anything else. Whatever this thing is, it has a hell of a funk.”

Suzume strolled out the door as I dialed Chivalry’s number. He picked up on the second ring, and it didn’t take long to fill him in on everything.

“The kitsune is in all likelihood correct, Fortitude,” he said once I’d filled him in. “While most things that our mother has closed our borders to will stay out from a sense of self-preservation, there are some that still wander in and leave a few bodies. I have never personally encountered anything that kills in this way, so it’s probably something very rare. In my experience, creatures like that are always on the move. Even if you go looking for it, it will probably have already left the area.”

“So, we’re not going to do anything at all?” I asked.

I could hear Chivalry heave a rather deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Mother’s contacts with the police department have already located a pair of locals with rather unsavory pasts who have been convinced to confess to your roommate’s murder, so this is tied up. If you wish to spend the next few days chasing shadows, then I certainly cannot stop you. Bhumika’s doctor has advised that we stay in the hospital for at least four days, so I will be quite occupied for a time and sadly unable to either continue our training regimen or chaperone you on this endeavor. At least take along your annoying friend—I would hate for you to be all alone as you circle aimlessly.” He paused. “My earlier assumption of human origins might have been wrong, but a supernatural component does not change my underlying point: accidents happen. Your roommate ran afoul of something on his own and was killed. If you could accept that forming these kinds of guilt-ridden attachments to humans you come into tertiary contact with is futile and self-destructive, you could step back and realize that this death has nothing to do with you. Send a wreath to the funeral, hire a cleaning service, and move on.”

I gritted my teeth. Chivalry certainly wasn’t pulling punches today. Knowing that he was sitting in a hospital bed beside his dying wife kept me from snapping back, but barely. My good-bye was on the sharp side, but it was as courteous as I could manage. After hanging up, I headed out to see what Suzume was finding, but met her halfway down the stairs as she was coming back up. She was shaking her head before I could even ask her what she’d found.

“Trail’s dead,” she said. “Whatever killed Gage, it has a car. The smells begin and end in one of the parking spots behind your building. It’s alone, too, so it must be pretty damn strong to be slinging your friend around up a fire escape. Was your brother able to tell you what we’re looking for?”

I told her about the Chivalry situation as we walked back upstairs. Inside the apartment, we both dropped down onto the sofa, which let out the tortured wheeze of cheap furniture being asked to go above and beyond its basic design parameters.

“Well, now what?” I asked.

Suzume shrugged. “The scent trail is dead, and usually when I’m trying to hunt someone down I at least have a description or a name. Think that private-eye buddy of yours might have something?”

I immediately shook my head. “Getting Matt any more involved is too dangerous. And now that we know that we’re trying to chase something supernatural, nothing he finds from the police would even help us. I don’t think profilers consider monsters when they make their suspect lists. I’ll call him in a week, and if he’s still looking I’ll try to derail him. But odds are that he’ll be either as dead-ended as we are or he’ll believe that the real killers were already caught.” I knew that the last part was wishful thinking. Maybe in a normal case that might’ve fooled him, but not in this one. He’d seen my family at work before, and he would’ve been counting the hours until a false confession was obtained and the case was officially closed.

“Well, where does that leave us?” Suzume asked. “Chasing shadows, like your brother said?”

I looked over at her. “Gage was a good guy,” I said seriously. “He deserves more than he’s getting. I’ll look until I hit a brick wall, but I won’t ask you to help me if you think it’s a waste of your time.”

Suzume made a little tsking sound, then reached over and flicked my nose with her finger, hard enough to sting and make my eyes water. I immediately clapped a hand over my abused nose and said, “What the hell was that for?”

“For being an idiot,” she said, in that tone of voice that made the word idiot sound like the most loving of pet names. “You’re my friend, so I’ll help you. It’s that easy.”

I stared at her. “It’s not that easy,” I said. “You know it isn’t.”

She just smiled at me, her dark eyes gleaming. “Idiot.”

Unwillingly, I could feel myself starting to smile back. It made no real sense, as the situation was almost as grim as it had been a minute before.

“So, what’s our first move going to be?” Suzume asked.

I had already thought of this one. “We follow Gage’s movements on his last night and try to figure out where whatever killed him found him.” Assuming, of course, that my brother was actually right and it was just a coincidence that my roommate was monster killed. But I couldn’t think of any other starting place.

Suzume quirked an eyebrow. “Oh, good. Some old-fashioned police legwork. Just what my weekend was lacking. Where do we start?”

“He told me that he was going speed-dating, so we’ll start with that and see if he ever got there.”

Suzume gave me a long and very unamused look. “I just filled my nose with crappy cop aftershave and now you want me to go smell the dregs of cheap perfume and desperation? Besides, I’ve seen your roommate. What was that tall drink of water doing going speed-dating?”

“He saw a flier and thought it would be fun. Tried to get me to go along, but I had to work.”

Suzume shook her head. “Oh, he was clever.”

“What? Why?”

She gave me that superior look that she always reserved for when she was going to lay a particular kind of knowledge down on me. In a classic Pavlovian response, I was gritting my teeth even before she started talking. “Basic rule of the dating scene, Fort. Always bring along a wingman, and that wingman should always be less attractive than you are. Personally, I use my cousin Hoshi.” She leaned closer and dropped her voice to a stage whisper. “She has a great personality.”

I glared. “Check my computer for speed-dating listings. I’ll look in Gage’s room and see if he still has the flier.”

“Hate the game, not the player.” Suzume tilted her head and looked at me. “You’re willingly letting me use your computer. Change your passwords?”

“Twice,” I said.

She smiled. “I wonder how long it’ll take me to guess all of them.”