Monster Read online

  “I think you’re Baba Yaga’s apprentice, and you’re here against my wishes on a case that hasn’t even been declared a homicide.” Liam’s voice was calm, but firm. “I can’t afford to take any chances.”

  I wanted to point out that I could cast a spell while driving, but that wouldn’t help matters. “So is this how it’s going to be for the duration of the investigation? You treating me like a dangerous suspect, always preparing for an attack that will never come?”

  “I’m going to have a word with Vincent, and then I’ll let you know.”

  He shifted in his seat, and I glimpsed his cell phone in his hand. He was sending a text, but I couldn’t make it out, not while simultaneously keeping my eye on the road.

  “He just texted Mother Hazel,” Peasblossom whispered. “He asked her if she sent you.”

  I tried not to be offended. I tried to look at it from Liam’s point of view. He didn’t know me, not really. And Baba Yaga did have a…grey reputation. One of his wolves, a man he treated like a son in need of direction, was lying to him, accused of something Liam didn’t think him capable of. He needed someone to blame, another possibility. And I’d turned up on his doorstep when he’d been expecting Mother Hazel.

  I stared at the road ahead and almost laughed. My entire career rested on this case.

  And I’d just become a suspect.

  Chapter 7

  Liam’s phone beeped, alerting him he’d received a response to his text.

  “Satisfied?” I asked, my voice frosty.

  “She confirmed she sent you.” He glanced at me. “You’re taking this too personally. I think if you’re honest with yourself, you’d admit you’d do the same thing in my position.”

  “That wasn’t Mother Hazel,” Peasblossom told him.

  Liam tensed, and I grinned. Normally I would chastise Peasblossom for baiting the werewolf, but in this case, I’d let it slide.

  “What do you mean, that wasn’t Mother Hazel?” Liam asked.

  “She’s being contrary,” I said. “It was Mother Hazel’s answer, but it wasn’t Mother Hazel sending the text. It was Gus.”

  “Gus?”

  “Gus is a gremlin,” Peasblossom told him.

  Silence fell over the vehicle. Liam waited for us to continue the explanation, and Peasblossom and I waited for him to keep asking questions. Apparently, we were both feeling a little petty.

  “Who is Gus?” Liam asked finally.

  Peasblossom opened her mouth, and I knew with the utmost certainty that she was going to tell him Gus was Mother Hazel’s gremlin. I took pity on him and spoke first.

  “Gremlins are smaller, more benign relatives of goblins. They have the ability to convert themselves into wild energy, and for some reason no one completely understands, that energy is particularly compatible with today’s technology. Mother Hazel can use technology, but she doesn’t like it. So when I bought her a cell phone, she immediately gave it to Gus as a hub to live in. Gus thanks her by forwarding her calls as necessary and responding to texts. Sort of a secretary.”

  Liam looked at his phone. “Gremlins. I heard a rumor that what humans call computer viruses are actually gremlins infesting their programs.”

  “Yep. But they don’t usually do that on their own; that happens when someone angers a technomancer.” I shook my head. “Or when technomancers get greedy and decide to use their gift to fleece unsuspecting humans instead of working for a living. Most gremlins are harmless, though they do like to reroute emails to junk folders if people don’t take the time to add trusted senders to their contacts.”

  I pulled into the parking lot of the ranger station, maneuvering the larger vehicle back into the employee-only parking lot. I unfastened my seatbelt and slid out of the car, careful not to drop the keys. Liam had already gotten out of the car, and I locked the doors then closed my door behind me. I smoothed down the lines of my coat and took a deep breath. No more being petty. The trust between Liam and I had been strained, and it was my job to fix that. I had to stay calm and be reasonable. Assuage his fears. I nodded.

  I never saw Liam come around the corner of the vehicle. Suddenly he was just there, in my personal space, towering over me. The scent of the forest clung to his skin like a faint aftershave, and underneath that, a masculine scent I couldn’t quite describe. It filled my senses, and I stumbled back and hit the side of the SUV. My breath caught in my throat as Liam followed me, keeping our bodies close enough that there was barely room for a breeze. He stood there, almost pinning me against the vehicle with the force of that heated aura.

  I was too shocked to call my magic, but I wasn’t afraid. There was no sense of violence to the werewolf, no real threat. Nothing but the intensity in his eyes and the pressing buzz of his aura pushing against mine.

  “Um…” I cleared my throat. “What are you doing?”

  Liam pressed a hand to my shoulder, studying my face. His nostrils flared as he scented the air. I narrowed my eyes. “Liam?” I asked warily.

  He didn’t answer, just lifted his hand, this time to rest against my jaw, bare skin to bare skin. He stepped closer, and the heat of his energy burrowed deeper into my body. I tried not to squirm even as my thoughts erupted into chaos. Liam leaned closer and put his face over my neck. He drew in a long, deep breath, his mouth ghosting over my skin but not touching it.

  Finally, he stepped back. The cool air rushed between us, a sharp contrast to the heat of a second ago. My knees trembled and I leaned against the SUV while I gathered my wits.

  “I don’t smell a change in you,” he said, sharp blue eyes looking me over from head to toe. “No disease. Your vitals all seem strong.”

  “Um…” I squinted, trying to concentrate on what he was saying. “I’m sorry, you sniffed me to see if I’m…diseased?” It hadn’t sounded right when he said it, and it didn’t sound any better when I said it.

  “And you didn’t smell aroused at first, either,” Liam continued. He tilted his head. “Not at first.”

  I slapped him. It wasn’t a conscious choice, not something I’d ever seen myself doing. But I did it, and it felt right.

  Liam blinked. He opened his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” I growled, “but if you really think I’m here to hurt you, then insulting me seems like a really stupid thing to do.” I shoved my hands down at my sides, resisting the urge to slap him again—or worse. “I am sorry I leaned into your aura. Twice. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t trying to ‘siphon your life energy’ and I wasn’t flirting.” I shook my head and lurched toward the building. “Definitely not flirting.”

  “Wait.”

  I tensed, but he was smart enough not to touch me, not to put a hand on me to stop me. I didn’t turn, just waited for him to speak.

  “The people in that building are under my protection. It’s my job to take the little things seriously. And I’m sorry if it offends you, but the leaning on me thing is weird.” He came to stand in front of me so I could see his face. “I needed to make sure it wasn’t something that could put my people in harm’s way.”

  “You can be careful without being an ass,” I said evenly.

  He scratched his chin. Then he nodded. “The arousal comment was uncalled for. I’m sorry.”

  I refused to blush. He didn’t deserve it. “Don’t sniff me again.”

  He blinked. The corner of his mouth twitched. I pressed my lips together, but it was too late. I smiled. He chuckled. I laughed.

  “All right, that sounded weird,” I admitted.

  “Not among werewolves,” Liam said, amusement in his voice. “All right. So you don’t cuddle with me, and I won’t sniff you. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  We shook on it, and Liam led the way to the building, holding the door open for me.

  “You know he’s still going to ask Vincent if you were trying something funny,” Peasblossom pointed out, her breath tickling the hairs at the back of my neck.
/>   “I know,” I said. I shrugged, knowing Liam could hear what we were saying. “But I’m not lying, so it’ll be fine.”

  “Telling the truth doesn’t mean you don’t get blamed,” Peasblossom said. “Remember when you accused me of eating the cookie? But I didn’t, did I?”

  I scowled. “You ate all the chocolate chips out of it. That counts as eating the cookie.”

  “It does not!”

  I abandoned the conversation as we wove through the station, heading for Liam’s office. He led me into a small room with plain white walls. A monstrous desk took up a quarter of the room, the surface piled with papers, files, and a scattering of paperclips, binder clips, and sticky notes. Liam stopped at the desk, frowning at the mess. “This case has put me behind.”

  “I can see that.” I perched on the edge of one of the chairs opposite the desk.

  Liam’s desk chair held a pile of folders, and he didn’t bother moving them to sit down. I guessed he didn’t spend a lot of time sitting. I studied the photos on the walls and file cabinets. He had pictures of his officers, including the canines. There were vacation pictures too. Wolves featured prominently. Some of the pictures had children’s school photos stuck into the corners. I couldn’t help but smile. Liam might be a little too high-handed for me, but it was obvious he cared about his officers. And his pack.

  “Peasblossom said that Mia’s gun wasn’t in her desk drawer like she said it was,” I offered when a few minutes of silence had dragged on.

  Liam paused with his hands full of papers and looked up at me. He scanned both my shoulders as if he were looking for Peasblossom. “Are you sure?”

  Peasblossom poked her head out from the curtain of my hair. “Of course I’m sure. Pixies are always sure.”

  “Well, that’s one lie, then.” Liam shook his head and began shuffling papers on his desk. “We’ll have to talk to her again after we find Greg.”

  “Does everyone have a gun now?” I asked.

  Liam harrumphed as he shoved a pile of folders to the side. “Yes. At least, all the people who shouldn’t have guns have them.” He braced his hands on the desk’s surface. “I still don’t have that final coroner’s report.”

  I toyed with the zipper on my pouch. “So, we have a victim who loved himself and hated everyone else.”

  “And was hated by everyone else in return,” Liam added.

  “And last night he entered the park intending to kill his neighbor’s dog.”

  “That’s the general consensus.” He fished his cell phone out of his pants pocket. “We need that report.”

  I scooted back in the chair, reclining until my head rested on the wall behind me. “Anthony follows him, but he’s turned away by Emma, who understands an angry felon running about with a gun hunting the man trying to kill his dog is a bad idea. Anthony gets in his car and drives off.”

  “He says he drove to work,” Liam continued, “but he has no alibi, so it’s possible he drove to a different area of the reservation and resumed the hunt for his missing dog.” He swiped his thumb over the phone screen, then tapped out a text message.

  “A more likely scenario, given his well-documented love for Gypsy,” I added.

  Liam laid the phone on his desk. “Meanwhile, Greg Tyler, dog walker and juvenile offender, leaves his house against Anthony’s orders to continue his hunt for Gypsy, and instead finds the body of our victim. His first call isn’t to the cops, but to Anthony.”

  “Maybe…” I said slowly, “he called Anthony first because he was afraid Oliver attacked Gypsy, and Gypsy fought back.”

  “So he called Anthony because he was worried Gypsy might have been the one to attack Dale?” He stared at his phone as if willing it to buzz with a new text message alert.

  “It makes sense. Greg loves that dog, and so does Anthony. If they thought Gypsy did it, they might delay reporting in the hopes that any evidence against Gypsy would be contaminated.”

  “Or eaten,” Liam added.

  I drummed my fingers on the arm of the chair. “I can understand why they might have done that. I mean, Oliver Dale was a bad person by all accounts. If someone I loved had attacked him, say in self-defense, I can’t say I wouldn’t be tempted to keep my mouth shut. Hope the cops blamed some wild animal.”

  Subtlety had never been my strong suit. With a mentor like Mother Hazel, it was a miracle I had a grasp of the concept at all.

  Liam’s shoulders tightened. Slowly, he lifted his face to look at me. “If you have something to say, Mother Renard, say it.”

  Right to it, then. Fine. “Why won’t you let me talk to Stephen?”

  “Because I already talked to Stephen. I talked to him for several hours.”

  So much for our blossoming camaraderie. I straightened in my seat. “And I’m not questioning your ability. But it is possible I might learn something from talking to him, get him to open up—”

  “And how would you get him to open up to you more than he opened up to his own kongur?”

  The accusation in his tone tightened the muscle in my jaw. He hadn’t come right out and said it, but the insinuation was clear.

  “We’re back to me playing the part of the evil witch, then, are we?”

  “I didn’t say—

  “If you’re suggesting that I would use magic to force Stephen to say something against his will,” I said in a low voice, “you are very, very wrong.”

  “You say that like I haven’t been watching you influence people all day. And I didn’t—”

  “You’ve been watching me charm people into being friendlier and more open to talking to me, not manipulating them into saying what I want them to say. What I’ve been doing is the magical equivalent of offering someone their favorite candy, or telling them I’m friends with someone they love and respect before talking to them. It’s a subtle influence that will only get me so far. What you’ve seen me do wouldn’t work on someone who hated me, or had a strong reason not to help me.”

  I shook my head, reminding myself that Liam didn’t understand me, and he didn’t understand magic. I would let the insult slide. Again. “Manipulating someone’s mind is another matter. And even if I were the sort of witch to throw mind-magic around willy-nilly—which I’m not—it wouldn’t work that way on a shifter.”

  Liam’s eyes sharpened, pinning me in place. “What do you mean?”

  “I can answer this one!” Peasblossom shouted.

  I winced and put a hand to my ear, hoping the next words out of the pixie’s mouth wouldn’t go straight through my ear drum.

  “Shifters have two minds,” Peasblossom continued, “human and beast. The magic to affect one is different than the magic to affect the other, because affecting a human isn’t the same thing as affecting an animal.”

  “She’s right,” I said. “The complexity of a spell that would manipulate both would be a lot of effort, and it wouldn’t be subtle enough to make it effective.”

  “I’ve seen witches affect shifters just fine,” Liam said. “Sleep spells, for example.”

  “Sleep spells are different,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm. “Humans and wolves have a similar concept of sleep, so the effect is the same. But manipulating a shifter’s mind in the way you’re suggesting I would with Stephen, negating his free will and forcing him to tell me things he doesn’t want to, or even convincing him to say something, confess something that might not even be true… A wolf would have no concept of that. And it would feel the attempt at affecting his will and react…poorly.”

  Liam considered that. We stared at one another in silence for a while. It was reminiscent of the standoff we’d had in the parking lot, and I swallowed a sigh. I’d been foolish to think the mistrust could be so easily put aside.

  “I’m sorry if I offended you.” He rolled his neck, tendons popping loudly in the small confines of his office. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just…” He shook his head. “Stephen didn’t do this.”

  I took a deep breath. It
would be easier to agree with him, but that wouldn’t help anyone. “But he is hiding something.”

  “Yes, he is,” Liam admitted.

  His voice held the weight of the knowledge that someone he cared about had done something bad, and he wouldn’t be able to protect him from the consequences. That tone eased away the rest of my anger. He was worried for Stephen.

  And he should be.

  “Dr. Dannon isn’t answering my text,” Liam said finally. “I’m going to call him. We need a definite cause of death.”

  “I left Emma’s sweatshirt in the SUV. I’m going to go grab it while you’re on the phone.” I stood. “Is she here today?”

  “Her shift hasn’t started yet, but she should be here soon. I need to talk to her anyway, so if you wait a second, I’ll go to the SUV with you and then we can stop at her cubicle together.”

  “I need a moment with Peasblossom, and then I’ll join you back here, if that’s all right?”

  His jaw tightened, but he nodded. “Fine.”

  I left the office as he snatched his phone off the desk and punched in the coroner’s number. As soon as we were in the hallway, Peasblossom tapped me on the back of the neck.

  “He doesn’t like you,” she said matter-of-factly.

  “He doesn’t like me because we had a little misunderstanding that’s been blown way out of proportion because he’s frazzled by this situation with Stephen,” I said. I pushed open the door and stepped outside, bracing myself against a stiff breeze that smelled of snow.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like witches in general,” Peasblossom offered. “Witches are an acquired taste. You’re a little scattered, if you want the truth. And he thinks you wanted to come out here alone because you want to talk to me about how guilty you think Stephen is.”

  I sighed and pressed the button on the key fob to unlock the SUV. “He’s convinced I consider Stephen an easy conviction and a shortcut to that favor from Mother Hazel. It would be nice to prove Stephen’s innocence instead.” I opened the door and retrieved the evidence bag with the bloody sweatshirt. A thought occurred to me, and I paused before closing the door. “Could you ask around, search for witnesses? If someone or something else manipulated him, there has to be chatter. Someone would be bragging.”