The Man From F.L.O.R.I.D.A.
[;canine; ;siruean;][;mystery; ;m:pov; ;first person; ;novel;]
 
Summary: A drifting construction worker puts down the beer and picks up a discarded bag, catapulting him into murky events and murder.  
 
Contents:
Prologue - line 36
Chapter One - line 60
Chapter Two - line 311
Chapter Three - line 332
Chapter Four - line 606
Chapter Five - line 651
Chapter Six - line 926
Chapter Seven - line 970
Chapter Eight - line 1212
Chapter Nine - line 1256
Chapter Ten - line 1581
Chapter Eleven - line 1634
Chapter Twelve - line 1892
Chapter Thirteen - line 1927
Chapter Fourteen - line 2215
Chapter Fifteen - line 2245
Chapter Sixteen - line 2510
Chapter Seventeen - line 2533
Chapter Eighteen - line 2795
Chapter Nineteen - line 2828
Chapter Twenty - 
Chapter Twenty-One - 
Chapter Twenty-Two - 
Chapter Twenty-Three - 
Epilogue - 
Songs - line 3045
Glossary and terms - line 3066
Copyright 2019 Happy_Dragon

Prologue

The room had been cold all night, which is hard to do in the South. Between somewhere in March and somewhere in October, it’s anyone’s guess if the weather is going to give an unexpected heatwave. But today hadn’t been that hot, the AC had been serviced at some point in the last year, and since night had fallen there wasn’t more than the heat of bodies to bleed off in the room.
   The club next-door was loud enough, this place better by far. Cold beer, the food not that bad, and the only thing the evening demanded was to pay the bill at the end. The waitress walked up to the table, hair up in a loose bun and long sleeves covering her arms. Thin, near invisible gloves covered her hands for sanitary reasons. Soft sneakers helped her stay on her feet the whole shift but more importantly kept her movements from being an interruption on anyone.
   Grayish fine fur covered her face, and the three quarter profile didn’t block me from seeing her tail. She stood a slender petite five and a few pennies, and if I stood up I’d loom a full head or more over her, maybe a hundred pounds difference between us. I’m the kind of person that gets noticed quickly for not fitting in, and forgotten just as quickly for not being threatening.
   “Another beer, sweetie?” That kind of easygoing politeness and cheer comes easier when you have to work with the public, and you know you’ve been somewhere too long when they start in with that.
   “Might as well. Not much else to do.”
   It’s not polite to call them wolves or dogs, but I’d squeaked by the sorry excuse for high school biology with that much. As much as I had a line of ancestors that, if traced back millions of years, had met with lines that would one day become gorillas and chimpanzees, she had the same relation to wolves and dogs. Her head had evolved for bipedalism and the brain would be about the same size as mine, but no one would mistake her for human. Then there were the other ones, which had once been some kind of ancient cat before they started walking on two legs. This wasn’t much more than a small town in a small county, so there couldn’t be that many of her kind out here. It’s not that hard to follow the working stiff’s golden rule—no need to make someone else’s day any harder.
   “Wish I could say the same. If you keep coming here I’m going to have your order memorized. You make things a bit easier for us working girls.”
   I laughed at that. “It’ll be another few weeks, then it’s somewhere else.”
   “Leaving that soon? You’ve been here, what, a month?”
   “About. Just here to help finish up the new hospital.”
   “Well, we need it even if they’re making it small. My sister has to drive near two hours if the doc down the road can’t handle it for her or her son.” She took the old bottle and swayed away, all simple linen and close cut fur.
   The next beer came, and I leaned back as far as I could while taking the first pull. The news flashed on, a clear sign that it’d gotten late and I couldn’t be drinking until dawn. Even if it was Friday night, the weekend gets cut up by other things.
   Someone turned the sound up, and the talking head prattled through the national lowlights first. “In more local news...” The waitress had returned with another beer ready, but turned to watch the news with me as the beer in hand drained away. “...was found by authorities earlier today and positively identified as the young woman that disappeared last week. They have repeated that anyone that may have information should call.”
   A picture of the woman, different in color but like the waitress, flashed on the screen with the phone number of the police department for the big ugly off the interstate.
   The waitress clicked her tongue in dour beats. “I don’t know about you, but why can’t people just get on with it? We all just want a home and food, and to not end up dead like that.”
   “Wish there was more to add to that. It sounds like a good modern prayer. Don’t think the local pastor like if that’s the only one you know.”
   “Maybe I should. Never liked it, and never saw much of a place for me there. Hell, you don’t need to hear me whine. One more, or no?”
   “Last of the night.”
   Her lip curled up in a small smile along the length of her muzzle. “I’m holding you to that.” She left, much unsaid under the roughest outlines.
   The world has never been perfect, likely never will, but I can’t make myself hate anyone that much. Dislike, disagree, and maybe never will get out of the habit of wanting to call the waitresses like her some flavor of dog idiom. It’s spilled forth and broken fewer situations than than before, but in the safety of my thoughts the tails don’t hear the small town habits. Maybe one day I’ll be able to leave that place behind.
   I checked my watch, drained the last of the beer, and after leaving a generous tip with the bill I walked out into the ripe humidity. I’m not fucking one of them, and certainly not killing them.

Chapter One

Moving down to the South was a bad idea.
   I grew up here and there across this forsaken place. Nine long years ago, I’d sworn I was never coming back. After signing on the line, they paid a bonus almost as soon as the ink soaked into the page. Two years passed by in a blink. I’d move to a new city for a construction project, finish, and leave for the next place.
   Every few months, or few weeks, I hit a new city. The only thing changing was the day’s schedule. The weather never matched what I wanted it to be. The food popped out of the microwave, whirr and beep, unless I took the time to care about washing up for a restaurant. Most of the time I’m just another face in the crowd, alone, unremarkable.
   Some of the younger and single guys did nothing but drink when they weren’t working. I avoided that idea because sooner or later they slipped up, calling in too drunk to work. Some of the guys went home and played video games all the time, slept, worked, rinse, repeat. Others got a TV and tried to watch every movie in existence.
   It wasn’t a fun lot, plenty of money but nothing of value to spend it on. There were always whores and other leeches available. That got old quicker than a shitty game got boring.
   Too many of the guys were burnouts that worked like robots, drank like fish, and always had the craziest stories.
   I spent too much time reading and trying not to get caught up in anyone’s crazy riptide. The downward spiral started weeks, no, months before as an unreachable itch. Each fresh mystery or adventure seemed as plain as the last, black ink on white page marching obediently to the last words. It didn’t have to be fun, marking time and counting the days until I arrived somewhere new.
   Then I had to go back to Florida.
   It was a medium sized city with a university.
   Summer, the real dog days, had finally rolled into town. Long days, unpredictable weather, and heat that baked the brain until cracked. Plenty of people barely past being kids themselves. Plenty of stuck-up rich or so-called smart people. Plenty of down on their luck scum, catering the goods that don’t come sterile in a bright package. There’s plenty of opportunities out there, just waiting for one person’s misery to get leveraged against others. The catch is leaving the AC to go fishing.
   Opportunity doesn’t knock, it tends to puke on your boots right before going to the ER.
   
The club was small, the lighting in no way up to code, and half the liquor old overpriced bottom shelf tailings poured into top shelf bottles. But it was close enough to walk to and cheap enough to stay at until close even if none of the girls were bottom shelf refuges. I’d found it by chance after less than a week in town, well before I learned which pizza places weren’t worth ordering from. Arcs of bench seats in old faded naugahyde too smooth from years of attention lined the walls, and small tables in front of them that would reek of alcohol after years of rehab in the sun. More tables and chairs dotted the room almost all the way up to the main stage, where the seating was along a bar and low stainless steel tube railings. A side stage, barely more than half a dozen feet across, gave a few patrons the chance to monopolize a girl as long as they kept tipping and she wanted to suffer them.
   The sound system sounded close to being on its last legs on at least half the nights I wandered in, and tonight hit the average on that. One speaker in the corner would come to life, wobble out of tune for a verse or so, and then cut out again. The overworked AC chugged when the place was only half-full, and when packed the smoke and fumes were a narcotic blanket on a man’s depression but not a salve. It was a place of souls in purgatory or worse, and too many couldn’t see the setting about them.
   That made it almost perfect if I wanted to wallow in fortune like too many other guys from the job. And if I wanted to drink alone that night, no one challenged that.
   In the middle of the week, there weren’t as many girls dancing and not as much money being thrown around. I made an early habit of choosing a different girl each night, sometimes randomly with a coin flip, but I’d never picked one of the tails. A row of bottles and the succession of girls pressing close to blow wind in my ear left loose sails under dark skies.
   Three-quarters of the way through the seventh beer some guy tried to grab a dancer’s ankle. She flipped her grip on one of the mini poles, not quite bars either, towards the edge of the side stage and kicked out with her other foot. Dicksnot-for-brains went stumbling back with what had to be a broken nose, then crashed into some dappled wolfie chick hitting up the table and party behind. The dancer snitted off the stage, and next up on the main stage was some striped cat babe with dyed hair a shocking orange and a bright purple streak down the middle. A bouncer got up to remove the rule-breaker and likely had fun setting his nose via the parking lot.
   Compared to some of the classier places in nicer areas it could have been a crap joint, but it had a ruthless charm and a good mix of babes. White, black, olive-skinned, spots and stripes and plain. I’d also noticed it was the only place you could see tail alongside skin, and they all competed for whatever cash floated out there that night. You name it, they had it at some point during the week, except for types that could only be found on some backwater fetish website. Jaded girls were just looking to make ends meet—some too strange for a 9-to-5 or retail and others not good enough for the high-end hustle or the low-end grind of the internet. They, life, wanted to drag the last dollar out of a man, just another breed of vampires trying to survive and defend against the feint and ambush of another’s wink and smile.
   Tits and ass is all the same whether it’s bare skin or not. I’d never been a tailchaser, but I couldn’t complain if they did that not-quite-a-dance bareassed in front of me.
   Guess the owner cared more about ones that showed up than racism. Maybe he didn’t give a damn if they didn’t cause him problems with the cops. Better things out there to bitch about.
   I could wile the hours away like an endless chain of beer mugs and bottles marching away without purpose. No one made me give a shit to count backwards and remember where it had branched and led to this alien land.
   
The sidewalk going back to my place always stayed dark along way too many stretches. Some of the dark pools were lots that hadn’t been redeveloped after their last owner, maybe years since then. This late, and without the din of traffic, the chatter of homeless people laying down for the night, cursing, the sound of bottles being lightened, half-dead sighs and the demon prince ruling all the adult fears that keep a man from wanting to end up like that – they crept out. Behind others I could hear a more normal life. Pockmarked concrete stretched out in front, accented by cigarette butts, weeds, empty cups, and the flotsam and jetsam of the sea of cars. And poking up from it all were scaffolds and cranes off in the distance, no matter where I turned. It’s safer down low when you’re drunk on something than walking a tightrope without a net.
   The road was empty at this hour, just before last call. The elevated lights of the monster preceded the stink from its oversized engine. The thing raced past with a scream of pistons and someone’s shout.
   Against moonlight a large handbag arced past into the bare lot beyond.
   I shuffled over to the bag, if only to get a clue who to throw it back at later. The bag had fallen on its side, a couple of items half out. Someone else’s past at my feet, a time machine cutting into the present and whirling without course or heading. I scooped up the whole mess and finished the half-drunken shuffle back to a waiting bed.
   
The next morning I forgot about the bag, made it in early for once fueled by coffee and a few extra energy pills, and hated the day and its heat.
   By the time I got home, I’d forgotten the details of everything after the last couple of beers from the night before. But there sat a woman’s bag, scuffed and beaten past the point of still being fashionable, on the counter.
   I grabbed a beer from the fridge and tipped the bag’s contents onto the counter. A smaller bag with two different sets of lingerie smelling of woman, smoke, and too many other hints. A hardcase, padded inside, with some makeup and perfumes. A charger for electronics. A small case of compact discs, tracks written on sleeves behind, with titles in sharpie. A pair of tiny sport headphones. But no wallet, no purse, and nothing to identify the poor bitch that had to resort to smacking some guy bare-handed.
   Except...
   After I emptied the bag and patted it down, out came a thumb drive from an inner zippered pocket.
   After two more bottles, and some week old pizza the shadow of a future hangover put its feet up on the couch. The drive only had several folders of pictures, one shaky video, and a few cryptic text files. Almost all the photos looked like late-night partying.
   It wasn’t as diverse a mix as the strip joint. Their clothes looked trashy, the kind of trashy that comes with a price tag. The guys with them looked like wasted office workers, some older and some younger. And then there was the kicker.
   One of the pics was inside the club.
   She’d taken a selfie while on some guy’s lap.
   I couldn’t have described her fur pattern properly after work-induced braindeath and a few beers, but she was one of the wolf looking girls. Youngish, dark-eyed, a row of earrings and piercings in one ear, and almost black hair against fur that alternated dark brown with glossy black. If she removed all the extra piercings in that ear and put on some clothes she’d look like just another plain college girl.
   The beer had gone warm and tasteless, and I cursed the goddess or saint of sticking your nose in things. Another beer helped make the call without a coin flip. I went back through the CD case. Her name was Deedee, at least when working the club.
   
Every night I hoped the next dream was something normal or escapist. It wasn’t enjoyable when hidden eyes watched, their gaze running spidersilk over shoulders and back, evaporating like morning dew as I turned. Why couldn’t it be a replay of that day at the lake, nine years old, fish not biting and the sun too bright, but there we were and no one could take him away on a perfectly peaceful day? Or that one Saturday four weeks before graduation, the wind tugging as I raced down the open road? Not a car in sight except for one friend ahead a couple hundred feet, another behind, pushing over 100mph on blacktop long since faded to sun-bleached white and gray, cracked from too many overloaded trucks avoiding scales and the Highway Patrol.
   I’d scrubbed clean work’s odors. The smoke tonight laid thick like a pine fire but I could have cared less. It wasn’t choking. Yellow and green lights alternated against it, staying in time with the simple beat. The beer sweated cold and the tables on either side indistinct, just her and I as smoke blew off the stage. Young enough to play the schoolgirl, but tonight she’d transformed into the independent woman a little girl dreamed of becoming, confident and long-legged in a smart cream businesslike skirt and fitted jacket, a darker thin belt around her tiny waist.
   I’d seen it before, enough to make her exotic instead of unknown. She’d clipped herself on the shorter side due to the summer’s heat. Her tail fur remained somewhat longer, swaying in time with the song’s pulse. Stiff ears that came to a rounded point moved like arms to complement the dance. Her feet might have been in heels, but the shape of the shoes didn’t match human. I repeated the old line, look but don’t touch. As each little piece dropped and swirled the tendrils at her feet, the beat got nastier and her hips swayed more to the low croon. Her tail arched high, her brown and black hair hung in waves to the dimples of her back, grazing her asscheeks when she leaned back and floating out when she spun.
   Pale lace covering short fur accented the illusion of stripes, light and dark. The thong pulled away and the stripes waved down over breasts, over narrow waist and flat stomach, lines drawn for fingers to touch and trace. The lights changed to red and orange, turning the brown fur to a dried maroon.
   The woman sang about heaven and love, curses and dying. Don’t cry about fate. I knew what was coming, now was now and the future far away.
   The last chorus of the song crossfaded to a watered down rap or R&B song, the lights shifted to blue and orange against smoke. She strutted off, leg and heels crossing in front as the next girl came out, except the next girl was ghostly. Only moments, and she walked out among the crowd packing the smoke walled room. Deedee wore only the lace thong and bra. She wasted no time, sliding right into my lap and throwing an arm around. Her perfume was a deep orangey citrus with hints of cinnamon, warm punch curling up my nose on a cold day, hiding inside against the wind and snow. She nuzzled me, feathers of breath escaping. It should have been impossible to feel her thong through jeans, but her motions said she felt my shaft inside.
   “Mine.” Her voice wasn’t as low as the song’s singer, but real and begging to be moans, her dark eyes asking to see deep into others.
   “Are you sure? Little girls should be careful. They might get taught what all their flirting really means.”
   She grabbed my hands and guided them under her small breasts, her hands keeping me from what I couldn’t have in the club. “I may be petite, and I may be young, but I don’t play at flirting. I catch what I’m hunting.”
   The walk to the back was slow. She took her time leading with me savoring the sight of her tight ass, the tail up just enough to flick and dance across my chest. No one stopped us at the entrance to the booths at the back, barely enough room for me to sit down and her to stand in. Her scent pushed in close, overpowering in close quarters, the sight leaving me rigid. She teased with hands, feet and tail as the lingerie came off again. All of it.
   Her body teased light on my lap as she slid backwards and leaned back, pushing the both of us against the padded couch. She whispered, just enough to be heard over the beat. “I want a man tonight. Not love, lust. Unapologetic, unfettered, complete lust. You up to the task the little boys can’t do, big man?” 
   “Is that all you’ve been hunting? Might take all night.”
   Her ears tickled my face in silent laughter at the easy game. “I hope it takes all night. You’d better stretch me out and fuck me so hard I walk silly in the morning.”
   It’d been a while, no, a long while since a woman wanted it this bad. She named a price in my ear I was more than willing to pay, and before the next breath escaped she hung off my arm with the club doors closing behind. Driving took effort to stay on the road, her hands running up and down my leg, then higher. It shifted to reward as her ass swayed during the walk to my place, the expensive looking cream skirt showing the narrowness of her waist and the length of her legs. While I unlocked the door she played at distraction, asking if I was as strong as I looked, asking if I was man enough for the more athletic positions.
   A man may not live like a millionaire, but with the right girl he’ll feel like one. Nothing fancy, but I kept the place decently clean. With her it became a minuscule slice of heaven. She peeled away into the tiny kitchen. Dark eyes drifted over the bottles of liquor, then her hands had a drink in each and her feet were pushing us to the couch. I thumped backward, she emptied her glass in one draught, eyes laughing at the predicament as she turned my lap into a chair. Her ears relaxed back a fraction, her tail actually wagging in a bouncy pattern as it swung lazily from side to side.
   “I’m picky about my lovers. If you can show me you’re worth my time...”
   I drained the drink and the glass clinked against its mate on the side table. Her tail stopped, her thighs noting the shift in weight. With an arm under her legs at the knee I stood, tossing her light frame over my shoulder. To retaliate she smacked me in the face with her tailtip, I punished that with a firm slap on her ass, getting a playful yip in return.
   The bedroom was small, just enough room for bed and dresser. I swatted her ass again to keep her in line before letting her down.
   “So you think you can dominate me, make me your little bitch?” Hot words, but her ears betrayed excitement and arousal. “This isn’t some outlet store discount suit. It’s probably more than you make in a week.”
   I grabbed behind her neck and pulled her close, the other hand cupping her ass. “If you keep it on, it’s getting messed up. Around your hips or on the floor, your choice.”
   Two tiny steps backwards. She shrugged out of the blazer and neatly folded it without taking her eyes away. Neither the dresser or floor were good closets. Her hands undid the buttons at the skirt’s back, that joined the blazer on the dresser. Fingers ran up blouse buttons, trying to play and tempt. She circled the top button twice, slid it open, tilted her head, then repeated with the next button and paused. That button twiddled between two fingers. I slipped free the thin leather belt from her skirt, doubled it in hand, and tested it with a light smack on the palm. No need to reveal that had never been a kink of mine.
   She backed down and popped the remaining buttons, one by one, until the blouse hung open.
   Why did some women have the habit of making everything into a damned game? “Everything off, now.”
   The blouse slithered off before she pushed into me, making the belt an ineffective threat. She spun with practiced grace and pushed her ass back, leaned forward, and reached behind to unhook the bra. Its lace joined the pile.
   “Oh, I’m not playing. I’m doing a very good job of teasing you. Have you been soft since I rubbed myself against that big cock at the club, hmm?” The thong fell to the floor. She turned, her finger running up and down my chest, flicking each button.
   “The longer you play at teasing, the rougher it’ll be for you.”
   She took her time, button by button, then her hands undid my pants as I kicked shoes free, thumping against well-worn workboots. Clothes fell in a disorganized heap, only socks and underwear remaining. I pulled a sock off and her nose wrinkled, so I rolled it under her nose.
   “Keep playing and it’ll get used to gag you whenever you don’t have a cock in it.” She didn’t tempt me as my other sock came off. “Down on your knees. Time to see if the little puppy knows how to do more with that tongue besides wagging it.”
   Her hands were against my thighs, dragging underwear down. I looped the belt around her neck, her dark eyes pleading as my cock waited for her. Resolve broke, one hand gripped and her tongue licked the length of the shaft, the other hand rubbing between her legs. The difference of her tongue forced me to control her pace with the makeshift leash. The taste of precum, the smell, must have been driving her crazy.
   I pulled free of her teasing. She stood, the belt loose and slipping down. Her finger lingered over the leather, then placed it with the folded clothing. With a look back, she crawled onto the bed. Flicks of her tail taunted, and with one last whip she rested on knees and elbows. If she had a smile, my attention was on the frame of her asscheeks and high-raised tail presented her cunt. Each breath had an undercurrent of a whine, waiting to be used and filled.
   She seemed too thin and tiny to take it roughly, but the truth was eager, horny and begging for the experience. All it took was a touch against shiny lips and she pushed back. I grabbed her waist one-handed to keep her under control. With each thrust I buried deeper inside her, stealing the volume from her gasps. Like her tongue the feeling offered intensity in a new way, not human but dreamlike. The fantasy would have ended too soon without cutting my breathing back to tight and constricted grunts. Tiny shivers showed off the patterns of her coat and small whines accompanied each stroke, ears rocking back and forth in time without control. I leaned forward to roll hair in a fist, and pulled her into an arc. She clamped down tighter from the surprise as used her, playing rough and feral growls in her ears. The shock of the moment snapped her ears forward, shivering along with her petite body.
   “This is what you get for playing.” Each word was a long, drawn out push of body and will, in control of the waves of sensation and biology that attempt to chain everything walking and breathing. I repeated myself again and again like a mantra, her whines gone from soft to pleading, still rising in pitch and volume. Her ass demanded it, right in reach. My full-armed smack paired with her loud yip she tried to pull away but rebounded back, clenching and spasming.
   Her approaching orgasm begged to drag me along. “Now what did you want, little bitch?” I kept the motion steady, each thrust rough and sudden.
   “Please, cum.” Her voice whispered, barely there.
   “That’s not good enough. What did you want?”
   The shivers rippled through her, unrestrained. “Please cum inside me. Please please please...” Each word came softer and more lost.
   The contrast of flesh was finally too much as I emptied weeks’ worth of tension, needing to quench the wildfire inside of her.
   
Saturday morning sun woke me from wherever I’d imagined, not even a mirrorshard of fantasy remaining. I’d kicked the sheet off and the ceiling fan rolled wave after slow wave of too warm air over me. Thick ropes of dried cum covered my bare chest and belly. I got up stiffly to shower, morning hard, and hoped that whoever she’d been that sooner or later I found someone half as good. Sooner, before I fell apart.
   
It wasn’t until Tuesday that visited the club again, tired but still moving under enough chemically aided power to take care of business.
   The wall of a dozen different perfumes over old smoke and liquor punched hard once past the outer door. The night still had time for the crowd to strike completely shitfaced. Just wait until she came out, then let her know.
   I stewed for song after song, waiting for something beside myself. Life didn’t want to admit that this was normal, neither good or bad, plain or exciting. The void screamed sleep-dream-wake-work-drink, and couldn’t recall the last soaring dream of freedom. Easier waiting than to walk back home.
   The last girl went offstage, and the PA crackled over the song’s outro.
   “Next up is every school’s problem, Deedee! The Teacher’s Pet!”
   She stepped out on the stage to the beat in four, swinging mini bookbag in time. One, two, pause and look left, four. One, two, pause and look right, four. Her red, white, and black schoolgirl skirt, thigh high socks, and a midriff-baring white shirt with matching tie weren’t standard issue. Eight bars in she stood in the middle of the stage, the bag dropping on cue, and four bars of fill sent her spinning.
   In less than thirty seconds I knew why I’d walked through the door tonight. 
   Songs get written about girls like her, and not the wistful first love kind. Doris Day sure as fuck didn’t have this in mind. They don’t make girls quite like that anymore, and Deedee made men forget the nostalgia. She seemed taller in shoes and onstage than she would normally. The details popped better than in lifeless pictures. Short cut fur, the alternating colors catching the brighter stage lighting stronger than the dim of the floor. Touches of gray shot through to accent her more at the curves and hollows. Slender, almost too thin, but leggy with just enough T&A. Some guys howled, some whistled, others just stuck their well-worn dollar tips in either sock.
   After my heart went back to something closer to normal and a few minutes more, she walked the tables looking for private dances. The schoolgirl outfit had an encore, and every step closer spiked my blood pressure higher. She leaned over the table slowly, her shirt providing me a nice view. She hadn’t replaced the bra, and nipples poked against thin white cotton.
   “If you liked the show that much, I’m only forty for three more songs. Your pants stay on, only areas you can’t touch are my tits or pussy.” Higher pitched like a young girl, but low and trying to flaunt all her experience. A novice huntress looking for her night’s catch, and I was an easy mark.
   “I found your bag, the one that got thrown out of the car the other night.” A beat, and she sat across from me poleaxed. “Wasn’t much in it, just your makeup, clothes, CDs, and a couple other things.”
   Her mouth opened a bit more. I took a pull of beer, and went on when she managed more of the same.
   “Only figured out who after looking at CD titles that were all Deedee this, Deedee that.” Her head shook as if my explanation derailed her work mode. “And couldn’t have figured out where without the thumb drive...”
   She leaned closer in a flash until halfway over the table and with her muzzle next to my ear. “It’s OK?”
   She’d hit a mousesqueak voice, nothing low and husky now. Hell, she couldn’t be much out of high school, maybe just old enough to have graduated this spring. I nodded slowly, not sure what got missed except that I couldn’t connect brain to mouth.
   “You probably can’t meet me in the morning.” She fell back into the booth, and I shook my head. “Then tomorrow before I come here. 7PM? Come back later and I’ll give you a dance you’ll never forget. It’ll be so good you’ll want to pay.”
   Her ears, dark brown shot with gray, fading to almost black tips, were flat and downturned in thought. “But not tonight.”
   I nodded again like a drunk scared sober, still speechless.
   She gave me a location nearby with a large and open parking lot. Then she wandered to the back slowly, ignoring any money left in the crowd.
   
The next evening I drove away from work tired and thankful I still had ten fingers. I hadn’t slept well, barely held down breakfast, and hoped to make it home alive.
   I pulled in, and cut the engine. Too many cars in the parking lot and I couldn’t tell which one matched her. I’d chosen an open area, watching the street and early evening traffic going by. The lights were already on, not helping the boiling hot even with the sun almost down mood.
   There, a later model car nearby. She had on long pants, a close-fitting zipped windbreaker, and an old baseball hat with hair underneath and ears through holes in the top, her eyes shaded in its darkness. No piercings right now, either.
   “Got my bag?”
   She seemed taller than I’d guessed, within a few inches of me. Heeled boots, maybe. The lights in the club probably made her look a bit different, and I couldn’t see everything now. And her voice seemed lower pitched, as if the club was a calculated act, body and voice certain of herself and her surroundings. I reached in and handed it over.
   Her hand patted, then paused for a moment over the small pocket where the thumb drive sat. “It was concerning when this got lost. Not something to be in the wrong hands.” She raised an eyebrow and the hint of a tired smile, and went back to examining the bag until I found enough bravery.
   “See you soon for that dance.” My words stopped her. “Not tonight though. Hard day.”
   She nodded, and walked away as my truck pulled out, returning to a lonely and plain apartment. There’s wasn’t much on TV except an old suspense movie. Either go to bed early and have strange dreams, or watch the movie and have unsettling dreams.
   
All eyes were on me but none saw me, not at night with the world dreaming. 
   The car raced down the highway and the radio rumbled on. It wasn’t my usual, but there were only two people and soon a trunk full of cargo. My co-pilot lazily sharpened an old knife. Another mile marker passed by. The exit came up, middle of nowhere. Pull off, quarter mile down the road, turn again. At night the lot was empty and the lights off. She glanced at a rugged and well-worn men’s watch that matched mine, an old present from a friend.
   Only one other car, a big late model sedan like a Vic. They’d brought four guys, and you don’t fit four in a two door sportscar.
   I got out, made introductions. They were bulky, imposing, and certainly wearing vests underneath, same as us. It made my frame look more like police cadet or military boot, neither of which I’d ever been. She was the opposite, at home in its protection while I held back the desire to scratch and reposition. Her golden eyes were all the protection I needed, but backup’s never a bad idea. Plan for the bad, then kill it before it gets up. If they never know your real plans, you never make it a fair fight. That’s what they taught in school.
   Trunks were popped open. Taped plastic bags filled theirs, two briefcases sat side by side in ours.
   She strode over, almost black denim jeans hugging every curve, boots laced high, taunting every man with a taste for her kind. Nothing much had ruffled her as long as we’d worked together. Slow counting, then she removed one. At a signal, one of the men opened the briefcases, riffing through the stack of bills.
   The bag slapped into my hand and she left any chatter on the usual careful job of packing to me. “All there, and all there, just like last time.” The fragments of old gravel twisted underfoot as I tossed the bag back.
   The lead man signaled again, and the bags and briefcases switched trunks. She pulled out a smaller pocketknife and cut in, offering a sample. I sniffed, the product pure as virgin snowfall, ready to be cut, ready for the small share to be blended into the magic that let me hear and smell and taste and move faster. Magic.
   Back on the road she drove, racing the way we’d come and more confident than me at the wheel of her car. Magic sharpened the no-scent of the shampoo she used. Magic augmented the slight noises of the tires and asphalt, sharpening the road’s feel in ways she found normal. And it would be magic when everything was stashed away and secure, her and I alone with nothing between and nothing able to hold back.
   Not the feelings of others, not the laws of the land, not the things consuming the precious minutes of each day, not the earthbound morals to control the masses, not even the distant promise of death.
   
Over the next few days I didn’t have time to fantasize about the windfall of luck. I couldn’t talk about it either, since I’d get called tailchaser or told to stick to your own.
   The courage came on Saturday. I’d taken an extra half-shift to catch up on something. A late lunch, a short nap and then shower, then go and collect the reward while still good.
   The place had packed full for the weekend. Too many college kids were still in town looking for something less safe than the downtown bars. The girls were raking in the small bills, and tonight there were enough flavors for everyone’s tastes. I didn’t see her, even after an hour. A light-skinned latina, raven-haired and plump lipped, brought the next beer.
   I took a pull. “Is Deedee working tonight?” She shrugged no.
   The next beer came with a short-haired redhead, and I repeated the question. The next beer arrived, this time from a catlike one, all fine dark spots across white and barely blond short fur. Her outfit was all fine golden chains and wisps of white, drawing my eyes with every sinuous step, enough to make me reconsider and unafraid of labels. The dancer on stage twirled around the pole kicking and arching back to the chorus of the song, guitars and drums carnal.
   Her hands ran down her body, but then she flung her arms out in a spin that turned her from the crowd. When she faced front again and squared her stance to stare down the watchers, fingers moved lower down her stomach to her crotch, timed to declarations of want, need and lust. The last word was for her. Animal.
   One of girls like Deedee, but more muscular and a bit older. Lighter overall, and closer cut so it rippled like shimmering fabric under the lights. Leather biker kind of lingerie girl, real looking—not the fetishy stuff that gentler and nicer girls flirt with. Metal flashed against darker flesh and lighter fur. She’d stripped down to the g-string and with a whirl that snapped off too, falling to the stage.
   Guess it was a fitting song for her.
   The girl thumped the beer down, piqued, and stared daggers at the dancing wolfie. “I hate that fucking song. And that fucking band. And fuck her.”
   The next beer came, but no Deedee. I ordered yet another.
   This time the girl was the wolfie onstage a bit ago. Close up her hair was black-streaked and dyed blue. Leather shorts, leather vest and top under it, leather boots. She didn’t need any help from the gear to make her tits bigger. She sat close, pushed the beer closer, and poked me in the ribs with a rather sharp nail.
   Definitely not nice and sugar and spice. Almost uniformly silver gray, or was it closer to white? Fur covered ears were pinned back hard and angry, darkening at the tips.
   “You’re telling me why you’re looking for Deedee unless you want an ER visit.” Instant sober, just add one thinly veiled threat.
   “She said something about a private dance from her next time. I did a favor for her. She’s not working tonight?”
   Stare and blink, hard and green. The nails of all four fingers and thumb dug deeper. “Reach for your wallet, slowly. That’s it. Open it on the table. Flip to your ID.” She looked at my info without turning away. “Jacob G. Ainsley. Forty bucks for three songs, now.”
   I lifted the wallet open enough for her to slide a pair of twenties out. A pair of ears swiveled towards me, then she got up and stopped trying to tear holes into innocent lungs or kidneys.
   “Follow me.” Her shorts, cut high on the legs and laced up the side showed off legs and an ass that demanded it, tail in counterpoint to the sway of her hips. 
   A bouncer blocked the entrance to the back in classic tough guy pose.
   “Three, Charlie.” The bills appeared in her fingers as he moved aside, and disappeared into his hands.
   They’d divided the back area into small booths, some semi-private and a few private. She led me to a private, barely room for a small couch-like seat, a tiny platform and pole a couple feet away, and mirrored surfaces all around. The lighting was only slightly better maintained here, and smelled much less foul.
   “You know the rules?”
   I nodded like a bobblehead toy. She removed everything but the g-string and straddled me. Her weight pushed down, and her pierced nipples poked at me through my shirt when she brushed against it. She moved closer on my lap with her mouth almost at my ear.
   “Whisper just loud enough like this, like you’re dirty talking me.” Her nose twitched, the ghost of work still on me, as she ground slow circles in time to the song. “Charlie isn’t bad, but if Bobby looks at the cameras you better look like a tailchaser that wants an outcall. And get your hands on my ass right the fuck now. You’re not one of those schoolboys and you best be able to get hard and talk at the same time.”
   What the more-than-a-little-scary lady wants, not with her cropped fur velvety over the steel of muscle. I didn’t care how much like a Penthouse letter it sounded, but carefully followed her directions anyway.
   “Uhh, you answer a question first? About...” I trailed off when she kept grinding her hips and pushing pale breasts to the limits of the law.
   I didn’t have a problem getting hard, and she kept up a low growl helped it say hard. I couldn’t remember ever liking the dominatrix type, but she was damned good at it and I doubted they dumped bodies in the dumpster out back. It’s dangerous to challenge wild animals, unless they’re the uninhibited kind walking on two legs, dishing out threats and commands. There were worse ways to die than this.
   “You like dragging schoolboys in here and seeing who shoots off early?”
   “Do I look like the type with a submissive side?” She had a dangerous and toothy grin, so b-i-n-g-o. “So you’re the lucky SOB that Deedee couldn’t shut up about. I got back Wednesday morning and had to listen until close. You’re not as cute as she made you out to be.”
   It stung a bit framed like that. “But cute?”
   “More like rugged. I prefer rugged, with a thick cock that gets hard when I want it and stays hard until I’m done. You got that, so I’m feeling bad about poaching her mark.”
   It wasn’t against the rules to play with her ass so I did. In return she didn’t let me guide her but didn’t ignore hints.
   Damn, she was good. Like more-than-a-little-scary good approaching can’t-stand-or-walk-straight-after good, and just coming to the close of the first song. Then she told me the problem.
   “But no one’s seen her since she left Wednesday morning. So me, then the gas station cashier. That was after three.”
   “Saw her that evening to give her back her bag, at...”
   “Think for me. What was she wearing? What kind of car?”
   “Late model. Import, but stock. High school bumper sticker. And the windbreaker, softball team.”
   Her knuckles brushed my cheek.  “Wasn’t her.” That news left me torn between staying hard to preserve organs, and going soft in fear. “She kept it, but wouldn’t wear it after some post-graduation incident the coach didn’t punish.”
   I couldn’t figure anything good enough to say. She didn’t need any sympathy, she demanded details.
   “Tell me what she looked like.”
   Wasn’t simple to claw them out when I hadn’t paid much attention. The bumper sticker and windbreaker had the wrong logo. The car was wrong. One by one, they were spaced further apart, and her questions became specific. I wanted to cum in my jeans even if it meant walking home in them.
   The third song was almost over. She hadn’t said anything since halfway through the song.
   “I’m going to hurt that bitch however she hurt her.”
   It was impolite and too personal to identify the bitch in question, except being around when they settled this sounded bad. She pushed herself back and stared me in the eyes from inches away to make sure her next words stuck, ears forward and eyes dead cold.
   “I’m Tahlia. That’s short for Castahlia, by the way. And you’re just some unlucky, anonymous bastard that’s gotten pulled into this.”
   I felt a moment of draining relief as she got off. That ended when she continued.
   “Meet me at the IHOP south of here, by the Royal, at 7am with your computer if you don’t want to end up dead yourself.”
   
At 7AM on a Sunday morning, the people at IHOP are either heading to church or already done with the week’s praying. The door squeaked too loud for my taste, and the mirror in the entrance was something to avoid looking at. No one looked good at this hour, and I didn’t need reminding. Laptop underneath my arm, I scanned for ears poking up through dark blue and black hair. She sat in the best corner to observe the whole room.
   I sat down as she sipped overheated black coffee. Her eyes flicked over the room, taking notes and not settling anywhere long.
   It was different seeing her covered. She’d traded the leather for a buttoned-up men’s long sleeve, just tight enough to help someone guess her cup size and choice of jewelry if she’d worn a thinner bra. Other than that, she’d dressed down as far as it goes. No necklace, no earrings, not even a simple bracelet or ring.
   A waitress brought coffee, and we ordered as light as possible. She stared coldly at Tahlia, in no way dressed or ready for Sunday service, and condescendingly at me. Once she’d gone, I turned on the computer and rotated it to Tahlia at her gesture. She tapped for a minute, muttering to herself about caching and drops.
   Finally she whispered a relieved yes.
   Another thumb drive appeared from beneath the table, plugged in while taking another sip of coffee. After a couple minutes the waitress came back with the order just as Tahlia removed the drive, turning the computer back to me. The plates were noisy on old tabletops, and the waitress’ attitude was still set on zero tip.
   “Either this coffee shows up for work soon, or I’m going back home for a nap after this. Mind clearing up what this was about? If the bag with the drive went to someone that wasn’t Deedee, what’s on my computer now?”
   “A copy of the whole drive. If it got plugged into a strange computer, it would make a hidden copy of itself. And if you were the kind of person I didn’t want looking at the contents, your computer would have been dead soon after.”
   “And just what was all that? Looked like a few selfies and however she tracked her tips each night.”
   “Not even close. I’m amazed we even got away with taking pictures, much less that many or for as long as we’ve been working this. Why they ever let me there I’ll never know. Someone must consider all the strippers they hire to get dumber the more they take off. The rest is notes on who we saw and what might have been going on.”
   “Again. Which was, what?” I’d never been the smart one in the group, but this felt like the time to get smarter.
   “Have you seen a man at the club with perfect salt-and-pepper hair, never looks drunk?” I hadn’t. She turned the computer around, navigated for a second and turned it back. “Him. The sheriff of this happily fucked up county, and currently running for State House. David Abernathy, the son of Walter Abernathy. Daddy built up a small company into one of the major construction firms in the area. The son gets the itch of public duty instead of following the family, rises to Detective, then goes back to run the family business when Dad dies. He continues the trend, and now the company is one of the biggest in the region. He’s got nothing better to do, so he turns over the day-to-day to his son, and goes back into public service. How patriotic.”
   Oh.
   “Some of the others are his lieutenants, others are among the local power brokers, ie the people that know this is their playground. A few are complete blanks to me, like his goons.”
   Not good.
   “Every once in a while, they come and get a few of us to be entertainment for the night. Sometimes it’s once every two or three weeks, and sometimes it’s a couple times a week.”
   As the movie says, it’s good to be the king.
   “A rich guy with a superiority complex and money to throw around is a different beast than a poor drunk guy that’s satisfied with tits and a lap dance.” 
   She dug back into her breakfast after the history lesson.
   “So how does Deedee mix in with this? Why should they care about a few photos, unless...”
   “Weren’t you listening? Some of us realized we might be seeing things that the average guy like you would go to prison for. They could throw the law library at someone like me. A few of us started keeping notes. Mostly just Deedee and I. There wasn’t an endgame at first. The more expensive girls didn’t care if they got paid for the night. We figured each of us saw a different part of the picture, and a nagging itch to know what was up. No one had solid proof, and each of us could be dismissed if we didn’t talk. I got chosen now and then because some guys want to get roughed up a bit. And I don’t have a problem with that even if I’m not getting paid.”
   I failed to be shocked. She sighed and continued with the same tired but unblinking stare.
   “Deedee...she had that mix of innocence and the wildness of the first time off apronstrings. They ate it up and she loved the attention. Things have been getting stranger for a while, and they’ve been getting more suspicious of her for a while. She’s good at playing innocent, but maybe Bobby and Sheriff dude’s handlers got a bit more paranoid.”
   As the coffee seeped into my brain I permanently nixed the question of whether Tahlia or Deedee had a Little Red Riding Hood costume.
   “I don’t know what went down that night they tossed her bag. I stayed behind at the club.  But whatever they suspected, it hit the fan when the bag showed back up. That drive was the capstone on our meager motherlode, fresh pics from the past few nights, and the club that night. Even if all the other parties could have been brushed off, one where you’re close to solid evidence of the state and local leadership where they shouldn’t be...whatever spooked them, it was enough potential scandal even if a part of it hit the news, and it was tail doing the delivery.”
   She finished the coffee, waved for a refill, and pushed the plate away. She looked back up. Emerald green eyes, clear and tremorless.
   The ghosts of past bad decisions tugged my nerves. All that showed was a twitch of the index finger, right hand. “They’re covering their tracks before it’s too late, and paying people off isn’t good enough.” And I was one of them.
   More coffee arrived, black as space. “Why do you care?”
   “Excuse me?”
   “Repeat: Why do you care? Just because you’re not their class of people, you’re still human. I’m not turning down work anytime soon, but no matter how people pretend there’s still differences between you and I.” She winced at the taste of the java.
   “Two things. When your life is on the line, everyone’s your brother. Second, I don’t like seeing girls get hurt. I was raised better than that.”
   Whether or not the coffee was as bad as she made out, she drank her fill and vented all of her frustration on me. “Right, the old high and mighty. Maybe you believe it, or maybe you’re the perfect plant to see if I’ll bite.” She leaned back, breathing in the aroma. I hadn’t thought I said anything shocking or derogatory. “Just great. A human with a conscience. A girl tries to mind her own business and the universe gets bored. I don’t need this kind of variety in my life.”
   “I came here because you said to. That’s all it has to be.”
   I’d said it to get it out, but it didn’t change my feelings. She nodded and left it at that.
   “They’ve done something really dumb. If I have to, I’ll be the hand of vengeance. But first I’m going to slap them across the face. I don’t care about justice right now, and I don’t have time to grieve, but I figure something’s going to fall out of this that I can use. I’m going to be ready in case someone tries to grab me, and I’ll take your help with one condition. If you’re in, it’s because you know they could try for you.”
   People get scary when secrets come dancing out. If it turned to kill or be killed, I knew which side was less likely to kill me.
   She slid a scrap of fabric across that smelled of smoke and a dozen other things. “Keep this. We were modifying some of her costumes a few nights before, after someone got grabby and tore one up. Anytime you think you’re safe, hold onto this, because if you’re wrong, this is what you’ll be.”
   
A small room, with a musty odor blanketing the place. It had been several long weeks since I’d given into the pleasure of coming out here, away from responsibilities. Strips of natural light fell on her only. The rigging allowed her to be turned as I wished. For the moment that was face down, legs bent and open as if on all fours. Another line held her tail high. The toys had done their work. The one clamped at the base of her tail buzzed on its highest setting for a blink and she tried to escape the overstimulation, her back arched. The toy buried deep in her ass made her shake even on low. The one locked inside by its inflatable knot was still causing her long toes to curl and cramp each time the tip pulsed inside. Other clamps were attached to anything sensitive and vibrated or shocked as fate saw fit.
   Her mouth hung open, drool gone from parched lips and tongue. No curses left, no words. Words became involuntary moans, those became panicked cries, and then feral noise as nerves overloaded and her brain paused. It had taken time to break this one, but there she was. Delicate and short coat, hues of gray so unlike and contrasting pink flesh. The knife hilt rubbed against an ankle, under jeans. Straps rubbed against long socks, rubbing skin. Lust was the motion of fabric or leather or hair against the body. Breath, paced, ticking. In that platter of soul shavings, she was, and caught in the webbing of rope.
   I turned everything off, then drug a chair to face her. A hand under her chin lifted just enough so that the central thing she’d see when reconnected with reality was my face framed by what was behind. Everything had to be cleaned up in the next couple of hours so I could return to other things, the evidence of almost anything here but an old shack on the lakeside gone in the next couple of days. Not much, just a few personal effects and memorabilia.
   The seconds counted off on my watch, lumped to minutes. Blood coursed, faster and faster. Even if there was no chance of being found, careful always gets the job done. It’s only fair to give her the time she needs, as long as she needs. Eyes faded by every chemical the body can produce opened unfocused and unable to look away. When they did focus, eyes tried to avoid who sat in front of her, but couldn’t avoid the mounted heads of women that shared her pointed ears and wolf-like muzzle.
   
She told me when and where to meet up. Tuesday, lunchtime, at a park in one of those newly upscaled areas. A protest up the street and on the other side made noise that couldn’t be heard from inside a car, just a half-dozen handmade signs demanding an end to rough police tactics. Four not human, and two that were but didn’t look like they had enough credit to matter. The park had enough red, white and blue to have a Fourth of July parade. The thing had already started, so I pulled in where I wanted to be. The far corner and in the shade seemed a fitting place for a truck with too many miles on it.
   Tahlia walked up to where I’d parked. The stride matched her clothes—no nonsense and gone completely tomboy. Her pants looked like a cross between military and hiking gear. That was paired with a plain tank and a dark print shirt over, and hair pulled up under a baseball cap. Her ears twitched with annoyance at the heat and whatever else had yanked her damned tail.
   I probably smelled horrendous to her.
   “I’m leaving with you when we’re done. Let me drop my bags, we’ll go wait, and I’ll tell you what to do.” On the way back she scratched her back, grumbling about needing a longer shirt in the middle of summer and the fit of her pants.
   The canned portion of the speech rattled like a wobbling cart wheel. Mr. Sheriff didn’t have much to say. Crime is bad, families and businesses are good, drugs are bad and schools are good. Tahlia whispered commentary while he went on.
   Everyone heard the same bit in school, there were human and siruean Native Americans, then the Brits, French and Spanish came, and finally the Declaration of Independence magically made us one. I’d grown up in places where all of that stayed far away and naive words.
   “He can talk tough on crime all he wants, but he’s nearly tripled the jail population in the last eight years.”
   Stay in school, give tax breaks to companies that want to relocate, and everything’s like an old painting with police and Boy Scouts helping old ladies cross the street.
   “They will stop you if they’re so bored that paperwork’s fun. If you’re poor, they’re more likely to stop you. If you’re siruean or kadisi, they’re more likely to stop you.”
   There was never anyone to look out for you like you, and there would never be anyone that listened without a price, without a leash or something to tie you later.
   “Combined we’re only about a quarter of the population, but the large majority of that’s in urbanized areas. Contain, control, and calm. Most won’t care as long as they’re alive.”
   It went on and on. Sadly, I saw her point without it going into racial divisions. I’d been shit on by more cops as a kid, and over the past few years, than I cared to count for walking or driving. If things were going to end violently, I’d cram some of that shit back down their throats before I died for being inconvenient.
   She was right about the last bit. We, the people, were supposed to be happy with what they let us have and not shake things up.
   I wondered again why I’d stepped square in this shit beyond the ball-clenching fear of being arrested or murdered for knowing too much. Hitchcock movies were off limits for a while. But what was the goal besides a bit of revenge for someone I hadn’t known and shooting down the cloud of boredom? I couldn’t lie enough to claim for civil rights or police tactics, elitist college kid idealism or revolution. The man once sang he was in the right place at the wrong time, and I could grab onto that feeling of staying above strange waters.
   Finally Abernathy wound down and prepared to take questions. The first three were about boring shit like taxes and the economy. I didn’t have to care about those—never anywhere long enough to care about taxes, and the economy was always better somewhere else.
   “Next one is my plant. Over there, with the kid and a baby carriage. She’s perfect bait for this.”
   She screamed American middle class dream, non-human Type 1, petite and in a housewifey dress with a medium cinnamon coat shot with dark gray, ears perked in attention. The woman had her hand raised, and Mr. Sheriff obviously wanted to play up his hand with an average looking mother that matched the kind of minority he could accept.
   “Sheriff Abernathy, I’m Jaithe Weaver. As you can see I’m a mom, and I happen to have a Masters so I love when you talk about education and employment being so key to success.”
   “Perfect plant because she means every word she’s saying. She lit up when I wanted to come to this clusterfuck.”
   Jaithe sounded like the kind of brain-dead drone that never saw the people that made her life possible. “I’ve seen how you’ve helped clean up this county from the kinds that only make more trouble for families. You’ve had to deal with those that don’t like how you solve problems. How are you going to convince those that don’t have minority constituencies of the importance of them as part of the solution? And that safer, lower crime cities lead to safer non-urban areas?”
   “I’m glad to have you here today, Mrs. Weaver, asking the same things that I’ve asked myself for my family. It highlights the importance of children, all children, as we...”
   Tahlia tapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go while he looks like a modern saint getting his ego sucked. He had a couple of deputies watching our target, and by now Melanie should have them out of sight, their pants down, and dicks in her mouth. Jaithe would have another couple kids if she learned to suck cock.” She’d obviously lost the battle long ago to reform Tahlia but kept trying out of habit.
   Back at my truck, she pulled bags from the back and glared at the large vehicle that belonged to the sheriff or one of his people. It matched the one from that night—huge, ugly, and stacks-of-money in your face. I stole a glance sideways as she opened the bags and said to work fast.
   A few minutes later we hunched down on the truck’s bench seat, waiting for the show. A laptop sat between us with a tiny camera on the dash, and as people filtered back to their rides some pointed, commented or took pictures of the decorated landcrawler. A few tried to ignore it or act like nothing was unusual.
   Tahlia pulled out a few small devices, chained them together, and plugged the result into the radio.
   When Abernathy finally walked up to it he circled twice, and we didn’t need the small directional mic she had pointed at him. He pointed at a wolfie chick that might have been the one that took the bag, hair brushing the top of her shoulders in a dark suit and crisp white shirt, then at the vehicle.
   “What. The. Fuck. Is. This. What?” He stopped at the back of the thing. The tail attached to the back, right at chest height, was bushy, multicolored and very large. “This is a tail, and it is not funny.”
   He shook the offender at her and the younger guy in business casualwear nearby. The sheriff tried to yank the tail free. It looped around and through the back doorhandles to knot it, and the base was shoved up the tailpipe so it only wedged tighter. If he had been gentle it would’ve slid right out. She stood military aware and rigid, with hands clasped and attention unwavering, while the guy had all the signs I’d seen of someone with a few different chemical habits or severe sleep deprivation. Probably a scoop of both going by his posture. Excepting that, he was a clone of too many front offices—his medium brown hair too long for the military and too short to look comfortably civilian.
   “And this shit. Ears. Fucking goddamned animal ears!”
   The chick set hers back. The younger guy shrank a bit checking his wristwatch, visibly wanting a drink and knowing he’d play peacemaker after this outburst.
   Right above the front side windows we’d attached large doglike ears, floppy and a foot tall. Office boy flinched as the sheriff repeated himself, louder this time. He finally found something to rip off that Tahlia made simple to remove. The cheap fabric she’d unrolled and made to look like a sash tore off as the velcro gave.
   It’d been nearly two feet wide and declared the wearer to be the Party Animal. Dozens of pairs of cheap women’s underwear completed the costume. Small, large, plain, patterned, and even a few that were wild enough for a strip club dangled anywhere that they could be stuck. He tossed the sash down, then pulled off a couple, balled them in a fist, and crossed his arms.
   “If I didn’t know better, I’d say she’d planned this.” Neither of Abernathy’s companions knew what he was talking about by their lack of reaction. “It’s from before you. I should fill you in. Damned woman had her nose in almost everything for a while. She’s been small time lately.”
   The woman turned in a slow circle, body language of a veteran hunter, until Abernathy stopped her with a hand to the shoulder. “We could find her for you. Who is she?” Other cars and the trees hid whether the wolfie was calm or short of snarling.
   “There are bad ideas, and then that. She doesn’t act directly, just starts fires by poking others. No, someone’s trying to make me look bad, and I refuse to play that game. Having her brought in for questioning is exactly what they want me to do. For now, we cross her off that list. She learned the hard way what weight class she fights in. And don’t worry about it until I say so. Both of you are staying on terra firma for the time being.” He stroked his chin, breaking the puzzle apart in his head.
   The younger man shook himself awake, then blinked twice, snakelike. “Surveillance? It wouldn’t take much.”
   “No, I expected this. Anyone with old grievances will fire at me right now, and keep doing it, from a safe distance. I hired the both of you for a reason. Just watch for now. The problem is standing on two feet somewhere, not hiding on a rooftop. They will make a mistake, and that’s when I let it be solved legally.” He glanced at them, then kicked one of the rear tires. “You two be careful as well. All it takes is one mistake to start an avalanche that kills you.”
   They finally got him to walk away and called for another car.
   Tahlia had fired one hell of an opening shot at him, and had a toothy grin on her face all the way back, the wind blowing in her hair.

Chapter Two

“Stop lying to me!”
   Three months, and I kept repeating this is all your own fault. You could have told her to leave sooner, you should have cut your losses long ago, but you did everything by half measures. Four true statements had repeated as looped litany in my head since I’d walked into this. I knew she’d blow up, but I couldn’t bear tossing prime cocksucking talent out on the street. It had made the sex rougher and bordering on too violent, but Caroline loved it and I’d taken what I wanted. I should’ve left weeks ago and let emotions ablate into work. Fucking them away was less effective than what I’d seen growing up. Drugs and alcohol don’t wash feelings away, they just help new ones crust over the old. An older me might shake his head and point out that Caroline was a lost cause from the beginning. That wasn’t me yet, and I’d learn the hard way.
   The shaking and physical portions of the tantrum were on low for the moment, not off. I’d distanced myself from hysterical swings, then waited. She sobbed on the verge of tears, medium-brown hair hiding their start. The apartment laid in a wreck, mostly her doing. Several smashed glasses and mugs laid close by.
   “You knew this wasn’t permanent. It’s not my fault you kept putting things off.”
   Each of her words rose in pitch at the end. “But what about us? I’m not the one night stand kind of girl. It’s been nineteen months!”
   “Except it ended three months ago, you didn’t want to move out because you’re still job searching, and sucking dick doesn’t make up for not paying a share of the bills when there’s nothing in the bank. I have no idea why you thought I’d change my mind.” Three months should have been enough time to steel myself for this.
   I couldn’t have written her script better. “What am I supposed to do?” She turned a quarter away and started in with the quivering lip.
   “It’s time you called all those supposed friends of yours to find a couch. You could have had a new job weeks ago, and sooner than that if you’d tried deepthroating your pride instead of me. And before you think about packing yourself up to sneak on the moving van, I’ll be moving as often as they ask me too. It could be every two or three weeks. If I can’t toss it in the back of the truck, it’s getting sold or donated in the next week.”
   “That’s it then?”
   “Yes.” I wasn’t giving her the satisfaction of continuing the argument.
   “So who’s the new slut? I bet she’s waiting right now with wet panties and marking the days off until you’re there.”
   The last time I’d touched another woman was the Tuesday after our first date, before she’d committed to me, and everything after that had been me trying to convince myself life and our relationship would shape up soon. “Caroline, this is all about you projecting. You want a relationship for all the wrong reasons, so you assume I do as well. You act like getting a job is hard, so you take your time while I had offers in less than two weeks.”
   That had her in my face and shouting. “No, what this is about is how stupid you are! Not everyone is some barely graduated high school type that can just wave their magic dick around and summon a paycheck. And stop changing the topic! Who. Is. She?” I let her stew in it. “Not saying anything? I’ll bet this is like that one. Rachael. That was the whore’s name.”
   “Do you want to embarrass yourself again like you did in public? Even after being proven wrong on that, you kept feeding the grudge.” I watched for the twitching hands, but it hadn’t started yet.
   “Ohh. Maybe it’s like you and Annette.” That started as unrequited love turned to a friendship—and that friendship had snapped in half due to Annette’s fiance, David. “Maybe you thought I’d forgotten that one.”
   “I was trying to, but you have a hobby of ripping wounds open.” David had proved himself a serial cheat, and that formed the other half of the reason Annette and I weren’t talking. “I’ll go get the salt from the kitchen. Just a second.”
   I wondered what made Annette decide to keep the wedding on. Certainly better that I’d been the one that walked in on Caroline and David completely drunk, fucking like dogs in heat. Also for the better that neither of them seemed to remember the incident, or what led up to it. After I put the pieces together, that had been the last straw with Caroline.
   She gave me the premium grade glare as I took her by the wrist, the shaker now in her hand. It flew past my ear as I ducked. I’d used up my ration of luck reaching for her as she dropped to a knee and grabbed at one of the largest glass pieces formerly known as mugs. Ten minutes later the cops had agreed to take her to a women’s shelter instead of jail, I cleaned up less blood than I should have lost, and the neighbors were thankful the noise had ended.

Chapter Three

She told me to stop by next morning before I went in to work. At the top of her list of instructions was to act as though I had a normal, uneventful lunch offsite. That’s exactly what I did, and went back to work after dropping her off in a shopping center.
   As the day wore on everyone just wanted the shift finished. The few guys I knew wanted to hit the town tonight, but nobody settled on bowling, pool, or just going to a bar. Bart and his buddy Sammy were on my shortlist for drinking with a minimum of conversation. They started arguing over which of two local bands was the better, then tried to get me as a tiebreaker. That failed since I’d seen neither. Once again I got labeled the boring short-timer, but only because just us humans were around. There were enough experienced pranksters of all species onsite that would have improvised something if they’d known about Tahlia.
   While getting gas for the truck I browsed the display by the register. Each bottle touted itself as a miracle—study harder, play harder, fuck all night long, be the man she desires. Fine print on the back led me to wonder if they were all the same stuff. Probably all Viagra knockoffs blended with amphetamines, so I bought the one that looked least likely to have me walking around at 9AM with a rock hard cock. At home it went right by the others next to the coffee pot, blessed goddess of having to get up early, just in case it needed a supersized kick one morning. I’d weep if the collection of bottles, vitamins and supplements, vanished when I wasn’t looking.
   When I opened my eyes and rolled over it was well before dawn and likely when Tahlia called it a night. I showered, dry-swallowed the daily cap promising all-day energy, chased it with a whole pot of crappy coffee that sang the praises of 4AM like a musical, then hit the road.
   The streets were quiet once the clubs closed and most people had found beds. The streetlights stopped their usual dance and turned to blinking yellows and reds. I could’ve driven from one side of the city to the other in minutes.
   If they hadn’t planted the huge sign out front, I’d have missed it. The place had serious tree cover, with enough newer cars to make it far from the worst place in town. I guessed her apartment without looking at the number. Only one place with lights on against curtains. The stairwell vibrated with each step and rattled the building.
   Just one knock.
   “Get your ass in here.”
   I opened the door and took in her brand of normal. More than triple the computer equipment than needed to qualify as overkill sprawled over a desk opposite the door. A small workbench near the window and door had bins of parts and a soldering station. A TV loomed to the left, and in the center of the room was a small couch and chair in an ell, table in between. Two framed posters were the sole personalization, one an older print of a harder man, the other newer of a rounder-faced man on the way to a full comb-over.
   The far side wall had bookcases with a personal library. Walking over, it turned out to be almost all technical, and what remained history and military. This wasn’t playing to snare the casual nerd looking for cheap online porn. She was a damned full-on, more-geek-than-thou geek.
   Next to her on the desk were two platefuls of breakfast. Besides the blessing of that was the smell of freshly showered and dried Tahlia, sharp wood and soft rain. Her hair laid loose and uncombed, her fur quickly brushed before tossing on a tank and drawstring pants. Taking a seat on the small couch at her direction, I made myself comfortable as she handed over one of the plates.
   “Might as well give you breakfast since I dragged you out of bed. Coffee?”
   “Already had a full pot. Got more in a thermos in the truck.” She’d gone barefoot too, and I exceeded the limit of watching her toes and ankles flex instead of staring straight at the jewelry poking through her thin shirt.
   “Eyes up here. This isn’t stare at my bits time, and don’t get creepy about my feet. Understand?” Her ears pointed back until I nodded, then they swung forward again. The words had no real venom, but she was only saying them once. “That’s better. I left an automated search running. It couldn’t find more than a mention of a vehicle being vandalized during the speech. It seems like we struck out.”
   “Thought the first move was going to be a slap. And if you don’t mind, who were those other two? That was the big ugly I saw that night. You know them?”
   She narrowed her eyes and kept them there until it was clear I wasn’t going to break first. “The brinnie only responds to Ma’am. The guy responds to less. As for what Abernathy calls them, well, I’ve never gotten anything else from overhearing him. You would think after a few encounters per month for most of the last year that something would slip. As to the other question...” A gesture reminded me of the plate.
   I dug into the food as she explained. Eggs, bacon, link sausage and steak. Not health food, but with what I’d seen of her she probably stayed active enough to get away with it.
   “More like a backhand with the gauntlet, toss it at their feet, and get away before their eyes clear to see who hit them.” I didn’t understand her, and she kept going over the blank look. “Now he knows a ghost suspects something, and he considers me far too obvious a suspect. Guess I’m not dangerous enough to be on his list right now.”
   I couldn’t see the purpose, or why he wouldn’t apply some caution regarding her. How quickly would he run through the realistic suspects unless his situation got much worse?
   “There’s plenty of other people that could toss a casual tail reference at him, and enough people that would love to put some pressure on him.”
   The lightbulb was still off, so she poked at the socket with a fork.
   “Think of it this way: if someone had collected information on him, maybe it ends up in an opponent’s hands, or his side so they have leverage on him.”
   I understood leverage, but my mental fusebox remained the same—an electrician’s nightmare.
   “Think like you’re him. You’ve done something dumb and rash, gotten back to safety, and a bit later there’s something that smells like an I-know-what-you-did memo, except it’s not specific enough. You couldn’t assume they’re connected, but can’t dismiss it.”
   The lights came on as artificial daytime rose and the generator snapped on.
   “So I expected a good enough slap should rattle him, but nothing much happened.” She had a plan, it seemed roundabout, but brainpower before sunrise wasn’t my strongest suit.
   She sat back and stretched over her head with legs forward and toes spread. This time I didn’t stare, at least not as perversely, before I went for the most idiotic words I could muster.
   “So my questions are, one—how the hell else were you planning to be a thorn in his side? Two—what can you and I do to keep the cops off us, as well as his goons?”
   She relaxed again, considering that a few seconds. “A few things to think about that aren’t so vague. First, there’s plenty of people that could smash his buttons. Anyone at the club is suspect, but mostly Bobby or Vinnie if they’re not getting paid on time.” She raised a finger. “By the way, Vinnie’s the owner and he sure as fuck wants to get paid if some fatcat siphons off a few girls for the evening. That would be suspect number one if I was him.” She raised a second finger. “Then there’s anyone at his little get-togethers that bought a share of the choke collar he’s wearing, and have a grudge in their back pocket. It’s no secret there’s a diversity quota on his personal entertainments. Little old me is an obvious piece of bait.” I wondered why, and who on the other end. She raised a third finger. “So lobbing that at him isn’t going to help him narrow the suspects down. Finding your truck might not be a safe move unless he starts associating us. He either panics in public, or he does something dumb in private. If his wife hadn’t died three years back all it would take is dropping off a packet of pics for her to see, and watching lawyers fight over the divorce terms.”
   I thought that through. She went back to eating without moving her attention from me. The bit turned into a few minutes, and I realized that she had it completely wrong. Go big or go take a dirtnap.
   “If, and this is the big if, there wasn’t a body found then Deedee would remain a missing person. Every day that passes makes it less likely that she’s alive, and nothing to say who took her or what happened after, right?”
   Tahlia’s stare turned hard. “Go on.”
   “Enough people are going to think she ran away to home, or it’s not worth bothering over a missing stripper. Bottom of the barrel, so why care?”
   “That’s a bit harsh, but I’ve had bad nights with customers that considered me as that.”
   “Even if he has problems long since buried, the one thing he can’t ignore is a fresh body stinking up the room and others noticing. That means the media, other politicians, or the public.” She didn’t respond. I couldn’t see it, but I could imagine hurt and rage coming up and getting pushed down as it kept going. “If anyone cornered him with the right questions, and the evidence started to point to him having a casual relationship with her...”
   The fork clanged on the plate in her lap. Hands curled into fists as her breath went tight. This had to be done, no matter how it hurt her.
   I thought out loud between bites of steak. “More than one person knows she’s missing. One voice gets snuffed quickly. A crowd of voices, not so easily.” That had her squeezing her eyes shut. “You can pull the old high and mighty about him and the maybe racist police until the end of time, but if people shouted about this then he’s going to wonder who set that blaze?” And then she opened her eyes, dry and cold. “He can’t ignore it when he’s speaking, and the press and people are asking. Once there’s questions on who she was, things get messy.”
   She took three slow and deep breaths. I was right. She tried to take the easy way out, and didn’t have a step two in mind. After pushing her feelings down again, she lectured.
   “You’re forgetting one small detail. We’re not being watched now because we’re too easy of a suspect, or a herring, and we must be stupid, dumb or not know enough to go to the press. It’s not staying that way.” The finger rose again, joined by a second. “Which leads to a second issue. Anything big enough to draw attention needs to leave him in a trap and bleeding out. If not, it’s only a matter of time before we’d be at the top of his list to watch, or take care of. He already made that mistake once, and will find himself doing it again.” The third finger popped up. “So we’d have to hit hard enough to stun him, let what you said start, and then hit him again while the smoke herds him where we want. I’ll get a chance to pin that snake with a branch that’s got a Morton’s fork on the end.”
   Then she explained the big words, but as she did I started nodding. I was also parking as far back from the street as possible for a while.
   My head throbbed with ideas desperate to pop the clutch, and it must have slapped a grin on my face. She propped up her feet and wiggled her toes with the dare to look.
   “You’re having some very dirty thoughts, and I want them as bad as they get. So fuck what I said earlier, stare right at ’em and lay down whatever you’re thinking.”
   Once I started speaking and she hypnotized me with the back and forth, the words came faster, and the idea stopped looking so crazy once the buzz from the coffee hit fifth gear.
   
That afternoon I took my truck over to the pile before leaving.
   Every site large enough has one. Misordered stuff, damaged stuff that can’t be returned, and the recycling aisle for unimportant or temporary stuff like framing. First come, first served; if the bosses didn’t have to account for it in the end then they didn’t see anything.
   Relying on memory and hoping enough remained was an adequate plan for failure. But there they were. Two buckets, seals popped but tops on. Some asshole opened them early, now they needed to be used in a couple of days at well under total bond strength.
   Luck left a small spool of thin wire cabling right nearby. Good fortune caused some idiot to rake the roll and slice some of the strands loose. I counted to sixty, watching for people walking over. Our site sat in a cluster of renovations and new projects, along with the familiar sight of yellow cranes of all sizes. I took a hint from them. Fasten things down properly, and it doesn’t become an accident at the worst time.
   I started tossing them in. Loud voices approached behind, the volume set to quitting time and not paid to give a damn. One belonged to our team’s foreman, an older burly guy named Harold. The other was one of the wolfie guys, Nicky, and to boot one of the prime criminals of taste in humor. He was wiry and maybe four, no, five inches shorter than me, looking like a beanpole next to Harold’s bulk.
   “Listen, fur-for-brains, if you’re telling me that Simpson is somehow not having a better year than your guy Donovan—”
   “Man, listen while I say it slower. Simpson always gets hurt. Always. So no matter how well he’s batting now, he’ll be off the rotation before the pennant.” 
   “Donovan, even if they do make it to the playoffs, is going to be out of steam by that point unless he’s taking an ice bath between innings. If you’re playing, cut it and stop panting.”
   “He hasn’t slowed down yet this summer, and you don’t like admitting he might have his conditioning down. Can’t make the plays if you’re not out there.”
   They came up alongside my truck, and Harold pointed at the stuff I’d loaded. “Figure out a use for some of that?”
   Nicky started that exaggerated huffing laugh that his kind does, twitching like he discovered a new joke. I used him as a shield to cover the delay, and went for the not quite true but not a lie.
   “Carl said we need something to help stabilize that piece tomorrow morning because we can’t have the crane that long. We’ll have to use the cable to keep it in position and then cut them after we’re properly bolted. It should only take a sinking a few temporary eyebolts in and a hand winch on each.”
   Nicky kept laughing but calmed the ears a notch. “This would be a hell of a lot easier if we ever had enough people to run both cranes effectively. You’re going to make us spend half the morning trying to get that good, and wearing respirators the rest of the day. We just need enough time to sink a couple bolts per side and then wait until Mr. Baby Highchair gets done jerking off. Then we can borrow the crane again and get it fastened to code. Bet you a dance from your favorite girl against one from mine, that place down off of Ninth by Twenty-Third.”
   That was Tahlia’s place. Not just his laugh, but the spastic ear twitching made me wish something took him down a rung or two. Didn’t need to be painful, just embarrassing enough.
   “Come on, I know you’ve been there because there’s nowhere else you can go to see some tail and act like you’re just there for skin. Shit, you think I’m not dreaming of which I’d knot?”
   Harold cocked a thumb at Nicky. “Dirty little dog. The old lady would kill me if she found out I’d ever been there, looking at all those dangerous girls. And Nicky’s the kind they eat like candy.”
   Nothing could stop him for long, and most things made it worse. “You got it all wrong. They love the men with money in their wallets, and a bit exotic doesn’t hurt either. Some of ’em like taking it too, so they get a bit nastier in private.”
   Harold and I started laughing uncontrollably. Nicky danced around, about as animated as an old silent comedy actor.
   “Yuck it up. Besides, you couldn’t handle the tail there. There’s this one babe named Tahlia, plays tough and then melts once you show her who’s boss.”
   That didn’t sound like her, or like anything other than Nicky’s boasting. I stopped laughing long enough to start up again. Harold brought it back down to earth and ironed terms out, wrapping Nicky in his runaway tongue. He cautiously approved of my plan as long as we didn’t have the cables supporting the whole weight, but conditioned it to hell and back. I left to catch a few hours of sleep and nearly repeat what had happened this morning, a small square of fabric not letting me forget her name.
   
The archipelagos of streetlights poked through the dark every few hundred feet. There weren’t traffic lights here, no cars at this hour, and she led the little dog on a leash. Her own ears perked forward, but they had headphones clipped on. The light couldn’t push far into the muggy haze, neither fog nor mist, still asphalt warm several hours after dusk. She landed on the island of light that stretched out a couple dozen feet. No way she could see anyone inside the treeline edging up to the sidewalk where the light truly faded again. At the light she reached down to scratch the floppy eared dog, brown and white coat with the standard issue overactive puppy tail wagging. She got back up, and I mentally checked gear. Knife at the small of the back, zipties in pocket, gag in the other pocket. Thirty feet away. Deep, slow breaths. The anticipation fell away, dangerous to hold, as the moment came close. Twenty feet away. The dog didn’t smell anything strange, not after I’d washed myself. If the little dog didn’t then she’d never react in time. No one ever had when I’d prepared. Ten feet away. My breathing stopped, the spring of muscles pulled tight. Irresistible magic prickled out from every pore.
   As she stepped past I broke cover. Lunging, the knife whipped from sheath to hand and skewered the dog before either reacted. Pushing off and up, I spun around. The blade menaced through her thin top and another hand kept her silent. The shock was the same each time, a useful tool as I pushed her before me through a narrow path carved by feet trodding to the bus stop. Her headphones hadn’t budged. The contrast of the happy pop music pushed into her consciousness and the spike of soured fear chilled her thoughts, but fueled racing fire through my nose and hands.
   I kicked the rear of the small van open, pushing her in and shutting the door behind. The small dome light illuminated her predicament. Welded steel grates to the front and pitch black windows behind me cornered her. A vain kick stung but well-used muscles prevented her from doing more than struggling while I held her ankles down. The fear worked deeper and undermined survival instincts. Usually I had their hands safely restrained by now, but without tears, shouting or trembling she surrendered herself. Eyes followed the blade’s edge as it sliced the tanktop and light pajama pants away from her exquisite body. The patterns of her coat rippled lovingly, layered over by cords binding ankles to wrists and more choke-collaring her to stillness.
   The van rumbled down the AM road out of town until arriving at the temporary place. The old place waited, clean except for what needed to remain. Everything had been prepared here, one last quick cull until the next chance, leaving the freedom to enjoy this. When the knife arced down for the first time, she finally found the will to scream.
   
A few hours was a poor substitute for a full night’s sleep, especially after sleeping poorly or needing to get up before any reasonable hour. Which, at 4AM for a second time, didn’t seem as fun or easy of an idea as it had twenty-four hours ago. Less than six hours of sleep, repeatedly, was a game for teenagers and long-haul truckers. Less than six hours of sleep, with the ghosts of nightmares still seeding unease, felt like no sleep at all. The only bright spot in that was the speed they faded away.
   Waiting in a pickup, with the engine and AC off, already eighty degrees out, got old quick and took the shine off of not having a nightmare at the moment. In a few hours the sprinkling rain would grow into a morning storm and make things worse by pissing off early enough to deliver an outdoor sauna.
   I’d pulled off to the breakdown lane at the treeline and just before the overpass ended in this direction. Some one hundred yards away and behind the overpass gave way again to trees. I looked to the rearview mirror and away before tired eyes looked back. An older model muscle car pulled up behind and Tahlia got out dressed for the early morning weather.
   Jeans, hoodie with earholes, and hiking boots. Good enough for pushing away the thought of what she’d looked like without them. She’d slung a large duffel bag across one shoulder and a small backpack on the other side to counterbalance. I’d done the math before sending her on a goose chase to a specialty place three hours away that would sell the material in a custom size and grommet it while she waited.
   I tossed the cabling and a bag over my shoulder. The full buckets slid out of the back, then I walked over. “Morning.”
   “What the hell did you wash with this morning? Either I’m coming down with something or you’re playing a wonderful prank.”
   “Soap. And water.”
   “I need coffee after this, and I don’t care how bad it is.” She glanced sideways, weary at the end of a very long day. “I hope you know what you’re doing with this. I figure we’ve got less than an hour before a cop sees this, and then two more if the city takes care of it.”
   I gestured at the duffel. “High visibility, high contrast like we worked out? Spray adhesive over the whole thing? Weighted at the bottom?” She nodded just as we came up to where I’d planned to anchor the right side.
   “Next time, we do something simpler. This better be a home run.”
   Every few segments of the overpass railing, a short length of square metal tubing had been attached, perfed through at regular intervals. If someone didn’t know it was there already, they’d never see it, and nobody in their right mind got up to look at the details of jerry-rigged civil engineering before 5AM.
   I set down the two buckets, the three lengths of cabling, and popped the tops off. The bag spilled out a few metal flats to use as applicators, gloves, a cheap facemask for each of us, and some simple fiber liner to wrap stuff. She unrolled more than forty feet of vinyl banner, and I took the longest cable length and demonstrated how it and the liner had to thread through the grommets along the top.
   “They’re not going to be able to cut the ends if we join it all together.”
   I mixed up the construction grade epoxy, well on the way to being unusable except for being a thick goopy mess. We made quick work of slathering and wrapping the mess around grommets and along the top of the banner so it’d be harder to chop off. The other lengths of cable were threaded through the perfed tubing in a complex pattern and epoxied as well.
   “And they’re not going to get to cut it apart here either.”
   She nodded as she worked, listening attentively and seeing the madness of it. I attached the first clamp to splice the cables, then went to work on the other while Tahlia gooped up the first.
   “Whatever’s left, smear it on the back. Can’t take it down easy, can’t cut it off quickly, and now it’s stuck to the side.”
   We stood at either end and flipped it over the railing, staring for a few seconds after it slapped to stick against the concrete. Given at least an hour to cure, it would bind up near any blade or small power tools. Given three hours, it would be hard enough to require a road crew and a cutting torch. They’d figure out it’d come to peeling the letters off one by one.
   Less than twenty minutes after we started two vehicles pulled away, and reflective white-silver letters of tape shone against a black tarp hanging down for inbound traffic to see. Each letter stood three and a half feet high, readable from over a quarter mile off and stretching across all four inbound lanes of traffic.
WHAT HAPPENED TO
AMANDA ULRICH?
   
What happened later was breakfast before we parted ways for work or sleep.
   She pulled the hood of her top down and shook her head as we entered. A bar near the kitchen with a TV morning crew talking above repeated the standard daily summer forecast. A few minutes shy of six in the morning, and the only other people in the place eating were a couple of paramedics at the bar and a party of graveyard shifters across a few tables. Tahlia’s nose twitched until she basked in the aroma of burnt pre-dawn coffee. At least the service wasn’t bad for pre-sunrise hours.
   The waitress had a permanent smile. “What’ll it be, y’all?”
   “Pancakes. No fruit. Two eggs, I’ll skip the bacon today.”
   “And you, sweetie? Don’t worry. Miguel can cook for anyone, and ain’t no one messing with anyone else here. House rules.”
   “I’ll have the eggs, sausage, bacon, his bacon, and a side of sausage and bacon.” Her eyes narrowed as that got shorthanded on a pad.
   “Give me a couple minutes, and y’all can dig in.”
   Tahlia waited until the food came and the waitress had smiled off to elsewhere. “If you were trying to get even with me, count us square. I never want to smell that stuff again.” Her nose hadn’t stopped twitching or ears vibrating since we’d walked in.
   “Epoxies are strong smelling, but they’re not normally that strong.” The table felt like it had been caked in the ashes of everything the government said was bad for you but tasted good.
   She tapped the side of her nose twice and then a single sniff. “I could probably tell if one the cooks farted in the back, if I focused and the air was off. So next time get me a pair of whatever noseplugs I’d need at a construction zone.” I hadn’t considered it’d be worse than usual, and her working through something like a light shined in the eyes or a harsh sound too close. “Forget about it. I’ve busted your balls out of habit, and you’ve put up with my bullshit. Even?”
   “Even.”
   A hint of a smile curled her lips. Not a real one, but the kind she probably practiced in the mirror so her kidney extraction threat seemed more real. “Good, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting a free pass or two to get pervy on me. Business is business, and pleasure gets charged per song.”
   She became tenser with that said instead of more relaxed and casual. Her green eyes danced over the room behind, but the grin she’d broke had lost its threatening effect on me. The tink and ping of silverware against the pancakes and plates filled the space. She was out of habit, and I had no reason to reject what she could give. The task had been laid out, we completed it, nothing more needed to be said. Nothing else existed between us. At least she didn’t laugh like one of the Chuckles.
   The splash of the channel announced the top of the hour and...
   “Turn that up! What the hell!” The paramedic poked his buddy while trying to get the attention of the waitress. As the volume got loud enough even the graveyarders perked up and watched the news.
   “And we have a developing story this morning on your Action 6 News. The eastbound lanes of SR...”
   Tahlia’s eyes and ears snapped to the TV and I turned slowly, in fear.
   “As you can see, the state troopers are preparing to block off at least one lane in case heavy equipment needs to be brought in.” The camera clearly captured the banner in the background, and at least a half dozen sheriff’s vehicles with deputies milling about.
   “I see that more officers have arrived on the scene. Have you been able to get a statement yet?”
   “The lieutenant on the scene declined to make any remarks other than they are working to remove this, but as you can see...” The camera zoomed in to an officer leaning over the railing and taking a swing at the cable with a handaxe, which stuck helplessly before he yanked it free.
   “They haven’t let us up close, but as you just saw this isn’t quite what Sheriff Abernathy has called in the past overzealous and bored fraternities, or protesters.”
   “Thank you, Megan. Now let’s go to David. You’ve been trying to make some sense of this. It’s been trending on social media locally for almost an hour now, correct?”
   “That’s right, Joy. The tag popped up, and the initial reaction was it might be part of a media campaign for a movie or musician.”
   “But that’s not what you’ve managed to find out, was it?”
   “No. Action 6 has gone through the voter rolls and other publicly available information, and there is a student listed on the roles at the university under that name. While there are others with this name in the area, soon after this started circulating online we received some dire information.” This was more and sooner than we’d expected. “There have been tips on our anonymous CrimeStoppers line that this student has been missing for several days now, and that law enforcement had already been contacted.”
   “So you’ve been trying to track this down since we last spoke?”
   “We’ve attempted to get a hold of local law enforcement to find the status of this potential case, but we haven’t gotten through at this early hour nor have we found any previous press release. And I should add that this isn’t the only potential missing persons case that local law enforcement is working on, nor have we heard anything that might link this to any older ones. I should mention that if you have any information at all about situations like this that you should be contacting law enforcement as soon as possible.”
   “Well, keep us up to date and thank you, David.” Local news stations had to chase ambulances and police cars, or resort to sipping better coffee than ours on camera.
   I had a sinking feeling that wasn’t pancakes, and denser. Facts tallied in my head. The number from this morning we could be tossed in a jail cell for, the number of cop cars we’d separated from Krispy Kreme, and the cumsoaked tissues the muckrakers had already gone through. I didn’t want to hear cop cars in the distance for the rest of the day. At least Tahlia had reached good spirits.
   “Hey! Check, please? Buddy here can’t sit around all day filtering your coffee for you.”
   
The morning staggered on, and I wished for a second thermos of coffee.
   Everything else had gone surprisingly right today. The section that needed be fastened finished up before 10:30, nobody did anything remarkably stupid, and the foremen stayed away and in air conditioning. Even Nicky and his friends ended up being mildly funny this morning. Maybe they could breathe a little easier due to living in the area and not wonder where they’d be in three or six months.
   By lunchtime I started counting the minutes until quitting time. Nicky broke away from his pals and squatted down beside me.
   “I’ve gotta learn not to bet both you and Harry at the same time. You’re one lucky sonofa.”
   “You made the damned bet and he roped you in, yeah? How much?”
   “Way too much. Figures. Asshole must be a number-crunching freak that likes to dick with stats instead of watching the game. It’s why people like him get banned from the tables in Vegas.” He shook his head, and got a fake pained look.
   “Took you for the better portion of your paycheck? You could make other people money if you’d go to the Indian casinos and let them bet opposite you.”
   “Go fuck yourself, Chuckles. It’s OK if you lose some bets as long as you score where it counts.”
   “You can hold off til next week if you don’t have enough to make good.”
   “That can go get stuck. I need a few beers and to see some tail tonight. I’ve got enough to cover my bet with you.”
   “OK. You want to meet up somewhere for food first? Eight?”
   “Pizza at Lorito’s? Let’s get some of the other guys in, maybe we can blow off a little and coast through Friday with shiteatting grins.”
   “Deal. Who else?”
   After a few back and forths, we settled on two of his buddies and a couple I knew that would enjoy cracking some tail. Nothing mean, just a bunch of guys making rough jokes until the evening’s end.
   
It was half past six when I turned into Tahlia’s place. The walk to her door bordered on familiar now, too personal and intimate. I knocked, heard her call my name, and locked the door behind. She’d already showered and brushed, prepping to go to work.
   She walked out of bedroom, a few different outfits spread across the bed with shoes and accessories around. A pile of gauzy fabric, leather, more leather, something ribbonlike that wound around and hid nothing. Any of them would look amazing on her. All she had on was a striped number that looked like a halter up top, wound around her, and had a few extra strips hanging down and a wide belt tied over. Barefoot, and with how it was cut I could see she hadn’t bothered with underwear or cared that I would see everything else too. Guess I’d earned a bit of stare at the bits.
   “Look at what I left up on the monitor.”
   An article was up on one of the screens.
   University president and city council inquiring about missing student
   I skimmed through the first couple of paragraphs while she finished up with her work gear then walked up beside. It wasn’t easy to keep focused with her nearby and dressed in so little.
   “Seems our boy isn’t looking too sharp now. But they’re trying to pass it off as the usual. She’s over eighteen, the big gun forensics aren’t in yet. They don’t want to explain that life doesn’t work like a TV show, but they’re too quiet.” There was more, but she turned the monitor off. “I’ve got an idea to keep his feet to the fire. If he’s mishandled the case, and it keeps getting attention, the community will get vocal.”
   “What do you mean?”
   She handed me a sheet of paper from the desk, rough plans sketched out. Ears and eyes clear, steady and so green. I glanced at the maze of drawings and information, crossed out and reworked several times.
   “That something we could do?”
   “That kind of equipment can’t go missing. It’s serial numbered and not exactly lying around to grab. Also, it’d be the last thing I do before a cop is guaranteed to close the cell door at the county jail.”
   “What about getting it from another site? Isn’t something like that common enough?”
   “Kind of, if they need one.”
   “So if I had the one that’s outside at that corner strip they’re rebuilding...” She’d thought this one out better. “All I’m doing is bringing a spark and gas into a dry forest.”
   “Tahlia, not saying you’re wrong or thinking like that, but at some point it’ll hurt people that—”
   “Believe in the system, the courts and unicorns? Nothing is as simple as the revolutionaries or status quo ever think it is.” Her eyes saw lines and divisions I couldn’t, and wanted to work them against each other. “Police aren’t going to rush into the ghetto or other parts of town like they would an expensive gated place. If you’re poor or the wrong kind, oh fucking well.”
   “That’s...”
   “Racist?” Old and tender aggravation spiked her words. “Yeah, but nobody remembers the ninety-nine times you saved the poor kids or a minority family. They never forget the one time, just one time, some girl got treated less worthy.”
   She waited, staring at the floor, while I folded the plans and pocketed them. I’d already decided the chance of jail was better than having my head in the sand or dying like cattle. Her shoulders were set and pleaded to be attacked or challenged, but she’d said her peace. If it took outwaiting her sharp words I’d do it, but she gave first and took my hands in hers, soft and callouses mixed.
   “I can’t blame them completely, no matter how much I hate how the police work. Do you want to know why I can’t?” She didn’t wait. “Do you know what the statistics are about sex workers?”
   She caught my eyes in a way that made it hard to admit. “No.” It wasn’t anywhere on my online searches.
   “Everything bad that could happen to me is much more likely. Same if I was an escort, or a pornstar, or just a girl taking her chances on the street. It’s not a safe life. More likely to get mugged or robbed. More likely to get my car stolen.” She added a slight waver and her ears drooped down in adult fear. “More likely to get my place broken into. More likely to be abused by a domestic partner. More likely to be raped.”
   She dropped to barely a whisper. “More likely to be abducted or murdered.”
   I avoided that unpleasant truth and her eyes, but that left watching her hands over mine. They remained steady, so different and yet not too different. Not too different to start giving a damn about the horrors that shouldn’t be between people, and tearing apart chances at a better world.
   “Us older girls mentor the younger ones. Amanda and I, well, she was like a younger sister. Headstrong, confident, and so full of hope.” She started to squeeze my hands. “And I’ve seen girls come and go. I’ve seen them lucky enough to graduate, get knocked up, burn out on dope or their own bullshit. And every time I think I can’t stand to go through that again...” A pause, a sniff, and then she started back up. “She’d hang out with me sometimes, poke and needle me for all of this nerd stuff. I know I’m not going to live off my body forever, but we were two different kinds of smart. We argued about all the social stuff—cops, jobs, justice and education. I could never stop her optimism for long. I wanted to see her, us, happy twenty years later and...”
   Her voice wavered on the last few words then broke completely. She looked down as well, hands together, warm flesh and warm flesh, pale and grey-white.
   Breathing.
   Vital.
   Still alive.
   As the second held and pulled out we joined eyes. Hers went to stone. She pulled away, turned and leaned against the wall with face in her hands. Tiny shakes crawled over her back and shoulders, and tight breaths choked off the chance of sobbing. Unsteady legs wavered.
   “Get out. Now.”
   There’s nothing I could do, nothing she’d let me do.
   The door closed softly behind, and I walked through the dusk and still summer heat.
   
The pizza was better than good, but everything on my mind made it hard to enjoy. That was sad, because from the first time I’d walked in a couple months ago Lorito’s seemed like the kind of place that anyone could walk into, sharing one of the few great all-ages pleasures in life, aka pizza. This had nearly authentic New York-style, as close as you could get in Florida, only missing the water or a Brooklyn streetcorner. The only problem was the police headquarters a few blocks away, so the sound of cop cars came with each meal. 
   The background static of the rest of the crowd fuzzed like old institutional wallpaper, with all of us scrubbed clean and dressed for a night out instead of sweating in the summer sun. I got crammed between Bart’s overdone cologne and Sammy’s musclegut build, and Nicky sitting between Alex and Gordo with all three sparkling hints of cheap pawn shop gold. Nicky and his friends were close to the same build, Alex’s fur a red-brown and Gordo’s waves of darker grays. Before the drinks arrived, Nicky and his friends were already trading barbs with the others.
   “And then, in the red corner, wearing the blue and white trunks, is the asshole that is in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in this city.”
   I looked up from a drink that could only be described as tea by someone neither British or Southern, and braindead to boot.
   “I’m talking to you, Chuckles. If you were any more of a downer I’d say someone shot your favorite dog when you were a kid.” He mimed a handgun to his head, fired, and then fell across Gordo on his left with his mouth open and tongue out.
   “What the...get your sniffing ass off me and stop drooling...hey, cut the laughing you...you got to the count of three or I’m shoving a bottle of Tabasco up your nose.”
   Nicky snapped upright like an electrified clown and started up again like a cocaine-fueled comedian. “And if you think I’m going to put up with someone so depressed that they’re sitting in their shit instead of flinging it around like a damned hrmmmmphh!”
   Alex had shoved a breadstick in Nicky’s mouth and held it in. “Told ya man, if your mouth is that big you might as well start sucking, get knotted, and make some money doing what you love.”
   That finally caused me to laugh weakly, and the others to join. Nicky slapped the restraining hand away, broke the breadstick in half, and swallowed while Alex egged him on.
   “That’s it baby, no spitting it out.” Alex ignored the deathglare as Nicky chewed at the other half. “Now, while we’ve transferred the title of Best Sulker, y’all seen the news tonight?”
   Sammy gestured with a breadstick. “Whatcha talking about, that shit on the overpass this morning? Saw it driving in. Heard it might be some movie promotion stunt, right?”
   “Nope, chick went missing about a week ago. And I’ve heard this isn’t the only one. Guy I know does maintenance at one of those big places just outside of the city limits, he says there were cops swarming over the place earlier this afternoon. Not like whoever this guy is would try one of us, but if that shit scares the crap outta me, imagine what’ll happen when bodies start getting found. Ain’t like the old days. Cameras are everywhere. Someone’s dragging tail, and going to have barbequed balls if they don’t start moving.”
   Gordo took a shot across the bow of an ally. “That’s just talk, smartass. If she’s a student like the morning news said, big guys like the president are going to be in a tough spot. Not much he could have done, and not much he can do except show off what’s already there.”
   “And, gentlemen, here we have Gordo the Fleacircus to tell us how it really is.”
   The two guys were ramping up to full argument with Nicky reduced to No Man’s Land.
   “Proud and happy to help you. You see, girl signs up for summer classes, decides she doesn’t want to be here, and skips town. Now maybe she’s at the beach or found a sugar daddy, maybe her boyfriend hit her one too many, but they don’t check for a brain before letting the kids in. And that’s what’s up. A week or two from now she’ll roll back into town and probably leave again when she finds her friends played a stunt like that and reported her missing. No body, no evidence, no crime. Any other ones? Not related. End of story.” Gordo leaned back and crossed his arms. “Now, we’re a different story. The assholes that pulled that stunt on the overpass, well, you know it’s amazing what you can get delivered to your doorstep from McMaster or half a dozen other places with a credit card. If the cops get freaked, every blue-collar guy in this city will have the cops looking twice at them.”
   Sammy went for the rebuttal. “OK, this is the one I saw too. Didn’t you used to work supply-side a few years ago?” He nodded at me, and I nodded back. “So think about this. Girls run off sometimes, but what’s making the yappers at the news get all riled up over this one? I’m with Alex on this. They ain’t saying shit because they already know enough to make this a murder case. Guy offs some girl. He’s getting attention. It goes to his head, and a few days later he does something dumb again, but not as clean. Then he decides to taunt the cops, like this banner, and get the public panicked. Fast forward a couple weeks from now. Every new murder has more evidence left behind, people are getting jumpier, and then the tabloids are in town. They’re riled up because this is a serial killer playing a game with the cops, maybe they see ratings and a few awards for crime reporting in their future.”
   Bart finally spoke up. “Bunch of morbid bastards know how to spoil good pizza. You see shit going down, you fuck the guy up and then call the cops, just like momma taught me.”
   Nicky looked at me. “Got an opinion on this?”
   “Trying not to think about it.”
   “First thing we’ve agreed on all day. Everyone almost done? I really need a few beers and some tail after this.”
   
The action at the club was long since out of first gear by the time we got there. The fatso collecting cover looked more bored than any man had rights to be. Onstage a busty shorthaired blonde bent over with nothing on but platform heels. A beer mug went flying in a high arc not because of a fight but because the idiot couldn’t hold a beer and cheer for tits at the same time. The soundsystem was either working right by chance, or had to be fixed to open the club tonight.
   A techno song thudded a four on the floor beat with the vocals run through a maze of filters.
   “Take me”
   “Take me”
   “In the shadows and make me feel”
   “Your love”
   The last couple of words faded out in a shimmer of synths and glitched stutters. The background of beer drinking and low table conversations cricketed the dead air. She strutted off the stage, in perfect time with music no longer there. After the blonde, a redhead in a superheroine costume came out. After that it was a black girl in nurse scrubs, with white fishnet and mesh lingerie underneath.
   Sometime after that, I remembered another blonde. More than a couple empties apiece littered the table. A few more songs played, and a few more girls.
   The next one was some striped chick, so Nicky and his friends shouted wildly over the first non-human girl of the night. Dark furred and short-eared to boot, she glistened under brighter white and yellow lights, and became shadow under darker reds and blues.
   A percussion heavy beat timed her steps, fine and fast. The changing lights weren’t in sync with the music but her body was, the stripes undulating like a canvas in the breeze.
   Gordo wolf-whistled her several times and ran up to tip her waving his bill in front like he was the one in heat. She turned around and gave the crowd a nice show of her ass and thighs before letting him tuck the bill into the back of her garter. When he got back to the table he grinned loose-tongued and completely besotted at the sniff of pussy he’d gotten.
   Nicky elbowed him as he got up to go to the stage for the next girl, a curly haired brunette. “Nice spaz out, mutt. We’re putting you on stage next in a clown costume.”
   Sammy had been silently nursing beer after beer since arriving and spoke. “What’s the deal? Trying out some fish scented cologne for her?”
   “Nah, man, just...you see how see used her tail? Babe knows how to tease. And that ass. Perfect. Imagine looking down and watching that pushing back on your cock all night.”
   I looked over at Sammy, and we raised bottles together, clinked and took a long pull. “Gordo has lost it.” We laughed at the simultaneous comment.
   Bart started cracking on easily pulled tail. “So what’s next for him, Sammy, at least before we have to drop him at the ER so he can make it to work in the morning?”
   “Ten to one, he tipped her enough she comes over to drain his wallet a bit more.”
   “Fifty. Perfect little heart shaped pattern on that ass.”
   That got Alex’s attention. “And after kitty has his tongue just by turning around, she’ll lapdance him and give him an earrub.”
   “That allowed for you guys, Alex?” Bart scratched an ear in demonstration.
   “Fuck yeah, and you don’t know what you’re missing out on. But Gord’s an embarrassing perv for that.”
   “Huh?”
   “He makes little puppy sounds, especially if she knows how to work the tips.” Nicky must not have been the only one that owed some money.
   “You don’t say. The tips. That’s some seriously kinky stuff, I’ve heard. Next time I see him scratching his ears I’m making puppy sounds.”
   That snapped Gordo out of his daydream. “Both need to focus a bit more on the girls and the beer. And fuck you for that puppy shit. Bet you a box of bandaids if you called one of the girls that you couldn’t get away with having any left over.” He probably wanted Nicky back at the table so he could monopolize the clown position.
   Nicky sat back down with a smug grin and pointed. “There’s your girl, Gordo. Don’t knot yourself.”
   “Hello, gatos.”
   She was exotic enough, and had a Spanish-like accent. No, maybe Portuguese, which meant she could be Brazilian. Fuck, just shove her into the South American category and stop thinking about geography.
   “You boys having a nice night?” Whatever she’d put in her short fur had it shining in the lights.
   I leapt in before someone laid down the drunken idiot card. “Good enough.”
   She looked over the six of us and let out a purr-like growl I could hear over the music. “Someone was trying to get my attention. I can take you, lay right back, and rub and roll...” The R’s rolled off her tongue like a drug to cure infertility.
   We were a round of alcohol-fueled grins as she leaned in a bit to flaunt her body. Her ears twitched as if pointing at each in turn, then disappointed that we didn’t answer at once to sort what she’d do with six worked up and horny men.
   “Who is the first I show my secrets to tonight? Or is it just my high tipper that wants more?” Gordo got up, and she led him to the back while the rest of us let out sighs of relief.
   Alex was the only one crazy enough not to go right back to his beer. “At least he’s waiting to make a fool of himself.”
   The songs kept on coming, and so did the girls. Most of them were dancing to recent pop songs, or dance remixes. It changed, and the girl up on stage a welcome break, with her blonde hair in a tight bun and looking like actual ballet to some classical piece.
   Gordo came back with a grin big enough for one of the gators out in the swamps. “That was...” Nicky mimed an Italian kissing his fingers. Gordo ignored him. “Only thing better than a good rub and a blowjob is one girl to rub and another to suck.”
   Bart drained his beer. “You just got your doggy dingus done?”
   “Damned right.” Well, time for another episode of fuzzy fish tales.
   “And she didn’t immediately run away to get some mouthwash?”
   “Hell no. Swallowed and licked me clean. Strange feeling, kind of rough but feels real good when she goes slow. Almost popped twice.”
   “You don’t say. At least that’s one way to never have to apologize for always forgetting the condoms.”
   “Don’t know why except I’ve developed a thing for that one chick they’re pushing on the radio now.”
   Sammy was the pop music fan, even though he looked a better fit for the roadside country bars. “I know which one. She’s got on tiny jean shorts and skates in one of them.”
   Gordo gave thumbs up to that. “Seriously don’t need to watch anymore of those videos. Only things that get me right now are earrubs and kittens.”
   The fooling around went on but slowed down with each new round of beers. Bart and Sammy each picked out a girl and came back looking much less poleaxed than Gordo. I’d been keeping an eye out but hadn’t seen Tahlia in the crowd or onstage all night. Alex finally wandered into the back with a bubbly brunette that had a paw tattoo on her hip. No one gives that much of a fuck if a girl has gotten knotted, but the ones that seriously chased tail knew they’d get looked at. Still, she was awfully cute and nowhere close to the worst stereotype. Perhaps one of those temporary tattoos she’d rub on if the crowd was right and wanted to work that.
   Nicky elbowed me while a girl stripped out of military fatigues to an amped up country song. “When you going to choose how to siphon my wallet dry?”
   “Haven’t seen her yet.” I considered that she’d skipped tonight to be at home crying over a chick flick, a bottle of supermarket wine and a gallon of ice cream.
   The army chick danced off, replaced by a latina dancing to a slow ballad with keyboards and flamenco guitar. As her song closed I counted the night’s beers and how many had cheered me up. The beat of the next song chunked on, the latest beer failed to rally the others, and I left to fill the toilet with the money I was pissing away. It took more effort than it was worth to care about myself, so even if I could care about something I doubted the mettle existed to care about someone for long. An old cracked mirror gone to corrosion and spiderwebbed cracks gave up on reflecting empty eyes and replayed two sets of hands. The short, fine fur lay gray-white against skin. I stopped the loop by bashing the mirror with a forearm, making things worse.
   She’d made her choices.
   The song changed as I sat down, the next girl took the stage, but the song never changed. Fuck it. I knew that my hand in life would be the same as all the other guys tonight. If I lived, sooner or later I’d go off the rails and fall for someone, from that point without free choice. I would willingly trade endless open boredom for a used cage, counting away the heartbeats until the last whimper chopped ragged.
   The chick on stage left, only a rough shape. The lights cut out except for a single spot, and the sound cut for a few seconds too long.
   A howl pierced the room, low and rising in pitch at the end. A second one answered, and then another overlapping, and another until it sounded like a pack on the mountainside. They trailed off, and with the song’s first two notes she stepped out onto the worn stage, centered in the one light. Tahlia stretched out in a dramatic pose, Victorian bodice and a skirt that I didn’t think was.
   She moved suddenly, only with the syncopated drums, until the verse fired up and launched her into a hurricane of motion. The twists and turns she made were punctuated by bits of the costume flying off when she mimed tearing at herself. The crowd cheered her on as she used the speed to fly higher and higher on a pole that shouldn’t have been rated for that abuse.
   The bridge broke into half time and she finally had a still moment, walking around the pole, arms extended high, piercings glinting in the lights, breathing hard but staring out at the men in challenge.
   I got the feeling she chose each song and outfit to go with it more like burlesque or theater than a lowly striptease. If she had a theme going, and there was nothing wrong with that, then what the hell made her pick this one except to throw herself into a frenzy?
   At the last line of the bridge she flipped backwards, caught the pole with her thighs, and spun herself upright and higher.
   At no point she left a second to walk along the edge of the stage for tips. Men were tossing bills at her and shouting over distorted guitars. Nicky pushed up to the front, with the same result, before flinging the bills onstage and walking back. It ended in a maddening laugh that she let out an earsplitting howl to, dropping low to sweep the stage of costume and cash with fluid grace. Her eyes made one last pass over everyone, the pressure of them resting on me a hair more than the rest of the crowd.
   She walked off with the unspoken dare falling on everyone, and I got it.
   You can’t tame me.
   Gordo woke up and stirred from his post-earrub bliss. “That, gentlemen, is going to be a tough act to follow.”
   After her song she weaved among the tables, taking tribute and basking in the glow of her admirers. When she got to our table, Nicky vibrated with childish glee. Her gaze passed over each one of us in turn, and didn’t pause on me more than anyone else. The bodice and rest of her outfit made her look overdressed tonight, but the skirts were deadly fluid over the waterfall of her hips.
   “I see I have some...” Reaching out, she gently brushed Nicky’s cheek. “...admiring fans.”
   She had been paying rather close attention during her set.
   “Told you, and none of you believed me.”
   Sammy was still half reclined in the booth. “He hasn’t shut up about all his adventures, and that’s why no one believes anything off his tongue.”
   “So...Is this his birthday? Promotion? Won a big bet? Celebrating the big day?” With each question she stroked his cheek again, slower each time.
   “Nah, we’re here because I’m awesome and we just got this section installed on site today, then glued and bolted it with this shit that’s better than whatever got used on that prank this morning.” Nicky got rolling through his greatest hits while I made a mental note—suggest everyone bet Nicky to temper his knotted ego. “You see, you want something that isn’t ever coming apart you call me, not someone that yanked some supplies and fucked it up so bad the PD got it down the same day.” She let him talk, and the train kept rolling downhill. “And if these freaks listened to me, we would have been able to kick off at least an hour early from work today, and that means more beer and more—”
   “Only thing we’re celebrating is getting him to shut the fuck up. They let you keep gags here, and can we get you to do him and toss the key?” Sammy saved everyone once again from a furface with the smell of pussy up his nose.
   “Hmmmm. I do have a collection of very nice gags and muzzles. You look the type that wants a loose one, just loose enough where I can still use your tongue.” I didn’t doubt Tahlia had a degree in using her collection of bondage gear. “Now, I think it’s past time I took my new slave in the back, and educated him in the ways I expect to be obeyed.” Nicky got up like a puppet on strings, led away on an invisible leash, played by the taller and booted puppeteer.
   Sammy polished off a beer as they disappeared into the back. “That is one sad and lost puppy begging to get collared.”
   Bart agreed loudly, belched, then went to tip another girl and go for seconds. Gordo got elbowed by Alex every few seconds so he didn’t bliss out again.
   I counted the songs, one, two, three, and hoped he hadn’t paid for more time. A fourth song went by, then a fifth.
   The next song came up and Nicky wobbled out of the back, looking as if every step cost a flare of pain. Served him right if Tahlia had an excessive dominatrix mood tonight. She came out of the back and leaned by the doorway, watching as Nicky continued his walk of shame back.
   Sammy looked at Bart as Alex elbowed Gordo and gestured at Tahlia. Bart and Alex tried to stay straightfaced when Nicky slumped over the table like a kid that got the belt. Gordo leaned over to whisper something to Sammy. Tahlia hadn’t moved and the bouncer stared too direct to be asking anything except if there was something wrong with the guys at that table.
   Everyone else stole a glance at me, then Nicky. He looked up, right into Tahlia’s eyes from across the room. He whimpered softly.
   Sammy won the MVP award for the night by getting up first, hooking an arm under Nicky, and motioning Alex to take the other side.
   “Guess we were all wrong on who’s getting an ER visit tonight.”

Chapter Four

I’d been dragged along because I hadn’t made a good enough excuse. When two of our party were women that hated my guts, unlikely to lie and look foolish contradicting each other, it was safe enough for me to relax as long as I stayed in the middle of the booth away from grabbing hands or the threat of a girl on my lap. It also didn’t hurt that I had Caroline on the phone, even if she sounded pissed at me being in a strip club. Correction. Gentlemen’s club. Once it gets expensive enough you can’t even call a stripper an exotic dancer.
   “I can’t believe you let them talk you into this. The only thing worse would be you coming home with fur all over you, just because Alan wanted to be a tailchaser for his birthday.” I wouldn’t have put that past him, and pitied the poor girl that needed money that bad.
   It had taken over an hour for her to call me back, so I kept my voice cool and let her overreact. “This wasn’t Alan’s idea. You can thank Gina, and Phillip for reminding everyone that I owed Alan a favor. So here I am being uncomfortable, very hands off, and almost completely sober.”
   “Maybe this will teach you to be better at gambling.”
   “It’s hardly my fault the bet was for a favor to be called in later, and that Malcolm stayed away for three days straight.”
   “Well, if you’re going to get roped into anything else, get a more accurate witness than Gina. I should have known what was wrong with her the minute I heard her nickname was Tinkerbell.”
   She wasn’t wrong. A higher power made sure that we got our pay deposited on time every other week. Gina happened to be the type that needed to take her shoes off to count to twenty, and she was barefoot in the head office continually.
   “Whooo. Lookie there, man. That one looks your type!” Alan sloshed a drink that wasn’t beer or normal looking liquor, and too expensive to boot. 
   The girl had some kind of sleeveless top with a corset over it, and showing off so little skin that if she’d put on a skirt it would be safe enough to wear while dropping her kid off at the elementary school. It wouldn’t be the best choice or the greatest taste, and my taste remained suspect as long as I let Caroline stick around. It’d been almost a month since she’d gotten within a notch of blackout drunk, and mistaken David and I. The only reason I had left to not go eye for an eye and settle with Caroline was that I was far too lazy. I’d started looking for another job, hiding the fact from her, and telling myself it was just a matter of time.
    “Who’s the birthday boy?” Her voice was low and smoky, drifting over the table. “Perhaps he wants something more unique than a birthday spanking.”
   Phillip busted in. “Jakey here isn’t, but he’d be a tougher nut to crack. Ain’t much to look at, but I bet you know all the tricks to get a guy to bust in his pants and then beg to beg. Right? Will? B-Man, wait, where’d he go?”
   I pulled out my wallet, thinner than usual even after several weeks of not paying for all of Caroline’s dreams. Less than two hundred, and five more days until I topped off. It was hell not being able to direct deposit and live off a card. The little that she hadn’t run up on every fucking card I had was moved to a new account that I didn’t have a card yet.
   “Here’s twenty. I’m going to very politely ask you to fuck off, because the best torture you could do right now on a guy is make Chuckles here sad.” I folded the bill longways and held it out between index and middle fingers.
   “Make it forty. Wave me over when they get to be too much for you, and I’ll drain their wallets instead of yours. You can’t blame a girl for making a living.”
   I added a second bill, and she tucked them into her stocking top. “I sure can’t, and thanks.”
   It worked, and the girl came back three times. The first victim was Phillip, then Brian. He was upset with me that he’d missed the original encounter.
   “Damn, you couldn’t wait for me?” He rubbed at his nose for the third time since sitting back down, and failed to clean it.
   “Taking a piss isn’t a fifteen minute affair, even for you. How many and how much have you blown tonight so far?”
   “Not enough.” I hoped he ran out soon or the next group that walked in was the EMTs rescuing him. “You’re no fun, you know that? Every single time. What you need is something stronger than that overpriced pisswater.”
   “Bud Light is pisswater. This is beer.” The last of that bottle warmed my stomach. “And since birthday boy is paying for drinks, I’m not settling for expired fratboy pisswater. You can’t drink it fast enough to get a buzz.”
   She walked back to our table, and Brian bounced like a too-smart kid with a hand in the air. I could only hope his wallet got thinner than mine.
   Gina slashed into the lack of things pissing me off after my fifteen minutes of peace without Brian expired. “So why did you pass up some fun? Carrie stick you in a chastity cage?”
   “No, but if she ever gets one off of you, she’d better sanitize it properly before bringing that in my place.”
   “Ouch, man. That’s my wife you’re talking to.” The point cleared the clouds around Alan’s head with a mile to spare.
   “You were wrong, sweetie. I’m thinking it’s not the leather types or the bimbos he wants. Jacob would have preferred the petting zoo.”
   Phillip looked puzzled at the drink in front of him, which looked like the gay love child of a margarita and 190 proof fruit punch, then downed it in one swallow. “I never took him for the tailchasing type.”
   “That’s because we’ve never caught him. I know all about those small town boys. Dangle something exotic in front of them, and they either want to kill it or fuck it. Since he’s not up on murder charges...well, what do you know? Take a look at her, Allie.”
   Tail, one of the medium shades of gray, and looking like she’d just done the salon run earlier in the day for a trim and brushing. The chick I’d paid earlier, and never asked her name, walked up behind the wolfie and whispered. It was plain as day, this is my table. The same for the reply, you don’t have my equipment.
   Alan was too drunk for social graces. “I wouldn’t mind a bit of puppy love tonight. How about it?”
   “I don’t think she’s interested in your dick, sweetie. Rolled up newspaper is longer and harder.”
   The exchange escalated until the wolfie stormed off. The other went after her, Alan waved over another girl, and shortly after I babysat a drunk, a weekend cokehead, and a guy that made the other two look good. I got up to take a piss and ran into the human girl on the way back to the table. 
   “Thanks for the help earlier. They’ll never miss it.”
   “You’re lucky to be able to say that. Viv is done for the night. If management treated all the girls equal, your night would have been over too. This isn’t some interstate truckstop and tits place.” I didn’t respond to her. “How the fuck do you stand people like that?”
   “Same as most others. I’m paid to. It’s not like they’re mass murderers. Gina and Alan are equal opportunity offenders after work, whether they’re drunk or not. If they had you in the back, you’d be the one crying after having them tossed.”
   “That’s all you have to say for yourself? Make an excuse for them and enable that shit?”
   “I’m out as soon as I get a call back. I don’t care what it is, just that it’s away from here. Maybe this time I’ll avoid their cousins for a few months.”
   “Good luck. But here’s a little advice for free since I hit my average take off of two sessions, both of which made me want a shower. It’s us against them. Not the girls like Viv, the scum that live to hate. One of these days you’re going to have to make a stand.”
   I looked her in the eye. “What’s your name? Never asked earlier. And not your name here. Real.”
   “Therese.”
   “How much did it hurt?” I knew how much it hurt to leave home at eighteen, and at least I wasn’t homeless.
   “They don’t make words for those feelings, but these days I get to choose who’s family. Now take your friends somewhere else.”
   When I got back to the table Alan was trying a bit too hard to convince a second piece of tail to indulge him while Gina blocked the view. A bouncer walked up from the other direction, and five minutes and a single-sided screaming match later I was outside. The doors on an expensive piece of jewelry thumped closed, and I started the engine of my road-weary truck.

Chapter Five

By the time I reached my bed the clock rolled to 2AM, and I had to be at work in less than six hours.
   Before I knew it the alarm clock jangled, and I set a pot to brew while rinsing off the scents of smoke and beer. After pulling on pants I got a second pot going to take me through the morning, downed as much of the first pot as I could before pissing like a racehorse, and found a shirt. On the way out the door, I grabbed the bottle of gas-station uppers marketed as better than Viagra, popped four, and chased it with the remainder of the first pot.
   As I pulled in the rest of the guys from last night were hating the morning as well.
   The pills didn’t work worth a damn to keep my dick hard, but were a miracle to get through a morning. One was what the bottle said to take, two at max, all four hit and I felt like the cables on a bridge in a strong storm. Nicky looked like a fur-clad pile of shit.
   Everyone else looked more than a little hungover, and I didn’t want to know how bad it was after I avoided the mirror. It became a game to try and cheer Nicky up. When someone suggested a quick break to run and get some fast food breakfast, his eyes bulged.
   “So that’s five bacon, egg and sausage; six sausage and egg; six more bacon and egg; eight plain egg...you need some eggs too after last night, Nick?” He managed something intended to be a hamstrung run to the Portas.
   “So that’s nine on the egg. Back in about fifteen to twenty.” The sound of dry retching echoed from the Portas.
   No one wanted to ask what happened, and I’m not so sure it would have been a good idea to know. They got two egg biscuits for Nicky, and he nibbled at one between sips of coffee and about a dozen pain pills. It didn’t seem to help that much except to make him visibly less run over by last night’s excesses.
   One thing went as predicted, everyone coasted through Friday and shot to not fuck up that badly. Neither of the cranes did much except look high above. Someone got Harold riled up and outside the AC, because he’d been stomping around the last hour, tearing into another fool at battlefield volume. The heat climbed into its usual slow-cooker range, and lunch consisted of finding shade and downing as much liquid as possible without pissing on the spot. A battery operated radio broke out, tuned to a talk and news station.
   “It’s the top of the hour, and the top local story today is the county police department under pressure after recent events. In the wake of a large homemade banner appearing, yet another sign of the distance between the public and...”
   Nicky crouched slowly a few feet away, and I helped him ease down.
   “...And this morning members of both the county and city commission made a unified call for details to be made public, as well as briefings to the...” 
   His eyes were only partly focused. He breathed slowly but his visible flesh looked flushed and red.
   “...will have to respect that any information regarding ongoing investigations may be kept confidential until prosecution, and to protect the families of any victims of crimes. Next?”
   The radio clicked off, someone cursed that they wanted to hear more, and another cursed about people doing their share of the work. The shouting moved off into the din of the site, leaving just Nicky and I. He took off his hat, unwound headband and cooling scarf, wet them, and replaced both without looking up.
   “What’s wrong, man? You yank her tail last night, or did she did she go all dommy on you?”
   “Didn’t do anything wrong.” His voice was weak and strained, his ears and tail limp and curled close.
   “Huh? You were OK, then you came out looking like you took a shot at the heavyweight belt.”
   “Can’t talk.”
   I knew part of what happened. Nicky had run his mouth like usual, and Tahlia decided a little fear would go a long way. We were having an unpleasant talk in the future, but first I needed this side of the story.
   “Fuck you, yes you can say something. Both of us have seen her before, and it doesn’t matter whether she’s just rough or a psycho, but you’re not sitting on your tail!” I didn’t intend to shout, or snap, and the only thing holding me back was the deathgrip on his shirt collar and his fear wide eyes.
   “I...I...I promised her I wouldn’t say anything. She acted like I knew something about that whole missing girl thing. And...” His eyes were wild, dancing to the left and right, wondering who was just out of sight and listening. “I kept telling her I didn’t know anything. Then she...”
   His voice dropped even softer, and I moved almost ear to muzzle. “...she unzipped my pants and teased the tip with a fingernail, not in a good way. But I couldn’t help it, and just when I was about to cum she squeezed my nuts and knot like rotten fruit. And then she kept squeezing, asking the same questions over and over like some deranged police interrogation.”
   The look on my face must have been bad. He tried to clear his dry throat, without willpower behind it. Eyes down, he put a hand up and I moved back so he had some space.
   “I don’t know nothing, man, and I don’t want to know. Not talking to police, not talking to management, not talking to that brinnie bitch or her creep that were here this morning, not even talking to a priest. Don’t think I’m ever going back there, too.”
   I left him to whatever was haunting him.
   After work I hit the hardware store to pick up supplies, and resolved that whatever came next she would come clean about this.
   
It was barely 7:30 when I slumped into a third-hand couch, and less than fifteen minutes into a movie I started snoring.
   Nothing flashed on the phone when I woke just shy of midnight. I fired a quick text to her, asking if I needed to put off sleeping yet another night. The reply came a few minutes later while depositing another night’s microwave food container in the trash.
   No. Get sleep. Need you early Monday. Meet me. Bring tools.
   After that was a time and a pair of addresses on the other side of town, the latter of one of the larger intersections and leading to a few residential areas.
   The dreams were unsettling, involving genital torture, missing persons reports, and a crumbling building while an unseen voice laughed. I couldn’t hear the words, but the dreamscape translated them. You can’t stop the pain, the wrong, the murders, the things that shouldn’t be.
   If you try, they’ll be able to see you, and they’ll hunt you down.
   An old forest outside the city, with the light barely reaching the ground through the green maze above. So green, a shelter of the world against the world. The pack of secrets, hanging loose at my side, slapped my thigh as I moved through the maze of trees. All I had to do is make it through and to the road. They didn’t want a scene, they wanted no witnesses to their knives. Scents drove me, blown the wrong way against the wind. If they caught up, no one will ever know any story but the one they tell.
   I grew up in the backwoods, and knew every secret of the place. The law was individual here. The traditions carved out of the pioneers were rough and uneven, only more so when review and appeal were foreign ideals. Those old traditions from the first thousands had been handed down, hidden from young eyes until the right time. There was someone’s grandfather, who claimed his grandfather had hunted when he was a young man. Not just a hunt, The Hunt. The greatest kind of hunt, chasing two-legged prey and outsmarting it, overpowering it, torturing it, sterilizing it, murdering it. Things that were supposed to have vanished long before the war still had stories handed down, hunting those that were once slaves or as good as, their children and grandchildren. There was safety in numbers. People moved to the cities. Hunters found prey hard to find, or too deadly. But in the closest of confidences someone would eventually talk about one bullet, and what it felt like to pull the trigger. Cowards. Words couldn’t bury their lack of action. They were cowards in my eyes, likewise in other’s eyes. But once or twice I wanted to forget that extra reflected back from a few pairs. Liar. You don’t know what it feels like. Liar. You never pulled the trigger. Liar. You’ve never taken another’s life.
   Wounds broke open again, bleeding into bandages. The pain coursed with each step. There were older traditions, waiting underneath the burnt forest scrub, waiting to hold us once nurtured.  The road led to civilization. People lived with each other in civilization. They cooperated, settled debates, and made laws to push back the evil. When the secrets I carried away reached the right hands, justice would come. Laws will burn the wicked and that thought kept me moving. She was waiting. When I reached the road, in time I’d be by her side again. Love will see me through the trials of pain. Many loves will stand against evil, linked in hope. The children, in love, will rebuild the broken church and sing the psalms of hope inside the walls. In the church, children will regain faith. Faith, all faith, god and goddess, human and not, joined. Once joined they shouted.
   “This is our world.”
   Each step got harder. The pain faded, but when it did I couldn’t feel my footsteps. My footsteps still crunched on the leaves underneath, but I couldn’t taste the blood. I heard the noises of wildlife fall behind, but the smell of the worn road wasn’t there in front. My eyes saw the trees thinning, but no sound of a car to take me to safety. The chase finally broken, the road the same, mile after mile, and it turned vision gray.
   After a long chase, she helped pull the stretcher over the lip of the ledge, hidden from above and below but not from her. Green eyes kissed my soul and she whispered all the hardships I’d bore were worth the victory I’d helped to secure. Ears forward, she kept her eyes on me without forgetting the pursuers that had lost their game. There were others lifting, promising that soon it would be time to heal and mend and dream of the children of the next day. I could hear voices shrieking in a child’s rhyme.
   All the days, we make the way
   Happy here, run without fear
   Then they came, with blood we pay
   Fight again, for love held dear
   The blood seeped around the stitches they’d tried to hold flesh together with. The stream trickled down the dry path until it met others, and fate found a way down the mountains and past the hills to pool in low earth.
   
I woke in a cold sweat despite both a ceiling and floor fan. The pills from yesterday still buzzed through my nerves, so I forced myself to eat. I drug the old excuse out and ignored the dust on it. If I ever managed a full and restful night’s sleep again, I’ll give up all the small vices. Anything to bury the unremembered nightmares.
   I tried a book for a while, then the TV to see if there was a decent game or movie on. There wasn’t. I avoided the news or anything too depressing. So it was nails, hair, shave, scrub and clean. Anything not to be yet another drunk that hasn’t pissed and shit himself yet. I did everything by touch, too weary to raise eyes and work by reflection.
   By Sunday morning I felt better, enough to attempt the small things. I headed out for groceries and a short walk. Laundry, a decent sized meal, then early to bed so I could be up when the last of the drunks were hitting the sack.
   On Monday, I realized the pills were going to be a good idea today. My head spun while showering. Getting clothes and boots on was an event. The first cup of coffee didn’t budge the sleep from my eyes.
   I took one, just one, little not quite amphetamine pill from the bottle with a second cup of coffee, grabbed stuff, and walked out into the city’s too humid night.
   
The radio pumped out one last old rock song before the canned overnight DJ came on. The lucky bastard probably had been napping on a couch with his work done hours ago.
   “...And don’t worry about that weather, it’ll be hot and if it rains a bit it’ll just be hotter after. On the subject of hot, Sheriff Abernathy is in a bit of hot water in case you’ve been asleep the past few days, and I don’t blame anyone for staying inside and sleeping through this heat. Sunday afternoon, a group of siruean and kadisi students joined with others from area churches and assemblies, marched on city hall and then to police HQ. And that followed a few incidents on Saturday that resulted in no injuries except a few arrests for disturbing the peace. Add on everything else that’s happened in the last week, and it’s hot indoors no matter what you set the AC to. Now, I’m a better DJ than an editorial writer, but you get elected sheriff and when bad things happen you’re who everyone, and I mean everyone’s looking up to. I’ve had the fortune of meeting a lot of the fine people from these counties, and we are blessed to have officials that care about this country and us.”
   Static cracked and two notes from a country song overlaid his words before fading back out.
   “So all I’m saying is we’ve got people going through some times, we’ve got people trying to make it better, and let’s all try and take care of one another. And I hope this all turns out OK. No one likes seeing all the pretty ladies hurt or crying. Next up, the Stones with Gimme Shelter. Some things never change, man.”
   I pulled in a parking lot behind a partly gutted building before the radio screamed about rape and murder. The corner unit was being rebuilt, but signs out front were already touting the new occupants and an opening day.
   A flimsy fence screened off part of the lot with green privacy mesh lashed to it. She leaned on her car’s side, with something big in the back seat. Hair pulled back, black jeans, white tank, and no attempt to conceal what was under. Her tail cracked from side to side every few seconds in impatience even though we were both early, her ears not all the way back but far enough. Ten in the rainy day jar said she’d been waiting for at least fifteen minutes.
   “Are we here for what I think we are?”
   We walked to the fencing, and she pulled a section open. “Not even a chain on it. Spotted this a couple weeks ago. Don’t know much about your stuff, but I think the only reason it’s still here is this isn’t the side of town for petty thieves.”
   A few pallets of materials mounded under plastic sheeting, some small shipping containers had greasepen writing on the side, and some odds and ends sat around. They must have locked the tools inside.
   Except for one thing. In the corner, a small hole had been knocked through the back wall and a short length of PVC pipe pushed through. It attached to a blower unit.
   Tahlia had an evil grin, like someone that got off on grabbing life by the balls. I ignored that for the moment.
   But she wouldn’t ignore me after I started asking.
   “Those things work either direction, right? You want to push air into something, you hook it up one way, you want to pull it out you hook it up the other direction.”
   “The fan only rotates one way, but that’s right. It’s all about airflow. They make configs of this for whatever your physical requirements are.”
   She turned on a mini flashlight attached to her keychain. “So, is this good enough? I’m hoping I got the right numbers for this.”
   The light wandered over the unit, and I looked for the manufacturer’s plate. “There. Steady for a second. I’m not a fancy engineer, but those numbers look about right. As long as you’re in the ballpark your plan should have enough juice.”
   “Let’s get this unbolted then. Show me what to do. You’re less likely to get fried pulling the power on this.”
   Personal issues aside, her work ethic was one of her best qualities. Fast, and kept at the situation she’d sunk herself in until free.
   They’d direct wired the damned thing, probably straight to a breaker without an inside switch, massively against code. A few snips from insulated cutters and tape solved that. Getting the unit free required more muscle than brains. Lag bolts sandwiched rubber between two lengths of lumber on each side in a square. They were idiots, but at least they fastened down it so it didn’t vibrate itself to death. On the other hand, they’d crammed it in a tight corner. I didn’t have a jack to slide out 200lbs or so of steel. After wiggling it clear, I backed the truck up as close as I could.
   We tipped our acquisition until we got hands under the short beams. Her shoulders set, we dropped to a crouch, and stopped whining about the early morning workout.
   The things I woke up for on Mondays. “Count of three. One, two...”
   Why couldn’t they have left us a baby forklift and keys? Tahlia would have found more uses for it, and I would have had to ruin her fun later. Yeah.
   “OK. Part one done, now onto part two.”
   “What?” Logistics took more effort than available coffee.
   She rested, feeling the exertion too. “Either we carry this across a long intersection, or you’re parking in a turn lane for a couple of minutes while we unload.”
   A short ride later, and I figured it out. A small island in the intersection with a pole supported crosswalk signals. She parked in a nearby lot, and thankfully nothing in sight said twenty-four hours in neon or bright plastic to witness this. My truck sat in the middle of the mess, and she ran back from her car with a second package. I unzipped the first where it sat on the asphalt. She had drawn this, and I hadn’t paid attention to the dimensions she’d scrawled.
   It flopped out, fucking huge.
   She dropped the second bag and held out her hand. “Give me your keys. I’ll get you off the road after we unload this. You can bolt it down quickly?”
   I studied the pole, and some generous civil engineer had already supplied electrical outlets in a tamper-proof box, with the cover flush to the pole. No one would know it was there unless the blinders of how the world worked had been removed long ago.
   The cover clattered off, and I thanked the god of standardization and the goddess of specialty driver bits. All I had to do was connect some power and sink at least two bolts. Two large anti-tamper bolts, into concrete.
   Once I positioned myself the pilots took a few seconds each, this job hardly a permanent or to code install. I switched attachments and sunk the bolts as she ran back.
   Between four and six in the morning is supposed to be the cool portion of the day. Natives like me should breathe easier in the urban swamp. “Just have to plug it in now, so another minute or so while I splice a plug on.”
   “Couldn’t the first cop that comes by unplug this? I thought you would wire it directly.”
   “Nope. But, yeah. Give me a second.”
   I’m not an electrician but the basics of three wire single phase aren’t hard. Someone wanted to cut out on a Friday and grab a beer, so why not branch off the closest transformer and call it a day? More likely, some asshole that wasn’t an engineer or electrician dictated how the city dealt with infrastructure.
   My knife worked quick and I tightened screws down, plugged it in, praying while flipping the power with a rag covered hand. The blower chugged on. I quickly turned it off.
   Tahlia got to work attaching the end of her masterpiece to the blower’s output while I rigged a second plug for insurance. A couple minutes later she finished and I ran down what would happen and why. Nobody was headed to the ER, just getting enough of a zap that it’d be fun to watch the next fool taking his chance.
   I pushed the commuter’s spittakes out of my head.
   She grimaced about the result, but the sheer ridiculousness of it all should keep the inevitable at bay for a few hours. I agreed with the condition that this would sprinkle some fun on a boring Monday morning drive, whether or not it entered local legend. With tools back in bags, we stood up, and turned on the blower more carefully this time. Crossing the street, the blower behind inflated a twenty foot tall stiffly wobbling penis with a sex doll, complete with sheriff’s star and hat, riding the tip. Up two sides of the pale shaft, in black tape letters, was the morning’s message.
PUBLIC OPINION
   
Later that day, my phone buzzed twice and quickly.
   I freed myself of the mess I had hands in, and saw the text icon at the top. The pill from this morning still buzzed and prodded thoughts to racing. I tapped and prayed for anything but a summons that had me running all over the city tonight and into dawn. One of these days I’d crash afterward and call in exhausted and too tired to work.
   Something big just happened. See you at my place after you get off
   The only thing I wanted less than getting offed was to have a potentially violent and unstable bitch attacking me. Third on that list was getting a violent and unstable bitch to see sense before she got busted. If she flipped out tonight, I could pull a trifecta and not have to go into work tomorrow.
   She still had the white tank on from this morning, but she’d traded the jeans for a pair of striped running shorts.
   “You have to watch this. In full.” A cellphone video started playing on one of the computer monitors, shaky at first until it centered on a man past middle age. She stood behind me, arms crossed, as I watched and the video finally focused.
   The sheriff.
   “I’ve been nothing but clear about department procedure. We have an ongoing investigation. Whether or not we’ve identified a suspect is not something we are saying at this time.”
   “Sir, there have been reports that the department has received information from multiple sources. Despite this there doesn’t...” The reporter’s voice was cut off.
   “We are not standing still. There are detectives investigating as I speak, and while I would release all documentation and evidence on the spot if I could, let me repeat this. What we have a sensitive situation and we will not jeopardize this needlessly.” He took a small sip of water. “We are going to solve this, and I have faith that this department will be able to give everyone closure so they can go on.”
   “Sheriff, what about the protesters the other day? They’ve repeated their call that you bring in the FBI to take over. Is that in the works?”
   “No comment.”
   “Is this a murder investigation at this point, and has it been connected to any other cases?”
   “No comment.”
   “Have you met yet with the city and county commissioners as some have called for, or is that in the works?”
   “No comment.”
   “What about the umm, displays, last week and this morning?”
   Abernathy paused, then took another sip of water. “I will comment on that. Someone thinks they’re playing a game, that they can rattle this department. They are wrong. This is not a game, and we will not be intimidated.” He stepped away, and the news conference concluded. The video cut.
   I backed away, throwing my hands up at small results. “What the hell did this prove? We know what we know, he says he’s doing something, the pressure hasn’t made him cave.”
   “In time he’ll have to bend. You were right about this. If he stays under pressure, he can’t weasel out. We keep the pressure up, and add more to make him hurt and squirm.”
   “Like Nicky?” Her face and eyes remained poker blank. “Last Thursday, the guy you took in the back? If it came down to that, is that what you’re going to do to anyone you think is in your way?”
   “Yes.” She answered without pause, and no color in her words. “You don’t have the ground to judge me. And I don’t have the ground to lend you. You need to understand that. Sheriff Abernathy understands, we can’t give up.”
   “That’s a complete pile of hypocritical bullshit. You’re judging everyone else, and acting like a bad movie. You’re playing the tragic vigilante, and slipping into villain.”
   She was icy. “You have no idea what I’m feeling, what I’ve been through, what I’m thinking. You’re walking in with dirty hands too and not seeing the truth. People have gotten hurt, and more will. So when I get out of bed, there’s hard choices to make. I don’t have good and happy options left, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.”
   The words came, faster and louder as I squared off toe to toe with her. I had a few inches on her and forty to fifty pounds, but an angry woman wasn’t to be taken lightly.
   “That’s actually a great choice. Be the judge, jury and executioner. Play god. That is some fucked up psycho shit right there. Keep going like this and you’ll snap.”
   “Are you fucking kidding me?” Her voice frosted, but it dropped softer now, barely a whisper.
   “No, not an ounce of motherfucking fucking around here. You’re not the only one that’s got enough of this story, and you’d better go look in the mirror and have a longassed heart-to-heart with the bitch you see there.”
   “Never call me that.”
   Like a spring she uncoiled and her fist hit air as I stumbled back two steps. If I got her to stop for a second, or forced her to calm her down...if I could stop her. The small couch was close enough behind, so I dove low and drove her backwards. She smacked into the couch, and pushed up hard to break my grip on her legs. Luck kept me out of range from her feet as she reeled over the back.
   I cut around and tackled her higher. We crashed over together, and this time I received an elbow square in the ribs. She put a few feet between us while I recovered feet and breath.
   “You don’t want anyone to see beneath that mask. Either you accept that’s changing sooner or later, or another person walks out on you. Permanently.”
   My ribs fucking hurt. She hadn’t pulled the strike in cold rage. Her eyes narrowed and I had no time to react, the ice gone. She closed and struck at chest height, tumbling us and the couch over. This time I hit the floor hard and should have had a concussion from it.
   I took a slow breath only to come back to earth with the feeling of a hand at my throat.
   Her hand.
   Nails were points against my windpipe, sharp and slowly constricting.
   She filled what remained of my sight, weighing me down on all fours, lips pulled back, teeth white, and eyes to a pinhole.
   “You will never, ever, threaten me like that again.”
   They pushed in, I stole two shallow breaths.
   “Do you understand me? Never again.”
   Her eyes narrowed, green and I took my last breath.
   She broke.
   Her hand relaxed.
   “Never again. I’ve lost everyone and don’t make me lose yet another person I can’t lose anymore and I want to care about myself and I can’t help but be angry and don’t look at me...”
   She collapsed on top, sobbing, her hand still on my neck but slipping down the side as her head rested close to mine. Her hair was soft, the short fur of her cheek tickled. Tears missed her cheeks to fall on mine.
   There was nothing to do but hold her.
   After several long minutes her tears stopped. After several more minutes her breathing evened out and her body untensed. It was strange. I’d never noticed her as anything but ready, coiled, wound, tense. I stroked blue and black hair.
   “It’s been a long time.”
   “Yes.” She didn’t like the truth.
   Neither did I. “It’s been a few years here too. Might be out of practice.”
   “Of what, nearly dying? I shouldn’t have lost it.” Her ears moved, tickling through my shirt.
   “Guess this means you have one person that can see what’s under the mask.”
   She shifted slightly. “Regrets. Fears. Personal demons. It’s not a pretty sight under there.”
   “Playground rules. Show you mine if you show yours.”
   It was barely there and inaudible, soft but still a laugh. And I laughed too. It should have scared me that I couldn’t recall the last time like this.
   “Tahlia, there’s just one condition. Just one, because anything else would tie you down.”
   “Smart man. Already smarter than my last ex.”
   To hell with the past. To hell with my own doubts. The memory of a young girl, barely an adult, dancing on that stage and full of life had to count for something. I had to stand for something. If I wanted her to put what it took on the line, I couldn’t do less. We would sort out the details later.
   “Well, if you did this to him you either scared him off or killed him. The rest of the world is something separate. But there has to be one person you’re not going to lie to, not going to deceive, and if you’re trying to be honest with yourself then you’ll always have someone that won’t leave you.”
   She didn’t laugh at the jab. “I’ve always been good at making bad choices. I can’t take it back, but I can try to be...” She couldn’t make herself say it yet. A couple more breaths, and she tried again. “...be better.”
   I let the moment sit there, fasting itself tighter in knotwork around us.
   Her breathing approached regular. “Just to warn you, when we get up you’re taking me in that bedroom and fucking me senseless. I may be a bit hotheaded but this isn’t my usual idea of foreplay.”
   My shoulders and upper back tightened, unsure.
   She felt it. “Be confused about me all you want. I’m confused about me. You’re really fucking stupid for doing this, but if I’m going to spit at death I might as well take backup along with me.”
   We got up, sore ribs and all. She put her hands on my head and pulled close before whispering.
   “I might need you.”
   
She led me into the bedroom, as deep as the rest of the apartment. A set of doors at the far end led to a small balcony with chairs and a table. The entrance to a closet hugged one wall past the bed, with a big honking homegym, a bigger dresser, and some dumbbells against the opposite wall. The rack of bondage toys confirmed that the woman didn’t play. She moved to close the door, and after it shut I grabbed her.
   I teased a finger along the neck of the old tank, nothing on under it. My finger hooked, ripping it slowly and easily like wet paper. She didn’t react until I grabbed the waistband of the running shorts, too thin and flimsy as well.
   They ripped off as easily, shredded in my fist. Her ears pinned back and her eyes narrowed.
   She’d skipped underwear so in seconds she’d been stripped nude except for two small bars. This was not how she allowed men to treat her. I gambled the trifecta. A full-armed slap staggered her sideways one step. She stood back up, looking at me, in a situation she rarely encountered. Her tail froze in position, not signaling anything.
   She wiped at her jaw. No blood there.
   “I deserved that.” The saliva wetness caught the light.
   “So, we’re even for trying to claw my throat out?”
   Three slow breaths, rise and fall of her bare chest. Her own nudity didn’t intimidate her, not with the line of work she was in. She stepped closer, her nose and muzzle less than a hands-breadth from my face. It wasn’t easy and never was going to be, but either she turned submissive and weak, or she made her peace and considered me equal. I stood my ground, the more-than-a-little-scary lady act not getting an encore.
   Green eyes stared, ears flicked forward and her head tilted slightly, watching my resolve. “You’re forgetting two things. I am in control of me, not you, not any man. Men do not hit me. The last that tried found an early grave. I’m letting this one go because I lost control.” Her mouth loomed so close that her breath tickled my face and neck. “The second thing: we’re different. I can smell you right now, your sweat from today, what you ate, the blood I drew that you taste in your mouth.” The last cut true, a hint of iron and copper taste on the inside of one cheek. “And I can taste you. Taste that’s on the air. What I smell I can taste. It’s like having eyes in the back of your head, never closed and always...” She didn’t finish, instead breathing deeply. “So remember that I will always know more than you think you are showing. I will probably know what you’re thinking about, as you think it, and it will only get easier for me to read you.”
   Another deep breath from her. I remained tall and firm. She couldn’t match my height no matter how she stretched, nor could I tower over her by much. Her right hand traced up my chest, directly between us, catching the fabric here and there with the nail. She reached the neckline and trailed down the left arm to the elbow, then back up and across the neckline again. She played a combination of her usual game and kept to the letter of the promise she’d made.
   The nail traveled up my shoulder to the hollow of neck and ear. She turned her hand so I could feel the sharpest part of the nail, then drew it slowly down, across and back up to behind the other ear. Her hand turned again, so the pad touched, gliding over flesh to fresh marks soon to be future bruises.
   Slow, controlled, measured. She reveled in the moment and savored every sensation of it. I didn’t need her sharper senses to read her in return. It aroused her. The thrill of pushing someone to new limits, the chance for her violent tendencies to play, yet I hadn’t moved a muscle in all of this. It dared her, and she’d try to push until I knelt.
   If I let her keep pushing.
   The time for being her emotional chew-toy was over.
   It was time for her to watch the rules change. I didn’t have to enjoy being like her but she needed a dose of this. I reached up with both hands, took her wrists in the left and her throat in the right, the jugular pulsing beneath fingers and each beat a ripple in time spreading outward. She pulled down and towards herself to break the grip on the hand, but her years of pole dancing and weights weren’t enough to budge me. Muscles tightened, tensed, and she set herself better to push and pull at the same time. My arm barely moved and she couldn’t brace her throat against my hand more than it already had.
   I didn’t have to wait for her next move. Her intent transmitted the moment she thought of it.
   “Stop.” She did. “Put your weight back on that foot. Better.”
   It was a stupid move, and one that could get me hurt if she wanted to chance it. I’d bet on two things, the first being that she’d taken more self-defense classes than my zero. The other was that she’d let this continue playing out and wanted to see how far I’d take it. I went where she had earlier.
   “You underestimate what’s possible. You can be outthought, and every advantage you have can be used against you.” Her pulse thudded even, not letting me read her there. “You can hear better, so that means you can be teased with that. Soft, soft whispers in a crowd that no one else could hear. Imagine that.”
   The soft beat under my fingers was the only part of her not giving me the silent treatment. I had to unlock the puzzle to go further in this game of hers.
   “That is what you want, Tahlia, someone to use your imagination, to use your senses, to play them like music along the whole range. That’s what you’ve been missing, right?”
   Green eyes lit up. “Such a smart boy when you chose to be. You forgot one other thing. Vision. I see differently than you do. But right enough for the teacher to give you the points.”
   I released her, and her smile matched her eyes. Mischievous. She looked a touch relaxed, but there wasn’t a plan to this, and she waited for fast thinking. I’d spent enough time in checkout lines, eyes not really reading the glossy trash next to the sugary trash. But there was an answer, so I asked it.
   “You’ve spanked a number of men, a few women, outside of the club, maybe in it? Isn’t part of the appeal the mix of feelings?”
   “It’s a good lesson in point. Some people love it, even if they aren’t submissive. I’ve felt it’s related to any strenuous activity. Stimulate the body and the brain responds.” She tapped her lip in thought and went on. “It’s also a good choice for a beginner, if they keep to the basics. Low to zero equipment cost, quick setup, and a wide potential pool of people to play with. If that’s what you want, tell me what to do.”
   I got spanked enough as a child so this should have been easier. She chuckled, pulling my head down closer to give me a kiss on the nose.
   “Guess I’m going to have to play teacher a bit tonight.” The word lit up my cortex, and I looked at the rack of toys hanging from the wall. A paddle. She gently turned my head back. “Not a chance. You don’t have the experience, and you’re too strong to use that without knowing how to control your strikes. Try again.”
   I turned back to the toys, walked over, and let fingers caress over them, soft leather, knotted leather, wide leather belts...
   What about the belt around my waist? Off it came, and she put out a hand for it. It rolled in her hand, then dangled as she felt the weight, doubled it and smacked her thigh with a crack.
   She handed it back. “Not a bad improvised tool. Familiar tends to be a good thing when you improvise, by the way.”
   Hell, there had to be at least one more thing from the trashy men’s magazines that always get left in the portas at a job site.
   “Bend over.” Her ears turned full forward and waited on me to complete the order. “Get on the bed and bend over, on your hands and knees. And get on with the safety lesson.”
   She crawled onto the bed, spread her legs and raised her tail, then leaned down on elbows. A lecturing tone entered her voice, rhythmic, and practiced over and over.
   “Basic anatomy now. Never ever strike at or above the human coccyx or the bottom of the root of the tail. Spinal injuries are not sexy. Be careful at the crease of the cheeks, don’t swat too low or inside the thighs.” Her tail and ass wiggled back and forth to keep my attention as she went on. “Other areas: don’t hit the torso or back except at the shoulder or chest, ie plenty of muscle and bone to absorb gentle blows.” She leaned downward, back arcing more, and kept the tantalizing show going. “Hands and feet are best done another way, for safety, and striking a major joint is how police cripple with careless baton strikes.”
   I pulled the mental list of costumes out and checked off teacher or librarian. Semester’s start must be a good couple weeks for her.
   A long sigh marked her opinion on my domestic dispute skills. “And for fucks sake I’m going to have to give you lessons later on how to slap without causing harm. If I don’t we’re both going to need to see a dentist eventually.”
   Back and forth and back and forth and a little wiggle. She had to be laughing about me thinking I was in control, especially with how she leashed my eyes and had me speechless.
   “Try it. Strike the mattress a couple times, as if you’re going to tap it with the belt. Let the tool do the work. Then try me if you can hit where you aimed. Gently until I say so.”
   The first try went left, the second almost on target. The third time, the belt struck the bed right where I’d aimed. I drew a deep breath, and let my arm swing the belt.
   It struck her left asscheek softly. Again a deep breath, letting my body make the swing with less effort and smoother. The belt struck her right asscheek, barely any difference from the first strike. Again and again and again, with less delay and less thought, not quite a hammer swing but more like a kiss. A sickening note swirled in my stomach. This wasn’t about physical violence, or mental manipulation. It was as much a release as a dance, without a chance to hide from yourself or your partner. I could see why she liked to do this, and I started to agree.
   After a dozen or so strikes to each side, she’d not said another word. I put a touch of hip and leg on the next strike, driving through them. The belt hit with a wicked crack, and she collapsed forward with a bark-like gasp. I allowed her only the time she used to push herself back into position.
   The crack was sharper this time, and the belt slapped square on the opposite cheek. She got up and braced for the next strike, allowing me to learn uncorrected unless I did something hazardous. I made the next strikes softer, but not as gentle as the first ones.
   She attempted to keep her breathing steady, her experience as the dominant not up to the task at hand. Either she was using this as a learning opportunity on how to be more effective, or to see how I reacted. She’d written the lesson, but I could outpace it and had other ideas. I varied the strikes, not expert but without complaint from her. Harder, then softer, spacing them out.
   The next strike was the hardest, and she lost control, falling forward flat on her belly. She tried to speak around her gasps, so I cut her short.
   “This is not a time for talking. You could be gagged. You probably have a few of those that would fit.” I walked around the bed to look in her eyes. “You do, don’t you.”
   Words needed more breath than available. I hadn’t struck with all my strength and I believed most was her not expecting it. Going with that thought I picked something I guessed to be a gag from the wall, and dropped it near her face. There were other things, and a good guess not all of them got left in the open.
   I checked the drawers in turn and found one that had a range of small implements, then another. Some of the stuff I didn’t have names for, but the drawer with dildos laid out on soft fabric didn’t need explaining. A couple were massive, looking both scary and like obscene alien art. None of them looked like a human cock, almost all of them narrowed to a tapered head and with a slightly bulb-like shape. That was normal from her guys.
   I kept hunting, and found her vibrator collection in the next drawer. It felt nice to know what some of this was. A few were egg-like, shiny, and I hatched a nasty idea. I tested them one by one while Tahlia wasn’t succeeding at breathing without gasping every couple breaths. One of the vibrating egg pairs had a controller with eight settings. The first rumbled gently in my hand but it almost doubled in intensity with each setting.
   “That...that...is too strong...for...on...after the first...first few...settings.”
   I turned around and took a few more swats at her ass single handed and strong, and she went back to unable to speak. Her labia were swollen from indirect stimulation, glistening wet, puffy and full. The shape wasn’t a human’s, but infectious nonetheless. Was there a chance she didn’t have a limit I would break or exceed?
   As she shivered in the role reversal, I frightened myself to think that this existed somewhere in the back of her head with everyone she dealt with, to some small degree.
   It was new for me.
   Not even novel.
   Arousing.
   Her cunt dripped, wet enough that the eggs slipped in after being rubbed in the juices leaking from her. Now or never.
   I dropped the controller to the bed, unzipped pants, and kicked off boots and socks. “Get up and kneel.”
   I held back on the one word she hated, that I’d never say again to her, but the meaning hid in my tone. She stirred and slid off the bed, controller thunking against her leg and then the floor, tongue out and panting. Her coat had rubbed every which way and her hair was a mess. I bent down, picked up the small wired remote, and whispered right in her ear.
   “That’s not kneeling. Kneel and put your hands behind your back. Keep them there.” She obeyed me. I ran a finger over the dial on the remote. “Years ago, well, every bad decision seems a few years back. This one was a woman, complete trouble in hindsight and no reason to stay except for how she sucked cock.” It had been a shitty and self-centered reason years ago, and still was. This wasn’t then. “Let’s see if this makes you as wild as she was. The show was short, but she used to perform magic with just her lips and tongue.”
   I clicked the remote on the lowest setting. “Go ahead.” I moved so the head almost touched her open mouth and outstretched tongue.
   Her eyes ran up and down the length, sizing and experiencing it. She leaned forward and licked along the erect shaft, leaving a trailing string of saliva. Along the side, then the other, and the warmth of a deep breath before she closed her lips over.
   “You can do better than that. Anyone that’s seen you dance would know that’s not the best you can do.” Green, flawless green, eyes looked up as she licked and sucked, the sensations sharper from adrenaline.
   I popped free of her mouth. “Umm, like that. Keep looking at me, or the power turns up like this.” I turned the dial on the remote up to three.
   Her body shook like an electric current went through it, her hands pressed into the floor at her sides, trying to stay upright.
   “Get back in position.” She did, and started again on my rigid cock, this time less distant and more enthusiastic.
   Her ministrations eased off, so I pulled free again and zapped her with the higher setting.
   “No slacking off either. You’re better than all those other girls and you know it. You just need a little encouragement to perform better.”
   Each time she paused, or broke eye contact, or moved her hands any from behind her back, I provided encouragement. She held out and I lost count, but her hands pushed against my thighs in a last ditch bid to stay upright. They trembled like her, a quivering mess.
   The odor of warmed plastic wafted from the overheated remote as I clicked the dial to off. She was too proud to call her surrender, and it ended with her at my feet, struggling to keep her head up. Emotion and ecstasy bind people. I steeled myself for the line I was about to cross.
   I helped her up, letting her lay back on the bed. The eggs plopped out with a tug, and I ran a finger, then two up and down the slit. Her head flopped side to side, her tail limp. The erotic lights and darks, fur and flesh, of her body contrasted and ready for me to take them. The next step was to pull her legs apart and taste her.
   She had a healthy smell there, slightly salty and musky, warm, and like exotic fruit. Exploring first with damp fingers, then more aggressively with my tongue, blood swollen flesh parted as I massaged the softer pink insides. It overloaded her again, a lower setting but still melting her brain. Intoxicated, amplified, she used the whole range of sounds from pants to huffs and whines.
   Her hands tried grabbing at my head, unable to control her fingers or what ran through them. Her legs lay splayed and I positioned myself over her, balancing on one hand while I guided myself with the other. I made it a gentle tease to start, the head blunter and larger than she was used to.
   Her body tightened around me, gripping inside but not yet coordinated to help pull me deeper. Body twisting underneath, whines became groans, gasps became moans as I pushed deeper and deeper inside. I went slow and gentle at the bottom of the stroke, careful about the cervix or whatever it was for her.
   The feel might have been the familiar warmth and wetness, but another model built to other specs, tighter then looser and then tighter again. The deeper I went the more it felt like squeezing into a cave.
   That changed the groans into fresh, long exhales that lowered in pitch as I pulled out and sharp inhales that rose as my thrusts filled her up. I wanted to last, so I paced myself to even, long and slow strokes.
   Each stroke made her louder. I quickened the pace to match her hands, grabbing at me, pushing inside her and pushing closer to the brink.
   Louder.
   She squeezed. I couldn’t restrain myself forever.
   There was nothing sapient-like in her sounds now, unrestrained and unchained.
   Soon.
   Nothing. But. Two.
   Joined.
   My last thrust pushed deep into the sensitive space and her noises reached an ear-splitting climax, with us succumbing to the natural order of things.
   
Off in the distance towards the main road and occasionally closer the sounds of the night intruded—ambulance, bus, semi, cop, door slamming, telephone conversation, AC unit. I laid back on a mattress that cost far more than mine, comfortable with her lying against me, the ceiling fan spinning in lazy circles, and light cutting through the blinds to paint lines over us. Some of her hair had draped over my chest, and she’d guided my hands to her scalp near her ears. They moved as the muscles under fingertips loosened from the massage, and she stretched her head to where my hand needed to go next.
   She felt the need to explain herself. It didn’t clear up much. I’d been there to help, plenty of distance between us. Now she had two sets of emotions to juggle. I did as well. If she paid as much attention to them as I did mine, we’d either skip the arguments or have regular title card fights.
   “Do you feel special?” She wasn’t as complicated as some women, but I didn’t know what the best response was. “I mean it. I don’t bring work home. It’s been seven years since I’ve fucked someone I met first at the club. And I don’t, repeat don’t, fuck humans or play in the litterbox.” Her voice had returned to cool and controlled, different than her revel in the adrenaline afterglow.
   “That sounds a bit narrow. It leaves out a lot of stuff.”
   “I’ve done plenty of private parties, made a decent sideline from domme sessions, but I almost always follow the club rules even if I’m not there. Keeps things clean.”
   “But it cuts down your social life.”
   Nicky either got lucky, or missed his dream girl. Better to not go there.
   “Phht. I’m never shocked when a guy hits on me in the middle of grocery shopping or laundry. It’s too much fun when they realize what they’re trying to bite.”
   My fingers tickled a sensitive spot and she stopped short of a full body shiver. “You let people bite on the first date? You seemed like the scare ’em on the first, make ’em beg on the second, and chain ’em up third so they know who’s boss.”
   “I don’t do that to everyone. And careful. Scalp and neck, not the ears.” I let her listen to silence and continued the massage. “What? I’m not that scary. Sometimes I make them beg, then chain them, and save scaring them for once I really know how to make them scream.”
   She mimed the stages and we broke out laughing.
   “No, I’ve tried to have a more normal relationship a few times. I’ve learned that putting away the gear only makes the fascination worse when they find out. And one of two things happen. When I don’t tell someone immediately about being the way I am, once they find out they try to dom me and I have to smack them back to reality. If I don’t tell them I dance, that just leads to the argument about finding a less degrading job. Nope, I’ll stick with the garden variety male fascination with freelance dominatrix exotic dancers. Pays the rent, gives me some laughs, good a few times a year for an orgasm.”
   Long ago, when I was still innocent, I hadn’t learned yet how hard it is for a person to change what they are.
   “One of these days you’ll string three sentences together without sarcasm, irony or violent innuendo.”
   “I’m fucking serious. Lou and Jimmy the Nail were so different, but boys are all the same once they start sniffing at tail.” She sighed. I shifted so that I could devote a hand to each side, thumbs digging in at the nape of her neck. “Lou, really Louis, was about a year younger than me, and I was still trying to squeeze a few classes in each semester. We met on campus, he went lovesick over me, and one of his friends somehow helped him work up the nerve to ask me out. I said yes, and things were slightly normal.”
   “And then?”
   “And then he found out about my bad habits, and the club. I was a dark fantasy come to life, he was a natural sub, but he couldn’t handle my job. Stalked me at the club. Got weird. End of story.”
   “The other?”
   “Jimmy was a good example of why you need to never stop looking out for yourself. Career crook, not small-time but more than big enough to flash it around and have a lawyer on speed dial, bought into one of the downtown bars a couple years back.” She skipped straight to the end. “He got himself killed. Never found the whole body, just enough to ID and death certificate his sorry ass.”
   The story of what she knew wasn’t long, reaching too far and the same old story. She’d dropped most of the details for my sake. It likely wasn’t something she watched from afar.
   “I couldn’t have cared less by that point. Jimmy disappeared, I got pulled in by the cops even though I hadn’t seen or smelled Jimmy for a month. They were asking me questions and playing good cop, good cop. They gave up, I went home, and the next day I heard some people towards Atlanta who had a beef with him got found too. Cops don’t like clean endings. It means someone was lying.”
   There was a lot people leave out to alter the truth. She’d played dumb before and came out with her coat whole. The same old song repeated, still the first verse and maybe the end would be different this time.
   “You don’t sound too upset about it.” I guessed that meant Abernathy and Tahlia had already bumped heads.
   “Jimmy was never going to die of old age. He played his hand wrong. The feds got involved, interstate stuff and all that.”
   She rolled on top and placed a hand on my chest, letting me hold her close, the barbell piercings in each of her nipples warmed but not as warm as flesh or fur. She remembered, and Abernathy should have remembered her. Not that many like her in this city.
   “And those aren’t close to the dumbest choices I’ve made.” I could only wonder where she ranked me. “How about you share a bad decision or two?”
   I collected my thoughts, and wondered where to start. It wasn’t that exciting, just a lot of blanks and things that never went right. She listened, never asked why I kept it free of names, and didn’t flinch when I left it unsaid that I didn’t feel much more moral than the worst of where I grew up or kept company with as an adult. Afterward she didn’t say anything.
   Only one question left worth asking. Was I at the tail of all those bad decisions, with her starting a new life? She didn’t stir.
   “If we don’t die soon, ask in a few years.”

Chapter Six

I sat in the booth and had to admit that pie had failed its god-given duty. Annette tapped the tines of her fork on the plate’s rim. She’d never get called a great beauty, nor was really she my type. Her hair was close to pixie short, but naturally dark instead of dyed to a virulent display. The fingers of her other hand curled closed one by one, working the small muscles of her forearm and rippling fire through the diamond in its setting.
   “Is there anything else? I’ve trusted you in the past, Jacob.” It’s as important to hear what people say as notice what they haven’t.
   “I know what I saw.”
   “You were the one that chased after me, not the other way around. I know you don’t like David, and you made your point long ago about us being wrong for each other. And Caroline’s problems are only getting worse. I know you’re not dropping your pay straight in the bank anymore, so stop avoiding that she needs to dry out somewhere else. Stop making it an unavoidable tragedy. If it was anyone else...no. I couldn’t be friendly with them anymore; I’d call them out for jealousy and get up. So why now, a few days later?”
   “I had to be sure of a few small details. They were both so drunk the fumes should have flash fired the room.” I went through the timeline and didn’t leave out details. “And don’t bring her addiction up again. Happy? I took your advice, she’s relapsed after a few months of not fucking up that much, and I know I can’t help her alone. If I had the money I’d...fuck. That’s the problem, Annette. David knows what he’s doing, and I’m sitting here puzzling out my life. No wonder why I’m an idiot to him.”
   What played across her face was worse than the confusion before we’d accepted that there shouldn’t be any more interaction between us. The treaty had held for the past six weeks, and even better Caroline had called David cheating pondscum only three times. I wasn’t going to get to hear more of David’s opinions of me, and I didn’t want to hear Annette whine about it anymore. But I had to since I’d opened that treasure chest.
   “I know you think he hates you—”
   Fork tines skewered her excuse. “Calling someone an uneducated, inbred hick isn’t slang for ‘How are things going?’ in any language.”
   “I’ll admit he can be a bit prejudiced against anyone that doesn’t have a college degree—”
   “Assuming that I need help counting as high as four puts a big red mark through that bit.”
   Clicking silverware cut again as she massaged a sore temple. “Jacob, you’re some things he isn’t, so of course he’s going to be intimidated—”
   “Walking in drunk with a gorilla mask and a peeled cucumber between your legs is juvenile, not intimidating.”
   “So he’s not as stuck up as some people with a graduate degree—”
   “Just stop defending him. You care about him, and I’m not going to make myself available so he can feel better. End of story.”
   That done, she stopped the tapping and cut off another bite of freshmade pie. “Fine. Fine. I’m going to have to deal with this. While we’re here, you up for providing some advice?”
   “What kind?”
   “What do you think I should do? When I ask the girls at work, I know that I’ll get at least one semi-serious vote to return the favor.”
   “Bad idea, and you know it.”
   “I didn’t say I’ll agree with that. This is just a thought experiment. But if I did, and asked you, would you do it? It could be the perfect way to sever everything between us, and get something you’d given up hope on.” Her eyes weren’t on me. “The look on Caroline’s face would be perfect.”
   “I’m trying to eat pie here, not throw up over you thinking about playing their game.”
   “Because here’s what I’m thinking about. It’s a good chance they’re lying. They remember something, so the only defense is play dumb and hope the storm blows over.” That confirmed for me she was well aware of David’s skirtchasing habits.
   “Don’t let him drag you down to his level.”
   “If I’m better at it than him, I’m not at his level. And why not? If he’s going to cheat on me, why can’t I have a guy on the side? Fair’s fair, right? It could even be without a condom as long as you’re able to test clean. That would be a great joke on him. If he wants to insult people I like and then cheat on me, while I’m at a conference halfway across the country no less, then I shouldn’t feel that bad sending him a text and a pic with your cum all over my face or dripping out of me.”
   “Yes, I’m clean, but no matter how much I’d enjoy it we’re not going there.”
   “There a few other things I could do. If you’re not up to the job then I could call up Seth. You remember him?”
   I hadn’t see him since last Christmas. “About my size, but a little less muscle?”
   “That’s him. We had the whole benefits thing going on about two or three years ago when I first moved here.”
   “We’re talking about the same Seth? Wolf dude, gray and brown?”
   “Siruean, not wolf. Please don’t do things that prove David right.”
   “I never took you for a knotfreak.” Annette didn’t seem the type, but she had the right to choose.
   “That’s a tad racist, Jacob. Just because two people get along doesn’t mean it’s a fetish.”
   “Would you admit it if you had a pawprint tattoo that you got covered up or removed? Thought so. David’s worse than I ever will be.”
   I had much less civil thoughts. A picture of Annette taking some wolf’s cock or showing a load of cum off proudly while holding onto the weapon probably would have ended with the police involved where I grew up. I kept telling myself I didn’t care. Seth was a decent guy, but it irked me just the same. We’d done the usual male bonding, bullshitting and beer sessions, so knowing that a few of the wilder stories could have been him and Annette...
   How many times had I joined the crude jokes when the guys brought up old conquests or ones yet to be? Cracking tail came naturally to me, so playing along with situations where everyone felt free to run their mouth...no blood spilled, no harm. If the combination was out there, some freak would try it for the experience. What about the times someone had given me the eye that said to go ahead and ask? Or the ones where anger got the better of me, playing to old dreams where we weren’t crammed together by fate? How many more times did I need to rationalize private thoughts away? Go ahead and stick me in front of a poster of the alphabet. I could fill out twenty-six slurs for near anyone, myself included
   “Does that disturb you?”
   “He was a better fit for you than David is.”
   “Well, if you don’t want to fuck me, I know this girl that would be up for a night with you. This is about people that need to receive some hard lessons. The sight of you with another girl and a little bit of gray fur on your shirt should remind her that there’s other women out there for you. If things go well between you, and David screws up again, who knows what could happen one night?”
   That did it. I could accept her past. I could accept her choosing to cheat on David in turn, even if it was a terrible idea. I could accept that she wanted me to mirror her and go chase tail. This wasn’t the Annette I knew, nor a thought experiment. She’d hurt herself in the process.
   I got up and tossed a twenty on the table. “I was wrong. You’re already there, and being dishonest with yourself about the why. It doesn’t matter what I believe is right, but doing this for revenge wraps up all the wrong reasons in a dollar store bow. I’ve got one checkbox for fucking crazy, and Caroline is it. I’m not trying to go for the double or nothing bonus round.” That she hadn’t asked what I’d said to Caroline made picking nothing a sane choice.
   “That’s a no?”
   “Have a nice life, Annette. Don’t expect me to write.

Chapter Seven

By the time I got up to leave, it was too late for a full night’s sleep. The shower ran and smelled of the steam seeping out from behind the closed bathroom door. Tahlia would need a good chunk of the remaining night to get the smell of sex out of the apartment. The couch had been righted again, the table back in place, the rugs pushed into place and smooth on the floor.
   While finding shirt and boots, water sluicing off her pattered and thunked as she moved around in the shower. She sang softly as she washed, something that I wouldn’t have thought she’d be the type to do. Her medium contralto drifted along the bottom of her range, life lending weight to the long notes and hope pushing the shorter notes higher.
   I floated in the emotional upper register even after cutting the truck’s engine back at my place. Her scent remained in my nose, the only memory of anything between locking the door and the pillow rising up to meet my head. Almost as soon it fell back to the bed with morning’s first touch on the dark sky. Coffee burbled out of the machine black as death, and for once its magic worked the first time.
   All of us had respirators on today, else everyone’s noses were getting raped by a triple dose of the usual that clung to us long after. The day ground on, and after, the little voice in the back of my head woke up at some point in the middle of a supermarket aisle. High warehouse ceiling, lights too bright even in the daytime, AC up so high it turned sweat to plastic, and old music tilted off the major key by the carnival vivid colors of the cereal boxes.
   Shake, blink, I tried to ground myself. Sooner or later the hunt would start. If I hid in the tall grass, they’d run me down with speed. If I took to the forests they’d cut me off with cunning. I unfocused my eyes and watched to the sides, looking for a catalog of characters. Hard golden eyes, a tired slouch that was part disguise, a deputy’s green, or maybe an unknown with a near invisible camera lens recording me.
   All I had to do was hang on and not panic. Panic would call to them, to slip free and start the chase. Stay anonymous, where I was, and be just another face in the crowd.
   The people that...I stopped at the thought of her name.
   Deedee, Amanda.
   The people that did this to her, whatever the reason, couldn’t hide forever.
   I shook my head clear again. It may have been affecting me, but the wheel rolled and rolled going around on the downbeat and coming around on the upbeat and...
   I headed to checkout, glad that whatever else in life I wasn’t standing in one place with a plastic smile melted to flesh. The attached liquor store in front had just started a late summer sale, so I chose a small bottle and planned to wash the paranoia clean tonight. The door closed and locked on another day once I’d made it safely back in the little apartment. Boots off, a clean shirt on, the tick of a cheap old spring-driven clock.
   Everything felt sharper, bedsheets that needed washing, the unevenly worn carpet beneath socks, layered odors soaked in after several leases and that had evolved an immunity to soap.
   I patted down until I found my phone, and messaged her.
   When next?
   A glass, some ice, and I poured a couple fingers worth while searching through the TV channels. A double feature was about to start, and I leaned back on the couch, glass sitting on the side table between sips. Pictures flashed, and somehow the plot resolved, everything coming out OK in the end. I ripped free from the stream of images, and found the bottle more than half empty and next to the glass.
   Once again, I discovered sleep by chance.
   
“The first thing you have to know is that no matter what any history book says, we’re still fighting against the ghosts of sins past. Those days are gone forever, but the wounds weep yet.”
   Her eyes were sad as she pointed at an old story, then a new one, on two different monitors. The only thing that had changed were the names of the people that couldn’t look forward to another paycheck or the next time with friends. The road ended, the chord and arrangement the same as before, looped over and over and again.
   “It’s not fair. No one should have to live like this. The angels should come down and strike sword, smite the sinners and let us shine safe and secured.”
   A broken dream stuttered, and the fear of the hunted flooded clockwork biology. Wet green leaves slapped as I ran and cut through the forest. The rifle’s strap kept it secure on my back. There hadn’t been a good place to make another stand, not since they found the truck last night. A damp fungal odor clung to each drop of water. The sounds were finally growing distant. Her footfalls up ahead got absorbed by the damp earth at times, her form never fully visible. Late morning light broke through low clouds and threw shadows across the decaying leaves. A gun barked once some ways away, maybe a mile or more back. Nothing but a warning shot, or an accidental discharge. Was it too much to hope they took one of their own out in chaos? How many were left? Three? Four?
   She leaned against a tree for a few seconds, waiting for me to catch up.
   “Switch up ahead, see? Let’s turn this into a shooting gallery.”
   I nodded and took off with a renewed speed after her. Her body was better suited to running like this than mine. If they were closer than they’d let on, as soon as we emerged from the cover of the trees there would be a bullet in my back.
   With each step I concentrated on not falling, not hurting myself. Breath and pulse thundered inside my ears, adrenaline sharp. The ridge climbed right up ahead, maybe only twenty or thirty feet high but enough for her plan. Tahlia passed the last trees and I saw her sprint, gun riding high across her back and tail streaming behind. A crack of thunder, real thunder, sounded and echoed off to the left. It would be luck if our hunters had to turn back and we kept going through the downpour towards safety. She’d found a place and urged me on, waving as I entered the clearing. The footing grew even worse as I crossed several dozen yards and climbed to join her. Guns unslung and ammo readied, prone, I watched the right as she covered the left. Silent, I worked myself as low as possible in dirt and leaves and waited for them to run into the ambush.
   The silence became a far off no-sound, then a distant rustling, then a closing presence before it died as a crashing wave. They stayed back inside the trees, far enough that I couldn’t see them without a scope. Not moving, waiting. I rolled over, scanning for any tattling sound behind or above. Too many trees to each side but it looked like no easy way up but the one we’d claimed. But there had been no way the both of us would get halfway up before the shooting started. Get them close enough to the treeline and then the game’s over.
   He seemed in a taunting mood. “We’ve got you cornered. Can’t run forever, and can’t escape us now. Come out and we’ll make it swift. One bullet each, to the head, point blank.”
   There was nothing to the sides until the trees, nothing above until the ridge another thirty feet up, and nothing behind but damp rock and dirt. Tahlia reached over to tap me, I rolled to face forward while she aimed her voice up to make our exact location less so.
   “Eat shit, Abernathy. Nothing’s going to save you if you make it back to town. How many dead so far? You think all those questions chasing you are going to stop?” The rock behind repeated her twice, faintly.
   “You know damned well I didn’t kill her. This has been nothing but a game from the start. All I needed was someone to help draw him out, to make me look vulnerable. You did a good job, even if you didn’t exactly play the part I needed.”
   “They’re going to have the FBI on your ass any day now.”
   “Feds aren’t going to care if a drifter and his girl go missing. You’re bait and you know it. I got what I needed, it’s the last act and now’s the time to tie up loose ends. Come down and play your part. No other choices.”
   I tapped her shoulder and whispered for her only. “Bait? Thought he was going to kill us if we came on down?” She nodded and threw her voice in a different direction. They probably knew exactly where we were by now, but didn’t have the position to take a shot.
   “Which is it, Sheriff? A little extrajudicial killing, or are we worms for your pet serial killer? Who is he? One of yours?”
   A shot cracked over us and to the right. I guessed three of them were left. Abernathy, his flunkie, and the wolfie chick. The two other deputies were certainly dead. Who was where?
   “Why should I care? I just manage the game preserve. You pay the fee, keep it clean, what do I care if it’s a two-legged bitch or on four?”
   My memory tickled at the one word I’d never ever used again around Tahlia. Abernathy in the center, flunkie left, wolf chickie trying to flank on the right. She’d probably stripped nude to blend with the shadow better.
   Tahlia didn’t attempt to hide. Her gun aimed, and she fired off four times in quick succession towards the voice in the woods, just out of sight.
   “Didn’t hit me, wolfie. Come out from up there. Playtime’s over.”
   She swore. She swore because he was right. Either we managed to kill all of them and disappeared into a new life, or there would be two more bodies found in the woods, bloated or half skeletonized on some distant day. I answered her fear of the final moment.
   “But with each other, at least we’re not alone in the darkness before the angels of revelation.”
   A look, a nod. Silver white fur and green eyes, soft and hard. “On three. One, two...”
   I spun at something I couldn’t have heard. An unfamiliar man, ghost pale and military hard. Tahlia fired to her side and a male voice screamed. The rest of my crash course training came to bear. Despite gunfire deafness the sights before me aligned upward as his rifle aimed down. Dirt showered my face as Tahlia aimed over and to the side where no one should have been. A silent sting to my chest dropped my aim off his head. Fire, and he collapsed over the ledge. Turn, hard to breathe. Tried to look down, to my side. The sky was gray, the leaves washed out under the storm to come. Where was she? Can’t look. Can’t breathe. Can’t feel. Can’t think.
   
Wednesday morning crept in and snuck a predawn rainstorm with it. Drops beat against the windows, and I felt lucky that I’d escaped with the barest hint of a hangover after seeing the bottle more than half empty. A few socks and other things that had been tossed on the bed clung to my back. I must have planned on sorting laundry or something banal before rolling over on them. The radio droned about things they couldn’t really describe on the air and all the other events. Banners, marches, even the crowd that had half in police uniforms and the other half leashed. While settling my stomach via dry cereal, I checked my phone before hitting the shower.
   Next round, after work, meet you there.
   The rain broke as I pulled into the lot at work, and by the end of the day the humidity still hadn’t been baked off by the sun. My old truck’s AC failed to make much of a dent in that and the heat off the asphalt. Traffic had been backed up all to hell no matter which road I turned on, the radio little comfort as I waited to pass by yet another accident. The light took a union break with me waiting to make a left-handed turn into the high school parking lot near the gym building. The old speakers wove words as warp with the weft of sound in a strange time.
   Having burbled and bantered through the letters A and B, the light changed as he started in on how to make lyrics with a thesaurus, starring the letter D.
   The radio must have been cursed. At least it wasn’t doing something of pure evil, like trying to revive disco.
   The sign in front rotated through its digital messages as I shut the engine off. DEBATE, STATE REP., TONIGHT @ 730PM.
   Cars filled only half the lot, enough for a sizable crowd. Others were walking towards the gym, and down the line Tahlia got out of her car and walked over. Black leather boots had buckles over her forefoot and calves, two over the foot and three up the calf. Black denim jeans, faded in places to gray, and a metal studded belt hugged her fit thighs and hips. A black tshirt with a distressed and faded print, tight across her bust, had a large beige and blue-trimmed old computer and a wolf chick, complete with feathered hair and 70’s garb. The shirt proclaimed beneath, in rounded sans-serif capital letters, VAXEN.
   She hugged me tight as we met, and I returned it, the side of her face rubbing soft and cleanly scented. We released and an open and honest smile on her face passed by with a matching twinkle in her eye. That faded to the familiar mask, the eyes turning harder and the grin menacing, and she gave me the warning.
   “We’re just here to watch tonight, and maybe nudge things in the right direction.” Everyone passing by watched everyone else, wondering and measuring anyone that wasn’t like them.
   I followed her to the entrance. A pair of cops with handheld wands guarded it, on either side of a portable metal detector. Tahlia went through first, the wand beeping at the buckles of her boots, the studs of her belt, the underwire of her bra, and her piercings. The cop’s face remained unfazed when she mimed pinching at her nipples after the wand beeped there. She barked a short laugh and he passed her through. They’d probably seen it all before, them and the other first responders.
   The metal detector and wand didn’t beep for my jeans or belt.
   Folding wooden bleachers were pulled out from the side walls, and two podiums stood slightly angled to each other and raised on a low platform with a third between at the far end of the room. Old banners behind the podiums proclaimed the years, some DISTRICT CHAMPION, some REGIONAL CHAMPION, and the largest STATE CHAMPION in the center. A few smaller banners flanked the sides with the numbers of players no one here would likely remember a decade after graduation, the newest only six years ago. The odors were soaked into the concrete—sweat, old pine, shoe rubber, spilled soda.
   The two men walked out, followed by a slightly younger man. Tailored suits had been traded for slacks and casual shirts. Abernathy’s looked clean-cut in a polo with the PD badge and the other a blue and white checked with the sleeves rolled up. The younger man wore a medium blue suit, and took the center podium while the other two arranged themselves at the taller ones with practiced confidence. The moderator didn’t have to suck up to the common man, just get through the next hour or so without puking at the pageantry and glamour.
   “...And that’s our format for tonight. So let’s have a civil debate, gentlemen.”
   There was a small round of applause, and introductions were made. I scanned the crowd during that. Neither of Abernathy’s shadows were visible, disconcerting by negation. A smattering of blacks, a few hispanics that had wandered up from Miami, and a sprinkling of the others dotted the crowd in clumps. Some of those others, mostly Nicky’s more responsible and very distant cousins, were pointedly glancing at Tahlia sitting right next to me or the two politicians. The remainder, more round-faced, concentrated their enmity on the other non-human group. I guessed at some numbers, and leaned over to ask a question. She ran over me before I got the first word out and answered half my questions in the process.
   “It’s slanted to the human side tonight, big surprise, but this is a lot more turnout than you usually see. Too many minorities ignore elections. Good.” The last approached a snarl.
   I picked words carefully. “I’m counting about fours whites for every black, and about two hispanics for every three blacks. And about as many...”
   Words tripped over the intent and she stared at me, getting the same in return. I could have tried harder to remember them, especially after fucking her, but they’d rarely been called anything but cats and dogs at best where I grew up. It would be a safe bet she had some less than civil words in her head as well.
   I cut her off before we broke the tie. “Do we have to have a talk later, or do you want to call this even and say we’re both going to have to watch our tongues better?”
   “As long as you use yours in the right way, I’ll try to be forgiving and return the favor.” She hadn’t thawed out to flirt, then pivoted back to work with our differences and bad habits set aside out of necessity. “You’re close but not right. Closer to five-sixths human, and about two to one for siruean and kadisi. Last couple censuses have shown the siruean pop growing in the south, and the kadisi trending westward. And most of us sirueans that vote will end up voting for the white guy. There aren’t many non-European of us down here, so I guess it’s European solidarity against the world still. Listen closely for it. They’re going to pander hard to anything that reminds them of their pet dogs, and fuck the rest of the minorities even if they’re human. They can’t afford to screw up with that voting block, not now.”
   “But they are screwing it up.”
   “Mm-hmm.”
   She focused back on the debaters, ears and eyes forward. I had missed the question, and Abernathy started. One hand gripped the podium’s top, the other tapped or pointed. I’d seen the look on his face before. His stress, and the reasons for it, were a giant prize-winning onion ready for dissection.
   “When I was first elected sheriff here, there was more crime, particularly in minority neighborhoods. Now, I’ve taken some knocks for my methods, but the results that the department and I have achieved speak for themselves and this community. People put their trust in you to do a job. At the state level, we’ve had too many men and women sitting in the capital that are there for a different reason: money. They’ve forgotten what comes first. So when I’m in Tallahassee, that’s what I’m going to keep fighting for—for the people and I will get results when I fight. Period.”
   The moderator waited a few seconds for the crowd to quiet. “Representative Vincent?”
   “Thank you, Sheriff, for reminding the citizens here tonight why men like us choose to throw our hats in the ring. But what I’d like them to consider is that the job, that I’ve come before you to ask for your vote again, is one that requires finesse instead of an armored tank mentality. Sometimes you have to put down the guns and talk, and learn. You can’t win battles if you don’t know what you’re fighting for, or who.”
   Vincent smiled with ease of man that owed money. Except he’d scouted the building and had a car out back, so his eyes darted in misdirection.
   The questions were too general for me to pick apart. Tahlia poked holes in lofty words and snared them in their own records.
   According to her, Vincent had voted solidly against anything that would benefit the Siruean population, arguing it should be in county or municipality hands instead of the state. But he had no issue with supporting rural farmers and expensive projects that put extension offices in outlying areas. The universities existed for the sake of the state.
   On the other hand, she repeated what she had several days back. Abernathy had done a good job at what he claimed, but at a steep price. He had alienated almost every siruean or kadisi that wasn’t some rich professional with money to isolate them from the reality of his harsher methods.
   They traded empty words back and forth, circus animals performing while the wallet slid unfelt out of the pocket. The moderator paced the show, and signaled the next spectacle.
   “One more round of questions, gentlemen, and then we’ll take some questions from the voters gathered here tonight.”
   He never got to that last round because a young dark gray siruean male in a baseball cap rose from the second row of bleachers. It wasn’t time for audience questions.
   “You’re both fucking sorry, lying, shitflinging tailchasers! You know exactly what happened to Amanda Ulrich, and you fucked every one of us in this state.” He’d pointed his finger in turn at the two men, then pointed again at Vincent before returning to Abernathy. The cops hadn’t moved at his first shout, but were now walking slowly to him. Why weren’t they running as soon as he’d started? “I knew her, had classes with her, and every fucking one of us would bet on how you’d weasel out of representing us. And you! You and I know where she worked, and you can’t hide that—”
   Two cops grabbed him, and he shouted at the cops manhandling him out of the building instead of finishing his diatribe.
   Tahlia’s eyes followed as he was dragged out. “I am so not responsible for setting that up.” I let silence cast my disagreement with that.
   The two politicians adjusted shirts and stances, watering suddenly dry throats. The moderator pivoted to it. Matters required him to be more up-to-date and know the public better than I did.
   “Well, I was going to leave this for the voters tonight, but let’s talk about some of those hard topics on the record.”
   Both men looked a bit paler than they had at the beginning of the debate, and ran out of water.  Beads of sweat broke on Abernathy’s forehead, the kind that I remembered from childhood. Getting caught after fucking up was bad enough, being grilled by one parent turned into torture. The other parent almost always found a new way to be pissed about the problem. Vincent shifted with the ill and green complexion of the friend that had seen his parents on the phone, listening to the level voice of anger.
   “Representative Vincent, in this district we not only have a state university, but the fourth largest combined Kadisi and Siruean population in the southern US. This city is hardly the only location in this district with said segment of the constituency. Each election, your numbers have dropped with them no matter the income level, and over the past couple of years you’ve lost even more support there, at least according to the latest polls. What next?”
   Poleaxed was a good word for the shock on his face. “I’m going to keep doing what I have in the past. I’m going to support well-written legislation, emphasize that the state and federal government need to stay out of local issues, and I will not be stooping to vanity bills because a few loudmouthed anti-American radicals can’t handle the real world and always have their goddamned tails in a knot!”
   The crowd went silent, the last shouted words echoed off the back wall of the gym. Some might not have liked taking the Lord’s name in vain, but part of the crowd held in a hiss over the last few words. Hell, I figured there were a few that could take issue with his whole statement on people he didn’t like.
   The silence was a weapon in the right hands. The moderator held it and asked his last question.
   “Sheriff Abernathy, we will continue there. You have had a few civil cases filed against you and the department, with the trend accelerating. The missing persons case of Ms. Ulrich has not only started to cast a shadow on the campaign, but media and others online have speculated, unsubstantiated at this point I remind the crowd, and intensified in the past couple of days on matters of your past personal behavior. If any of the allegations being made are not slander and were proven true—”
   “And they, point blank, are not. Whatever is being said, it’s all a fantasy that no one in politics would ever stoop to.” He could only stall and repeat that for so long before the lie fell flat, and this the last time he might escape by it.
   I looked at Tahlia. “You have any idea what the hell he’s trying not to say?”
   “Had to go to the club earlier and got caught there. Haven’t been online this afternoon to check the undercurrents and pulled free just in time to come here.”
   I had forgotten something, and remembering it shocked like having icewater poured over on a windy day. “What about the pictures on the thumb drive? Were there other pictures, more which showed him?”
   “Yeah, but only three people had copies, and the thumb drive was only a few. Not much on that one, just puzzle pieces. I have the whole collection, which is rapidly turning useless without something else to tie it back to her. Amanda had whatever she managed to sneak when butter didn’t melt in her mouth, and...oh shit.”
   “What?”
   “Charlie.”
   “What about?”
   “He was passing me security cam footage. He isn’t supposed to have access to that. If they’ve found out that’s out there, even the possibility that it could be out there...”
   The moderator and crowd seemed to be gearing up for audience questions, but not too many and none from certain kinds of people. Tension bled out of the men to start nipping at the lowest row of bleachers.
   She held back panic. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of here. Go to the bathroom, leave out the back. Drive back to your place. Fuck.”
   A few others had a similar idea to avoid the logjam at the main gym doors. A cop watched the coincidental group file past, bladders freshly emptied and nighttime almost fully down.
   I made certain to drive really careful and hope to be lost in the crowd.
   
After I closed the door I ripped the cap off a beer bottle and downed it in less than a minute.
   Panic wasn’t normal for her. Whatever chain of events whipped through her head had to be magnificently bad. My phone sat silent, and the alcohol had teamed with the acid in my stomach to form gastric napalm. I might as well swing by a Taco Bell later, slather everything in the hottest sauce they had, and find work as a walking flamethrower. I briefly considered what would happen if I turned myself in, but set that aside. I didn’t really know much of use to the real criminal investigation here, and the idea of a few years of gay sex or no sex at all wasn’t my top option. Which meant I had no other option, not as long as events plummeted downhill without brakes.
   The couch met my ass. What the hell did I know and what bits were the best weapons for staying alive? I knew Tahlia, but chances were that was just her stage name like five thousand black girls named Diamond or Sapphire. She remained secretive but smart, keeping me out of the bulk of it in case I was too dumb to live or got picked up by the cops. I knew about Deedee—no, Amanda—and that they were playing at Mission Impossible like a pair of kids or military intelligence.
   There was just one question I should have been asking: what don’t I know yet? That led to who could answer that, but would be unlikely to help. Abernathy would be a good starting interview. Small chance he’d hand out a gift-wrapped case file and pat heads before pinning a kid’s plastic deputy badge on us. His flunkies went straight to the no-go pile as well. I simplified and added the whole damned sheriff’s department on the molehill. I kept kicking around until I wondered who else knew Amanda besides Tahlia.
   The phone buzzed. Tahlia was on her way, and didn’t want me pulling a gun on her if she’d shown up unannounced. At least that gave me a fresh mystery. How did she know where I lived if I’d never told her? A minute after, the phone buzzed again, and she demanded an order of pizza and what kind. It was nice when every place in delivery range already had the address.
   The problem of where bossy and demanding women were on my list of least favorite things got interrupted by a third buzzing on the phone. She’d called in and seen if she needed to be in tonight. They had enough girls for the night, so she was free to take the night off.
   There wasn’t a knock from her, just her voice. “Open the damned door so I can get out of this heat.”
   She stared at me once I’d undone all the locks, and swatted at me as I made a bow and flourish while holding the door open. She’d added a light patterned shirt over the tee, and the split tails flapped up in her wake.
   “Pizza on its way? Meat lovers? Good.” She accepted the apology of soon-to-be-food as the door closed and relocked. “Consider yourself lucky I didn’t ask for a 32oz steak and a bottle. Though you might want to remember that one. Hint, hint, my loverboy.” She gave me a couple twitches of her ears for good measure.
   There wasn’t enough on my plate to be scared of, and now I had her using terms of endearment. Argument night hadn’t made the schedule again. I made a mental note to ask one of the guys if that whole ear shit was some kind of flirting thing or just her taunting me. Both, likely. If she hadn’t done it first it would be the perfect way to bust Nicky’s nads.
   A couple of fresh bottles from the fridge were cracked, she sat on the couch facing me, and had tucked one leg underneath herself after shucking the shirt. She took a long swig while scratching at her back.
   “Let’s get down to what we can work on immediately. Get some air fresheners for this place, clean that sink more often, and...” She took a couple of sniffs and let her ears drop from their usual hyperaware forward position. “I’d tell you to change your bedsheets, but that’s not it. You could eat a bit better, and would smell better if you took care of yourself.”
   Just fucking great. The first real thing she used her sensitive nose for that wasn’t threatening me, and she had to be obsessed with how clean the place was. If I’d been home more the past week or so the place might be cleaner.
   A knock at the door: pizza. I opened, paid, and the kid with cinnamon and white fur looked past with admirable self-control over his feelings when he spied Tahlia behind. “That was fast, man. Keep the change, stay safe out there.”
   “Heard that one. And thanks. You two enjoy the pizza and have a really good evening.”
   I turned around to a wide wolf grin and her smoothing down her tshirt. Instead of asking right away I put the pizza on the counter, grabbed a couple plates, and walked back with food. Then I asked, except I didn’t really need to.
   “You were wearing a bra earlier tonight.” The metal of her piercings pushed against the tight geeky tee.
   “I always like to tip delivery something special. So I let him have a taste of the show. Mmm, bacon.” She tore off a big bite of the number one priority and licked her lips clean. Her white bra laid on the floor, all nice and lacy on top of the bundle she’d made of the shirt. One other thing to add to the list of her personality traits besides bossy was a habit of two-birds-one-stone.
   “Don’t you think flashing your tits at the guy delivering food was attention getting, and the exact opposite of what was needed here?”
   “One of the best information gathering networks ever invented is delivery. If the East German secret police, or Stalin, had invented pizza delivery, they could have cut that budget in half and gotten twice as much info. One of the first things I learned when I started dancing was to keep my ears open when the customers looked like professionals. It’s amazing how much I’ve made converting that into money on the stock market.” She was serious. It shouldn’t have been a surprise, but she didn’t have to be so smart about it either. “Stop pouting. I told you I’m not going to be young or attractive enough to dance until Social Security kicks in, if it lasts that long.”
   “Two questions: How the fuck did you get this address except stalking, which sounds up your alley, and when are you going to start filling in on all these little secrets of yours. Like your full history with Abernathy and the cops around this place. You’re not some convicted felon that turned to stripping because nowhere else would hire her, are you?” She polished off the slice while I talked, and chased it with beer. “And a third question from bad listener land. Besides work, who else would have known Amanda to start pissing and moaning at the cops?”
   She sighed, got up for another slice, and sat back down without facing me this time. Another bite, and another swig of beer. I let her collect her explanations and went for another slice myself, and sat back down staring directly at her. The AC kicked on, too loud and not cold enough.
   “One, I memorized your address from your driver’s license. Two, no felony history thank fuck, and nothing other than points on my license that have long since expired. But the community sticks together, and I’ve known most everyone in it, firsthand or secondhand, that Abernathy’s locked up or arrested. So the short answer is that I’ve been interviewed by cops a lot more than I’d like. One small aside—if you run into a tall guy named Zhalin take him very seriously. I think he has a new partner, but he’s the head at Homicide now and a lot sharper than he lets on. Until I have proof otherwise, he’s in Abernathy’s back pocket.”
   “No wonder why I feel like thinking twice before dribbling like an idiot in front of you. You’re halfway to a law degree if they’ve had you in the station that much.”
   “You’re funny but not that funny. I’m starting to trust you for reasons I can’t believe I’m using. They’ve never been able to lean on me like a clichéd procedural because I keep my nose as clean as possible. And since I can smell you thinking of it, Jimmy was a good example of that. I fucked him, I was aware he’d had a past, but I refused to be his little collared bitch or go to manage a business he’d knotted up.”
   “And what about Amanda?”
   She ignored that while finishing her slice, then belched. “I’m not talking about that. Hold on before you get angry. I knew her at work and she’d stop by my place sometimes after or before. She learned that lesson before I could teach it to her, that the best strategy to keep going after you resolve not to be a druggie is to have a strict work life separation. We didn’t talk about personal stuff except in broad terms.”
   “That is the worst excuse of the day, and you made a date night out of a political debate and pizza afterward. No trophies for being a genius here, but hello social media.”
   She turned to look at me, a mix of annoyance and more annoyance. Her answer was simple. She lowered her head some so I could see it from overhead, then traced fingers along the shape of her muzzle, wider where it met the skull and narrowing towards her nose. Then she did it again, but letting her fingers drift out a bit and draw the shape rounder at the end and slightly shorter. It was direct, and one hell of a slap in the face.
   “Get it now?”
   “The other college kids and the professors are...wait just a damned second. You’re saying that there’s some kind of ethnic bullshit hate whatever dammit that is part of this? Furfaced prejudice or whatever that knot thing earlier...” The words stopped and then she was somehow angry and laughing at me. I could get casual racism just fine, and get the whole slurs bit, but this was way too...human? I’d never noticed it in the past. It was as if...
   The explosion happened in my head and I considered how much of a dumbass I’d been.
   “Now you get it better? I’m the wrong type for some, stereotyped, so there are sirueans as well that have to learn the hard way that I’m not dumb.”
   “I don’t have a clue what that ends up meaning here. Guess it means not everyone gets to do that university thing like Amanda.”
   “Go ahead and lump me in there. I rarely take a semester off, but I also rarely take more than one class a semester. Online to boot so I don’t fuck my sleep schedule.”
   “Serious?”
   “Almost done with a combined computer science and electrical engineering degree myself.” OK, the books weren’t a hobby. “Cross my heart, don’t want to die, don’t pull my tail and I won’t tell a lie.”
   I’d never considered that all her talk of getting older meant she had plans in life. Besides, I sure never learned how to plan long-term much beyond not shitting in my pants. A mental step back, then I looked at the mess that was my brain and kicked at it in anger for not having a clear on switch.
   “What the fuck is this leading to then? Because the best you’re getting from someone that was lucky to get past high school is from books and old movies. Get in a problem, have a man walk in with a gun.”
   She took plates to the kitchen, and walked over to the pile of paperbacks I hadn’t sold back yet to look at what I was reading. The top one opened in her hands as she scanned through, then glanced at the titles of the next and the next before she sat back down, this time looking at me.
   “Stop kicking yourself about not knowing things that I don’t expect most humans to. That doesn’t make you dumb by itself. You’re smarter than you think, but you’ve got shit experience with social cues. We’ll go over that later, like you made the mistake of suggesting. Just keep being you and the worst you’ll do is piss off the same kind of sniffing professor that would get himself stuck just as bad over me. So go ahead and guess for me who would be a place we could run to.”
   “OK, the obvious. FBI, right? The local newspaper or TV. Maybe Abernathy’s opponent, or even a tabloid that wants some dirt.
   “Obvious, and all of them ineffective. The FBI will turn him for evidence elsewhere, betting that he’s got dirt, and in return they fuck over his career but let him avoid jail or any semblance of wrongdoing. The old ‘I want to spend more time with family’ excuse. Tabloids sleaze it up and are lost in the noise when there’s something different next week. A newspaper would bury the story outright without being as gracious as a tabloid to pay for it, that is if it looks like it’ll hurt their interests. Said interests are pretty connected to all the business, especially the developers, in the area, so a missing person stays missing in this case. And, forgive me, but Vincent makes a monkey toy look like a genius.”
   “This is smarter than him?” I tapped my chest and then clapped outstretched hands a few times. “I should team up with him then and form a ‘Champions of Humanity’ movement. It would conquer everyone while they’re paralyzed from all the laughing.”
   She shook her head and reevaluated the depth of my stupidity. “Another beer?”
   “Why not. Can’t be many brain cells left to kill.”
   “I really and honestly don’t know what happened after Amanda left the club. Her place still has forensics trying to find their asses, and I’m not walking into a cop encounter. I’ve got a few guesses, but there’s a lot of things I didn’t see that I can be more certain on now.  One positive is our bag hand-off bitch isn’t pretty security. She has to be Abernathy’s cleaner. I saw her from a distance while leaving tonight, talking to the cops at the entrance. She must be taking care of the dirty stuff that Sleepy can’t sweep up, and remember I’ve never gotten a useful lead on that sniffing bitch. I’ve got a clock ticking on us now. She’ll go to Abernathy. We’re right back where we started, but in more danger.”
   “Chances of her showing up here?”
   “Minuscule. You were around her for a few minutes. She’ll know me, and by now Abernathy’s filled them in. Unless they saw us together, we blended into the crowd. I’m not calling them up to see what’s in their hand, but I doubt it’s been a fishing pole before tonight.”
   “She’s going to grab one with your favorite food on the end.” A guiltless stare passed judgment on my analogy skills. “If I hadn’t handed her the bag, this wouldn’t have started. Digging into his business connections will take too long, but this is about protecting money.”
   “That was point two. Near every building project around here that isn’t residential has enough tied up in it that they’re the real political force. Which translates to said money, and his ass as a launchpad out at Kennedy. You can’t fix the national economy, but you can look better for business than the next city. If there’s one thing that he’s done right, its to make this city look so good by the numbers that it’s near impossible for this place to fuck up on attracting business. Last is the complete guest list at those parties. People connected to the money.”
   The beer wasn’t brain food. “Let’s drop the guesses and focus on practical. The parties were usually small?”
   “Depended on the night. I was almost always there for this one chaser on the county commission. Most of the ones I did were small, three to four other guys tops, maybe two or three girls. Amanda got to do the bigger parties as well. They never discussed much business when I danced, Amanda got the opposite.” She got annoyed all over again that she couldn’t pull enough extra as tips from thin air.
   “So you show up for work one night. They come. Who pays who?”
   “If it was anyone else, I’d cash out for the night and go do what I wanted. That’s pretty standard. If you want me, you get to pay enough to cover my costs to the club and whatever I wanted to make that night. Since I don’t escort on the side, whatever I want is better and easier than getting groped by beer guts and fratboys.” 
   “But—”
   “Hire multiple girls, if they let you do it, and you’ve got to pay the club and the girls have to work for their money like they were at the club. Abernathy’s boys paid regularly to just walk in and take what they wanted, no questions asked. I’d get a flat fee, and that’s the night. Normal guys aren’t paying the house to make sure their toys are behaving at the club when they aren’t there.”
   She only had one real thing on him. Money. If she could follow it, there’d be something, but she had nothing to stand in court.
   “So the other girls would talk to you, and it’s all about which guys at these parties were the biggest scum?”
   “And the last detail. We were keeping notes. The money got bigger, we paid attention, and they got more paranoid. It’s stupid because any stripper worth her g-string is going to watch the money. But I know one other thing from idiots like Jimmy. After a certain amount of money, the chance of drugs goes way up. Maybe not Abernathy unless he’s way stupider than I’d lowball, but someone is providing the fun. What I could guess at made Jimmy look like a street thug.”
   “He’s not likely to throw another party before the election now. The camera footage?”
   “Only a couple places I know that he’s on it good and clear. That alone isn’t enough.”
   “What if you had all the footage, or it looked like you did.”
   “He’d freak. I could eventually connect the dots.”
   “Which is what you’ve been trying to do from a weaker position.”
   Tahlia reached to gather her shirt and bra, stopping halfway. “That would mean they really do go after Charlie...”
   I had enough in my head now to fire up a mental bulldozer. She had most everything and all it would take was being crazier than the person that might want to kill us.
   “Which they wouldn’t if he was the one who told them that an unknown asshole managed to access wherever the cam stuff is stored.” Maybe she’d be afraid of me more if something this insane worked. “That’s what you were trying to avoid, exposure. But it’s time to change the rules. He’s being herded into a corner by the fear of fire. Now we grab him by the throat, and make him afraid. Everything else was a smokescreen and he didn’t crack. This time, he either cracks or he comes to arrest us.”
   After another beer, a sheet of paper sat between us with a sequence of events. Most of it ended up being online stuff for her. All she had to do was fake someone out tomorrow, but only after she scored that footage.
   
Thursday morning arrived, this time gray and spitting rain past sunrise. There’d been a cop parked at one of the major intersections, then another a mile later. No one at work was much for conversation beyond food, coffee and bitching about the weather, which made great news as far as I gave a damn. Nicky and his pals were keeping to themselves, shooting worried glances at anyone without a tail, and getting waterlogged every time they had to move from under cover. A few arguments blew up as the storm kept going into early afternoon. With these kinds of attitudes everyone needed to skip tomorrow and go straight to the weekend.
   Another argument started for no reason I could see. One minute things were fine and the next a near 300lb. beast of a cat held Alex back from some guy I didn’t really know, one of the transitory Mexicans. His hombres were keeping him still and whispering too loudly for the rest of the tails not to hear, something about perro and worth and trouble. Harold arrived on scene with enough dramatic gruff for a sitcom, beergutted and half bald, and broke everyone up by race so he could go back to busting engineers that had never held a power tool in their lives. I grabbed him as he went by.
   “What the hell was that about? Can’t just be this weather.”
   “You run late and didn’t see the news this morning?” The acid in my stomach bit from his voice dropping to a near inaudible whisper.
   “No.”
   “We’ll talk after work.”
   He left it at that, ominous and black as the weather broke to sauna-like sun. He wasn’t one to hang out with the average guys after work, even for just one beer. The tales of his old lady were a machine gun of no respect and the thousand and one tasks she’d whipped up for him, clearly warning the unmarried that steady work, marriage and kids was a certain path to either financial stability or mental instability.
   The place ended up being a tiny sports bar in a strip mall right around the corner that I walked to.
   I counted no fewer than six cop cars driving by in the span of a few minutes. Nothing unusual about that on one of the main traffic arteries.
   Harold sat alone and waiting for me to show, waving for two beers as soon as the door shut. There were only humans in the place, not even a hint of Spanish or anything other than muted English. I took a seat beside him, swallowed a pull from the mug, and waited until he collected his thoughts to talk just under the volume of the TV and crowd, a confessional in reverse.
    “What happened last night was bad news, a big dustup. Some ghetto tails took a swing at some punks and the less reputable illegals in a parking lot. By the time the cops arrested everyone it was almost a hundred people. Lucky no one brought a gun to settle some scores. Hell, didn’t you notice how many cops there were out today? There’s always things I don’t know, but I can safely guess people are going to get territorial until they find that girls body, and probably until after November. Might need to keep everyone separate for a few days until it settles down. Lord knows I’m not blaming them if it turns out to be some psycho tailchaser. You’ll be out of here by the time that shit hits the fan.”
   I stared and wondered why he couldn’t have told me that earlier.
   Harold’s habit of roping the unaware into bets should have occurred to me earlier. “What else happened is between me and you. I’m not asking for an explanation. Just consider this advice from someone that’s seen this movie before. Watch your ass.”
   “I’m not following—”
   “Yes, you are. I was at that debate. I saw the chick you walked in with, and I got a good idea where you met her. You need to listen closer once in a while, because any girl from that place isn’t snow white and Sunday best clean. I’m not telling you where and where not to dip your dick, what I am telling you is that you have one of the lousiest senses of trouble I’ve seen in a long time. Nobody’s ever going to call me racist to my face, but that girl better look herself in the mirror and admit she’s the one that got her friend dead.”
   The word cracked and my vision swam. “Wait...what?” I tried to drop my voice as low as possible but it came out soprano ratsqueaked.
   His laugh wasn’t good. “My girl wanted to go to college here, so we moved a few years back. I’d be happier outside city limits and away from the riff-raff, but I had the money, she finishes high school, I’ve got plenty of work and the old lady doesn’t have to juggle a job and everything else. My girl meets this chick, Amanda, in class and I see them together in the usual band of friends. Following me so far?”
   I held onto the anchor of the beer mug.
   “I find out she’s working at that club when I decide I need a night out. Sat down for a beer, and not half an hour later there she was. Long story short, she saw me, I paid enough to get her to sit and talk for a couple minutes. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not some thumper, and I hadn’t ever seen her be anything but a good friend to my girl. It’s legal and this is a free country. But you’re going to have a little fatherly concern at my age. Which I did, even if she’s got her tits half out and sitting a few feet away.”
   What he said next left my knuckles white and cramped.
   “Well, that’s how I met your new friend. I get done counseling Amanda on her life choices, tell her to stay safe and I pass her a couple extra twenties. Pretty girl, for one of hers. She gets up, and not but a song later I’ve got Ms. Blue Hair and Leather playing Siruean Inquisition on me. That’s a girl that goes with threats the way summer and baseball do. She does her bit, and I do mine. I haven’t been back, because I don’t need that again.”
   He left a space for me, and when it drew out too long he watched as I tried to decide which way to run. It was a strange and alien place, flat and nowhere to hide.
   “Only thing that’s admitting guilt faster than a lying kid is one that’s dead silent. I can put the whole thing together. You got some connection to Amanda, and then you also got some connection to Ms. Trouble. Amanda disappears, and I’ve got a daughter crying because one of her friends might have gotten murdered. And then some stuff starts happening. I didn’t even need to see you with her.”
   I finally managed two words. “What was?”
   “Nicky.”
   “Nicky the Motormouth.”
   “I’m not calling the cops because I wasn’t there to see anything you and her did. Even if you were safe at home last night, that dustup wouldn’t have happened like it did if the two of you weren’t out there pouring gas on the fire. You’ve got a choice. Walk away and save your skin, choose to let the law do its job. You’re not a bad guy. You aren’t playing with drugs or dealing with stolen goods. But if you keep being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’re going to be a different man if you don’t die when that fire gets too hot.” 
   He finished the beer, paid, and got up to leave.
   “Good talk. We’re not talking about this more.”
   It took about fifteen minutes after he walked away for me to break my fingers off an empty mug.
   
The good news was I didn’t even make it to the truck before I felt the telltale buzz. I needed something that wasn’t alcohol to take the edge off, and the pills sounded like a better idea with each step. All I had to do was swing by my place first, and she’d have to understand that.
   She didn’t like it one bit.
   “It’s been almost an hour. You didn’t respond. You smell of beer and...” She got right up on me, ears pinned, and sniffed my neck and breath. Her stare was prosecutorial.
   “One beer, talked to my foreman.” The chemical courage had long since hit and seemed much stronger with alcohol, making it so easy to leave out details. “Not good, but nothing to worry about.”
   “This isn’t the time. We’re already rolling.”
   “Huh?” The now familiar ice crawled up my ass and sent tinglers up my spine.
   “Got what I needed last night. Sent it, and our boy bit hard. Also let a few images slip. Lawyer sent some fancy shit and it was down in less than an hour. But it’s out there and I, no we, are going to wait and see.”
   She wasn’t going to explain much more.
   And she didn’t have to, because I’m not stupid once my face gets shoved in it. I should carry proof of it.
   Only three stills from the camera footage, but it showed an older man and a girl that was about the size and shape of Amanda. Nothing out of the ordinary for the club, but it was the guilt by association that we’d cooked up. This was take two, in fact. So why did an icicle up my ass start strangling my nuts as well?
   “You put these up, and told him you had more. Because you thought this was too good to pass up? Better than our plan?”
   “Way better. Everything else I have is something that doesn’t show enough of him. But he can’t bet that this is everything and that I’m bluffing. I’m betting that Bobby should have been ready to turn off the cameras if Abernathy visited, but he got distracted and didn’t shitcan that booth one night. Testicle squeezy stress toys, my favorite.” Her ears were still back and she crowded in my personal space as I kept staring at three grainy black and white pics that could be anyone.
   She sniffed again at my neck.
   “So you also got stills from a camera near the entrance or outside that are better? If you’re bluffing and he sends his goon girl...are you going to keep doing that, or is this some crazy sex thing?”
   “You smell like pheromones. Human ones, but that’s what I was smelling the other night. It’s what’s underneath that is tickling my nose. That stuff isn’t good or safe if it is what I think I’m smelling.”
   Game’s up.
   “Got some stuff in case coffee isn’t enough. Found it helped a couple times, and felt a bit less jumpy after them.”
   She backed away half a step and I didn’t turn, keeping focused on the pics on the screen. Too easy to focus.
   “Make me a promise.” I turned slowly to see her with arms crossed and ears still pinned.
   “Some days coffee isn’t enough. Some days just run you into the ground.”
   She whipped out the big university-level words and attitude, poking with them like I was an animal in a cage.
   “Take a smaller dose, and less often. Sooner or later your endocrine system is going to be overworked, and you’re going to be pumping that scent all day long. You’re going to start smelling like a predator, and a bad one at that. People are going to notice and instinctively avoid you. You’ll have to take higher and higher doses, more often, just to stave off a crash until your system rights itself.”
   I didn’t want to admit it. Must be hell walking around knowing that much about a person, and them about you. Broadcasting, on all frequencies...
   “Took four the night after you and Nicky. Long day, got no real sleep that night. Crashed that weekend. Was shaky on Monday. I had one for the morning, and another before here.”
   She spun away and butted her head against the wall.
   “Damnit, damnit, damnit! And you were still ramped up on it that evening.” She regained her breath, and her eyes weren’t happy, not sad, but disturbed. “That was as much my fault. Really. It’s hitting your pheromones harder than I think those things are supposed to. And it sure shouldn’t affect me, but there’s this sour note to the other stuff in it. If we got the blood moving like last time it would go straight to my head, but that’ll probably fade over the next hour or so, then reappear as you piss the rest out. Just a guess. I’ll bet that’s a bunch of Chinese bathtub chemistry someone bought in bulk and is long since closed up shop to stay ahead of the DEA.”
   All I could manage was a croaked sorry. The chemicals were keeping me steady but the thought...
   My thoughts weren’t safe. I started to wonder what could constitute coercion against her in a court of law, a kind of roofie for the tails.
   She hugged me. Not angry, but uneasy and cautious.
   “OK. Modification. You take something like that, you tell me before I smell it. Got it?”
   “...uhh...”
   “It saved your life, and got you what I’m starting to think I would have chosen anyway in due time if you hadn’t threatened me.”
   In some bizarre-assed Tahlia logic way, it made sense. Kind of. Just a pair of psychos bouncing like a .22 in a skull.
   “Now, human mine, you’re going to follow my instructions so I can stay clearheaded and get some work done tonight. Go home, eat, and keep your hands off your dick. Serves you right if you end up with a few hours of steel girder in your shorts. I’m going to air this place out, and hope that staying home again pays off.”
   Her eyes were so green. Emerald. Fresh grass. Pine. Warm, slick, electric, sweat salty, skin and the blood underneath. Lucid. So aware of all of her.
   “Chances are I’m non grata once Vinnie finds out. The only person that can tell him is Charlie. And he won’t. After today he’ll head straight to Abernathy and preemptively save his own skin. I figure the fan will fling enough shit that we’ll have a week at most. Tonight I’m gathering munitions for my shit cannons.”

Chapter Eight

I could’ve done without the cover band massacring old Chicago tunes, especially when they were onstage at the park’s bandshell on a Saturday. They fucked up royally and did it in June. If they’d chosen something worthy of insults I wouldn’t have felt so betrayed by the parks department.
   “Are you going to tell me what she said?” Caroline cursed under her breath as a string of kids ran past.
   “It’s only going to upset you. How about we focus on us for a change?” It was a chance for her to avoid talking about her feelings, or anything else about her, and a chance for me to lie to myself that the past few months had clearly been us healing the rifts.
   I followed the standard script, episode number nineteen. She’d changed out of her usual office couture for this, into an airy sundress that accented neither her hair or eyes. I’d gone with an old band tshirt and worn jeans, the workingman’s weekend tuxedo. We could have been discussing any number of other things. Unless they did a one-eighty, her job would be gone in another few weeks. There was my bank account to talk about, and why I’d opened a new one that she didn’t have the number for. We’d be living on a thinner budget until someone decided she was worth the trouble. At the top of the list of her troublemaking was my last bank statement. She’d figure it out soon enough.
   “Us means talking about her. You need to change your story to something that’s believable as the truth.”
   “Rachael was seated next to me, that’s all. I can’t wear a full body condom every time I set out the front door to protect myself from your overactive imagination.” Like all of her blowups, I had to weather this and then it would be back to the usual mood swings and unprovoked horniness.
   “Because when I stopped by earlier in the week, Gina said—”
   “Gina wasn’t there, Samantha was, but you’d rather take Tink’s word since she’s saying what you want to believe. If Sam had sat next to me, this would be you accusing her.”
   “You have an excuse for everything. Jacob is always caught up in the wake of other people. Jacob is never to blame for the things that happen around him. Jacob could say no to people but can’t say yes. Jacob will never admit it was his fault he didn’t stop it.” I loved this line where she talked about herself.
   I kept eyes on her but watched beyond to where families were playing. That wasn’t going to be me anytime soon, and not with her. It was a mix, and for the first time in weeks I felt like everyone that wasn’t Caroline got along, just living their own lives. A knot of kids were ignoring color and species, running in a weaving pattern around blanketed islands. A few balls were the MacGuffins to capture and then protect. The parents allowed the game to keep going, ignoring the occasional bump and reveling in the youthful glee. They’d work that off in time and settle down.
   One kid must have been from a richer family, decked out in the logos of upper class designers and fancier sneakers. His pursuers were closer to the dirt poor I’d seen growing up, praying that would never be me after yet another move. One kid needed a bath and brushing badly, with a cheap tshirt with the print half peeled off and sneakers covered in dirt and grass stains. The richer kid cut hard in an open area, kicking dirt up into the face of the other. He cut again towards us, but his pursuer anticipated without being able to see as well. They collided and went down in a heap. The first shouts were I needed to brush past Caroline.
   “You two, break it up. No hitting, no scratching, no kicking up sand and dirt like that. Play fair, or someone’s going to get hurt.”
   The parents of the tail ran up, worriedly looking him over as he blinked and rubbed at his eyes. She had that kind of tired pretty about her, clothing the best and brightest she could manage but still having once been labeled gently used. Their brown and cinnamon shades were different, but as neatly trimmed as they could for a family outing. Mr. Moneybags hadn’t pulled his glare from the tail or me. Immaculate khakis and a polo draped him, and hadn’t been touched by him until leaving the dresser drawer. His kid had a few good bruises and knots in his future, including a certain black eye from this.
   “What’s this commotion? You can be sued for assaulting my child, and you for striking him.” The tails were smart enough to let me do the talking.
   “Shove a dick in it, asshole. I saw the whole thing and so did others. If your kid can’t take it, don’t let your little showdog run with wolves.” The other father narrowed his eyes as the mom gasped, but it was an effective insult.
   “Did you just have the gall to call my son a—”
   “If you’d take the stick out of your ass and glue it a little higher, you could give everyone here some entertainment. I meant what I said. The world’s not nice, and he’d better learn to live with it unless he wants to spend the rest of his life needing a lawyer to protect him.”
   Moneybags stepped closer. He puffed up, trim enough, but as much shorter than me as he was taller than the other father. I guessed I had forty pounds of muscle on him minimum. He’d used intimidation before, but that doesn’t work as well without a weapon or blood spilled. We’d attracted the favor of the park staff, and two stood close enough to cut in if required. He looked to them, back to the other family, and me.
   “I pay my taxes, and I expect to be able to have a nice day at the park. Not this.”
   “Sit with the hoi-polloi, but don’t think this is the ballet.” He walked away from us with his son in front of him.
   I knelt in front of the young tail. “That was a good one. I’m not telling you it’s OK even though I fought a few rounds like that myself at your age. Don’t do it again. I was serious. This isn’t a fair fight. They’re the wolves of our world and will rip you to shreds if you make the mistake of walking in their forest. Got me, kid?” I hadn’t made it polite, and got called out on it.
   “How dare you? How dare call my son that and—”
   “Same goes for you, mama. I didn’t grow up with the money that kid has, but I’ve seen the same sad story before.”
   “Where?” Something in my voice forced the father to accept what kind of sadness I’d meant and didn’t want young ears to hear.
   “South. Florida, specifically, and all the dirtroads and scraps of money when you live outside city limits.” He didn’t need me to elaborate.
   They walked away, and Caroline’s voice dropped to a whisper at my ear. “That was his fault. He’d been taunting the human kid since we got here. You need to open your eyes and stop acting on the moment.”
   “And who escalated?” I didn’t like admitting bits of my past in front of her. “It’s over, back to the weekend.”
   The concert went on, then the next act, and a third. Each time she made a trip to the portas, I watched how Caroline held her handbag on the way back. She’d scrounged up enough for some fun and didn’t want me to know about it. Just enough breeze cut the heat, and the vendors made a killing.
   “I’ve been thinking. I know what happened.” Great, the pills had kicked in. “It’s straightforward. You’ve been fucking her on your lunch breaks. Then you stop by a convenience store on the way back, wash up in the bathroom, and head back with a drink and a pack of crackers to cover up. If you only do it a few times a month, it would look like a normal lunchtime errand.”
   “Now the big flaw: coordination.”
   “Oh, that’s easy. You use codewords with her and hide them in normal conversation. You watch too many action movies for me not to get the hint.”
   She was right, but we’d only met up once for coffee and to discuss a matter between our companies. There had been good reason for it, and the problem had gotten cut off soon after. Besides, Rachael’s circle of friends intersected Gina’s in a few places, and the last thing I wanted was to have that closer.
   “Or maybe I should get us a little dog and train it to smell other women’s perfume!” The last three words came as a shout in between songs.
   “The show’s on stage, not out here.” That got her standing and moving. “If you don’t stop, we’re going to get asked to leave. Sit down.”
   I tried at helping her down, rewarded with a flurry of strikes from her bag and even louder words. A staffer in casual khakis and an event tshirt approached and confirmed my opinion. Caroline demanded that I gather our stuff, arms crossed. We cut through the back of the crowd as fast as I could drag her along until she pulled me to a stop at the edge of the parking lot. Her phone dialed rapidly and she talked too fast.
   The kid had gotten a large stick to hold back the wealthier kid and one of his friends. I watched with disgust as they struck at each other. Neither had learned the lesson yet, and the hurt was coming.
   I could deal with blatant racism. It was the next door neighbor to growing up in the poorer neighborhoods. The park staff hadn’t come earlier to settle and separate the parents of two fighting kids. They’d come once it was two humans.
   The young tail swung, and got his attackers to retreat a step. He shifted his stance with the immediate threat gone, and got suckered from the rear by a third kid. I remembered fights like this too and the ends of them. Suckerpunch didn’t have a good arm, and didn’t have a good head anymore when the tail’s weapon got lucky, striking him square in the temple.
   The cop didn’t ask questions when he arrived, just called for an EMT for the bleeding kid, and ziptied the tail in front of his parents. He didn’t cry, too young to define stoicism but old enough to understand when the deck’s stacked against you.
   “He didn’t listen to you, and went running with the wolves again. Maybe he felt like he didn’t have to back down and accept the beating. There aren’t any innocents, just the bruised left standing after the book closes.” I wanted to shout at her about right and wrong, instead of looking at a million piece puzzle in tones of gray. “Your problem, Jacob, is that you don’t know how to take your heart out of the picture when you don’t know the whole story.”
   I felt sorry for the kid, tail or not. He wouldn’t be lucky enough to get taken straight to a foster care facility, or see his parents in a few days.

Chapter Nine

She was right too often, and I resisted the temptation to take a few pics once the boots were off. Getting stressed, worked up and then set to stew while a pornstar caliber erection went to waste...I took a shower and smelled the need to clean the place as soap ran off.
   I had smelled her.
   Even through water and soap, I still could, the shadow of it.
   The first dream I had that night was of walking through the day, knowing things that I shouldn’t. That woman was cheating on her husband, the scent of semen still on her from the other day. That guy over there had a weekend drug habit that he’d been nursing for a dozen years. That one didn’t know they’ve got whatever bug was getting passed around this summer, but they’d feel the symptoms in another day or so, fevered and puking into the toilet. Those two were in love and radiating pheromones like crazy for each other, each crashing wave accompanied by a display of spontaneous handholding and kissing.
   It crumbled and shattered as the phone rang. 2:30AM. Her.
   “Whuu?”
   “Remember I said he bit? Got the other part now.” Her words buzzed as I squeezed and blinked.
   “Just woke up, you’ll have to turn the stupid rating way higher.” Slurred, and I wasn’t sure the words I thought made it into that mush.
   “I’m combing through some info. Sheriff has had a lawyer on retainer for a while. Probably handling the above board and legal cleanup. Paralegal there tipped me. She doesn’t know if there’s dirt, but what she does know is that there’s more to Amanda’s case than I suspected. Lawyer has a thick set of documents under lock and key, and something got delivered last night just as most of the staff was on the way out. We’re going there as soon as we can in the morning. Chances are I’m going to have to improvise on the spot.” I processed that as Tahlia had a distraction half-planned, and stopped second guessing the brains half of our operation.
   “Right. Reading, breakfast, then what? Breaking and entering?”
   I felt the eyeroll that paired with her sigh. “I’ll need breakfast after an all-nighter. And coffee. No pills though, got me?”
   “No pills. Right.” The words weren’t as mushy but I needed shuteye.
   “Go back to sleep. Call out as soon as you wake up. Be ready for excitement. I’ve got to see if anyone else dropped me something tonight, then I need to take the edge off before I deal with you.”
   There was a creak from the chair she sat in, and a breathy nothing.
   “Hang up and let me work on this problem, OK?”
   Right. I didn’t remember more than a click and then dreams of her, this time a straight-laced professor about to let down her hair with me, the stranger that she’d met at the bar after several glasses of wine on a girl’s night out.
   
“I normally don’t go for guys like you. Actually, make that never.” 
   “Why not? Until the revolution comes it’s a free country and you haven’t tossed a drink in my face yet.”
   “Let’s start with you’re making me laugh and I’ve already had five glasses of wine.”
   Check: an average guy that had traded a plain and dirty shirt for one ready to absorb the smoke and volatiles of the night. Several whiskeys and beers had pulled the chucks off my tongue and I powered up down that old pitted tarmac. 
   “Now you’re just being that kind of tricky smart. Am I making you laugh because of the wine? Is the wine keeping you from tossing the drink at me? Maybe your friends, who I haven’t seen in a couple glasses, decided that the poor professor needs to get drunk enough that the first guy that charms her is going to break that dry spell.”
   She laughed again, tan slacks and a patterned blouse under a tan blazer, a couple more buttons open than would be in a classroom. Soft and short silver-white fur lined her collarbones and down her cleavage. Dark hair, almost black, was tied up, framing the lines and curves of her face. An ornate silver charm, an elongated chevron shape pointing down and covered in detail within a circle of vines, sat at just the right place to draw the eye down there. She looked up just to laugh more, and the green of her eyes sparked against light thrown by hundreds of glasses. Her hand cradled one of them, almost empty.
   “No, no, and the last is probably because they’ve had enough of me burying my face in textbooks. At least that’s done for the moment. You’re talking to a freshly minted PhD, finally done, Saskia Castahlia Vujana, and damned proud of it!”
   Her ears twitched in merriment, the fine hairs swaying.
   “Ahh. So not just smart, but really smart. Maybe out of my league smart.”
   “Don’t talk like that!” She slapped the bar and called for another glass after the present evaporated. “Just because I know all kinds of computer things, and I’m lucky I’m not doing my orals now, because wine, doesn’t mean I need a man like that. Besides, nerds are too easy to run over. A man should be more like a romance novel, and know how to do the important things like really sexy earrubs. Hint hint.” She descended into a fit of giggles as the bartender delivered the next glass of red wine.
   “Now you’ve got me. Siruean, into computers and with a PhD to boot, reads romance novels and gets giggly on a few glasses of wine.”
   “More than a few, but, cheers!” She drained a third of the glass in one go.
   “And what got missed? Hobbies you’ve been putting off for years? An itch to explore life?”
   “Just the dancing and gymnastics I gave up as a kid. Hey, let’s go get a booth so we can sit and talk where it’s quieter.”
   Half an hour later and another beer for me but two more glasses of wine for her, I’d gotten the whole story—freshman year and itchy-eared, to nine years later and ready to apply for a professorship.
   The soundsystem, which had enough little speakers throughout the place that the background music stayed background, pumped out a recent song, electronic and upbeat.
   “You’re stalking I’m running”
   “And I can’t break free”
   “Emotion is chasing”
   “Me in the club tonight”
   “All these eyes see me on the floor”
   “It’s just a matter of time til”
   “You catch me, capture, in your snare”
   “And I say”
   “Take me”
   Her eyes shone, tearless and unveiled, whether the ambient light was low or reflected from afar. “And that’s my family history! Quite a journey, and I wish both of them were still alive to see it.”
   “Never knew that about the wolveshead. I mean, I’ve seen kind of simple and stylized versions, but it’s kind of...”
   “Ethnic? Exotic? Don’t worry, I’ve heard all the bad ones and the curious ones. Like, it’s a big world out there and we’re all so small.”
   “Well, some things are small, but not everything.”
   “Like my tits?” I sputtered for a second, a swallow of beer half down. She teased a bit more, arms pushed together underneath and shaking them. “Come on! You’ve been staring and I sure as hell don’t mind! Do you know how bad it is for a girl when she starts taking a block so she doesn’t have to have that week-long fuck-my-brains-out vacation, and then she forgets men entirely? It’s really bad when you jump off them. Well, I would be minding if you were one of the creepy boys I know. I mean, I’m not that big but no way I’m small.”
   “So, ahh, Saskia...”
   “Hmm?” She kept smiling and I caught the faint tang of something off of her, like a perfume.
   “I guess, well, I need better manners for one.”
   “Gah! When a woman wants to be looked at, she’s not going to push away the man she wants looking. Maybe I just need to take you home and practice my teaching skills. Like how to properly get a very horny girl to lose control, and there will be some one-on-one labs after so you can demonstrate those new skills.”
   
The place wasn’t big, but fancy enough to make me happy the closer option had been her’s, and not my sparser bachelor den. It was airy, open and the kind of place you wanted to come home to.
   She doffed the blazer across the back of a chair and joined me on the couch. I wanted to be polite about it and not tear her clothing off, but she writhed like a snake in my arms, twisting and moving to the time of the wine’s beat. Whatever stress she need to work off, it involved her kicking off shoes and stretching out until she’d decided it would be more fun to straddle my lap. I pulled the blouse up and off as she ground against me to whatever music currently played in her head.
   Everything after was a series of unsexy incidents. I shifted my weight and she fell forward, shoulder dipping and knocking me in the forehead. She tried to turn on my lap and gave me a faceful of fur that triggered a sneezing attack. After some tissues and a good laugh, I figured it would be safer to lie down on the couch. Then she twisted, I went with her, and yipped right in my ear when her tail got pinned between leg and the couch.
   I’d figured we’d had the same amount of alcohol. Two bottles of wine had her more inebriated than a clumsy kadisi on high grade linny. “Maybe we should skip straight to the bedroom before someone needs an ambulance.”
   She laughed and untangled herself from me, walking into the kitchen. Slacks and a bra was a good look for her, especially with her dark hair, even if the bra looked more like one from the bargain bin at a department store than fancy lingerie. That made it better, made her more real.
   “Could we try something?”
   “What?”
   “Well, this was one of my commencement presents. They told me it helps you lose your inhibitions easier when you’ve been on any kind of birth control for a long time.” She had two small and brightly colored pill bottles. “You take one of these, and I take one of these. It’s probably a tasteless protein pill, but it can’t hurt.”
   I swallowed one, and they were completely unnecessary. Only a dead man would fail to be aroused by her. Once we found the bedroom, and lost the rest of the clothes, I saw the truth of it. She was on the taller side of her kind but lanky, in the valley between skinny and overweight. I laid her back on the bed and figured that anatomy couldn’t be that much of an issue. Her fur wasn’t super short, nor long, so fingers won out over the mouth in most places. I trailed down her cheeks and along the sides of her neck, letting two fingers per side do the work that I’d normally leave to firm lips. Her eyes drained to thirsty and I found quickly that the benefit to using hands was keeping eye contact. And with her ears, drooping uncontrollably as I moved down from her neck to trace collarbones or the inner swell of her breasts.
   Short needy puffs of breath matched each caress, and I seized the initiative. Her left nipple, bare and aroused, suffered a slow assault three times around with my tongue, then the right. Wandering fingertips on her sides moving from armpits to the bottom of her ribs made her tense up, clench the bedsheets, and whine in pleasure. I attacked again and again until her heels scraped on my lower back urged to either come back up or to go lower.
   Down it was. Mouth and fingers in concert, I mapped the scenic route down her stomach and let her squirm in anticipation. So far, so good, just like any other woman once they were alone with the man they’d chosen. Softer, finer, lighter fur smoothed down her belly, and between her legs. The darker flesh of her labia contrasted against pale gray-white fur, almost silvery, everything clean smelling except for the stronger smell of her arousal. Stronger now and welcome, because of whatever that pill had. I inhaled deeply, and it was like a...no, it was like nothing I’d ever had invade my thoughts. Each scent of the room tickled old instincts—the remains of my cologne, her perfume, the polished leather of her shoes. Carefully, I traced up her labia and again. The taste tingled across my tongue more vividly than it had with any other woman.
   When she had enough she pulled me up and we traded places on the bed. I couldn’t help but be hard in her hands, and even stiffer when her tongue traced loops around my cockhead and lower. If this is what I’d been missing out on, an army would have to barricade me away from chasing after tail from now on. Even the cool brush of teeth on each side had a fresh eroticism. She didn’t keep eye contact, nervous and lost in the rush of her own heightened senses and heartbeat, but a man could lose himself forever when she turned her head and warm green eyes were looking up at him. My fingers twined in her hair and guided her head up and down the length of my cock, submitting to my wants instead of complaining about it being degrading.
   She made one last long lick from base to tip, swirled her tongue over, and laughed. “I don’t know which of us is enjoying this more.” Her ears swayed and teased against my wrist.
   “It doesn’t have to be a competition. What’s your favorite, missionary or on top?”
   Her laugh was genuine and throaty. “You could spoon me, if that kind of handholding and cuddling after isn’t too kinky.” It shouldn’t be possible to be relaxed and revved up simultaneously, but it was like I’d known her for years and could read the shades of meaning in her ears and how her tail was held.
   She rolled over and I moved into position. One leg lifted, and her hand wrapped around my shaft, rubbing the cockhead against her lips.
   “What, no comments?” I teased along the line of her jaw, then traced down to cup her breast, squeezing and fondling the nipple. “Bet those friends of yours are going to want a play-by-play tomorrow morning. No harm in telling how you’re going to rate tonight.”
   “Be gentle at first and you won’t lose any stars. It’s been a few years for me and Goddess blessed you more than some men.”
   Her direction was enough. I took it slow and let her nuzzle me backwards, pushing into me from above and below. Slow, maddening, but divorced of any artifice or illusion. Just her and I. My girth stretched her open, her fingers circling rubbing at her clit. My other hand journeyed up her neck to the base of an ear, and I let a finger trace around it, then up the outer edge and down the other side. Her shivering reaction answered all I needed to do it again, whispering into her ear as my cock finally deep enough in her to draw the thrusts out slowly and deliciously. My hand left her breast and tangled in her fingers, twined like dancers alone in the spotlights.
   One lonely woman and one lonely man, searching for meaning in the sea of the senses, singing the song that had no beginning or end. I pulled out as far as I could, letting her feel every fraction leaving her, then in again as deep as her body could handle. Time drew out, held in a hall of mirrors, reflected beyond the reach of the senses. Without barriers, without lyric, we gave ourselves over wholly invested and with each breath a fortune. Her tail undulated and shivered, her legs shook, and each stolen word pulled her brain and body back to landscapes she’d long denied herself.
   The pressures built, and slow wasn’t enough anymore. Time had eroded the last time I’d buried myself like this in a woman or her thrall. It was mild at first, a tickle across the skin, but the current pinpricked flesh and shouted in the back of the old animal portion of the brain this to be what clarity demanded, amplified and rectified beyond capacity. I thrusted deeper, pushing and rolling us so I pinned her to the bed with legs splayed, angling her hips so that my cockhead pushed against her back walls and the curve of my shaft did likewise for the front. Gripping tight, I pushed her arms up and apart.  I had her spreadeagled and trapped. Prey sounds trickled from her, predator’s growls and grunts flowed from me as I took the prize I’d snared and dragged into the shadows to consume. Her limit reached, my heart hammered, and I filled her with raw seed, the animal satiated.
   
“Wow. Didn’t know that.” A mirror to the side reflected light from outside on her but not me, making her angelic.
   “Now you do. I wouldn’t have gone out alone. Too dangerous.”
   “And it doesn’t frighten you that the minute you’re alone with someone, it could become dangerous? You’re too trusting of people.”
   “Cynicism is for people that need a bit more hope in their lives.”
   “Why hasn’t something like this been all over the news? What if it started being tall girls, or blondes too? This isn’t the kind of thing a rational person ignores no matter who it is. Whether you’re new to the area or not, this is what the police should be doing instead of ticketing parking meters downtown, right?”
   “Good luck. Really. I got myself caught up the the ESSA as a freshman, but it’s little more than a puppy party. Sorry, but it is, and I get to say that because, you know, ears and tail. If they weren’t stuck so hard that there’s not blood left for their brain, they would do something useful that isn’t whining about the imaginary ghosts stepping all over their tails. They’re just going to get in the way of people trying to solve this. Girls have died, and I can bet you that it’s more than three. That’s just the ones I know of. Whoever’s doing this could have picked a few girls just coming home from a nine-to-five or maybe one drifting through town.”
   “Still, downer. And scary.”
   “Still, reality. Sooner or later they will catch the guy, and everyone will breathe easier. There’s so much opportunity for bad things to happen, I want to forget about all of that when things go right and people are nice, and I am so full of cum.”
   “Satisfied then?”
   “Not with the world, not a chance in hell. My glass is empty, and there’s nothing you and I can do except be the animals we are—lusty as we stare at the last moment. Whatever was in those little pills, it’s making me feel like I’m in the middle of teenaged hormones and making it worse. If you’re ready for round two, I can ride that cock this time and you can have a break.” She mounted me with a dancer’s grace and slid down with the same gasp as the first time. “Just get your hands on my ass right the fuck now and show me how you want me to ride.
   Somewhere in this, the bestiality became revelatory.
   
I decided as soon as I woke up the morning had arrived too soon. For once in the past few weeks I remembered a dream that didn’t seem bad. Coffee wafted in through the open bedroom door. I moved unsteadily, getting worse with each sip of the first cup, so it was a relief when Tahlia messaged minutes before knocking on the door.
   “What the hell is wrong with you?” Her hand turned my face side to side, squatting in front while I sat slumped forward. “I need you whole today, not looking like a sack of dissolved guts.”
   “Managed to get up without help. Coffee’s not helping any. Just one?”
   She sighed at my stupidity, and went to the counter. The jeans this morning were tight and blue, the shirt sleeveless and as green as her eyes. It’s not polite to stare at a woman’s ass, but I did it anyways and suffered her glares when she turned, catching me in the act.
   “Let’s see. This one was what you were taking?”
   “Yeah.”
   She looked at the back, whistling. “Amazing what you can get for a few bucks if you go inside to pay for your gas. This is some pretty strong stuff.” She rattled one out, and watched while I downed it with the last of that cup of coffee. She helped herself to a cup, didn’t keep her voice low while opining on my caffeine choices, and waited for me to kick into first gear.
   Tahlia was still looking through everything on the counter after I completed the trial of boots and pants. “You take way too much shit. I’m amazed you get up in the morning and make it to work, or have the strength to pin me.” She swept a selection of bottles into a bag. “If you ate real food instead of this endless parade of shit you’d have more energy, and wouldn’t need half these supplements.”
   “I had this nasty thought the other night. You’re bossy. Unless you got solutions...”
   “You call out?”
   “Not yet.”
   “Do it while I drive. I’m glad you needed that pill. It’ll make Doc’s job a bit easier.”
   Luckily, I got Harold directly, and that the pill helped as I talked. Good stuff. Each word felt easier than the last.
   “What’s happening, man?”
   “Feeling a bit off. Got a friend taking me to see a doc.”
   “You’ve never pulled the too drunk excuse so I’m giving you this one for free.” His silence after wasn’t long. “Put me on speaker.” I did it and Tahlia didn’t flinch. “Hello, Ms. Trouble.”
   “Good morning, Mr. Bossman.” No hiding. It wasn’t as though she could fake a human voice.
   “You taking care of him because you care, or are you trying to play some game? Pitting people against another?”
   “Do you remember what I said to you before?”
   “Loud and clear. And you?”
   “I’d be dead if I hadn’t learned to listen long ago. Do one thing for me, or not. But I think you’ll be interested in this. Moreso since your conscience will be clean.”
   “That would be?” Harold’s tone was the same from last evening.
   “Keep track of the news today. Something’s going to happen. If it goes wrong, it’ll be worse than night before last. I’d prefer that only the wicked get hurt.” The only sound was the car engine.
   “Our definitions might not match up.”
   “Agreed. But you can keep your ears and eyes open. Everything after that is up to you.”
   The phone cut, and I tried to make a few connections. Tahlia’s right ear twitched in annoyance.
   “What the hell was that?”
   “Just dropping a few hints. He doesn’t want to stick his neck outside the door and see what’s happening. He pays his taxes and thinks his duty to society is paid. No matter what he feels in his heart, it’s not his war. I gave him the chance to feel better. Today’s going to be rough for some, your bossman will bite, and he’ll do it.”
   “How can you be sure?”
   “I can’t, but I made it clear when we talked last time that if the shit ever hit the fan, it would affect his paycheck before it did my take out of the club. On that subject, I wasn’t going to mention it, but Abernathy stopped by last night with a few deputies. Seems all three of those boys tipped him off, and he came running. No one admitted to anything, so all of them are going to behave for a while. Miracles never cease.”
   She dropped the conversation and left me wondering what other schemes she had ready.
   Her car was way too fast for in-city driving. She cut down one main road, then turned onto a wider one. Businesses raced past until intersections started branching into residential areas. Turn, several streets, turn, repeat, until she pulled into an average looking house that had a few additions to make it bigger than the rest of the neighborhood. The woman that answered a side door was in a tidy checked cotton dress, a single pendant on a necklace, dark brown and cinnamon shot with enough gray to make her dappled. She was old as hell, shriveled, wrinkled, and not even five feet tall. But Tahlia deferred to her as she bustled us in and back to a small exam room.
   I sat a plain chair, Tahlia faced me on another, and the old doctor rolled between on a wheeled stool. She gathered herself in the self-importance that takes a few years of school to achieve.
   “Now, dear girl, you know that I don’t advertise for human clients. And not even 7AM, so what’s so important that you bring your newest chewtoy to me for a checkup?”
   She had a hard time staying composed. “He. Is. Not. My. Chewtoy.” Her ears were flat back and the older woman giggled in a way that let me know there actually were some people Tahlia couldn’t bully or strike out at.
   “Well then, why come to Old Doc Leonora unless you wanted my advice? Smells healthy enough, upright and breathing. Can’t be that bad if he managed to get himself washed up this morning. Urgent care center down the road can see him when they open at 8:30.”
   “Just look him over. Got these from his counter, right next to an excuse for a coffee machine.” Tahlia passed the bag and stared daggers at me for making this trip necessary.
   The old woman slipped on a pair of reading glasses and looked over all the pills and vitamin supplements. She clicked her tongue a couple times, swiveled ears as she traced the labels with a finger, and then arranged the bottles in a few groups.
   “Name and age? How much coffee? Other caffeine? Any other prescriptions or recreational drugs? I’m assuming you had the normal course of shots as a kid?”
   She leaned close to sniff again, and I tried to lean away. The room resembled a normal doctor’s office, super clean with bins and cabinets everywhere, but it wasn’t like the ER or care center. For one, there was a large rack filled with bottles that I guessed were herbs. Then there was the old woman herself. I didn’t feel unsettled by a doctor like her, or that her kind would be doctors or mechanics or teachers. It was the foreign manner, like getting tossed halfway around the world with everyone still speaking English but new rules. Tahlia was brutally direct and easy to read. The old woman wasn’t. Her ears angled down a bit as if she listened to herself talking. And then...I started answering the questions and tried to remember something while she complemented my mother’s taste in names.
   “Umm. About a thermos or two a day, so maybe like two pots max. Not much else. Water’s better when you’re out in the heat. No special prescriptions, nothing illegal. Never had a reason to assume the standard shots got screwed up, and never gotten sick from just being around someone. A personal question: what does your necklace mean? I saw one exactly like it in a dream last night.”
   Aged ears swung full forward. When I turned to look, I caught shock playing across Tahlia’s face. The woman’s voice turned me forward.
   “It’s a very old design of a wolveshead charm. A protector. I keep the faith. Could he have seen yours, little one?
   “No. I haven’t worn it in a few years.” Behind the old woman, Leonora, I saw Tahlia’s ears back and wavering, then downcast.
   “You earned the right to it.”
   “I’m not enough, never have been.”
   “If you’re not worthy of it, then you argue almost no one has the right. You’re still young, but the songs of the Broken Church are in your blood.”
   The words...
   “Weird dreams, strange words, and I can barely remember them the next morning.” Both sets of eyes and ears turned to me.
   “No shit. Doc, what the hell is in those pills he’s been popping? Some of those bottles are kind of light. Like this. More than half empty.” The gas station bottle rattled as she thumped it back on the table. “I’m amazed he can sleep at night after one of these in the morning.”
   “Hmm. The ones that aren’t vitamins are little more than your standard stimulants but in a higher dose than normal. It’s not that healthy to take a lot, but in the short term he’s in no real danger from the amount in these. Long enough term, the standard potential kidney and liver damage, but that’s nothing special and a negligible risk unless he’s taking far more than a couple a day. Tell me if you recognize any of these things about yourself.”
   She turned to grab a stethoscope and blood pressure cuff while running off a long list. Tahlia kept a litany of comments on all things human in the background. I answered yes to a few as she checked my pulse.
   “The what, hyperfocus and sensory stuff, how extreme would that be?”
   She counted under her breath. “Not bad, not good. A little elevated but not out of the norm. You took one of these this morning?” The bottle from the gas station turned in her hand.
   “He did, else I’d never of gotten him walking and here.”
   “The result doesn’t smell like anything I’ve ever encountered. It’s as if they tossed the whole kitchen sink in there and hoped it would be enough to sell to everyone. As for your question, not much. You might feel as if it was easier to solve a puzzle after, or that you could smell a faint scent better, but anything still legal isn’t going to turn you into a superhero. Most that affect the nervous system just let you block pain or keep you going, a refined version of the fight or flight response. If you survive it, you can rest and recover, else you’re dead.”
   She leaned back and crossed her arms, ears back. Small comfort that she had a better bedside manner than Tahlia, even if she still suffered from chronic bossy female syndrome.
   Velcro rasped open in the old woman’s hands. “Let’s get that blood pressure. You’re probably fifteen points too high at least.”
   Which I was, on the dot.
   “So what the hell am I supposed to do? Take him home and make sure he doesn’t exert himself too much or pop more of those?”
   “That would be a start, though it’s usually better to taper off anything like this and drink more water than usual. Hold out your hand, son. This will be just a drop of blood. I’d be a fool if I didn’t check for a mild protein incompatibility. Most are asymptomatic anyways, one of nature’s fine gifts, else we’d never be able to be in the same room. You too, girl. Hand out. Pinky fine?”
   The red drop was less visible on the darker pad of Tahlia’s hand than the one on my flesh. She peeled open two packages, each with different symbols and marked for gender, placed a drop of my blood on each in the labeled spot, then reversed the order for Tahlia’s blood. The old woman hummed softly while each drop soaked into the disposable tests.
   “The wonderful thing about these is the fast answer. And that they let me know when someone’s too embarrassed to tell me something I need to know. Like that they decided a bit of kissing and more was better than the adult games a certain young lady plays at. Men are so much more fun, so I hope you stop coming to me to sidestep nature that much. He’s cute for a human. I don’t blame you for letting him bed you.”
   “What?”
   “A little less shouting, young lady. You’re not the first, and you’ll hardly be the last. Besides, you don’t keep male friends. You’re not antisocial, but any male you’ve ever kept close enough to you to be worth dropping by here before normal hours wouldn’t be a neighbor. One of these days you’ll learn us old women see with more than their eyes and nose. Ahh, almost ready.”
   It was a fresh and new experience. Tahlia pouted. Her nose twitched as her eartips bounced up and down while trembling along the back quarter of their arc.
   The old woman ignored childishness. “And clear, and clear, at least of the worst of anything. Minor incompatibilities, but nothing concerning unless the immune system is compromised, like yours is right now, Jacob. Just a second.”
   The woman stood to search among the rack of herb bottles, then crouched to look through even more in cabinets beneath. She was happy with herself. I’d seen Nicky and gang laugh with their ears before, but the joy the old woman took in needling Tahlia lapped wrong and then added speed.
   “Now there we are. I don’t keep all that much of this around. I usually need the reverse of it. This will give your body a chance to straighten out, or you could just stay away from her for a couple of days and be missing each other.  Oldtime home remedies were sometimes a steaming anti-scientific pile of, well, you know, but the ones that worked saved lives. Now we just need a bit of water. I’ll be back.”
   After she walked out, I stared at Tahlia and mouthed what the hell was all that about. She didn’t see the need for quiet.
   “Leonora wanted to check us for all the common things. Think of it like allergies, except person to person.” Then she muttered softly about weak custom compounds, charms, and people that couldn’t keep their noses out of other’s life. I didn’t want to tell her she was wrong. Secrets were safer to keep from your priest than the doctor. The old woman returned with a tray, pot and cups like it was time for tea or coffee.
   “Really, little one, you shouldn’t be embarrassed by such things. A perfectly virile male, a woman without a mate, put them together and biology happens. Not all of it, but almost everything.” She sifted a bit of the bottle into a cup, and added hot water. “If I was your age still I’d enjoy whatever the Goddess grants. I’m not one of those self-absorbed ones that think we shouldn’t enjoy a bit more companionship than just food and drink. Any man capable of making your toes curl...”
   Tahlia growled.
   “Oh, stop that. Two things. You’re just teaching him how sheepish you are of your feelings, and that he’d do well to muzzle you and give you a taste of your own medicine.”
   Her growl stopped dead. She wasn’t forgiving me easily for what came next. 
   “May have already done that.”
   The woman looked between the two of us, and let out a youthful laugh.
   “To be young and in love! Really! Almost ready here.” She took the cup, stirred and smelled it.
   “It was only once, Goddess motherfucking take! Once! I swear you’re worse than my mother!” Tahlia’s boot stamped the floor with the last word and her ears drew back and vibrated again.
   “Ease up on the cursing, child. Now let’s get this in you.” She handed me the cup. “Drink it quick, dregs and all.”
   It tasted bitter and astringent, but I downed it in one shot. It tasted about as vile as my worst pots of coffee.
   “Once! Damned pheromones! Can’t you smell how strong his are because of those pills?”
   “You’ll feel better in a couple days, son. And you. I’m not senile, my nose works just fine. He has a nice strong scent. So what?”
   “That’s not just strong, it’s...” The old woman waited for her to dig deeper. “Forget it.”
   “That’s better but not good enough. Sit outside and consider your worth, Tahlia, while he tells me about some of these dreams.”
   Stalk was a good word. She snapped up, and her tail swished back and forth as she left.
   After the door closed, Leonora sniffed at me again. Side to side, then by the ears and close enough to feel stray fur brush by.
   “She’s right, but that’s beside the point. Now that I can speak without riling her temper, and the girl is an expert in that, how did you meet her?”
   “The club, met her one night after I—”
   “Don’t need to know details on that, not unless I want to answer questions later. I’m just a doctor that saw you one morning, understand? Good. Now, these dreams. When did they start?”
   “Guess about two weeks ago.”
   “And how long taking these pills she’s worried about? Same?”
   “Those? About the same, but the rest...It’s just normal stuff, right? You don’t get strange dreams from a bottle of energy pills, do you, doc?”
   “And how long since that night at the club where you met Saskia?”
   “About two weeks...wait. Saskia?” It rang true, of a dream in different club. The dreams had faded fast each morning, except for the dread. Sound, song, hunt, take. “Saskia Castahlia? The girl, I dreamt of her last night. That was her name. Looked like Tahlia’s sister, less, you know, but the eyes were the same.”
   “That’s her full name, Saskia Castahlia Vujana. Never told you that, and she’d never shown you the old wolveshead. What else in those dreams?” Her eyes were pale from age but bright.
   “Can’t really remember. Vague dread. Some of it must be thinking of what happened to her friend. Amanda.”
   “Any detail could help.”
   “Nothing. Well, it felt like watching a movie, except you’re the character and the camera. Being hunted. Or hunting, no, stalking someone else. Creepy.” A shiver washed over me. “What about the thing you mentioned earlier. A broken church, was that like some wartime split? Because that’s what it felt like a bit. Fighting and being chased by the enemy.”
   She stayed blank and cold from the second I mentioned it.
   “If you’d like to learn, I’ll task that girl of yours. Don’t think you’d have heard of it growing up. Where did you say you were from?”
   “All around this damned state. Mostly counties that have more horses and cows than people. Does that matter much?”
   “Not a scrap of toenails. Except that you’re not going to find many humans that know about it unless they’re studying comparative religion of Europe around the age of the Reformation. What else?”
   Why do people get along? How?
   “Is there a reason someone would feel...no, that’s not right. You didn’t answer the question. A split. Fighting.”
   “You slept too much in whatever passed for a history class?” I nodded. “Thought so. It’s not like any high school history class is going into that much detail aside from the few biggest events of a century. We’re lucky now.”
   She’d avoided it for a second time. And it was something a smarter person would recognize, if just the name. Take three.
   “Hunted. That’s the key word. He was hunting like, well, hunting.” Leonora didn’t stop to ask who the he referred to. “Something happened long ago, and there’s politics and damnit now it sounds all conspiracy theory. OK, no more pills, cut the coffee, because the next step is drooling and being an unemployed amateur historian.”
   “Nice of you to save the world of that. You’ve finally figured it out. It’s all normal adult fears. Combined that with the usual fears of outgroups and strangers, and there’s your dreams. The rest, I can’t sell you those answers. Now, feel better? By this evening your immune system won’t be overreacting to her, and in a couple days you should be fine. Hotheads will settle down, and the worst thing I’ll worry about in public after November is a kid grabbing at my tail to wipe his snotty nose.”
   The old woman got up and led me out. “In here little one. Let’s see if I can’t blend you something to take the edge off for a few days. Or you could finally take an old woman’s advice.” She laughed at her own joke as Tahlia followed her back into the room.
   I waited, the minutes drawing out. The key was the charm. My phone barely helped. The first couple of things that pulled up were about it being used as a pan-siruean symbol, but only since World War II or so.
   The door opened. “If your vile teas didn’t work I’d never put up with this.” Tahlia wiped at her mouth, tongue hanging out.
   The old woman might have gotten a fine laugh at her expense. “Now, now. I’ve told you I don’t judge. Go, have some fun and stop being so prudish so I can drink my morning tea without dreaming up a husband hunting expedition for you.”
   It was late enough that the half-light of early morning pushed over treetops and homes. We got in the car and she pulled away as I belted in. Gelcaps and tiny pressed pills rattled in plastic like a hundred latin percussionists trying to be quiet instead of in time.
   “Time for breakfast? Was what she gave you as bad as whatever the hell kind of backwoods home remedy—”
   “Yes, and worse. I could smell yours. That was mild.” Her ears were forward and focused more on the road than me, but every time I spoke the right one turned a fraction.
   My head cleared, so time to figure stuff out while the brain wasn’t fighting the cock for blood. “There’s something going on here in the background. Crazy shit. History shit. The kind of stuff you probably have on your bookshelf. So cough it up.”
   Eyes forward, she navigated the early morning traffic before the worst of the rush hit. “What are you thinking?”
   “None of this question with a question crap. Come clean. Reformation in Europe. Being hunted. And again, Civil War era. Start talking.”
   “What do you know about the colonial history of America? I’ll need to frame this for you.”
   “Pilgrims. Indians. Bunch of people fighting, then the Revolutionary War.”
   “And the Pilgrims came to America because they were...”
   “Religious persecution?” Ominous dreams, like cleaning the land.
   “Good. Early European settlers didn’t encounter the siruean Native Americans immediately. Some of them were from areas that persecuted anything that wasn’t Catholic, or whatever the local ruler followed. A small amount of us from Europe moved here. Fresh start. By the time the war started, you had a real problem. Siruean fighting or allying with siruean. Humans versus humans, or not. It’s a wonder we declared independence and managed to not kill each other so some teasippers could keep their feet up. Then came the Civil War. Take a guess how a down on his luck sniffer could make a living, if he took his nose out some plantation owner’s ass long enough to smell something other than shit?”
   “Hunting?”
   “Good, we’ll make a scholar of you yet. Worst people back then, because you could get away with it, hunted. Hunted slaves, hunted sirueans, hunted kadisi that pissed off the plantation owners and tried to run. Eventually it faded to your garden variety revenge killings and lynchings. It’s dirty history, but there’s the red in the flag.” She turned on a smaller road that would cut past the worst traffic.
   “So what about now? Murders happen, someone kills someone, sometimes someone different.”
   “Gentle, but true. Part of the reason any minority will have a beef with the cops is the higher rate of murder. Others have high rates of in-group murder, but siruean and kadisi stats are really low on that. I’m several times more likely to be killed by a human than not. Think, if those pills aren’t clouding your head too much. All it takes is one fuckup for people to forget all the good you did. All it takes is one unsolved murder. All it takes is one stupid kid that won’t listen. All it takes is one mistake.”
   The wheels kept turning, and I saw a plaza approaching, several restaurants promising food.
   “People make mistakes, and sometimes they have to learn.” The best I could offer, because she was right—history was dirty and violent.
   “And once in a while, you have to put aside peace and pick up the sword to protect.” She sniffed, and a tear swelled at the corner of her eye. The car pulled into an entrance and then a parking spot. Her hand moved off the wheel, and she reached over to place my hand in hers. “If I hadn’t have had you with me, there’s a chance my rage would have boiled over the lessons I was raised on. I would have gotten a gun, and ended Abernathy and his crew with a few pulls of the trigger. And I’d be dead now.” She looked at me, eye to eye, unapologetic. “I want to be whole. I want something more than the fears lurking outside. I refuse to back down. I will be what I was meant to. Maybe it’s time I listen to my elders on one thing.”
   If I’d never come back to this state, I wouldn’t have had this chance. She wouldn’t have had the chance.
   Her hand let go of mine and pulled a necklace from the tiny front pocket of her jeans. The braided leather cord and silver arrowlike charm in a circle dangled from her fingers, intricate but handmade. The etching on it didn’t exactly match the doctor’s. The wolveshead.
   She slipped it over her head. “Breakfast, then work.”
   
I had a bad track record recently with food in the morning if I’d jumped out the door and hit the road already. The place had enough business to look normal, the traffic zipped outside safely, and the coffee’s aroma scored better than good. A few businesspeople, some students, and a smattering of regulars dotted the tables. One guy along the wall worked on a laptop while eating. Tahlia glanced as we walked in, and then ignored him. He had plenty of gray to go with his age, and combined with his suit and posture it screamed lawyer.
   Tahlia fingered a napkin repeatedly, confirming that she was watching him in the reflection from the window. “Eat whatever you think you can keep down, even if you have to resort to soup.”
   “Soup for breakfast? I’ll pass. I’m feeling better already. Whatever that swampwater was, it’s doing something.”
   “If she wasn’t that good, I wouldn’t have taken you there.”
   “Because of what she said? You don’t seem like you let much of anyone talk to you except how you want.” She sighed and that’s all I needed to know, a long story that wasn’t going anywhere.
   Coffee arrived, then food. Tahlia dug into bacon and eggs, and I added pancakes to that. It was a nice place even if pricy for breakfast. At least the staff happily served anyone that had pants, shoes, and cold cash. I ate quickly, and began to notice others talking. At first I worried what I couldn’t hear was about the ordinary man and the siruean woman, but the voices didn’t seem aimed at us. Fragments jumbled on top of each other. Someone recognized the lawyer, and the voices grew louder with the words more heated.
   He pretended not to hear it, left money for his check on the table, and collected his stuff.
   One woman got up behind him. Then a man. Then others. All human. 
   We turned in concert, with a clear view of the parking lot and the road outside. Morning traffic flew by, racing to beat the 9AM buzzer and flag.
   By the time he reached a gleaming two-seat convertible, a crowd of a couple dozen had emptied from the restaurant and a few others adjoining. He started the engine, but between revs of it the crowd had moved to shouting. He pulled out in a screech of rubber, narrowly missing two women, and right past the stop sign onto the road and into morning traffic.
   A semi-truck hit the sports car square in its driver side.
   The car flipped into the air, landed on two wheels, then rolled over upside down. Glass spidered, plastic shattered and metal folded into an origami coffin. The world was forced quiet after the gunshot, and tiptoed back in slowly with the call of sirens.
   “Tahlia.”
   “Hmm, Jacob?”
   “Next time, pick a place without a show.”
   She pinched her muzzle at the bridge and rubbed her eyes. “This is worse than your sensitive stomach. I am so not responsible for it or other people’s driving.”
   “Rush hour accidents tend to be that. They’re a mess all over the place.” My brain stuck on the instant replay. “What do you mean, worse?”
   “It’s a wonder you can tell the difference between the food and the plate. Look across the street.”
   I followed her finger to a billboard. Lawyers, and the third in a group of four smiled down stiffly on a crumpled car below.
   Never underestimate the power of the truth.
   Facts. Experience. Success.
   Well, shit.
   She paid the bill as I wandered outside to rubberneck. Cops routed traffic around, trying to get cars off this stretch of road. A mobile news crew zoomed into the next-door lot and in a blink I heard them beginning to shoot. Shouting. The small crowd hadn’t dispersed and ran to confront the camera.
   “All we want is an explanation! Why are they still hiding? How many more innocent people will die in the next week? Two weeks?”
   Tahlia came up behind, tapping me on the shoulder. “Time to go. Let’s pick up some stuff from my place.”
   
Ten minutes later we were halfway to her place along every neighborhood cutthrough she knew, and I felt the first real and wonderful bonds of a loving relationship. Somewhere, your partner is absolute crap at something and you should keep them from that at all costs. Some people are disasters in the kitchen. Some shouldn’t be allowed in a hardware store. Tahlia had a nice string of unintended consequences, and I would bet more than the wager against Nicky that a few people put pieces together that she’d set loose. Big difference between embarrassing or publicly shaming a politician, and being a link in the chain that ended with a t-boned convertible.
   She pulled a handheld police scanner from under the seat and let it squawk and chatter. The background noise acquitted anyone from talking.
   The car popped out of a side street across from her place, and she did her best imitation of a normal person with no reason to look for any cops hidden in driveways. Her calm held until the door closed behind. She rapidly sorted through an incomprehensible pile of stuff on her computer table, ears flat and shoulders already tired.
   “Not that. Might need that, and that. Shouldn’t need that there. Too complicated, need it simple.”
   “What are you going on about?”
   “I need two things. First, a backdoor into their system. That’s the hard part. I can’t be the one to do it because I’ll stand out like a wet dog that’s gotten skunked. Once you bluff your way inside, the rest will be simple to talk you through. After that, I’ll go in the side door to get the docs. If I can fuck with their security system, it’ll be a cakewalk and I can be out soon after you.”
   “So...who has them and where?”
   “Easy. Dead lawyer had them. Assume his office. Also, I’m assuming only two people had the safe combination. Him and one of the other partners if it was relatively safe stuff, but him and a secretary if he needed to insulate the other partners. Secretary means bad security, aka either a physical note with the combo, or she kept a password file on her computer. Security is only as good as the dumbest person in the organization. Now this, this is what I was looking for.”
   She held a slim black plastic block, a grin, and a set of cables in the other hand like a whip.
   “Right. You’re going crazy. This is one of those bad spy movie batshit ideas. Or worse, a Bond movie.”
   “You’d make a fetching Bond. You’ve got the good girl with moi, the bad girl, and we’ve got gadgets galore. Portable hard drives and USB thumb drives. Firmware updaters and crossover cables. Bluetooth and more. Have a sense of fun. Batshit ideas are a great defense mechanism in nature.”
   
By 9:30AM a muscle car pulled into a sizable lot west of the worst of the city’s traffic. The smell of money from the landscaping, mirrored glass, and shitty overpriced artwork overpowered the AC filter. The shirt felt constricting even though she said it fit perfectly. The blame laid on my build, according to her. They didn’t make shirts like this with fatassed blobs of gamers or her rugged man in mind. She reviewed, I clipped on the earpiece and let it connect to my phone. The call came through, and I heard Tahlia’s voice in my ear as well as beside. Her disguise fit better, but I was too nervous to think of how she looked in it. Dark slacks and a medium blue shirt made a nice business casual combo, and with her hair tied into a messy bun she tiptoed on the borders of normal looking. That was, if you didn’t notice the hair.
   “Remember, I can hear everything you do. I replaced the mic in that set so that it’ll pick up everything around you instead of just your voice. Just let me talk you through it. Once more...because if I’ve forgotten something here we’re not going to have the time to make something up.” She sighed.
   “Awake and aware. You already said it, this is just identifying what you think is in there, plugging in a few things, getting out. Right?” I scored a hit with easier said than done when she repeated herself for the sixth time, and worried how much of this was overpreparation and how much not.
   “Details. I got partway into their system last night but covered my tracks. Even though I could have put a backdoor in, if something went wrong and this guy is smart he’d figure out what happened. If I did it from inside, however, and he never saw evidence of a hack later, he’d have no reason to go looking more than the usual in the first place. First, that backdoor into their network, preferably at two points. I can set the second up later today, but slapping the first on his machine is like tailing a lazy cop. He’ll be too arrogant to look behind himself. Second, I need a backdoor on one of their switches. Even if they find everything I have you do, they’ll never detect a hack hiding as something they’d already whitelisted. It’s like changing someone’s locks so that their old key will work, but so will your skeleton key.”
   The plan was crazy but simple. Once I got moving my sweat and camera over the entrance agreed. Not simple enough.
   The doors slid open, and I walked through with a small canvas duffel bag full of computer tools, disguised with a baseball cap pulled low and matching company polo shirt, both embroidered. Whatever or whoever she’d done to get her hands on them, she’d gone through the trouble of washing them first. Next time I’d tell her to nix a windbreaker that would be easier to move in. Large reception desk front and center, with the law firm’s logo behind. There had to be at least a dozen sets of flowers on the sides of the desk and dead center, no two alike and with different pots. Two women sat behind the desk, one on the phone and the other watching as I walked up. My phone in hand, I said out loud that I’d arrived and was getting directions. I repeated what Tahlia said in my ear to the watching woman.
   “Hi. Charlie sent me by to check on the problem that got called in. I was told one of the switches. Said it won’t take more than twenty minutes and no one will notice anything.”
   “Good. They were supposed to send someone yesterday, and then told us it would probably be Monday.” The receptionist pointed to her left. “Down that hall, third on the right. Mark is in a meeting. Should I let him know?”
   A sign-in list sat on a clipboard. I ignored it, hoping I didn’t have to leave an obvious trace.
   “I don’t know who these freaks are. Ask if Mark is the IT manager and then say you don’t really need him, that you’re on the phone with the office and coordinating.”
   “You don’t need to disturb Mark. He’s the IT guy here? Got the office in my ear and just need to coordinate with them.”
   “Well, thanks and thank God it’s Friday. Except not. I’ll apologize in advance if some of us seem a bit down this morning. One of our partners passed this morning in a car accident. Mr. Barry was like a father and family to so many of us.” She didn’t sound supremely broken up, more like she hoped the wake had an open bar with plenty of the good stuff.
   “Sorry for your loss. Accidents are so sudden.” I’d feel OK about what happened if it turned out this guy was a scumbag on top of being a lawyer.
   Tahlia growled in my ear. “Stop flirting with that bitch and take the third right before I play ping-pong with your nuts.”
   The short walk gave me time to think. Intrusive thoughts of love started scratching the same itch that sex had. We’d fucked up royally by making me the calm one. Her affection came out in strange ways.
   Those crazy stories that got swapped over lunch or a few beers no longer sounded inflated. If anything, I’d outdone half the crew on my own. I’d fucked up good by getting involved, but the window for cashing out had closed for the day. One more day, then tell her to dial it back. I couldn’t break my word and skip town. Convincing her neither of us needed to lose our jobs due to felony convictions, so simple. In order to do that, I needed to walk out of this building.
   The third right ended up being a crowded room, maybe fourteen feet by fourteen. Along one wall, a long desk with a series of computer monitors looked like Tahlia’s setup. Opposite a trio of racks with wide but not tall equipment had enough wiring to make an electrician stiff. At the end a narrow set of shelves overflowed with books, technical looking titles, loose papers, and a few toys. I pulled out the chair and reported in.
   “Good. First, I need the machine that’s going to be mine. Tap the shift key on all the keyboards on his desk.”
   “Done.” The Mission:Impossible theme, the original in 5/4, started thudding through my head like a cannonball fantasizing about being a lithe pinball.
   “How many groups of monitors came on?”
   “Two. Uhh, they’re asking for passwords.”
   “Do any of them look like what you’d see on your laptop?”
   “Big nope.” I wanted better directions, but having intact testicles later was more important.
   “Any of them show an apple?”
   “What? Yeah, the left one.”
   “OK. Look on the desk and under it. About ten inches tall and looks like a tasteless big black ass-raping to your wallet. Least they could have done is make it look unique, like, oh say, a Cray.”
   It had the shiny look of a sports car that would make fun of a large mudstained pickup truck, and an attitude because it was a midget to boot. “Got it. What now.”
   “Take out the blue thumb drive. Plug it in and let it reboot the machine.” Her voice sounded like she’d associated the machine with whatever her least favorite customers looked like, and nothing in the bag looked like her portable drive from earlier.
   “That’s it?” I turned the miniature thing around and found the USB ports. “It’s doing something. What else?”
   “The easiest part. Now you play network tech, and make me a second hole to get through. Turn around, look for something with one of these logos.”
   One of them matched up. After I read off model numbers, a voice interrupted. “Hey. They told me you weren’t coming til next week. And by the way, another switch bricked last night.” He was younger than me, somewhat overweight, thinning hair and beginner’s beard, a polo, and with a laptop under his arm.
   “Tell him you’re early. Don’t elaborate. This is the one guy I can’t bullshit.”
   “They sent me today. Someone can’t tell their days apart.”
   “Heard that. Doesn’t matter if they’re all workdays, though. If you can get one of them up we’ll be OK. No matter how you try to protect it, Florida will kill hardware, right? I’m going to head down the street and grab coffee, stay out of your way. Back in about twenty?”
   “Should be done by then.” I had no fucking idea how hardware died, except a dozer would do in a pinch.
   He shuffled away, and I heard her breathing again. “OK, work quickly. Almost no one does this shit right, not even the passwords, if they get paranoid and restrict or disable remote administration. Everyone’s going to claim they secure their install, but idiots always like an insurance policy for one stupid mistake. Have to hope he’s made one of the common mistakes. Grab the dongle with the same logo, and make sure the USB drive hasn’t fallen off.”
   Whatever the equipment was, queen geek’s stuff was better. Techs must prefer simple and automated over mouthbreathers that shouldn’t be operating a staple gun. A green light came on after only a minute, and she told me how to reset the box of blinking lights. I pushed for permission to unplug everything, pack up, and get out before the fatass came back with something that I couldn’t call coffee.
   “You did great, they’re morons. Time for me to get our treasure. I’m at the back door. I’ve got maybe five minutes, ten at most to do this. If you hear any kind of alarms stay put and leave when you’re clear. Get to the car and wait for me, fifteen minutes. Keys are under the floormat. There a card for a duBois in the glove compartment if you need to bail me out.”
   I made it out of the cramped room and re-entered the lobby to find the flowers had multiplied onto the floor in front of the desk, and the reason I preferred using backdoors to enter anywhere unsafe. Abernathy, his flunkie, and his goon were walking in flanked by a pair of sheriff’s deputies. He wore as light of business casual as he could get away with in the heat. Despite the flunkie’s sloppily ironed polo and khakis, he’d managed to hide the worst of a red-eyed multi-day drug binge from everyone else. The she-goon scanned the room in a dark pantsuit that failed to conceal her physique or demeanor. Sharp, golden eyes were the only pair of the five that seemed to be paying attention to anything not in front of her, so it wasn’t a surprise that she targeted me as soon as her eyes passed over.
   She broke from the group and strode up to me, staring up slightly and letting her nostrils flare. Up close and not tired, she clearly had about an inch on Tahlia if her taste in footwear was similar. Inexperience and the casual disguise had allowed me to mistake her for Amanda. Pushing nervousness down, I became the ruse returning the favor. I had reason to be here.
   “Here to work on the computers.” I tapped the embroidery at my breast and tried for a smile.
   She circled around, the rest of her group almost twenty feet away. Abernathy crossed his arms. The flunkie checked his watch, and the one partly concealed by her sleeve might have been the same, a touch small on his wrist and a bit too imposing on hers. I swore one of the deputies said she was either sniffing for drugs again or in heat. Front and center again, golden amber eyes set between backturned ears stared at me.
   She whispered, too soft for anyone else to hear. “Bullshit.”
   “Uhh, Mark, the IT guy, he left to get coffee a bit ago. And they saw...” I jerked a thumb at the reception desk.
   “He did come in about fifteen minutes ago or so. We both saw him.” Her voice was shaky, the she-goon’s attention on her.
   “What’s in the bag?” Demanding, like Tahlia, but moreso.
   “My gear. Listen, this is just a quick service call.”
   “Open the bag.” Without stepping closer, she felt that much more invasive.
   “What the hell? No. People got rights. Search warrants and stuff.”
   She called my bluff. “Call the company. Do it.” She repeated herself, and the receptionist dialed, praying softly for no more drama this morning.
   I counted down the time in my head. Tahlia was silent, but hopefully with hers on to monitor the happenings. I delayed, and the only reason she-goon hadn’t told the deputies to grab me was she didn’t have a positive ID on me. Close, but she wouldn’t risk being wrong.
   “They’re on the line.” A mousesqueak voice cut my thoughts off.
   “Describe him.” How long had it been since since Tahlia started her run?
   Mark walked back in as if on cue, past a few people outside the building. “Hey, I picked up a little extra! Mocha for each of you and a black for my new friend.” He walked past the deputies, deposited two clear plastic cups of liquid candy on the front desk, then saw the scene as he turned around. “What’s going on here?” He wasn’t as vapid as he seemed a few seconds before.
   She turned so that both Mark and I were visible to her. “You know him?” Goon-bitch nodded to me.
   “Girls told me he got here, well, about twenty minutes or so ago to see if we could get some of the hardware running again. Minor problem, try the easy things first and eliminate stuff so you can break it down. You know? Nothing to worry about.” I added the god, or was it goddess, of clueless fools to my growing pantheon.
   “Did he sign in?” She pivoted back to me. “Did you sign in?”
   Mousesqueak managed again. “No.”
   “Must have forgotten. Nothing big, done here anyways. Like he said, nothing big, just trying to make it through the day.” I went to step around her. 
   “Freeze.” I ignored that.
   “This isn’t the only place...” It must have been close to five minutes, just make it out the door and start running like hell.
   She spun and her fist connected in my stomach, knocking the wind out of me, then a second hit square in my face, the headset flying off as I staggered for balance.
   I hit a wall and slumped down it, hoping Tahlia heard and that she made it out of the building.

Chapter Ten

I had to put up with Brian and Phillip. There’s only so many places to go, and things to do, in a smaller building. The computer had spit out the pick tickets and left me with no choice. I’d lost my temper when Alan had allowed Gina to update the parts database on Monday. Now I was paying for other’s mistakes and verifying the parts, line by line. If we could have scanned the codes like normal, then I could have used one of them to pull and gotten things together myself. I was faster, sober, and less prone to forget which bin my hands were in.
   “So, Jakey, how’s Caroline and the rest of the harem treating you?” I stared daggers at Brian and got treated to a display of idiot ninja skills. “How many is it up to now?”
   Lucas had run off to grab a few things the two motormouths got wrong, leaving me to Phillip’s opinions. “Well, besides Ms. Vacuum Cleaner, he’s got the pixie, that redhead...”
   “She’s a blonde that dyes it red.”
   “You been leaving mirrors on the floor again, B-Man?”
   “I know redheads, can smell them a mile away. Only thing worse than a bottle blonde is a fake redhead.”
   “Where was I?” The radio went from music to annoying DJ interrupting the advertised forty-plus minute block of music. “Damned tall and ugly has more women floating around him than a girls’ locker room.”
   I’d had it. “If you ever learned how to use your wit instead of your wallet, they might stick around longer than half an hour.”
   Gina popped her head around the corner. “Are we getting those out on time?”
   I marked another line as checked for item and quantity without looking up. “As long as we actually have stock. Go check with Rob, see if he sweet talked the thread cutter into working again.” Her overflowing perfume remained.
   “...next up, Disproportionate Retribution. Their new one should drop in a month or so, here’s the single they did for the Pluribus compilation. This is Autarchy.”
   The guitar and bass ripped through the punklike doubletime, the drums enough to show the early Motörhead influences and do them proud, every other line slowing to a chug with both vocalists shouting over power chords.
   “A man’s gotta stand, a man’s gotta work”
   “A man’s gotta have a voice of his own”
   “A man’s gotta fight, a man’s gotta bleed”
   “A man’s gotta speak for what he believes”
   “A nation needs to...”
   I counted parts from one sorting bin to another in time with the music,  zipping a full bin down the conveyor. Brian stopped taping up the previous box.
   “I never would have taken this for your music. They freak me the fuck out.”
   “It’s true, and good for working faster.” I stared him down until he went back to complaining and working, both poorly.
   “Heard Rob say you used to do the music thing. What happened, huh? Burnt out?”
   I lied. “Never did it. Picked up the lingo from the kids that did in high school. And music is cheap entertainment. It’s kind of like a puzzle in reverse.”
   “It’s a bunch of fucking noise.”
   “Like I said, it’s true and good for working faster.”
   “Fuck, you’re always going like that. They must have had some strange schools out in the swamps.” He picked the tapegun up again, the shhh and thrum of a better sound out of him.
   “Same schools as everywhere else, just a lot less money.”
   “That’s not what I meant. You actually get into that whole American myth thing. That must have been the one book the school library had.”
   “Remind me to drive you outside city limits and leave you there with your mouth running like that.”
   “They’d get along better with me than a band that’s two thirds tail. Same probably goes for wherever you grew up in Florida.” Phillip added a hell yeah while sliding another bin on the conveyor.
   “Don’t count on it. Some places, they dislike everyone. The difference is how they show it off. In the city, in Outer Redneckistan, wherever. I learned to hate that.”
   Phillip tagged in, and danced around in a shot for displacing Alan as the most offensive man in the building. “I never would have taken you for a bleeding heart liberal, Jakey. They must have run you out of town.”
   “I left. And you’d be surprised what’s on my voter ID.”
   “So what was the scoop? Or are you going to act like—”
   I cut him off and then Brian. “There was nothing there for me. No work, no life, and a family I wanted to get away from.” After a few seconds of a threeway staring contest, they broke and went back to work.
   What I’d left off had once been important. Why stand still and suffocate in a tiny corner? I had taken the little cash I had, set out, and made an oath to myself that I’d never be like the worst I’d seen growing up. The old litany was almost forgotten each time I dragged it out anew. I’d never be the drunk that couldn’t work. I’d never be the man that beat his woman into a hospital stay. I’d never be the man that ran from his kids. It went on and on. At eighteen it’s hard to admit you’ll never have a glamorous life, but when the mile markers to thirty start showing up having a job and a roof over your head starts to mean something. No matter how small I was in the grand scheme, I stood on my own feet. Caroline wasn’t perfect, but everyone is a fixer-upper. I had a small bit of savings, smaller now thanks to her. The last line of the litany echoed across the chasm. I’d never be the man that gives up and puts a gun in his mouth.
   The song moved to a breakdown that built in speed until they traded lines, the end of one blurring into the beginning of the next.
   “I’m not the only one you’ve got to worry about”
   “I’ll nail this to the door so you can’t ignore it”
   “You’ll never stop me from saying what I believe”
   “I don’t need anyone to grant me what I already see”
   “History never judges the crimes of victory”
   “Like lady justice it’s blind to the blood I bleed”
   “I’ll test myself, I’ll fix myself, I’ll rule myself”
   “And we’re not alone...we’re...united”
   Not one of their best, but good enough to piss off and piss on the ones that needed a golden shower.
   Alan poked around the corner this time, with a large bin fresh from Rob. “How many left?” I grabbed another empty bin and a half checked ticket.
   “I’ve got two to go, then the two that were waiting on that.”
   “Good. What Malcolm doesn’t know won’t hurt.” It wasn’t pleasant admitting he could be right at times. “What the fuck are you doing?
   He cut over to Brian, reopened the half-taped box, and shuffled through the parts with the pick list in the other hand. I waved to Phillip to keep going.
   “Damnit, Brian, there’s a time and a place to be stupid and this isn’t it. Let’s open them all back up and double-check.”

Chapter Eleven

It’s uncomfortable to wake up in the backseat of a police car, find your arms cuffed behind you, and accept the silver lining is you’d been seatbelted in. As I shook my head clear, that seemed to be how much worse the day had gotten. I tried some basic multiplication in my head, then tried a few other things to assure myself that even if I was headed to jail that I wouldn’t be a drooling idiot unable to fight back against the local chapter of the Incarcerated Man Love Society. It wouldn’t be long anyways, not with the cruiser flying down a wide residential street faster than the speed limit. Small victories, at least I had the seatbelt on.
   I decided to try for the most reasonable conversation. “Hey! Fur bitch, possible concussion, bet there’s a lawyer that’ll call that police brutality. Hope you’re driving this to the hospital.” He didn’t respond, increasing my certainty he’d been one of the two that saw the whole thing. “Fucking serious here. Don’t they give you guys pepper spray and batons so you can kick the crap out of people before a trial in a civilized way?” Still nothing, and the cruiser flew past an intersection and a church. “Get that phone call, and it’s L-A-W-Y-E-R time. Bet those bottom feeders don’t need Viagra when they’ve got shit like this happening. Wonder if they’ll gag you and give you a reach-around or spitroast you so you can dribble all over the carpet on your own.” Tahlia’s honesty didn’t work as well for me.
   Ahead the neighborhood faded to undeveloped land. With no other cars out on this stretch at this time in the morning, the cop sped up. My phone buzzed in silent mode with the ring I’d assigned to Tahlia’s number, leaving no time to brace myself before a thud and shot as both tires on the right side blew out from the recovery. The police car slewed further sideways and back a few times as it braked hard, and then went past the shoulder and into a large tree. 
   The dust from the airbag settled as the tension over my shoulder eased. I hadn’t decide whether my driver was officer of the month or I’d just experienced the latest in shakedown tactics, Adrenaline shot through my blood, the hiss of the car was like static, and the shade danced spastically against the sun that got past it.
   The car door clicked and the disoriented officer groaned as a shape checked him over, then opened the back door. Tahlia had a slick shiteatting grin, rattled a set of keys, and unbuckled me from the back. She ran around, opened the trunk and passenger side door, and returned with the bag of computer gear.
   “Come on. I’ll get the cuffs off later.” She wasn’t handicapped by restraints, the bag tossed in the backseat, and the door already open for me by the time I made it to her car a couple hundred yards away. She helped me sit, then got in. “Face out, just a second.” My right wrist slipped free, and I belted up as she gunned the engine into a squeal in the road.
   “What the hell was that?” I unlocked my other wrist and tossed the cuffs in the center cupholders.
   “Officer Dudley Do-Wrong forgot this is a nature corridor. He just whacked Bambi at better than 85mph before using a tree as a parking aid. Nice find, by the way. I’ve been wanting a real standard issue pair of cuffs for a while to complete my police officer uniform. Ooh, and they’re the coated ones that prevent the got dragged down asphalt for a few miles look. Thanks.”
   “Seriously? Did you at least get what you were looking for? The docs? If you didn’t, someone’s probably getting paid overtime to feed a paper shredder right now.”
   “I got everything. You got your wallet still?”
   I patted myself. “Yeah. Why?”
   “If they had it, your place might have a friendly officer stopping by later. We’ll empty as much as we can from my apartment when we get there, just in case. If Charlie did what I guessed he would, we’ve got a few hours if Abernathy decides to get a search warrant in his hands.” She turned the stereo on and let fragments of song keep time to the striped center line of the road.
   Bowie crooned. I was fine with her choice of music unless he touched a raw nerve. That’s one of the problems with British singers. They get clever with all that education.
   I pushed the button to turn it off after he started a conversation with Jasmine, none of the songs before or after any more comfortable, and she grimaced. “Too soon.” She accepted my low estimation of modern culture without argument.
   Scary counted as her preparing for it to be this bad, and good as walking away from the cruiser. She dropped me off to get my truck and follow her back, winding through neighborhoods. I ran up the stairs, got a large duffel shoved at me, and raced back down to toss it in the truck bed. Back up, and she repeated this a couple times. It felt like clothes and shoes.
   After four trips, I must have had a decent enough portion of her clothes and toys, because she recruited me to start taking computer equipment. Surprisingly, it was all light and tiny except for the big computer monitors she’d quickly cushioned in foam sheets and cardboard, held together with packing tape. Then there was a box of books, and her following behind with another.
   “Meet you back at your place.” She jumped in her car and drove off, windows down and radio loud.
   
The upside to having Friday off was that I didn’t have to deal with anyone at work. The downside to having Friday off was that instead of nursing a hangover or dealing with co-workers and their bruised testicles, I had today’s adventures. No matter how nice I considered her, I had a 50/50 chance on being unemployed come Monday. If there had been a plan beyond having me haul duffel bags from the parking lot to my bedroom, she hadn’t revealed it.
   The second upside was she’d made herself at home. The more business appropriate clothes had come off and she’d changed into a plain gray fitted crop top with some old denim shorts. She cocked an ear back at me for a moment as I closed the door, then returned forward. Her hair was up, her feet were flexing in joy of being barefoot, and she muttered while setting up her equipment in the tiny living room. The small table that rarely did more than host empty food containers and pizza boxes had been dragged to a wall to host two monitors and a computer tower to the side. Cables were scattered around while she sat crosslegged, the whisper of fans fought with the AC, and it wasn’t even noon but I needed a beer. Fuck, I’d earned it. That woman, no, complete bitch hit hard. One of the bottles Tahlia didn’t sweep off the counter this morning was good old extra strength Vitamin I, and I’d be lucky if four was enough. Besides, if she’d kicked me instead, I’d be handcuffed to a hospital bed right now.
   The fridge door popped open to the bachelor landscape, barren except for beer, lunchmeat, and a few odds and ends. “Want one? Beer?”
   She kept at her mess of cables and hardware. “Sure. How much of that pisswater you have in the fridge? And lunch?”
   “Enough, but not much food. Sorry.” I closed the fridge door and grabbed a bottle opener.
   “Well, order us some more of that pizza. Tell them to send that cute cinnamon boy again.”
   “Excuse the question, but what the everloving fuck?”
   She turned around. “Jealous? I’m going to use whatever I need to motivate him. He gets a little tease, you get the rest later. I’ve got a plan, I just need some tinder for the fire.”
   I made a mistake in telling her to be honest but not having a plan to curb her dominatrix tendencies. “This sounds like a dash of Tahlia is bored and wants to push people’s buttons.”
   “Half right. When you opened the door for him the other night, describe his reaction in one word.”
   “Shocked.”
   “Exactly. Even if he wasn’t one of those ESSA kids, chances are he knows enough of those puppies. And one of the best ways to irritate a puppy is to let them see a prime piece of tail with someone that isn’t them. But the reaction you’d get is different. Self absorbed ESSA kid, maybe he loses his cool a bit and forgets Customer Service 101. That kid had already heard something about the clash. Maybe he saw something, but he wants to prove to his manhood to me. So he’s grateful for the big tip, the bit of a show, yet I’d bet he went home and jerked off thinking about you fucking my brains out later that night.”
   “Except that’s not—”
   “Loverboy, the mind is a powerful thing and you are culturally inept. What would you think if you were at the club and you saw a human girl with a pawprint tattoo grinding on some tail, then leading him to the back?”
   “It’s a free country.” The sight of Alex walking to the back with a brunette flashed before my eyes, among other things.
   She sniffed. “That’s not good enough. Your friend, maybe he’s been chatting about it all night. You know how guys bullshit. Next day she’s dropping him off at work, and you can’t get away from the recap.”
   I didn’t respond because nothing would sound OK.
   “Listen to me. It’s not some kind of world-ending racism to refuse to join the PC bandwagon and say every girl out there should try every kind of dick possible. Because if it was, no one would really be able to claim they aren’t racist. I can’t read your mind, but your reaction was in the same range as that kid. Some people fetishize it, some people accept it as long as they don’t have to watch it, but the more a woman goes against her kind the more of a backlash she’s going to get. Luckily we don’t kill each other left and right anymore. You’re my first human despite years of having the chance to try it, and we’re a pair of hypocrites, pot and kettle. Just go a little easy on the other hypocrites.”
   I didn’t like thinking about it, whether in the past or now. “Then there’s a big apology in order here.”
   “Consider it accepted. It’s not as though I pat girls like Tracy on the head. She’s the brunette your friend chose. Complete knotfreak at nineteen, but she’s not on drugs and she can’t get knocked up while she’s working on her degree during the day. She just has a bad habit of stealing all the tail.” The beers sweated in my hands. She sighed. “Just a pair of horrible people, we are. Bring those beers over here and let’s read some of this while we wait for the pizza. Tell ’em to be here in thirty.”
   I sat down on the couch after and she sat beside me, the first of the manila folders open on our laps. Just before the pizza arrived she ran to the bedroom and strode back out with the now infamous trouble on my mind look and lacking a bra again.
   “Just follow the script. Remember, I’m good at this.” She collected the two empty beer bottles and grabbed plates and paper towels, humming to herself.
   Knocks on the door. “Pizza.” Sounded like the same kid too.
   She walked over, staring through the peephole with one hand behind her back as if she had a ghost of an itch. Whatever her plan, the wiggle of her head to see more to each side ended at her neck. The lock clicked open and it was game time.
   “That’ll be be nineteen...” He looked up, never making it up to her eyes.
   Her left arm gripped the door at the top and the rest of her stretched out in curves, one leg cocked and tapping toes on the floor. He got an eyeful and I let it drag out for about ten seconds.
   I cleared my throat. “Put it on the counter. Thirty, keep the change. Worth it to keep her happy.”
   The kid managed to make it to the counter without tripping over himself, eyes never gyroscoping off of her tits. He palmed the bills and took three tries to get them in his pocket, murmuring a shaky thanks. Tahlia slunk over and played her finger along the jawline, hooking him under the chin.
   “Come here, cutie. We’ve got a few questions.” She led him to the recliner, pushed him backwards in it, and straddled him just like she would any other mark at the club.
   Except this kid sure as fuck wasn’t twenty-one yet, and he looked young enough to still be underaged. They used to let kids do delivery at sixteen back when I was that young. She swayed a bit, and the kid swallowed hard. Fantasy was one thing, but a hungry man-eater with a prey scent up her nose wasn’t safe. Her necklace waved at the perfect length to dance back and forth over the swell and curve of her top, hypnotizing like a snake in a basket.
   “Be nice to him. By the way, what’s your name? Easy questions first. She’s in a really good mood, so don’t worry about anything.”
   His ears twitched nervously, everything else so frozen he barely croaked the answer. “Benjamin. Sir.”
   “Well Benjamin, the fine piece of ass you’re getting to ogle right now, aka Tahlia, wanted to know a little bit more. Also, you are at least eighteen? No one wants to do that whole minor indecency thing, you know? Now, you said the other night was a bit rough. How was it last night and so far today?”
   He broke free of the vista of Tahlia and stared at me, then at her when she swiveled his head back. “Turned eighteen a few months back, sir. And it’s been crazy. Lots of cops out today. Saw at least six of them, and it’s not that long of a drive.” He gulped.
   Next one. “There was a nasty accident on the other side of town. That hurting you guys on the road?”
   In one fluid move she pulled her top off and leaned over him, arms caging him in the chair. The wolveshead smacked him square in the face, then his voice muffled slightly because he was half a hand away from motorboating Tahlia’s cleavage.
   “Not really, sir. Store out that way said they’re almost done cleaning that up. Glad I’m not there today. Friend texted me and said that the cops are stopping for anything and getting quota for the next few months.” He tried to glance at me again, and Tahlia immediately turned his head back with an annoyed click of her tongue.
   “Go easy on Benjamin.” Time for the hammer between the eyes. “Did you know the girl that’s been missing, Amanda?”
   “Yeah...” The kid had found a way to look pale and blood-drained through summer-trimmed fur.
   I improvised. “Good friends, or you knew her through someone else?”
   “Umm, my brother is a year ahead of her. And I’m starting college classes in the fall, sir.” He tried to swallow again. “It’s not that big of a city. You know how if you don’t know someone, you’ve got friends that do?”
   “Do you recognize me?” Tahlia’s voice was husky and cold honey thick as she changed from swaying to grinding circles.
   “Y...yes, ma’am. I mean, you used to, your hair, it...used to be...purple, maybe. The older guys, you know, talked...talked about you.”
   “Don’t call me ma’am. I’m not that old. Acceptable terms of address are mistress, goddess, queen, and She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. I don’t have the time to punish all those filthy older men you work with, but what were they saying about me, cinnamon bun?”
   “That you were...were a nasty, nah...ballbusting...piece of tail. At...at the...club, mistress. And...and that they wanted...collar you...”
   “Well, no man has ever made me truly submit. And you’re better than them. Most boys know my reputation and don’t have the balls to say something like that to me.” She stood, unbuttoned and slid the shorts off, leaving just a thong, and took position again. “But I like honesty. Just the other week I thought someone wasn’t being honest with me. Do you know what knotbusting is?”
   “N...nnn...nnnooo, ma...ma...mistress”
   “Pay attention. It’s when you’re all ready to cum, but instead of letting you I squeeze your balls in one hand and your knot in the other. If I do it right you keep feeling like you’re about to blow the most massive load ever. If I’m rough and do it wrong, it’s worse than being used as the ball for the girls’ soccer team.”
   “That...doesn’t...sound like...like fun, miss....” Benjamin squirmed like a rocket about to go off.
   “Well, it can be fun for me, and some guys like it. You know Amanda might be dead.”
   “Yes, gahhhhh...” The kid’s balls had probably crawled up to hide behind his kidneys for a body-wide conference call.
   “I have such wonderful men. They know how to stay hard for me.” She turned, winking, and went back to business. “And I want to find who’s responsible. Then I’ll do something that makes my usual tortures look like Sesame Street. I want your help so I can do that.”
   “Please...”
   “Please, you want to help? I bet you say that to all the girls with nice tits. Here’s what you’re going to do. If you see a cop car, post it online. Make a tag, what direction, and car number if you can. Get your friends in on it. Us girls just adore men of action. Gets us wet. Can you smell me?”
   He’d lost the capacity for words, and just nodded.
   “Almost there, cinnamon bun. When you leave here, I’m going to eat, then get my brains fucked out. By then I want to know where every on-duty police car in the city is. Ohh, that’s a nice big one.” She got up.
   I hated always being the voice of reason. “In the bedroom, on your left.”
   By a miracle the kid made it, and she wandered over to watch. Her hand circled over the front of the thong as if she’d just had a big meal and was tasting it from the inside. His pants thunked down along with a long growl that hadn’t matured yet, and then a series of strained pants. The sink turned on, and a couple minutes later Benjamin leaned on the kitchen counter still looking shaken.
   Tahlia hadn’t moved from her voyeur’s vantage. “That was a nice show. Nice cock, huge load, and you’re going to make some girl really happy someday soon. He deserves another tip, right?”
   “Up to you.”
   She went to one of her duffels for her wallet, and counted silently. “Two hundred. Not bad for a side job, no?” Benjamin’s eyes stuck to Tahlia’s tits even after what she’d done to him.
   “No, mistress. Why the cops?” He’d recovered enough, but needed the excuse of a long line at the gas station before facing work again.
   Her finger hooked his chin again. “All you need to know is that we intend to make it very uncomfortable for some people to keep doing what they’re doing. I would be very sad if something happened to that lovely cinnamon stick before some girl hits the lottery with it. We’ve kept you long enough.” He shuffled out and she was ready for lunch after playing with her food.
   After a few minutes of her enjoying the grease and oil, I tried to say it in the most level tone of voice manageable. “That was a very evil thing to do to that poor boy. Robbing the cradle on top of everything else.”
   “Thank you for not being too jealous about it. I briefly considered unzipping him and giving him the best blowjob he’d ever get if it came to that. Or maybe just a good handjob. Young boys these days watch too much porn. Scary that I might have been his first 3D pair of breasts.” She got up for another beer. “How’s the I treating you?”
   “It’s not. And don’t change the topic.”
   “I want my loverboy to be able to fuck me, not wince every time he has to change positions.” A small bottle dangled from her hand as she leaned over the couch back. “Take one. I want you wild, and you really should know how infamous I am for making guys cum in their pants. I’m like one of those massive meals at a restaurant. Finish, and you get your picture on the wall.”
   “Or finish and do a walk of shame? You need a dose of your own discipline.” I cursed that I probably made amateur detective partner first, amusing entertainment while clothed second, and good enough to replace fingers or toys third.
   “I like the sound of that. Maybe teach you how to be an amazing dom and then we could work as a team? Behave or you get the psycho babe that’s tied up in that corner.”
   My feelings probably scored too low to make the Sweet 16, but at least she was sober and consistent. “It’s hard to be worse than the pranksters at the site, but you blow them out of the water.”
   “If you’re done playing the sensitive modern man with feelings card, it’s time to take care of my severely underfucked status.”
   
First times have a nasty habit of being anxious, cautious, and less than perfect. Second times are less so, better matched as the steps pair to music with practice.
   There were far too many moods to the movements of her tail as she walked to the bedroom. The tip of her tail curved up, and the whole swung in counterpoint to the movement of her asscheeks.
   “You must enjoy leading men to temptation and their doom.”
   She leaned against the doorway and looked back. “That’s me, a siruean siren. All you have to do is match me and you’ll live to see another day.”
   Once I’d followed her she pressed up against me, hands on my shoulders, and sniffed one side of my neck then the other. Her tonguetip traced up the jugular, soft and crawling like a drone against the speeding doubletime. My hands held at her hips and dug into the muscle of her ass.
   “Is this what you wanted? Something smell good? Or did the good doctor convince you to stop being so uptight?” Latter almost definitely involved somehow.
   Her tongue continued it’s tour. “I’m playing a dangerous game, and trust you’ll keep your word. So we’re going to take this one by one.”
   It was a strange word, so short, outsized, but promising. I fell to the bed and she followed, tugging at khakis and shirt. Once out of them her tongue wrapped all over and nostrils flared to take in more of my scent.
   “Easy, girl. It’s like you didn’t get dicked down only a few days ago.”
   “You should know better. The better it is the crazier we get. And I’m having this adverse reaction to you, with one symptom called being a complete nympho. If you don’t shut the fuck up I’m putting that mouth of yours to better use.”
   “That’s a threat?” She had the habit of responding with glacier green eyes for so long that it was almost fun to watch her try anything else.
   She swung a leg over and thumped her ass on my face, then leaned forward, dragging herself over my mouth in the least subtle way to ask for a 69. It made a fair payoff for the beating I took earlier. Long strokes of her tongue felt like warm flame, displaced by water and air, and made thought chancy. I grabbed over and pulled her to me and let my tongue work against her lips until they parted under the teasing. The appropriate response to that attack seem to be fitting as much in her mouth as possible and make me sorry I escalated.
   I felt like a rookie freshman playing against veteran all-stars. Whatever I did to her, she had two tricks that would buckle my knees if I’d been standing. If my mental notebook still worked after this, I hoped I could read the shaky memo that said to keep her from bringing all guns to bear in war. It had never been a problem to last as long as a girl needed, but her mouth was a nasty inquisitor that had me spilling secrets in short order and against my will.
   Tremors and afterquakes didn’t keep me from trying to get even with her, but I could hear her making a show of licking her lips and sounding satisfied. “That’s just a friendly warning. I don’t fight fair. Maybe next time you’ll remember that before I drain all the blood from your brain.” If a magic eight-ball was giving me bad life advice again, it would be have ‘Let’s Do That Again!’ on every facet. She had the damned evil thing on retainer. “Keep going and when you’re ready for another round, let me know.”
   It didn’t take that long for her to push herself up to give me even more of her in the face. I relaxed and let my hands fall back and had a wicked idea. Fingers slid over ankles and heels, and I intertwined fingers in her toes and hoped this would get me even. Immediate, and predictable, female reaction. Her toes curled and gripped back, so I closed my hand as if grabbing a ball and pulled back slightly. When she lost her focus, gasping, and her toes uncurled, I thrust my hand back through her spread toes and did it again. I quickly learned that if I stayed fast about it, she couldn’t react in time when I loosed my hold on her feet. After a few minutes, the combination of that and a probing tongue left her breathing roughly and collapsed against me.
   “What were you saying about another round?”
   “That you’re a very lucky asshole, and you’d best memorize what you just did. This is going to shock the crap out of the girls at the club, but I just earned bragging rights with them and then some. I don’t gossip about my sex life, full stop. How would you like it if I tell them all the naughty details?” She stroked me, and gave it short soft kisses.
   “Like who?” It seemed completely in character for her, and I wondered if the gossip between strippers was as bad or worse than normal women telling tall tales.
   “Bri and Mariah are still undergrads, Amber and Rose are trying the whole money-sucking masters rollercoaster, and then there’s Maria, Gabi, and Savanna if I buy them a round of mint coffees.” She shivered as I returned the favor a second time, nails digging in until I backed off enough. “That’s better, unless you want me to tie you to a chair, then give the kittens coffee. Really heavy on the mint, if you catch my meaning. Also, think about it. Who the hell in their right mind names a kid with almost pure African ancestry Savanna? Whatever they shot her up with, it’s as bad as choosing to name some blonde human girl Cinderella.”
   “Those all girls at the club?”
   “Mmmm.” She took me deep, popped me out of her mouth, and gave a lazy lick every few words. “I know you’ve met Maria, mostly dark and plays up the whole born outside the USA angle. She was talking about the mixed table the night you were there with the other guys. Bri’s a textbook dapple, proud of it, and only Amanda could outdo her enthusiasm. Amber and Rose had the least creative parents when it came to names, Gabi’s got the hair dye of the week subscription, and Mariah does the whole shaggy hippie thing.”
   “If you saw the wrong color fur on a pair of pants in the corner here...” She went back to stroking, but I got the feeling anytime she wasn’t talking that she’d take a quick break and use her mouth elsewhere.
   “It would be because I told her to do it. Amber needs to loosen up, Maria loves every kind of dick, and...ooh.” Whether an aftershock or because I couldn’t help digging into dessert, nah. Her tail dropped to brush my head of wholesome thoughts and swayed with her ass.
   She let up on the suffocation after a light smack. “That sounded like a bad idea forming.” I repeated to myself that Tahlia wasn’t like my past relationships.
   “Me? If one of them wanted to have you for a night, which would you take?” 
   “Is this a threesome or a hypothetical question?”
   There was a pause, then a snorted laugh. “Very real. They’re going to ask, and I want bait. Who?” Another teasing lick as a reminder that whichever I picked, her cocksucking skills wouldn’t rival Tahlia’s.
   I pushed the old feeling away since this was less about me than the last time. “Guess it would be a flip between Bri and Maria. Can’t remember much about the others, sorry.”
   “Well, I’m going to point out who you could remember, and see who does what. They will remember you after that. Speaking of memories...”
   “That sounds like a really bad idea forming.” I tried to distract her by tracing around her labia with my tongue, which only slurred her words.
   “Remember Jaithe? Mrs. American Dream? If I got a bottle of wine in her you would be the focus of all her romance novel tier fantasies. I might use you as the latest front in my battle against the evil empire of poor and unenthusiatic oral sex skills, so don’t be surprised if we meet her later and she can’t look you in the eye.”
   She threw one leg over, reversed, and back so she straddled me. Her tail stroked my leg around the kneecap, then switched sides when she leaned forward for a long kiss. Her hips rolled up and down, grinding me against her. I might as well get accustomed being used as token and toy, because complaining had little chance of working. With it this good there wasn’t a lot of complaining that could happen.
   “You are going to break her, one way or another.” Rolling turned to circles. 
   “I’d rather you break her. She’s been getting back in shape after kids number three and four, and I’ve had that women’s intuition that hubby went and found himself some fun that didn’t require scheduling around a couple babies, and wanted to experiment with a knot. Jaithe’s never been stupid, and if I present it right she’d bite instead of holding her resentment inside until the kids grow up.” The fine fur of her chin teased along my ear. “So how about it? I could tease her a bit about her reading habits, talk you up, and when she starts getting a bit uncomfortable with the direction I’m going I hairpin back and remind her that reality can be a lot better than fantasy.”
   I pulled her forward a bit, hinting, but instead she pushed a breast to my mouth. “What did this poor woman ever do to merit this kind of revenge?” After a couple laps around the nipple she retreated.
   “Bad man, trying to make me wild. Just you wait. Back to the subject, besides the endless church talk, looking down her nose at me for being childless, on industrial strength birth control so I don’t feel a thing or get every bit of tail in the club doubling down on the flirting, or just the whole negativity about my job and sexuality? You don’t read women’s romance, so let me clue you in. There’s a whole sub-genre for the bored housewife. Historical, so she can escape the hum-drum of normal married life, and with a dashing human male that crosses paths with her. Then it’s off we go to things she’d never admit to wanting to do in real life. I hate them because they’re poorly researched. I could do better, and with a little more experience I could have so many toes curling in frustration. That’s pure me, naughty and ready to torture.”
   No doubting that, and she had enough of teasing. My hands on her hips helped balance her, she moved to one knee, reached back to grab me, and pushed down. I slid inside with constrained growls from both of us. She started slow until a couple inches were inside, then dropped the knee to ride.
   After that there weren’t words, just the sounds. I rolled us to pin her, legs pushed up and me thrusting deep, then we traded positions again and again, allowing her to work off the anticipation she’d built up, allowing me to be the arbiter of her desires. She returned the favor, and gave me permission with green eyes to use her body in turn.
   Nails scratched bare flesh, limbs were pinned and then released, and the moment came that I transformed to something she’d never sought but others had dreamt. 
   
Women purr like housecats. All you have to do is satisfy their emotions in the right way and they’ll wrap their heartstrings into a leash for you to hold. Men aren’t really any different. Just give a man an excuse to care when he’s tired of the pains and scars he drags behind him, and he’ll show why the old myths were understated. She curled up at my side, head on chest, and the fan and AC pulsed over naked fur and flesh. My fingers ran through the hair at the nape of her neck, dandelion silk floating through and falling to her back. She stirred, pushing back into my hand, and I went higher, scalp under fingertips. If there were time enough, I would choose this and to hell with the problems that everyone else could ever bring, weeks of it until the soul knitted back together, two surgeons on a lonely field alone with their oaths.
   Up and over the crown, and one ear twitched as if an unseen fly tried to land on it. Truly silken, with darker fur along the edges and the rear of each tip, fading to an almost invisible white on the inside. She breathed slow and unguarded, safe in my arms. It felt alien to think it, but soon it would end with either one more set of evil gone from the world, or the both of us dead. Whichever came, time ceased.
   The other ear twitched, and this time I ran a finger just above the edge, then cupped it to stroke with the same gentle motions I would for the underside of her breast or mapping the river betwixt thigh and body. It was as soft as it looked, firm underneath and warm. Her eyes opened, pivoting to me. 
   “You couldn’t resist?”
   “There’s been some things that didn’t fade away from the dreams. You were in one. And...” There was a gap where the words wouldn’t come out, more than alien.
   “Now I’m in your dreams, and I let you stroke my ears?” An unusual feeling, the laugh connected to the muscle and flesh under my hand. “I lost any reservation or shyness about a man seeing any part of my body years back. But I made myself some rules after I started dancing. I’ve never given a guy an honest handjob or blowjob in the club, and they’ve always let me have first shot at handling a guy that gets out of place, so I’ve busted plenty of balls. If a guy wants to fuck me, he’s got to earn me, and few have managed to get a second shot at me. But there’s two things I’m even more stingy with. Bit silly of me, but I’ve always figured if I kept something back, and never gave those up, then I’d never truly submit. Want to guess?”
   “Ears?”
   “Got it. So now you get to feel extra special. Only human, and the second to do my ears.” She pushed up a bit, firm muscles stretching on top of me. “First guy was my first, period. What’s the other thing?”
   Plenty occurred, and I let them spin off the reel slowly, one by one. Swallowing, she felt too practiced at it. Definitely not letting me cum inside her, and the whole spanking incident probably fell under the fetish thing. That was something she reserved for a guy once he’d gotten wrapped around her finger, and probably never to the degree I’d gotten, maybe just a pair of handcuffs or a blindfold. Others seemed too specific, so I started at the top and waited to feel some reaction if I got close.
   “You missed something.” Small quakes of laughter rippled through, amused at her own game.
   “Threesome, with another girl?”
   “You don’t want to know how many offers I’ve gotten to be the unicorn, but I’ve let myself be picked up a few times on nights off.”
   “What about two guys then?”
   “Couple times. You can’t blame a girl when she flips a coin and it lands on edge. But that doesn’t count here. One guy, and yours truly.”
   “Cum on your fur must be hard to get out.”
   “It’s a pain in the ass to clean up, and you’re still imagining the smell there half a week later. It’s also such a common fetish and happens by accident all the damned time.”
   My other hand moved down her back, each lumbar a milemarker to her ass and tail. “Got it. You don’t let guys play with your tail.” To prove it, I let nails and fingers glide down the swell of her hip, back up, and grip around the base of her tail, not quite sure what would be the thing there.
   When she didn’t react, I let go. “Nice try, and when we have time I’ll have to teach you all about siruean erogenous zones. If you knew what you were doing down there I couldn’t have kept a straight face. I’m amazed you weren’t accidentally grabbing at my tail earlier when you had the chance. So, again, super common fetish, except girls love it almost as much as a good earrub or the kadisi go for toejobs. And before you ask, it’s not my feet. That’s more like number one creepy guy fetish, when he beelines for the feet before ass or tits.”
   I thought some more to avoid mentioning the reaction she’d had about her feet, wondering if a whole extra list of kinks existed for her, then doubled back when she wiggled her ass a little under my hand. “If your tail is so sensitive, then what about your ass? You love teasing with it.”
   “Just because it’s one of my best features...well, so are my tits but that’s besides the point.”
   “Exactly. You love teasing guys, but they only get so much. That’s everything with you. So you don’t do anal.”
   “And that’s it. My ass belongs to me and me only. Except you’re making it really tempting. Want to hear a joke?”
   “About what?”
   “How are spinach and anal alike?”
   “Messy?”
   “Nope on both counts if you prep right. You didn’t like spinach as a kid, and you don’t like taking it up the ass now.” Never thought I’d call a villainous grin attractive.
   “That is the worst joke I’ve heard this month.”
   She reached down to grip my cock, stroking the semi-hard shaft. “And this is no joke. It would be a serious gape if you pounded my ass open with this.”
   The woman was bad, and slid the pad of her thumb over the tip until precum started to leak out again, slick between flesh. Then she slapped my chest hard.
   “Get up and toss something on. Let’s look at the more of those docs. And this time, try to pay attention a bit more.”
   
“This is worse than bad.” That she hadn’t looked up meant the observation wasn’t about my jeans worn down into shorts, paired with the wifebeater dangling in my hand.
   The papers riffled past fingertips, eyes scanning back and forth. The gray tee and denim shorts were back, with her hair pinned up. She hadn’t shown many expressions besides shades of annoyance. For the moment I was low on the inner dialogue’s target list. Now was an ears mostly back moment, ticking slowly like fingers on a tabletop, and her tail tapped another sharp rhythm against the cushion of the couch.
   I tugged the shirt on and checked which bottles of juice claimed a few days left of life, choosing the one that looked the least likely to kill me. “Are you sharing, or is this shit meets fan bingo?” Pour, return bottle to the fridge, and smell the sugar and vitamins.
   On second thought, I’d have preferred if she didn’t share and stopped the whole tough attitude, except that’s what she’d been for years. I took a sip, and glared at the back of her head, willing her to be a different woman. The glass tinked on the countertop as I pushed aside the guilty thought that her friend was dead and undiscovered. Her armor matched her as much as her hands, her eyes, her fears. I’d have to accept it, or never be fully at her side when she needed what I could become.
   “Abernathy knows near everything.” It was a good thing she cleared that up before I picked up the glass again, and even better that she ignored everything but the pages spread across her lap. “The reason he hasn’t asked for help on a missing person’s case is because it’s a homicide investigation, plain and simple. They’ve got all the physical evidence they’re getting, but no body and no indication how it happened. It’s just a bunch of hearsay about what might have happened between when she left the club and got home, and the next morning.”
   “In other words, short of finding the body it’s not going anywhere.” I downed the juice before she had a chance to say more.
   “Second, he’s very aware of us. Take this one for example.” She waved a few stapled sheets. “Semi-official, aka just him and maybe Zhalin, about people peripheral to Amanda’s case. I’ve got a rather impressive profile in here, but all the verifiable stuff is from the past or reports from his goons. You’re a blank page, except for two notes. The second is they spotted us together at the debate. Neither is your address, phone number, place of employment, or your license plate, which is a good thing right now. The remainder is him trying to parse what and which of the things targeting him are us, and which he can’t trace to us.”
   “And part three is what he’s doing about it.”
   “As in, absolutely nothing. Believe it or not, we weren’t on the radar until after the debate. We’re a pair of coincidences he wanted to make certain were in no way connected further to Amanda’s murder. And now I can’t hate him the way I have been, but knowing his record he’ll be right back to his usual self soon. His goons have been checking up on us since Wednesday night, rather quietly, but the last update here is from yesterday afternoon. I’m amazed he found enough for them to tidy up that wasn’t us, and I haven’t ended up a grilled cheese sandwich on the interrogation griddle.” She turned around to rest her chin on top of crossed arms, leaning on the couch’s back. “Besides, we’re not his job. He may have been ahead in the polls before this train hit him, but he’s got bigger things on his plate. So many people to juggle, or he’s going to find out what happens when everyone pulls the rug out at once.”
   She turned back to her reading, and I poured myself another glass and hoped to grow a bit in importance.
   Paper flipped, stopped, and she waved a second set to catch my attention. “Ooh, now this is something. He’s not as dumb as he looks. I know her place, and unless he’s an idiot he’s got this one right.” That sheaf fell back in her lap and her fingers plucked at a single sheet of paper. “Why couldn’t he put some meat on this? I could guess at this, but if he’s saying anything at all here in his own hand, what he isn’t saying has to be gold.”
   “How about you start cluing me instead of spoonfeeding? Her place?” She folded the map into a plane and sailed it towards the kitchen. “Gated. One way in for vehicles, security cameras. This reminds me of a place I lived a few years ago. Cost too much. If a raccoon can get in to raid the dumpsters, people can sneak in and out.”
   “Don’t make me drive us there so you can show me how. We’re missing reports on that except for gate log summaries, so either it’s sensitive, not completed, or tied up in other lawyers.”
   Eyes followed as I finished the glass and placed myself in front of her. My hand was out, and the annoyance in her eyes skipped closer to cold fury as I read. The handwritten title was weak points, and as I scanned down the numbered list, it was sad that I showed up dead last. The one above it asked how the fuck did someone manage to abduct Amanda and leave less evidence than the last time.
   “What does he mean, last time?”
   She reached over and picked up a thick manila folder. “Here you go. You’re about to learn why we didn’t end up in a jail cell last Thursday afternoon, or had his shadows being unpleasant with us. Take a seat and be prepared. I’ve already given you the good news.” She’d arranged it so the first few sheets were a hardcopy of some emails between Abernathy and people on the investigation.
   It took a few minutes for me to find a comfortable position as the interrogator, her gaze taking in each small personal movement of mine while she was stone still. It didn’t take long to scan down and see how something worse than bad could be the good news. Curiosity paid off quickly. The first thing afterward was a picture of a woman like Tahlia, but with pink flesh and about half a dozen shades of gray making up her coat. I guessed her older than Amanda but younger than Tahlia. A second picture was a group shot of a few others and her, in a sweatshirt ID’ing which college within the university she’d been a grad student at, labeled with a piece of tape ID’ing the date and location. The third was a black and white photo of a decapitated body.
   I dropped the folder to the floor, and made it to the bathroom with stomach churning. Breathing slowly, the nausea subsided and cool water splashed. Head down, mental filters erased my hands gripping the edge of the sink and shaking uncontrollably. Not a single speck of vomit, not one spasm and retching sound, but I couldn’t sit out there and pretend like this didn’t outdo a fist to the gut. It had been distant and safe, but a copy of the truth had been in my lap only a minute ago. It wasn’t a movie or book, vivid past the highest resolution, analog and undistorted.
   The light bounced between the mirror and anything else nearby, foreboding, and I turned away before looking up. I didn’t have the need to see my own eyes reflected in this moment.
   Her eyes and ears didn’t hide what had been happening while I’d battled nerves down. Both were centered on me. I sat staring at the open folder, the corpse grayscale in front of me, and swallowed. Hard is hard, and time to face it. No flinching, no turning aside. I counted backwards, and arrived at a stark number. Almost two weeks. Before I faced down Monday morning, I’d face the costs of the decision two Sundays back to stand at her side instead of waiting for the knife or gun to take me. I picked it up.
   Rather than examine the cold photo, I turned to the next one, then the next until the color faded back into flesh. The typed pages between could come later.
   Unlike Tahlia or the victim before, this girl had a coat colored a dark chocolate spotted with lighter coffee and cream, or perhaps it was the reverse. Whichever it was, the light pastel sundress she wore showed it fading to a creamy white on her throat and down her chest.
   I held the photo up to Tahlia and saw the one beneath it was another group shot, this time of a quartet of women, in professional skirts and suits, all different, standing in front of a well manicured hedge and glossy modern building. “How does this happen, the coloration? It seems more common with the kadisi.”
   “Two parents with different coat colors, and neither set of genes that the kids get is recessive. It’s like human skin color in that there’s not one single place that determines it. We get the added surprise that different ethnic or population groups may have people that are the same color, but don’t arrive at that from identical genetic combinations. Blood type is a better way of explaining it. So suppose one parent summed up to a darker brown coat, the other almost black. When they’re close enough, you can get a combination of them like with me where the gradient is only noticeable close up. Amanda, you had brown in the dominant gene and a charcoal black in the recessive, but the recessive isn’t completely suppressed, so the result is striping or spotting. The closer the dominant and recessive are to each other in preference, the stronger the pattern. Now, this girl had something uncommon. Neither color got the upper hand, so you can’t tell which is the base and which is the spots.”
   I thought a few seconds. “So she would seem more attractive and exotic, or just strange?”
   The worst of her concern for me and lesson over, her ears went back and returned to ticking. “Again, depending on her heritage, but overall she’d have a tougher time socially. We’ve got a rather mean slur for it. Getting called puppy is bad enough. Girls like Amanda can’t escape childhood without being nicknamed Bryn at least once even though brindle is a medical term for strong patterning like hers. This girl, I’d bet one of her polite childhood nicknames was Ceecee just like Amanda’s nick was Deedee.” She paused. “Missy for the ladies and Mister for the guys. Immiscible.”
   I turned past the group shot, knowing what was next. Another decapitated corpse, nude and soaked darker with blood at the neck, less decomposed. The details stared back at me, dreamlike and solid. Tahlia hadn’t flinched at this, it has to be seen and damn the nightmares. Each picture stared back as a new shrieking and wordless tableau, leaving me searching through the dregs left by cold sweats and wondering why. The first girl, I found a vista of her, tracing warm flesh over cold, along the arm and down, then repeated with each leg and back up the torso. Then the second, and when I closed my eyes I could see something I shouldn’t. When I opened them, there were new details in each. If I could take the scene from my head and make it tangible, it would be a snuff film. I knew, and I didn’t want to.
   “You had a reason for this. And you wanted a reaction.” It was hard to meet her eyes.
   “I got a reaction, yes.”
   “And what was in the dreams matches. What if they weren’t dreams?”
   “You weren’t there. The time of death on the first happened during daytime, when you’d have been at work, or so coroner the says. And when she went missing rules you out too. The other, there’s no chance either unless you had her in the bed of your truck the morning we did the banner. My question is something the cops can’t ask because they don’t know to ask. Why you?”
   She left the question open, and got up to shower. The smell of it drifted through the small apartment, then cut off with the snap of a towel and the roar of a large hairdryer. I switched from page to page, then set those aside to look through the other stacks she’d made. There were so many details. One pile seemed to be nothing but notes Abernathy had made on his own situation. Most of it had nothing to do with me. It rattled too much like homework to connect the pieces into a finished puzzle.
   The domesticity of seeing her walk out of the bedroom, hair up, barefoot and nothing but a short black satin bathrobe, and the wolveshead on, reminded me of how long it’d been. There’s always one night stands, flings that lasted a few paychecks worth of trying to give a damn and failing, but the comfortable feeling of her, her smell and mannerisms, was something I hadn’t had for a few years. In fact, the last time was the last gasp of normality and stability I remembered. When it fell apart, I’d moved four times within a year, exhausted what little money I had left, and traded a too old truck for the even more seasoned warhorse of a pickup I had now before signing on here. The familiar disappeared from the mind, the kind of thing you can only notice once it’s gone.
   I flipped back until turning up a picture of the sidewalk, close up, with a small stain and a quarter for scale.
   “You mentioned being able to smell something in the next room. Might not be able to make out what it is the first time you smelled it, but would it be simple like the difference between two kinds of juice sitting on the counter, right? Like the difference between me hearing the engine of a small car and a larger pickup?”
   Her eyes narrowed a bit. “Yes, why?” I looked at the evidence in my hands and tried to find any report or summary from the detectives.
   “Next, why didn’t you, excuse one of the worst possible racist statements, stink up the room after you showered?” Then I realized that lack of intelligence was a good sign of temporary brain damage from getting floored by the she-goon; Tahlia had been in the shower that first night and she didn’t smell bad, just different.
   Ears pinned towards me, eyes narrowed more, and after letting me stew enough she relaxed into laughing. “Goddess blessed Mary, why would I?”
   “Umm, wet dog and fur?”
   “Parents didn’t want a pooch in the place when you were little?”
   “No. Too many moves, money can go elsewhere.”  I found the typed summary of the second crime scene, only a few stapled pages, and I scanned down it as she responded.
   “Bathe dogs correctly and often enough, they don’t smell as bad. Likewise, if I shower regularly and properly, drying off the right way for the length I keep, it’s not far off from mostly dry hair. Bathing doesn’t cripple my senses so I can’t tell friends apart, but I’d be in the hospital sooner if I got cut bad and that became infected. You would too, if you rarely showered. Why the combination?” No way she’d missed this, no way the police did as well.
   An alien thought tried to move in front of me, but disappeared when I didn’t focus on it. “If an average human with an average sense of smell can make out that you’re in the next room showering, that would be much stronger to an average siruean, yes?”
   “Of course.”
   “So, again, let’s say an average human and average siruean are in public. They can’t see each other yet, but they’re moving towards each other. Siruean can smell the human before vice versa. And if it was two average sirueans, it’s not like one of you would be at that human level of smell.”
   “Again, yes, but senses are fallible. Just because you hear or see someone enter a room doesn’t mean your brain has a little light that pops up saying person. And there’s other factors like wind or rain.”
   “The point is that it would be more difficult. These girls had to have known someone was nearby and got taken by surprise. There’s a Holmes collection at the top of that stack of books. Never been much for them, but maybe some of it sunk in. What if both of the girls couldn’t smell anyone nearby or approaching?”
   Her humor was gone, and ears pinned back. “Unlikely, but whatever’s tickling you, spit it out.”
   I held up the summary and the photo of the sidewalk. “Pet dog. They couldn’t find it after. And this stain, according to mass produced forensics kits, is canine but non-siruean. The dog would have smelled what she missed.”
   She zipped to my side bullet quick, grabbed the two, looked between them, and tossed them back on my lap only for me to grab them right back. “What a bunch of knotbrained, grasschewing showdogs! I’m no police dog, but I know they’ve got a couple other sirueans on the force. It’s a hell of a lot easier to ask a second opinion of them than a K9, and...” She grabbed the whole folder, plopped in my lap, and went through the thing.
   “Tahlia—”
   “Shut it. I’ll call you a clever little monkey later if...damn, you’re right. I missed it during my first readthrough, but why wouldn’t they haven’t asked the question at all? He’s going to hate it when I bust his knot about this.” She dropped the folder in her lap to free up both hands, then started stroking my head and patting me. “Who’s my clever little monkey, yes he is! Helping me solve a murder, good boy!”
   It wasn’t dignified at all, I deserved it for the dog bit earlier even if I did apologize beforehand, and her sarcasm gland was working overtime and hiring. I endured it, glanced at her, and then she added the cherry of a kiss on the cheek before getting up.
   “I’ve got a few ideas now that we have a how to piece together.” She add a kiss to the other cheek. “One of them is going to require you to put a lot of trust in me, but first let’s get some questions down on paper, ask the modern oracle of the internet a few to refine it, and see if we can’t find the lynchpin and this asshole.”
   
It wasn’t pleasant work. She had me organize the stacks of paper around us differently now, asking questions, challenging each other, and taking plenty of deep breaths instead of lashing out. She turned back to the computers at points to check or verify things, and had me writing out a timeline. There was too much information already, but at her insistence, I added to the police’s investigation by cross referencing summaries and filling in the blanks from online info.
   “Let’s take five before the next one. What’s up?” One ear had an itch and shook back and forth a couple times.
   “Good one, by your measure. Short, cryptic, in the margin, at the bottom of the section with an arrow to the next, and makes no sense. ‘Where J&M free time? Who are they guarding?’ He’s got points dismissing almost everyone else on the force as having plots against him, and this is still that section. Why not write out a name?”
    “Kitchen, and I’m guessing he’s got a mild case of paranoia now like I do.” She chose the same old juice I had earlier, jingled it, and poured two glasses. “He’s got a lack of solid evidence. That doesn’t knock out your theories, but he knows the people around him better than us. That overpass stunt kicked every fire ant hill in the county and the ones bordering. First section was his political enemies, real and potential, right? Vincent, couple on the county commission, few others. We’re looking at the department now and his staff, and he’s not that worried. Next is all the construction companies and big corps. So J&M could be bitch and his flunkie. Bet he’s been reconstructing their lives like a plane crash investigation.”
   “Abernathy doesn’t trust anyone, and doesn’t have much room?”
   “Oh, I knew plenty of people had a share of his choke collar, but it’s almost funny knowing he’s been working how to slip that leash. In a strange way, we’re actually helping him. If he finds out who did this, or we manage to figure something out that helps him, he’ll look like a hero. You’d do it too, if you were in his situation. Keep notes, and keep quiet. When you’re somewhere that they can’t keep hitting you the same way, turn the tables and hope for the best.”
   “You’re a chronic cynic.”
   She shifted to a sardonic grin at the taunt, and countered. “There’s going to be good out of this. Him being a tailchaser may be distasteful, and I can’t hate him entirely anymore for it, but it’s the perfect chance to start anew. He takes his recent past, makes his first bill one about violence against women or something trite but good sounding, and it would be hard to vote against it. He’d have to put real effort into it, but penances, especially public ones, whitewash a lot of sins.” She paused and the bittersweet hope vanished. “There’s moral black holes out there. That’s the purpose of an army, a sheriff, and executioner—to make hard choices that nothing else can prepare you for, and keep others from having to think of those alien things.”
   “This is going to sound strange, but if you don’t stop and get back on that digital monstrosity of yours, he’s getting the easy way out. No justice, and same for whoever did those girls.”
   “They had...have names.” It was a relief to see her eyes flashing hard.
   “You weren’t saying them earlier.”
   “And you almost puked. It’s called keeping distance. You’re right. There’s not much chance we succeed in anything except not getting arrested. But the stakes are what they are. Victoria. Deidre. And Amanda. Let’s do this.”
   Seconds later the “this” had derailed into a catastrophic wreck. Something flashed in the corner of one of the computer monitors. She pulled up the notification from a platoon of geek tools.
   “Ooooh, fan, meet shit factory.”
   “Meaning?”
   “Something about the lawyer or the firm. Maybe he had a deadman’s trigger on Abernathy so he couldn’t be replaced. And survey says...”
   The first result she pulled up was a shaky video, just outside a modern building and walking up to the doors. A quintet waited just on the other side of the large glass doors. It turned around briefly to show two police cruisers and the large landcrawler. The voices weren’t clearly audible until I heard a woman’s voice yell to do it. A couple handful of seconds later, I heard a murmured excuse me, the sound of a door, and then the vertigo kicked in.
   Mark, the not so fit tech, walked up to a large reception counter with a cardboard holder and four cups. The camera closed in enough now for me to hear most of the words again. The me on the screen tried to step around the goon, then side step again when she told me to freeze. Two punches connected, and the past me staggered as others shouted. The last words before the video cut were Abernathy’s.
   “Take him in. We’ll sort it out later.”
   Tahlia turned, noted my lack of fun, and scrolled down. “For what it’s worth, you’re this afternoon’s cause célèbre on America’s Dumbest Cops. I’m going to do something I almost never do. I set up you to be there, and in she walked. I’m responsible for you getting decked, but I am so not responsible for her failing Anger Management 101.” She had an expression almost as pained as the look of me getting hit.
   If there was a good comeback to make us feel better, that part of the brain had writer’s block and went home early.
   “OK, OK, OK, me shit maybe girlfriend, bad timing, bad.” She took the closest sheet of paper, doubled it in her hand and swatted her own nose.
   The desire to add my own swat backed off. “And what did this video teach the class today? Anyone?”
   “That you either have a glass jaw, or that bitch is the kind you shoot from a distance, latter more likely? That’s just first impressions. I should step through this frame by frame and see if we can establish who was outside.”
   “Fuck that. Either you come up with a miracle, or I’m swearing off walking outside for a day or two. They’re not going to need a APB on us, not with cameras above the traffic signals of every major intersection. We’ve hit a homerun straight into the packed bleachers of beehives on Anaphylactic Shock Night. And it’s a doubleheader.”
   I went to warm up some pizza, and left her to the digital skullduggery. After a slice I felt better and less like a punching bag.
   “I’ve got a way to make this up to you.” Her voice lilted light with venom and glee. “Grand slams require epic grandstanding. After a certain point, you can’t get tagged out.”
   “Pissy pitchers just bean batters. Angry cops have more options.” She gave me the sad look women have a Ph.D. in at birth, and I caved. “We get out of this, I’m taking you to one of the Indian casinos. Nicky’s tagging along. Anything you bet on and he bets against should be pure profit.”
   “Can I wear a red dress? I’ll look so good even the female dealers will get distracted.”
   This had to be good. “No tricks.” Once I stood over, an enlarged still from the video filled the monitor.
   “Meet our new friend.” It was blurry but enough to make out the numbers. “If you help, maybe we can get him to talk because he feels bad. And if he doesn’t want to, I’ll make him feel bad and have some fun. My reputation has to be worth something.” Life, if it continued this way, was going to be a series of attempts to keep her from her favorite form of fun. “Don’t give me that look, I just want to get him to say yes or no, no pressure at first. Just mind games. Like my little cinnamon bun earlier. Let’s see what two hundred dollars buys. Reach over and grab the green thumb drive in the bag, will you?” She’d tossed a few extras into the bag I had at the law office. “Match car number to our little net, and we find out—”
   “Tahlia?” There were three green or partly green thumb drives loose in the bag, and something stuck to a case of them.
   “Hmm?”
   “Something else first. You didn’t put this in there.” A small plastic bag dangled between fingernails, whitish powder inside.
   She grabbed it, shook a couple grains onto a fingerpad, and tasted. “Not powdered sugar. Dump my bag on the floor, but carefully. Some of that stuff is more expensive than this.”
   Onto the floor went a series of unfamiliar tools and equipment. “Where was the bag, in the trunk?” I patted the bag down and handed it to her.
   She repeated the patdown and grimaced. “Next to all the other goodies.”
   There was enough to worry about without this as well. “You’re not even worried about this? Cops planting evidence on someone?”
   “Do you think they’re idiots? Neither of our prints on this bag before now? Maybe this is a sign, maybe not. How about we place this on our evidence list? J&M are going to hurt once I nail their hands to the table and then toss this in front of them. Trust me, this fits in our plans, simpler than last time. Help by playing bait for a minute or two for me? This needs to happen today while he’s still on duty or we lose the opportunity. I’ll be nice and gentle and we’ll be back here in about an hour or so.”

Chapter Twelve

The coffee shop was local, had more character than parking spaces, and seemed like the local branch of the hippie union judging by the kind of flyers stuck to any open wallspace. It had one saving grace. They understood black coffee, despite the handicaps of employees with dreadlocks, brightly dyed hair, piercings, and well-worn band tshirts. Rachael liked it, and having her happy about this might make the rest go down easier. If I didn’t fit in, a natural redhead in tan slacks and a light blouse looked like a spy for Seattle’s zombie horde.
   She sipped at the monthly special of coffee-flavored syrup. “He’s standing firm on that?”
   “Unfortunately, yes. We can’t get the material in fast enough. Alan might have dressed it up, but there’s only so much machine time we can devote to this. I’ve given him the estimates, so it’s up to him or Malcolm to decide what kind of break to give you. I hope the first batch was to spec since it got triple-checked before pickup.”
   “I really don’t know what they expected. A bolt’s a bolt.”
   “Unless it’s a custom order for fifty thousand structural bolts in a specific alloy because a pencil-necked engineer failed to check his breaking stress.”
   Rachael squeezed a cream cheese pastry the wrong way and dropped a blob on a napkin underneath. “Like you said when we asked, it’s lucky they’re not inspecting each bolt and screw.”
   “So what’s the big problem besides getting them all made?”
   “They’re going to withhold payment.”
   “If Gregory does that, Malcolm’s going to be down there like an amphetamine-laced llama with cybernetic venom glands. We’re helping you out of a fix by starting without anything down. Least they could do is a partial.”
   “If it was my decision...well, it’s bad enough that a few of the girls know we had a thing.”
   “Which ended once we agreed sex wasn’t enough for our relationship. I found Caroline. We’ve kept things professional since then.”
   “Mostly professional. Point in case, our little problem a couple weeks ago.” She had no problem keeping things neutral. Caroline would have made a dirty joke, and Annette had lost any shyness about talking sex with guys long ago.
   “Which was outside of work, and after a few rounds of alcohol.”
   “Accidentally letting two of my co-workers see old pictures of us was fuel on the fire. It’s one thing if I kept them for myself. It’s going to keep being hell for me until they find a better game than needling me for a selfie with your handiwork.”
   I let that one die out. Rachael might have been the sanest girl I knew since making my own way in the world, but the relationship never clicked. There hadn’t been a drop of drama, and we’d fucked it up by never making the time for each other unless it had been time for a hookup. Caroline might have been an accident, but we’d connected like a dream. I’d slowly admitted back then that Caroline fit me better. I had attention to spare, and she wanted it. I jumped ship on Rachael after what had to be the least ugly breakup talk ever. She was great, but Caroline needed to write a book to educate other women—and those were her normal blowjobs.
   “Please be careful with that. If you wanted them to forget, getting pastry cream all over your blouse will have the opposite effect.”
   “Trust me, I’m not showing them the best of those.” She fiddled with her phone and showed me the thumbnails of one of our better nights. “We were so good together, and I miss it at times. But if they want more, they can go beg Caroline for amateur porn.”
   I stopped with my mouth ready to open. A wolfie chick, dark white with hints of brown, in pale dress slacks and a blue blouse hugged Rachael from behind, and oohed at what Rachael had pulled up.
   “Now that...oh, my. That’s you. Bianca wasn’t making that up.” She grabbed the phone out of Rachael’s hand and sat with us, making sounds at each new picture.
   “No, she wasn’t. Now give me my phone back.” Rachael was left steaming as Ashley avoided a turnover and got up to order. “You’d better leave. She’ll keep this between us if I ask nicely, but I’m not giving her chance number three to hit on you. If you stick around there will be questions.”
   Half an hour later I’d returned to work, replaying the parts of the conversation that didn’t involve mine and Rachael’s sex life. Alan grumbled, and his finger wavered over the button on the phone to Gina’s office. A few deep breaths later he clenched a fist safely away from temptation.
   “You sure?”
   “I’m positive. We play hardball, let them know what’s ready to pickup on a partial, then forward an email before they get here for the invoice. I used to fuck her and can still read her like a book. They don’t have the money yet, but if we’re not billing they’re going to have to extract payment down the line.”
   “Thanks for that. I agreed with you that we shouldn’t have taken this on, but that was Malcolm’s call. Anything else?”
   I shook my head, and hit the bathroom to drain the filtered coffee. My phone buzzed, then a few more times as I sat to take a deserved break. The top message was a mirror selfie with a blue blouse open and nearly bare tits squeezed between her arms.
   That would feel so good between these.
   Each successive message and picture got filthier. After the last fight I had with Caroline, I hardly felt guilty as I typed. I was curious. That’s all it was. Nothing serious, and every guy knows damned well that you can kick another guy in the ass before he plays out a rape fantasy with an unconscious girl, but a girl that wants to flirt will know no bounds. I’d never done it before, wasn’t planning to, but I wasn’t going to tell her exotic and fluffy ass to put her clothes back on. She sent one last picture, promising better when I got home and returned the favor.
   The day did a good Nascar impersonation, and traffic didn’t. Caroline had gone somewhere, but enough of her scrawl was illegible to render the note on the refrigerator moot. It wasn’t for a job interview, and she didn’t have my card anymore. Her bank account had been getting cleaned out, and I’d rather she chose to dig into my past than dig up the change for a spot of fun and blow up again. It would be harder to catch her this time. That was the price I paid for a secure job and home.
   I stripped for a shower, pulled up Ashley’s vistas, and stroked to a nice response before getting in. The camera clicked, and I let the message go on its way while I washed off the day’s issues.
   I’d gotten even stiffer despite cold water, and Ashley’s responses had the same effect. The soft, overloaded buzz and tingle worked deeper into my shaft with each stroke. She knew which buttons to push right now. Another cleavage shot, then sitting on the countertop by the sink in nothing but her panties, all the way to a lovely spread. She tempted, asked if I wanted to become a part-time dogwalker, and then said one of her biggest fantasies was being a guy’s first. Yeah, curiosity my ass. The tingle became a white noise spreading into my abdomen and lower. I couldn’t respond. The last was her on her bed, on all fours with tail raised high and on display. She pushed the last and biggest button.
   Anytime you want, this is yours.
   I made enough of a mess that by the time I’d cleaned up and rinsed off, Caroline had returned with a sloppy grin. Her grin got filled the second she saw I was still hard, and I had no problem going for seconds. The guilt faded after I deleted the conversation and decided any further contact with Rachael needed to be through company email.

Chapter Thirteen

The directions might have been simple, but left me far out of my depth. However, revisiting easier things would increase the chance of getting arrested, or assaulted by the cops and their buddies. Too much depended on whether I was a fugitive or forgettable.
   On the other hand, forgettable tended to be the last word to apply to Tahlia. I summed up the evidence for what we meant to each other, using traffic signs and crossing streets as counters. The best guy explanation I mustered was we’d fucked up by fucking, and neither of us ready for more than working together. I flew through an intersection at the last second, right in front of a cop, and cursed before berating myself out loud for having pussy on my mind instead of the road. Laughter cut my reverie short, and the phone beside me on the seat of the truck kept squawking like Miami foliage.
   “Stop worrying, I’m close by. Make the turn in, and you’ll pass their unmarked. Red car. If they wanted you and suspected this, it would have been a cruiser. Stop just past him, look at the buildings like you’re trying to figure which is which, and sell it good. Drive forward slowly. Good. I told you to stop worrying, as far as they know you’re just another asshole ex-boyfriend. Do it again. Good. Make the turn. There’s only one way out, so he’ll be leaving before he attracts attention.” The asshole wasn’t experienced at inconspicuous. “Target’s in. Park, go up the stairs. Number 515.”
   Up a flight of stairs, then down the long side of the rectangular building painted in a yellowed beige that was halfway between clean and needing a pressure washing. 518 to the right on the short side, on the left 517 and then 516. Heavily curtained windows and enough space between each apartment ensured a small audience. The late afternoon buzz smelled of rain that hadn’t decided to come or not, and two small potted plants framed the door to 515 on either side. Empty styrofoam, weighted with sand, swung in a takeout bag at my side. Calm and easy. Just knock, follow the script. She’d called it easy. A misbehaving boy, forced to stand in a corner. I could have my ass kicked the same day as taking one to the jaw.
   “Hey, Tahlia, you there? Don’t be so angry, babe. Stopped for food on the way, your favorite. Have a bite and talk it out.” There wasn’t more to the script, so I failed at what a foolish jerk would mumble in this situation, along the lines of stories starting with ‘This one really happened’ instead of careful tactics.
   “Sir, step away from the door.” I turned, toe to toe with an officer that had a couple inches on me, almost a couple decades, and at least another fifty pounds with a tiny bodycam clipped to the pocket, recording light off beneath a tiny blue and black crucifix pin. “If she was home and wanted to talk, she’d have answered you by now.”
   He stepped back to the inside corner of the walk, perfectly placed to cut me off from whichever stairwell I tried for. It wasn’t difficult to give him a genuine idiot stare.
   And that’s when they did it.
   He never heard Tahlia walking up along the inside railing in the same outfit she’d used at the law offices, now with a matching dark blazer. Nor had he paid attention to the other girl that had been looking out from the other stairwell. He couldn’t pay attention after that, even if all to hear was a stun gun sizzling while his eyes went wide, and his body spasmed and jerked. The other girl ran up, unlocked 514, and held the door open.
   Tahlia grunted as the officer weight leaned towards her. “Let’s get him in.”
   If this had been her idea of simple, then a refund was due, except that kidnapping a police officer of any kind surmounted the worst felony I’d gotten wrapped up in over the past couple weeks. The front room had everything pushed to the walls except for a plain wooden chair. I helped deposit the staggering officer in it, then Tahlia lashed him down quickly while he came around, first regaining control of his limbs, then his ability to focus on everyone, which had been limited to Tahlia and I for the moment. Her business casual might have been nice enough for a small office but not wealthy enough for the nicer side of town. Three other girls stood behind, one each of human, siruean, and kadisi.
   “Hello, Sergeant...” Tahlia looked at his namebadge, attempted a reassuring smile, and failed with perfection. “...Roberts. I want you to know and notice a few things. First, I have every intention of releasing you unharmed, just a few questions, and each of us goes their own ways, no hard feelings. I’m sure you’ll agree that’s for the best once we’re done. Second, you are tied to the chair, but I’d like you to notice how it’s done. If my trigger finger gets itchy again and I zap you, I’d prefer that you don’t get hurt. Basic bondage tiedowns 101. I’ll even show you how to do it so you can try it at home with your wife. You with me so far?”
   He tested the bonds, which weren’t tight to the chair but held fine. “Just questions, but you’re waving that thing? If that’s stronger than an issue taser, you might consider getting caught with that could be a serious charge. Put it out of reach first.” He waited, too collected to calm my anxiety.
   She walked over to a table against the wall, deliberately placed it where he could see, then stepped away. “There. I’m reasonable, you’re reasonable, and thank you for forgiving a girl that’s not as strong as a bigger man like you for wanting a bit of protection if I’m alone at night.” Her version of reasonable might have been chipper, but had taken lessons from her smile.
   “Ma’am...”
   “Please, Tahlia, not ma’am. I’ve been told I was too rough with the last person I dissuaded from calling me that. So, I’m being reasonable.” She glared daggers at me, and there wasn’t enough reason to play along.
   He leaned over. “Mind giving some tips later? My old lady would never admit in earshot I might be right. That’s a good, solid BOB. I wouldn’t mind knowing where you got it.”
   Her men’s dress shoe heels were loud despite carpet. “That’s not a bedroom toy, unless you’re a sadist.”
   “Not battery operated boyfriend. Back off bitch.” He missed the sign of Tahlia’s eyes, but she let it pass. “If that monster could get rigged to an ankle strap, it would be a good backup. Seriously, where?”
   “Online, and legal. Modified it to go from the don’t-ignore-me tickle I gave you to fuck-your-day. Back to business. Number three, we’re going to remove your belt and pants for comfort. Since I’m supposed to play nice and be reasonable, you’re getting lucky and having a private show start up in a bit. Last, after we do that, you’re going to call in and make sure we stay undisturbed here for a while. If you do, you walk away with the biggest fish tale any cop will ever have and not have to swear on a bible for.”
   “If you promise you’ll modify one of those for my wife, deal.”
   “Good. Girls, get this man’s pants off him and please remember that we’re being gentle today. You, kitchen.” She walked away, expecting me to follow.
   As long as she stopped being reasonable in the manner of a bank robber proclaiming innocence with the dye pack all over him, I’d be reasonable. When I walked behind the dividing wall, she’d already dropped the small packet on the table and talked right in my ear for privacy. The noise of the AC, another fan, and a fish tank made that overkill.
   “I want every weapon we can have right now. Just seemed like straight coke to me, so this must be a human chemical.” Pushing closer didn’t peel my eyes from the evidence we’d been targeted. “You, or him. Just enough to tell us what’s there.”
   “No.”
   “No?”
   “As in no. That’s not happening. That little extra could be poison to me for all you know. It could have been a poison to you.” The memory of a dream fragment returned, of heightened senses blended into the white stimulant rush. “He doesn’t have to know unless there’s a reason, and I’m not playing guinea pig.”
   “That means you ask the questions again, and I listen.” It was a relief, and not, combined with wanting a beer before the eventual why-the-hell had to happen over this. “If you don’t ask me, we’re going back out there before they decide to see what fun they can have with a captive audience.”
   “Ask what?”
   She tapped her nose and sniffed. “Two way street on that promise.”
   I pushed aside all the other questions until we were safe and I could wave a tube of epoxy at her, but from a distance. “What makes you think he’s going to keep his promise? Besides the built in polygraph.”
    “We could ask him.” With that she walked back out, leaving me to curse fate, including every god or goddess of love ever dreamt up.
   It’d been less than two minutes, and I felt like a teacher that just walked in at the wrong moment. Roberts’ pants were around his ankles, his belt off to the side, and all three girls were completely naked. The human girl, busty and pixie-cut blonde, sat on his lap, and the other two had a plethora of toys at their feet and one in each hand, arguing quietly but punctuated by hisses and low growls. The capstone was Tahlia trying to stifle her laughter, hand over muzzle.
   I didn’t allow the luxury, gesturing as I puzzled it out in my head. “What the fuck is this? Speed striptease? And this? Tahlia, if this is your idea of gentle then you’re going to make some future talks rather long and detailed.”
   Roberts leaned back as far as the chair and bindings allowed. “Hey, buddy, I forgot your name.”
   Tahlia calmed down and interjected. “His name isn’t important.” Then she went back to corpsing like an old comedy routine for a few more seconds.
   “Yeah, yeah. Well, as much as I’m enjoying being rescued from paperwork and boredom on a Friday afternoon by uuh, babe, you’re too good...” She leaned forward to peck his cheek and whisper her name again, then giggled. “Yeah, Melanie, but some of that over there might not be as much fun.”
   I recognized Maria from the dark fur and accent, guessed the other to be Amber just by the color of her eyes, and tried to guess the use of the toys they were still waving at each other. Amber had a slim metal rod and a bundle of wired pads for something, and Maria had a small elastic band and blindfold. One out of four isn’t bad if you’re not a member of the Sex Toy of the Month Club, but I got the feeling that this level of prank wasn’t a cultural thing. Nicky was just an overactive talking jokebook. Since I hadn’t defined gentle adequately to Tahlia, she decided to have fun. Or the girls did on their own. Same result.
   I positioned myself between them and started with Maria, and she tried to appease via a throaty purrlike trick and a sultry smile. “There are certain ways you ask a nice police officer a question. Blindfolds are almost guaranteed to have not made that list.”
   She rubbed against me and laid her arms over my shoulders. “We could have fun. Or I could have fun with him. But you smell better.” And she meant it, if the feeling of her tail caressing up and down my leg indicated things.
   I pushed her away as gently as possible, and turned to Amber. “Whatever those are, they didn’t even make the book of 101 Things to Spice Up Your Marriage Without Leaving The House.”
   Roberts pulled his head out from between Melanie’s tits. “Those pads go to a TENS unit. Us older guys on the force love them for our backs.” I needed to write a better manual for kidnapping and interrogating a police officer.
   “And the other?”
   Amber looked too embarrassed now, so Tahlia answered. “Urethral sound.” She made a fist with one hand and inserted a finger into it with a plopping sound, then took a seat on the couch pushed against the wall, her wholesome humor reserve for the day exhausted.
   I’d have told the girls to cut it out, but it occurred to me that whatever I said only had a chance of making it worse. It’d been a busy day and having it end this way, just so the papers the next morning could headline ‘Local Man Abducts And Assaults Police Officer With Exotic Dancers’, wasn’t what I’d gotten out of bed for.
   Tahlia finally played adult and club mother with a sigh. “Party’s over. Clothes on, everyone next door, now.”
   “But I didn’t get to give him a dance! And I love men in uniform!” Amber slumped crestfallen like a kid without a toy.
   “Then let him know what days you’re at the club. He can pay like any other man.”
   Roberts looked even more morose at the loss of his lapdance partner, and the lost opportunity of two others. Tahlia gave the girls a few minutes to vacate, took a few deep breaths as she mouthed the words. So not responsible. At least she was still in humor over today’s ride. I waited until the door shut behind them and started before the urge to get off the ride kicked in.
   “Right. Now that the circus has departed, down to business. She punted, so question one. Why should you be trusted? There could be a SWAT team coming to kick the door in.”
   His shiteating grin fit a man that knew something no one else in the room did. “Because I told them to fuck off and not bother me for a while. In cop speak, that is. I had Amazon duty this morning, and that’s good for rest of the day pity. I wasn’t expected to do more than putz around the rest of the day, but I’d been closest to here when we got a call that some ex-boyfriend was on his way to be some kind of trouble. Just my luck after lunch.”
   Tahlia and I said it almost on top of each other. “Amazon duty?”
   “Yup, mean and delivers all the varieties of pain, anywhere, anytime.” He must have to treat his wife richly each Valentine’s Day for living with that sense of humor. “That’s Morgan for you. Her and Jeff are the last people you want to be around.”
   “Jeff. And Morgan.” The names were ice off her tongue. “Everything. Now.”
   She got up and grabbed the stun gun, cracking it on a couple times before sitting back down, out of easy reach of Roberts. Score one for things rooting me to the floor.
   “Wait, woah, woah, hold on!” Roberts fixated on a woman that went from zero to psycho eyes in under fifteen seconds, and I got ready for her to leap. “I didn’t hire her! No one likes her! Well, maybe Abernathy, but fuck!”
   It cracked and sizzled again, ozone tingling in the air. “I have a problem. I want to shove this up her cunt and hold the trigger. And now I know her name. Last name?” She triggered it again like a security blanket.
   He tried to turn to me. “Help me, man! I just come into work each day! Never had to fire my gun, twenty-four years on the force! I’m not one of the bad guys! She promised!”
   Rather than risk an explosion from her at the next mention of a name, I walked over. Hand out, she slapped it into my waiting palm, then sat back, arms crossed and ears pinned back. I thought better of it, and moved to the other side of the room instead of remaining as emotional support. I placed the weapon behind me, and looked Tahlia in the eye.
   His eyes dashed from side to side, and I’d lost my idea of the second question to imminent violence. She broke from my stare and filled the quiet void.
   “Continue.”
   “Whaaa...”
   “Morgan. Last name? Standard reporter questions.”
   “Ummm. Think last name. Jeff is really Jeffries, but everyone except her calls him Jeff. Jeff and his feral pet Amazon wolf bitch.”
   Somehow I got moving first and intercepted her only by the grace of having been standing when she was sitting. All it would take was her slapping my hand from her shoulder, and she wouldn’t need the stun gun to hurt Roberts.
   Her eyes were clear, stone and not blinking. “You will let me do this. I will keep my promises, but you will let me do this.”
   “Maybe you should take a walk around the block.” As soon as it left my mouth, I realized how bad that sounded versus the current situation. “Clear your head, don’t hurt anyone, etcetera.”
   She straightened up, took hold of my hand and gently kissed it. “For Amanda.” Her hands held my fingers just in front of her lips, then she knelt in front of Roberts and clutched the wolveshead, silent for a time as if in prayer.
   “Oh crap.”
   The silver charm around her neck meant something to him. She raised her gaze to meet his and I saw serenity. Not the calm of the still church, but immovable in the path of the storm, and centered again after many years foundering and searching the stars for a way back home. I had promised to be there for her as she did. After all, it would be bad if ‘Local Man Abducts And Assaults Police Officer With Exotic Dancers, Then Upset Girlfriend’ ended up as the Saturday morning headline.
   She got up, grabbing the wires and pads of the TENS unit, then returned from a bedroom with a glossy plastic box. Her fingers connected the pads, sight unseen, and she knelt again with the completed unit between them. He looked down at it, then back up to find her staring again. And he started.
   “Right. I first saw her about a year and a half ago, maybe more. She looked like something out of a movie. You know the type, they can’t help but look military trained. I even remember what she’d wore. Gray pantsuit, cut to her build. Jeff, I first saw him a few days after that. All we heard was they’d be working on Abernathy’s upcoming campaign. We all knew he couldn’t run again, and he’d been eyeing the House seat. But they were good for him. I mean, without them he’d never have gotten his fire back after his wife died. You know the story about him and his father’s company? He joined the force out of public duty, took over the company after his father passed, and came back out of public duty. Not a lot of us that love the boss, but we all respect him, and it was good to have someone to dislike instead. Not much time for it though with the paperwork load. They don’t socialize, they barely talk to anyone else, and no one wants to change that.”
   I leapt in before she could knock his foot of the mental accelerator. “What about personal security? That’s what they are, right? Tahlia saw Morgan and Jeff with him, being his left and right hands. Maybe chauffeuring people to a private party out at his place, or somewhere else.”
   “Boss isn’t going to talk about his private life with the R&F, and like I said, they never talked to us unless necessary.”
   The next one leapfrogged back into my mind. There were only four possible suspects. “Would they have ever been involved in an arrest? This morning, when she...” The ghost of the gutpunch waved back as I paused. “Well, you were there.”
   “Yeah, that. Cabe, that was the other deputy, him and I handled the initial bit of paperwork. They dragged you out to the car, then she came back and took the bag you had. Zipped it, dropped it on the reception desk, stared down everyone like she didn’t give a shit, and knew that it was just a matter of time until you got out and charges dropped.” He wasn’t going to speculate further.
   “So the bag was there—”
   “Yeah, Cabe went to get you all set, and I did for the bag. By that point they and the boss were gone inside for the meeting. And I don’t know what. Just escort them there, go on with the rest of the day, and soak up the sympathy. Even if it’s just fifteen minutes, the rest of your day is easy. Hell I could check for you. There’s probably no warrant out. It’s bad enough that she did the police dog rou...” He swallowed hard. “Would it be too much trouble to get some water?”
   I got down on one knee by Tahlia. “You OK?”
   She didn’t break to glance at me. “If you do, I won’t move a muscle until you get back.” If I lived through this, and we kept to our current trajectory, the first anniversary gift I got for her would be a book on letting go of grudges, and moving on.
   The kitchen and water felt cooler. I grabbed three glasses, and walked back out. Tahlia took one, and I gave Roberts a few sips. While he cleared his throat, I downed half my glass.
   “I got an idea. If you two untie me, I’ll do the one thing I can that will prove I’m on your side.” A few minutes ago, he’d been afraid, now he was calmer. “No tricks, we’re all walking out of here and going on with our lives, right?”
   I looked to her, and she shook her head. “I can’t tell. Either I put some trust in you, or I don’t. He decides.”  With closed eyes I told her to untie him.
   The knots slipped free quickly starting with the hands, and Roberts stretched out one by one, his demeanor sturdier and more professional. “There’s a lot of things you go through in training. This was not fun compared to those.” He rubbed at his wrists, then stood to pull his pants up, then sat again so she could undo his legs.
   I shot the next nagging question. “What’s Tahlia to the department? By her stories, it seems she’s been on the edge of a few cases in the past.”
   “That wasn’t the question I was expecting. But let’s go there. Did she tell you about Jimmy the Nail? Or Roderick. Bishop was a few years back, and he’s running out of appeals and bad at good behavior, or so you hear when you have to visit there.” He looked at me, then back to Tahlia, and to me.
   “She did talk about Jimmy, as a matter of fact. Short version, though.”
   “How short?”
   Tahlia told it. “Jimmy was too dumb to go straight. That’s why you had to close the case. He fucked up big time, and fucked the wrong person over. The department couldn’t put a stamp of good riddance on his file and let it lie.” Since collecting herself while sitting in front of him, she’d managed to stay composed enough that not even her past was moving her.
   “You know, cops don’t get out and know everyone the way they used to. But you do the job long enough, and you learn a few things. Jimmy was one in a million, must have had the better part of a cabinet drawer for himself, slipped through every loophole, had lawyers good enough to always make sure even the truth couldn’t stick. And our lady there, Jimmy tried to court her more than once, or so the urban legends go. One of the best was at the club she works. He goes in one night, or so the story goes, and presents her with a few dozen roses and a job offer. Might have been a ring involved too, but stories tend to grow as time passes. As I heard this one, she told him off, and on the way out another guy with a rather impressive sheet decides to comment. They take it outside, and some fast thinker had already called us by that point. We get there, two crews are facing off in the parking lot, she’s between them, ears back and calling them all kinds of child while dressed in nothing but shorts and boots.” The pause said he’d seen that level of undress. “But she’s got a reputation around this city.”
   “That doesn’t answer the question.”
   “Yes, it did. Just because someone doesn’t have a long sheet, doesn’t mean you can’t get some answers out of them if you question them long enough.” He turned to her, and entered her staring contest. “Anything that happens involving the sirueans, just go find Ms. Vujana and then see who she kicks and doesn’t. She’s smarter than the people that haven’t done their time yet, and sooner or later someone will have a bruised backside. But you haven’t had anything really major happen since Jimmy, have you? Oh, I know the bottomfeeders never completely left you to get on with your life after that, but anyone that crosses you has had the shade of Jimmy the Nail staring over your shoulder at them. I’ve never had the luck or fortune to make Detective, but it doesn’t take that to guess you had a wakeup call. Yet here you are.”
   She answered simply and softly. “Here I am.”
   “And there’s a reason. So here’s the addition to the deal we made. My mother was proud when my younger brother went to the seminary. For a while she’d though I’d do it instead of him. But we talk sometimes, brother to brother, and he helps keep me from the worst of the nightmares. The bad traffic accidents, the suicides, the drug deals gone wrong.” He unpinned the badge from his uniform and placed it slowly on the floor. “Right now, I’m listening. I think I know what’s coming next. But it’s your choice, Ms. Vujana, and your choice, Mr. Lucky, how that happens. So, why are we really here?”
   I collected the glasses and boiled it down to TV Guide level. “Amanda. And the others. Someone, no, a serial killer is out there.” She took over once I was leaning against the front door again.
   “At first, I thought it could be Abernathy trying to cover up his habits of hiring girls. Maybe something went wrong and they dumped the body, then I happened to them. But I wasn’t right about a few things. That means I might have been wrong about Abernathy, and there may not be much of a purpose in continuing to snip at his heels. I may want petty revenge on Morgan, but whoever actually killed Amanda...I’ll have dreams until the day I die about doing to them what happened to those girls. You saw this?” She held the wolveshead up and he nodded. “Things have changed the past few days. And all I have right now to hold back the rage inside me is an old hope and a new dream. They have to be enough to cling to.”
   He reached down, taking her hands, and patted them, once, twice. “Then I’ll help. When that badge goes on, that’s our oath, from the newest deputy to the sheriff. I believe he sent them out with the detectives to look things over again, one more time, as an unofficial opinion. I’ll talk to them, for you, for Amanda, and if you’re willing to set aside your differences for the greater good, then perhaps they will do the same. Tonight?”
   “Make it Monday evening. I’d like us to be prepared, and them too.”
   “Just make one more little promise, and I forget to write down a good chunk of what went on here.”
   I didn’t give her the chance. “Name it, if it’s that simple.”
   “Both of you don’t need to be playing at this, not at the cost of your lives. But it wouldn’t be right for me to tell the two of you to close your eyes. Keep them wide open. If I give the two of you the number of the detectives on this case, then I expect you to make that call when you see something. And if they want to talk to either of you, you do it. No more games, no more hijinks, because I want to see Old Sparky do its job. If you have nightmares, that’s a heck of a way to send them express to the hell they belong.”
   I said done on top of his last words, but she took longer while standing up, green eyes wanting that lightning to work now. “Done. But if the guilty cross me, I’ll save the chair its trouble.” Without the need to keep on the tough girl script, her ears flipped back at the threat of self-defense.
   “Well, that ends this neatly. I thought when I came to that I was in for something bad.” He glanced at me. “You got a scary lady here. Couple times there I started hearing music in my head and was waiting for her to start dancing to it.”
   Tahlia hummed a few bars, did a little twist away, and Roberts went prey still. She spun with careful, small steps, circling closer with each trip around him, ending up in front of him and leaning down, one hand on his shoulder and the other at her hip pocket.
   She finished the tune, then smiled and gave him a long lick on the ear.
   “Don’t tempt me. I already have a map.”
   
On the drive back, she talked to herself almost the entire way. Almost every threat I’d imagined wasn’t real or was made worse by fighting against it, and if I heard right, all we had to do was step back from the paranoia cliff edge. After grabbing a pen from the center console, she tried balancing an old unopened bill on her knee and made notes on her one-sided debate that she was losing. At the next stoplight I interrupted her speculations.
   “There’s no grand conspiracy, no evil mastermind, just the cold world. And you’re still making theories.”
   “Because Roberts was wrong. Part of it is he doesn’t have everything, and neither do we, but I know a few things the rank and file don’t. The simplest explanation is that Abernathy doesn’t want the feds walking the circus through his garden, and he’s doing everything he can right now to prevent it without making things worse. What I find odd is our killer took a little vacation, or reversed course on craft. Newest body found first, then the second. Three murders in about a week, and only the oldest without useful forensics.”
   I clenched at the idea of going through each page hoping that shook out a few clues. “He was serious. Money says he goes right to Abernathy’s office for a long debriefing, and there’s a deputy’s vehicle shadowing us from now on. Next step would have been visiting a crime scene, and we shot that horse.”
   “Which is why we’re about to get clever. I’m going to see if I can work tonight, and you’re calling your place before everyone runs away for the weekend. We’re going to pretend everything’s normal and so are they, but there’s not a single new card or chip on the table except a pair of names. Time to work quick and take out some frustrations on the poor boys that want to pay for the privilege of it. Luck would be someone with a taste for nosecandy and a loose tongue that can tell me about the local market. Whichever of us is closer to the truth, that wil make the right people nervous.”
   She’d finally brought up the white elephant. “Do you want backup, or do you think it’s safe to be separated?” My brain screamed it anyways: ambush, setup, killing zone.
   “I’ll have someone pick me up, and I’ll have you or another girl drive me home at the end of the night. I think I’m doing a cop uniform tonight and making the stun gun part of the costume. If I turn the setting down, I should be able to play with it and charge for the honor. Which would I look better in? A blue uniform or black? Maybe I have enough for a green Sheriff’s setup.”
   Once safe on the couch and after dialing him, Harold kept it short. “I’ve got good news if you’re feeling better.”
   “By a mile. Doc said nothing to worry about, be better than fine in a couple of days, just don’t overdo it this weekend.”
   “That means rest. Not fuck your girl nonstop in bed, but real rest with real food. Two things. I said I’d give you one. You’ve got a second if you need it, as long as you have yourself in after this is over. The other is that your girl was right. Today was strange. Had the big guys popping in all day. Now you know the rules, hardhats, boots, check-in, all the safety regs. Kept a close eye on their flunkies that kept wanting to go places they shouldn’t. Even got rid of Nicky by paying him more to go tail one of them. I’m not telling you to go Death Wish with her on some asshole, but I’ll admit that I’ve had my eyes closed tight in the past and my head down. I have two options. Calling the nearest field office and hoping someone forgets I was doing my job earlier today, or I can let you and her add up the sums for me. You understand? I’m not going to cry if that kind of inventory goes missing. Anything else?”
   “How about a small side bet.” This didn’t have a damned thing to do with Nicky, or her paranoia rubbing off on me.
   “You’re on.”
   I could see the chain in my head. One of Abernathy’s buddies got spooked, and paid off a non-local like me. The sheriff had distance, but then two unexpected bodies turned up. Fast forward, and we hadn’t received a visit before today because we were bait for the actual conspiracy.
   Fuck. I’d promised that old woman. Monday would be a fine day to stop breaking promises.
   “If this is nothing, you can fire some complaints up to the office and wipe your hands of this. A few days after that and the source of one of your problems will be shipping out to who knows where.” I didn’t get a laugh track from him.
   “You’re not that bad, but you’re right. It’s my prerogative if I want to clean house of anyone or anything that I think is going to damage safety. So what if this is something?”
   His argument stopped quick. There wasn’t reason for me to ask this of him, but avoiding a potential bet that easy was too big and tasty of a carrot. He said deal, and I followed. Betting time over, I wrote down the address, and paced through the files for Amanda while Tahlia showered again and prepped for the night. My place was half the size of hers at best, and she didn’t have the room to spread out that she was accustomed to. After her growls and cursing interrupted my train of thought for the fourth time, I poked my head into the bedroom. She posed completely nude and holding up one set of lingerie, dropping it on the bed, then grabbing another before going back to the first.
   “I can’t decide. I have some of what I need here to do a cop costume, but the rest either got destroyed long ago or I packed it away. So, second options.” She waved the first, then laid it against her body. “I have this, which would work under a long pencil skirt and high-collared blouse, and I could go for the super-classy upper-class dominatrix.”
   I pointed at the skirt combo on the bed, then the set she modeled, mesh and damasked blacks. “Looks expensive, but this isn’t Adult The Price Is Right.”
   “Over eight hundred for this set. Had to drive to Atlanta to get measured by this one dressmaker that does nothing but high-end siruean fashion. I made the mistake of asking how much for a functional corset that I could also tear away, then treated myself.” Then she picked up the other set, all straps and rings. “I think a nice pantsuit would go with this. Or...ooh, librarian. I’ve got a good wooden ruler somewhere and rapping knuckles a bit harder than a tap would have the Friday night crowd chasing my tail.”
   She forgot that she was still nude and dashed to her bags in the other room to dig up CDs for matching music. Her tail and ears perked and telegraphed in a way that she’d rarely revealed to others for almost a dozen years, just like I’d built a shell of my own. While she wasn’t at my throat right now, I had problems feeling sorry for the guys at the club. She’d rip through them like a hurricane in a trailer park.
   After packing for the night she emerged in a sleeveless shirt and loose skirt, face back to the laughless state. “Don’t burn you brain out on research. I might need it later.”
   I’d had enough of her games and moods for the day. “What am I to you? Just a—”
   “Stop right there.” It would have been more concerning if she’d sat next to me. “Describe me. First three things that come to mind.”
   “Distant. Manipulative. And you show trust in the strangest ways.”
   “At least we’re on the same page. You didn’t trust me at first, but I was the least bad option.” That hurt to hear from her. “Here we are, blurring work and pleasure. I wouldn’t have chosen you, but you work with what Goddess grants.”
   Her excuses for behavior aside, she deserved the occasional clothed tongue lashing. “I’m adding another three things. Keeps her feelings to herself, is good at avoiding questions about them, and gets more blunt the closer you get the real Tahlia.”
   “So I’m like everyone else, just more so? That might be part of why I appreciate you and I’m putting up with this. I’ll share my mind and body with you as I wish. Don’t deny that you’re doing that too. As for my heart...” I let the past ripple in memory, and put things off in the same way that failed to pay off before. “Are you going to wish me luck tonight?”
   “Have you ever needed it?” And with that, our little heart-not-to-heart concluded, it was back to work.
   “Tonight, maybe. But I might have already had all the luck I need. Remember how I said this morning that Abernathy stopped by the club? It turns out that Charlie did almost exactly what I’d thought he would. But both Bobby and Vinnie didn’t have that stroke of genius out of the kindness of their hearts. Think a bit like someone dangling their nuts over an alligator pit before feeding time. They had to have insurance offsite, which makes me wonder exactly what the hell they were doing that had them thinking it was time to sing and save their skins.” She went back to grab the bag, and I turned to hear her. “All I have to do is play pretty tonight and put the past couple of weeks on the backburner. I still need to make a living.”
   “The chance of something happening went way up today. We bought in, and nothing yet that clears Abernathy in your court. He could have told his goons to get her, and they walked into a fresh crime scene. What if they were the last people to see her alive and have to keep their mouths shut.”
   “And you’re not wrong. I know there’s one piece missing that will make the whole illusion shatter, and too many people that could sell it. I could look Abernathy in the eyes and say all I’d done was be concerned about a co-worker and friend. He lost his chance to dump us in the woods.” With that, she left me for the evening.
   Clocks don’t tick the way they used to, so time rolled off the slope. A quick bite of leftovers, and I waited for the sun to fall. She’d left computers running, trying to assemble a puzzle where all the pieces were the same color and barely different in shape.
   My phone buzzed, and before I’d looked at the number I had it to my ear, answering to my name.
   “This is Detective Zhalin. I’m investigating the recent incidents Roberts said you’ve been sniffing on. We’re having a talk, off the record, just us guys. He thinks you’re useful, so meet me at the club in an hour. You understand?”
   “Yeah. That all?”
   “Right now, yes. You two either make my job really hard, or are assets, because some people have a problem with staying out of the way.” He hung up, and I got dressed for the night, worries about schemes bubbling up faster and faster.
   
Before I’d put a pair of dusty old boots back on to head out, I called the radio station. In a foul mood, I requested a Police song, telling the lady covering the night shift that this was for the whole ongoing situation.
   Halfway there, she came on after a break, the local news outlining protests and yet more frank exchanges of views. “I don’t know how many of you have already made plans for tomorrow. Whatever it is, just be aware we’ve got some pretty ugly bits of reality to remind us of what we’d better not ignore. I can’t blame you no matter how angry you are. This...this...if you’re feeling like this is something we need to stand together on, there’s going to be a candlelight gathering at the square downtown starting shortly for all the victims of senseless violence, in memory of the girls. And tomorrow at the festival, there’s going to be a tent a bunch of us local groups have gotten together. I understand if anyone wants to stand in protest elsewhere, but I’ll be there because we’ve...” Her voice cracked, as live as it gets. There was the sound of a tissue and a human sob. “A request came in twenty minutes ago, and I thought I could hold it together. I’m going to go cry now, but I hope whoever’s responsible for this is listening. I’ll be watching you.”
   I wouldn’t have thought of it without Tahlia digging through music, and a synth bass paved the last few miles to the club.
   
The club had been long since packed by the time I walked in. At least I had a spot waiting for me. A strict looking siruean male in a suit sans jacket matching the kind of voice on the phone sat back, watching the room more than the girls. He had a tan and black coat clipped shorter than Tahlia’s, reminiscent of a German Shepherd or a Doberman, making me feel that he had little choice but police work, like a kid nicknamed Boomer, Tank or Colt is doomed to think of the NFL as a first career option. I walked over, bouncing off the already drunk and the half-naked pursuing them. Two empty beer bottles sat on the table, and a forgettable brunette dropped off a couple fresh. If he was paying, I wasn’t voting against tax dollars ending up like this. 
   “Evening.” He had Tahlia syndrome—curt, too direct, ears hard forward, stiff and unmoving.
   The redhead on stage, pale and curly-haired, down to black and green panties with a fan of bills in her garter couldn’t grab his attention. He got up to let me slide in, and at his size football might have been an option, my height but maybe two hundred plus pounds of muscled legs and broad shoulders. No, closer to two fifty, so easily forty pounds on me and likely none of that fat.
   “That it is. Detective Zhalin?” He flashed his badge for me out of sight of everything, then appraised, profiled, and turned me inside out with a sniff and an irony stare.
   “Roberts never got your name.”
   “Jacob.” I didn’t owe him extra yet.
   “Well, it’s nice you showed up. And to make you feel a bit superior, I’m kicking myself. Your sorry ass could have been in an interrogation room less than eight hours after that little overpass stunt you and Ms. Vujana pulled off. No one had your name then, and it sure wasn’t on my radar that morning, but you’ve made some rather big waves. I have to hand it to you, that got us a lot more leads in one day than we’d had in a week before. Want more to feel good about?” He had a better poker face than Tahlia.
   It was hard to say no after beer had lifted my mood. “And Tahlia was making this seem like one huge clusterfuck. If you’re writing the true crime novel of this as it’s happening, she’ll be upset if you get her wrong. It seems like no one sober and sane wants her after them.” The redhead left and Roberts’ latest jack-off fantasy, Melanie, came out in a different superheroine costume than the other night.
   He cocked an ear and showed a sliver of perfectly white teeth. “And what does that make you for smelling like her? Besides a public nuisance, all that rattling you two have done meant we found Victoria Jarrett within two days. There’s ways I’d have rather spent my weekend than with a decapitation, and missing the head, but here’s the bonus round. A few days later I get to repeat the experience. Granted, you’re not the only annoyance I have in my life, but we’d be dissecting the potential abduction sites for the hundred and first time if we didn’t have people so scared they remember a few other names.” He leaned forward, and took a long swig, bottle number three history.
   “What kind of names?” Never trust a guy that’s drinking faster than you and still talking like it’s Tuesday, especially when he hasn’t loosened his tie.
   “Rolling, Wuornos. Ted Bundy. Don’t know if you follow me.”
   “Serial killers.” Another round of beers met the table, and the music couldn’t hold back the spiderweb cocooning me.
   “And the kind that had people scared like they’re becoming now, wondering if the official body count is even half the truth. I’ve done the dirty paperwork before that closes out a murder, and it’s not a bandage.” He sniffed again, then downed another quarter bottle of beer while looking past me and the show on the stage. “I’m not a very religious man. I know where I stand in this world; my wife, my kids. Men like me, and maybe you, we’re different. We wake up, the mask goes on. We do the duty the world needs, and every distracting bit, the emotions other people can allow themselves, we have to do something else with it. Some of the guys on the force do volunteer work. I make sure I treasure my kids. I fear there will be that one thing that finally does it for me. After, the kids will look, and know. I’ll look in the mirror, and that person will be totally alien. Those aren’t eyes I want to see out of, get me?”
   I matched him with a drink. “Then why do it at all?”
   “Why do anything then? Why hook up with Vujana and tear across this city the way you have? I’ll tell you. Fear. I’ve seen people that don’t have it anymore. Ever do something really dangerous at your job?” Getting personal was unfair, as was leading the suspect across a tightrope between smart and willing to talk.
   “All the time. Every day, you might not get to go home. No guarantees except the ones you make.” 
   “Everyone out there has moments when they put aside fear. I’m not talking about that. You ever go to a zoo and see an apex predator? A tiger, a lion, something big and mean? It’s informative, because you’d get to see what I’ll have to look at in the near future. They don’t have that fear everyone else does. And you smell it. They can hide it for a bit, seem innocent or helpless, but whether it’s emotional or physical, they’re looking for fear. They want to run you to the end, to see it in your body that you already know what fate’s ahead. That’s what their soul eats. That’s what breaks the covenant, the church, the house—cold blood.” He downed the rest of that beer, then called for yet more. “So you understand the piece of your soul that you’ve lost and haven’t noticed yet? You wanted in on this, and you’ll feel it later. One is too many. Over a dozen, and I’ll have to consider getting rid of all the guns at home.” 
   He perked up, waiting for it to impact on me and shatter. “What do you mean, a dozen?” No, no, no, please dear lord...I’m not making this a prayer. 
   “Potential murders.” 
   I closed my eyes and narrowed the world to his voice and the cool bottle against my head. “Not three? Dumb question, how?” 
   “I made the call this afternoon, before I left to eat. Have you seen any of the files?” I stayed silent, wondering if this counted as entrapment. “Let me restate that. The copy that used to be Abernathy’s, have you looked at any of the crime scene photos yet? The bodies? Read the reports? Stared down the facts? How did that make you feel?” 
   Parts of my childhood waved from the island of their exile. “Almost puked. Must be worse in person.” And that passes with time, but I knew he was right about my soul getting vivisected. 
   “First fresh one you ever see is always the worst. After that you learn some distance. You don’t have but a drop in the bucket. We’ve been looking into some older cases, girls gone missing, recent unsolved murders. Even called up more than half the counties in this state. I don’t even need Amanda Ulrich’s case now. I’ve got almost zero evidence from her place, but it’s closing if this is right. I’ve got a pattern.” I opened one eye to a grim smile familiar with the dirty work that needed doing. 
   I missed the changing of the guard, and staked money that the red and white siruean on stage was Rose, whirling in lace and more lace. The next table had a pair of fast talking latina girls, Puerto Rican by the fast cadence, milking the wallets of some fratboys with well-heeled parents. Rose leaned back from the pole at almost a forty-five degree angle in a spin, then pulled up into a pirouette, spinning to the edge of the stage and presenting her garter to a line of waiting men. A couple measured breaths, then I opened both eyes in case they were needed. Zhalin was still having fun, waiting to deliver the deadpan punchline. 
   This wasn’t entrapment, it was playing with the rabbit before killing it. “If you say more than heads, there’s going to be a toilet with chunky beer soup.” And it was a fine plan to admire until you’re the one in the snare.
   “These, yes, but it’s the how. He didn’t take the head as a trophy every time. What I can say is that each of the girls was taken by surprise, almost no struggle and overpowered so quickly they never had a chance. Molineaux’s going to have the amateur detectives guessing for years. Ulrich will have books written about her. Jarrett was a messy abduction.”
   “And all the other ones? How far back? Years?”
   “Not that long. Bit less than two years. Some of these could be from copycats hiding in muddy waters, but I’ve got more than I had this time last week. He’d never done more than one every two to three months, never close to each other, easier to write off as just another unsolved mystery. Now, this.”
   A parade of whys and hows trampled down the cerebral Main Street, out of time and step. “And all of them siruean?”
   “I’m not even done trying to get possible matches. But that’s one of his hallmarks to date, unless he’s doing some human girls with a different profile a few counties away.”
   I needed more beer to think of this, and called for them. “If all you wanted was someone to listen, you could have gone anywhere and found a bartender.”
   “Oh, you’re better than you let yourself know.” The shakedown rattlesnake wanted details like the little lost dog, or the police would be right to haul me in and suspect that I had a split personality.
   “So far, this is one sided. Listener, talker.”
   “More like you’ve got a question. This is your shot. I didn’t call you to watch the girls and drink beer.”
   “Tahlia was wondering...”
   “Which mean you were, and she confirmed it for you. Go on.” He’d be laughing in a few seconds, or calling his buddies to laugh with him.
   “She’d been taking a shower. And it was one of those strange moments where you think something’s missing. Then it flashed. Wet dog.”
   At that he laughed, man to man instead of protector and transgressor. “First time tailchaser, yeah? Enjoying yourself, stealing one for a time?”
   I’d tell Nicky about this on Monday and gloat with sprinkles on top. “Given her reputation, or what everyone talks about, it’s a wonder you didn’t send her over earlier. Already had a chance at dying from her temper.”
   “Should meet my wife.” Then he commiserated. “Whatever you do, next relationship, don’t tell the lady you’ve ever had tail. I’ve got it worse than you. At least once a year my wife busts my knot because I got myself tangled with a human girl back when I was barely out of high school. So, what did you ask her after she stopped beating you for that one?”
   “The question went like this, isn’t it harder for a human to smell a siruean nearby than the other way around, yeah?”
   “That what we call easy. My sense of smell at least triple what yours is. Try again.” Easy counted as girls sucking dick just a few steps off the street and in the alley, not this kind of game.
   The previous girl left, and out came the ballet chick, this time dressed for a chorus line. “Victoria Jarrett was out walking her dog late at night. Why didn’t the dog bark?”
   The look on his face was worth the memory of a sidewalk. “You asshole.” His ears flipped back for an instant, then forward and less aggressive.
   “But that’s it? No matter who he is, doing it once is lucky. Twice, really lucky. A dozen times, you have to wonder what else got missed. But if the dog missed it too, with a sharper nose...anyone can excuse getting surprised by bright lights, or loud noises. Maybe each had the attention span of a fly. But smell, either he’s got some kind of camouflage, or every victim fucked her sense of smell somehow.”
   “Now if that isn’t some first class grass and shit. Hey! Another round here!” He waved over a perky kadisi girl, white and blond, and let her slide in between. “Actually, scratch that sweetie. Go get me a good bottle and a couple rocks glasses. Whiskey sound good?”
   “Not bad at all.” The girl was taking advantage and had a hand on each of us, nails and fingertips mapping.
   “Mmmm. You boys looking for more than a drink? Celebrating something?” She turned to give me a sniff and kiss. “You’re Tahlia’s property, but she’s going to let some of us have a taste, so I can forgive her choice of music for a while. And you, the woman that let you off the leash must know how to handle this monster. Taking turns or am I getting both of these at once?”
   “What’s your name, kitten?” He had to be about as old as Harold but in better shape, and she was closer to eighteen than my age.
   She patted his bulge and gave him a kiss. “Emilee. Three E’s, just need some men to put some long O’s and A’s in there.” Her hand changed his mood too quick, habits formed from the company he kept.
   “Well, Emilee, if you see that bottle gets over here, give us a half hour or so to talk business. If we want some fun, and I wouldn’t mind that, we’ll see what else tonight brings.” She gave each of us another kiss and a long squeeze, then slinked off. “What’s your girl going to say? She’s here tonight.”
   “Probably nicer than your wife.” The idea of Tahlia being anything except possessive didn’t fit, and her comment about litter boxes flew through my head.
   Emilee sashayed back with unopened bottle of honey brown liquid, giving us a show of opening and pouring before going to see what she could make in the meantime. “Here’s to the women. Better when they’re alive and driving you to madness.” He raised his glass.
   “Agreed. To the women.” And the first sip burned, good and strong down my throat and up through the sinuses.
   “Now, you asshole, let’s get down to the meat of this since you two put that together. I’m bringing in the FBI, just a little bit. No one knows but me and Peters. Told their guy earlier today the whole of it. Possible serial killer with multiple kills in one area, and other possible kills near enough to make it a daytrip. Right now, it’s just checking forensics work that I won’t get court admissible results on for a few more weeks, and seeing if we can give someone else closure on their nightmares. What I’ve been working on may be the other end of that. Think about what you smell like, that is, if you were me.”
   “Saw a Doc Leonora this morning.” And I didn’t add that I wasn’t considering switching to her for primary care.
   “Which I would have guessed because you reek of one of her awful blends. She dosed you good. What else?”
   “Tahlia. You can tell the difference between her and another?”
   His ears only made it halfway back before he caught himself. “Kind of. You haven’t spent that much time with her, but there’s woman on you, and siruean at that. Who else would it be? Anything else?”
   “Pizza, some beer now and earlier. Energy pills. Must be confusing.” A flash of white and blond got onstage, and Zhalin missed it entirely, turned to me.
   “Not really. Vujana’s got a sensitive nose. I’m average, but like I said, it’s still more than you. So here’s my point.” He leaned forward and gestured with his free hand. “A dead body smells dead. Everyone has a bit of the scent of whoever’s around on them. It’s small, humans sense it. You’d say ‘They seem like family’, or ‘I knew they were in the room without seeing them’, a slew of other things if it was a person you were familiar with. If I had the time, I’d teach you all about K9 units. You can think of it like this, you hear the orchestra but I can hear the instruments. They’d hear the fingers on the instruments.”
   “OK, so Tahlia was being very frank about smelling and identifying stuff. She made it sound like a kind of psychic ability.”
   “It’s not inaccurate, but sensitive doesn’t mean trained, nor does it mean infallible. These girls, as soon as our potential killer stopped hiding his scent, they started picking it up on their coat and skin.”
   “Or that part came later. What about indoors vs. outdoors?” He shook his head at me. “Guess I had the wrong idea from her showering.”
   “I’m going to leave here, and the wife is going to tell me I smell like alcohol, smoke and perfume for a week no matter how much I wash up. Part of that’s her being her, but I work a non-natural death, and same thing. I know it was there. The quads can’t think that out. It makes me worse at discerning things, but what I can do, I’m really good at because I think. Same goes for you. Witness reports are unreliable, indoor or out. But when I smell the same unnatural hints, that memory of something that isn’t in the room anymore, on the second body, an older one, as the first...”
   “So you’d know if a person had smoked marijuana or been shooting junk without a piss test?” I made a note to never work under a better nose than mine. 
   “Even if I didn’t know them, I’d suspect it. There’s good reason for that. I’ve taken the damned tests for it and I have to refresh my certification every other year, so I’m walking admissible evidence in any case. Practical purposes, if you have the time, you bring out the quads and make it a solid case. Now, take you as an example. Alcohol fades quick. Let’s say you drank some last night or with lunch, but that’s about the limit, about double the time it takes to clear a Breathalyzer. Marijuana metabolizes differently, so as long as someone washed good, I’d be pressed to pick right several hours later, but the lingering part of it...that’d take weeks to fade completely. It’s like that hint of garlic or onion smell. Maybe you ate a plateful of it a couple days ago, maybe you just walked in the restaurant for lunch, maybe you’re one of those unlucky ones that had onion soup once and now your sweat always smells of it. Give you another example. You said you took some energy pills. Caffeine or one of those liquid blends, the one that say grape but taste more like getting facefucked by a grapist?”
   “Whatever goes with the coffee and gets you out the door, you know? The less you can taste it, the better.”
   “Same here. So let me profile you a bit. I know what the fuck they smell like because your average fuckup loves this crap. They get those super cheap ones out of a gas station, not illegal, not all caffeine, but I can’t walk in and bust a station for it. That’s narcotics’ job, and they won’t because the soup they used isn’t scheduled yet. Well, your budget fuckup does what he needs to get it in a smokable or shootable product. It’s weaker compared to amphetamines, but we’re talking the type that aren’t having anything but bad endings. So you pop a few of those pills, think maybe this gets me through the worst days on the job, right? Smelling you is like that guy here that had a few beers and running into him the next day versus some alkie.”
   The bottle slid towards me after Zhalin poured himself another finger. “Roundabout, you know this guy, your serial killer...”
   Zhalin raised his glass and inhaled the vapors. “Suspected and unconvicted by the courts, but man to man, the asshole that I want pilloried with his nuts out for public busting.”
   “Like you said, same difference. He’s got a strong stimulant in him, maybe a mix of things. He overpowers them, has them for a while, then kills them.”
   “It’s good you got what I’m up against. Initial forensics writeup overlooked the dog, and I’ve been doing more cross-checking and sitework than correcting reports. Shit happens when you’re tired, and I don’t get much sleep when this is on my mind.” This time he didn’t hide his opinion and kept his ears back.
   “Would cocaine be what you smelled on the girls?”
   “Florida’s still Florida. 80s and 90s are over, but coke and crack aren’t ever going away. I don’t think that was it. Why? Coke’s a good bit more upscale than a budget pack of rock.”
   “Suspected and unconvicted by the courts, but man to man, there’s coke coming through. Even better, I might know how.”
   “Let’s push that to the side for a minute. Fuck, I should have had Vujana stewing for a day. She’s a bitch, but useful.” His ears rolled forward slowly, and I followed his hungry gaze.
   Speak the word, and she’d been summoned. “Did I just hear my name, or did Bobby chew on the speaker wiring again and I’ve been dancing to music in my head?” She’d picked the skirt and blouse, looked overdressed with hair up like an old movie but in muted color. She sat on my lap sideways and demure, returning Zhalin’s stare.
   “Vujana. Was just thinking of you.” He had enough to drink that the librarian and ruler might have been a smarter choice.
   “I told you when you got here. We could make this less public and I could repeat myself.” I moved my hand up her leg towards the waistline until she pushed it away.
   “Roberts told me about your new toy.”
   “Old toy, and you can’t blame a girl, can you? Not right now, anyways. I hope he’s feeling better.”
   “He’s laughing it off. I don’t think I’d do the same.” If I’d been sober, I still wouldn’t have picked up the second and silent conversation between him and Tahlia.
   “Then don’t push me. Besides me, what have you men been talking about?”
   “Your man was asking about the local coke trade just now.”
   “I’d listen very fucking closely to my clever little monkey. And consider any promise out of his mouth backed by me.”
   “Vujana?”
   “Yes, Detective?”
   “Would it be too classy to suggest a banker theme? Your threats tend to return better than my retirement account.”
   She smiled. “I have to be onstage in a song or so. Did I see Emilee over here poaching?”
   I didn’t want to admit to it. “Kind of.”
   “Well, just don’t bring her home. I’m not a cat person.” And with that she walked off, all posture and short steps from the skirt and lingerie.
   He poured out more in his glass, stealing several eyefuls of her while she made her way back through the crowd. “You are one deranged motherfucker for trying to collar that bitch.”
   “She’s not that bad.”
   “You must still have all your blood in your dick instead of your brain, and maybe Roberts and I weren’t direct enough. The only reason she’s never seen a moment inside a jail cell for assaulting an officer, and Roberts was nowhere close to the first time, is because she’s scary and useful. Or useful and scary. Hell, you ever watch any lesbian porn online?”
   The change jarred. “Usually tired and fall asleep first.”
   “I’ll clear up how much danger you’re in. The old phrase, don’t stick your dick in crazy, right? I love my wife. She might get pissed I’m here, she might tease me about things from before I knew better, but she’s loving. The girls here, they look out for themselves and their men, if they have one for a while, are accessories. Vujana’s in a class of her own. There’s this one website where they have two girls fighting, and the loser gets dominated and fucked by the winner. Kind of hot when both the girls are fit and look like they’re really fighting. Morgan’s first class scary, military trained for certain, and maybe been on a spook squad doing dirty things that will still be classified after we’re dead. She’d be a punching bag for your girl. Maybe she’s been picking on the rest of us whenever we get in her way, just to send a postcard to Morgan. One day.”
   Since he brought them up... “What else about her and Jeffries?”
   “You’ve tangled with them, you know almost as much as anyone else. I stay as far away as I can. I don’t want their odors in my head.”
   “This is just opinion, but he’s got that strung-out look, or recovering from it.” A blonde started her set with an athletic set of moves on the pole.
   “The man’s had that since I first saw him. He drinks almost nothing but coffee, must bathe in it from how far away I can smell him downtown. It’s scary to think of them as a loving and domestic couple. Don’t think she makes him get enough sleep, don’t think I’d sleep easy if I shared a bed with her.” 
   “That’s it? They’re a pair of blanks?”
   “As close to it as you can get. They probably met doing whatever wetwork she was into, and that means he’s a lot smarter than he comes off. They did a tour, got out, hell, they’re probably collecting from half a dozen different interests that want Abernathy delivered nice and safe up to Tallahassee to do their biddings. Good money if you can swing it.”
   I leaned back and thought over the crazy scenarios Tahlia and I had invented. We only had one real piece of evidence to buy information with. “So they wouldn’t be doing any side work?”
   “There’s not enough time for it.”
   I pulled out a copy of the address Harold passed on. “Foreman thinks there’s some odd people, not the ones that actually do the work but office and shirts. Two and two. Abernathy keeps things clean so the politicians look good, business comes in, builders build, but that means controlling certain other kinds of business, right?”
   “In a perfect plan, yes, but narcotics is a funny thing. Almost got assigned to that when I was down in Miami for a few years. Last thing I needed was a reputation as a drug-sniffing dog. All it takes is one bust, and a network over several states unravels, people start going to jail. Unless you’re some ghetto kid or you can control the entire shipping process down to the customer’s doorstep, you don’t make narcotics your retirement plan.” His eyes faded to a window into a day in the life, too often picking up the pieces of poor financial advice. “Perhaps you get a chain of folks, and they say, one by one, I could make a bit extra. Just this one time. This isn’t the Mexican cartels. You hear shit. Doctors, lawyers, car dealers, one time it was an elementary school principal. There’s big fish at the top of the chain, but there’s no big fish here. A few small or medium time crooks at best. And every so often they end up in a dozen pieces, half burnt, and you might get two or three, just enough to say that’s the last you’ll ever have to deal with them.”
   I pushed the slip of paper across, and Zhalin took out his phone and dialed. “Zhalin. Yeah, favor. Go look this up, quietly. No, not that. Who knows? Just get the stuff together. I’m talking with this guy. Yeah, and I’m betting he’s got an angle. Just do it, OK. I don’t care who has to get out of bed between now and 3AM in the morning, I do a favor by keeping my eyes and ears open, you do your job. If you got another corpse stinking up the place like those two guys Thursday morning, I’ll have to be there. Get it moving, we good? Good, boss could use some cheerful news to feed the press for breakfast. No, let him sleep. Later, thanks.”
   The half empty bottle between us glinted and shone in the shadows away from the stage, fire of diamonds and rare. “Damn. What did he say?” The blonde walked off, and got replaced by a slender blonde, all legs and tits.
   He stared down the whiskey and pushed it closer; I pushed it back to the center, enough for now. “There’s a good chance this is connected to some dirtbags we’ve been trying to keep tabs on. Just some hints I’ve heard. There was some organized freaking out after that lawyer ran into traffic this morning. The little part of the brain you exercise when you do this long enough, it makes all kinds of connections.” He left that open, fueling an inkling that part of the reason I wasn’t overnighting in jail right now was the cops found a better toy, and I’d made it even more fun to stalk.
   A table got loud enough to intrude on my thoughts, and Charlie walked over to tell them they weren’t the scheduled show. His gaze passed over me after that. Not just the room, not just the rowdy and happy crowd on a Friday night. He noticed me. Conspicuous, mismatched with Zhalin. He wasn’t the only one. Too quiet, neither of us tipping the girls, just waiting there like two predators in the grass. The room tilted in slow horror movies steps as the alcohol licked at the back of my eyes. I took two breaths and forced myself still, not moving, not floating on a sea of doubt. Neither of us wanted to say much. He wasn’t going to believe it, not without the bag and their fingerprints on it, that Morgan and Jeffries planted evidence and might have a connection to the local nosecandy ring. Maybe they liked a small sniff before fucking each other’s brains out.
   Zhalin’s phone rang and he walked towards the front door to hear better. One day, and now I wanted to sleep after this much running around. I wasn’t cut out for this, so I poured more whiskey and rolled the smell of it under my nose, trying to decide whether to say goodnight or not.
   The lights changed and Tahlia came out, slow to a sinuous high hat and bass line, drawing a knife from a sheath at her back and tracing down the buttons of her blouse. Wood and steel danced through her fingers as she rolled her hips to the beat.
   It was a nice choice, slightly obscure but better than some of their singles. Taunting a homicide detective by dancing to a song about murder rolled right up Tahlia’s alley. She could have softened the blow if someone had covered it, but every bit was the message. Wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d encoded a message in Morse to Zhalin with her tail or hips, and laughing harder if he hadn’t got it.
   As the expensive looking clothes dropped off her, the raindrops of guitar and patter of drumsticks matched old cold tears and warm ones I wasn’t there to see. She walked the edge of the stage, pointing at each man, directing them with the blade’s point, then waving them away for the next. Zhalin came back and watched for the first time tonight, a corner of his mouth up and a hand at his waistline adjusting the fit of his pants.
   “Can you take it if I give you some advice on her? What I’d do if you were the detective and I was the guy she’d latched onto?”
   “Worst that can happen is she hears about it later.”
   “That’s mean. I’d be fucking that bitch, knotting her, teaching her, breaking her, and making her beg. The only way to survive one like her is she wants you. Else...”
   The song moved to a close and she spun around the pole, knife held high. With the last cymbal crash, she tossed it hard into the front of the stage.
   The knife vibrated as she walked off, one foot crossing the other, the lights dropping except for a spot on the blade.
   Charlie walked over and pried it loose with a bit of show.
   “Forget the else. I’m done for the night.” Zhalin stood to pull his wallet, and dropped a card on the table. “In case either of you need me to do your dirty work. You’re not getting any other records, and you’d better play level with me. Got it? This one was free. Quid pro quo. And I’ll forget where I heard some stuff.”
   “As long as you understand what she told you earlier.” Whatever that was, she knew how to punctuate things. “Is there even the chance in your mind that Abernathy’s dirty? There’s too much happening around here.”
   He could have said nothing, but took pity. “He’s not the cleanest man I’ve ever known, but he’s got a good reputation. His name is on plenty of donor lists: the hospital, the local orchestra, the schools and charities. No surprise. Careful, but never get in his way. No matter that your lady and him don’t see eye to eye. Neither’s going to give ground, so I’d better solve this in time for the election. And at the top of the list of things he better give his successor is a picture of her, so they’re prepared for that meeting.”
   A tattooed chick with purple hair came on to a throbbing electronic club song, and Zhalin walked away. I poured again, downed it, then breathed easier.
   Emilee slid in beside me and had her hand gripping my cock immediately, pushing up against and making herself at home. “He left. I wanted both of you.” I didn’t ask if it was allowed, putting an arm around to console while running a finger along the edge of her ear.
   Tahlia sat down on her other side. “Dickmuzzle decide he had enough for the night?” She reached over and worked Emilee’s other ear.
   “Guess so. What did you say to him earlier?”
   “It’s between him and I. You ask about Morgan?”
   “He didn’t say shit. Except ex-military, in his opinion.”
   “We’ll talk later. You take your ass home and sleep off the booze. I’m not coming back to whiskey dick.”
   Emilee stirred. “You promised! I was going to have fun with both of them!” 
   “I never said tonight.”
   Emilee pouted and her ears folded back. “You promised, and—”
   “Shut the fuck up or I go back on stage and have them play Photograph.” She left, the shape of the knife now clear at her back.
   It was a slow and careful drive all the way back home, and the mirrors remained dark.

Chapter Fourteen

“You need to do something about the bank. I stopped to get gas and your card got declined.”
   “What’s wrong with yours? Did you max out again for the month?” I didn’t look up, concentrating on the change into and out of some bizarre-assed Steely Dan type of voicing.
   “You need to pay attention better. I told you three days ago that they were sending me a new card.”
   “It doesn’t change the fact that you’ve been using my card more and more.”
   “Well, you have a lower APR. There’s not really much reason for me to use my card except in emergencies.”
   I put the old Strat aside after running through the main riff of Black Cow at near tempo. “I’m not going to ask, Caroline. You make triple what I do. You also spend near triple what I do. Granted, a decent chunk of that is probably your car payment and the exorbitant insurance for it, but there are ways to tighten the belt up.” I waited for her to choose an evasion.
   “My position requires a little more image than yours does. Investments in my future may look frivolous at times, but the tune will change when there’s enough for a house.” Not a single word about us or me, as if I needed her.
   “If I wanted to audit you, it would have already happened. I’m more concerned about the small things, the little habits easily overlooked.” She flew by it for a second time.
   “This isn’t some dirt floor hovel out in the middle of the woods, Jacob. Each time I think I’ve broken you out of the downward spiral of counting and pinching pennies, you backslide. If you’d loosen up a bit, all those little phantoms you like sneaking after would vanish.”
   When your opponent hands you a big stick and stands unguarded, you can’t be faulted for the results. “How should I be loosening up? I’m not working excessive overtime, I’m not squirreling away every dollar that doesn’t go to essentials, and in case you missed it there’s a fresh bottle of liquor on the counter. If we wanted, there should be enough in the bank for a vacation. So what am I missing?”
   “I’ll bet that if I cared to track it, you’ve got patterns for everything. Like, every fourth day you go to the restaurant down the street for lunch. Guys can be predictable, but you beat the average.”
   With that said, she abandoned the hole before it required a ladder. I tried a few licks from earlier albums, but ended up on later ones. The shower cut off and Caroline wandered out in the cliched plush once-pinkish bathrobe. The smell of blended wine burned under prescient ninths and thirteenths.
   “I wasn’t trying to be mean, Jacob.” The pinkish liquid swirled in the stemless glass while she stood against the entrance to the kitchen.
   “And I wasn’t taking it as an insult. We grew up differently, that’s all.”
   “Please. I didn’t mean to imply that your childhood involved things that make a twenty year old mobile home look palatial.”
   Yet I saw friends that were lucky to have that. And I saw worse.
   For the first time in weeks I watched her eyes go human. She placed her wine on the table in front of me, took the guitar from my hands, and pushed into my side. “You’ve never told me everything.”
   “It’s not important anymore.”
   “Don’t make me cut it out of you.” I’d ignored that part of Annette’s advice. Caroline’s fingers said things her mouth didn’t, searching for handles or hooks to tear at.
   “We moved a lot. It seemed alien to see Christmas in the same place.”
   “Why? Deadbeat father? Drifting from job to job? Debt? Whatever it was, you’ve worked your way out of that life and past it.”
   “Mostly just the ups and downs of being poor and living paycheck to paycheck.”
   “That’s not the whole story. I know you better than that, Jacob. Everybody’s got awful scars. I don’t know why you put up with me sometimes, and I keep asking myself why you and not another guy. We could be two different people in different places, if one or two things went down other roads.”
   “You’re drunk. That’s more than one glass of wine talking out of your mouth.”
   “I’m remembering. It’s a nasty thing I wish I could cut out. Don’t you ever feel that? One fine day you end up crying in the bathroom for no reason. You flush the evidence of the tears down the toilet, but it keeps happening. It’s like a cold—you sniffle all the way to pick up something for it, and no matter what you do it hangs around for a week or more. The only difference is how miserable you are while you suffer.”
   I held her back, and let her run through the rest of the maudlin. Prayers and dreams transmuted through the softer focus of weeping flesh. It might have been cruel to do that while thinking about dropping her off, unconscious, at a budget rehab facility, but the more jagged slice would be looking later, then putting it off. Again.
   After whatever cocktail she had did its job, I let her down onto the couch, and went back to fitting some old bits into newer sounds. Once I realized I had nothing important to say, I poured a glass for myself. Annette had been more right than me, but talking to Caroline’s doc had done little good. She’d found a less strict supplier and squirreled them in a less conspicuous place than her purse. The wonderful thing about old movies and your own past is that when you start making the same mistakes your parents made, you don’t have space to criticize the ending, and doubly so when it’s a long running series with at least one reboot.

Chapter Fifteen

I rolled over when the door opened, staring at red digital numbers. A bag touched softly on the linoleum of the kitchen nook, the smell of smoke and liquor on her fur creeping in from there. A glass clinked against the countertop, a couple ice cubes, and the sound of a bottle opening. She sighed, then walked in.
   “Hard night?” I hadn’t made enough progress on sleep to replace the fading slur of tonight’s drinking.
   She still wore the expensive stuff, and the little bars of light from outside highlighted her at angles. The glass in hand reflected more light, almost half full, and a small plastic bag swung from the other. She sat on the edge of the bed, and I reached over to touch her thigh. Ears flipped back, forward, then back again every few seconds. The glass and ice tinkled in her hand, the liquor and the clock the only color in the low light. Numbers changed on the clock once, twice, and finally she drained the glass, placing it after on the small table next to the clock. The bag bounced on the bed at my knees while she reached down to undo the shoes’ straps, sliding off with the whisper of leather against woven linen as fine as silk. Only then did she lie back across me and place her hand over mine, the knife and sheath between.
   “Good money. But tense.” Her ears flipped back and stayed there. “Once Zhalin was gone, I became fair game. I think Vinnie had every other girl riled up before I got there, and then I should have taken a few in the privates to do some disciplinary spanking.”
   “You get to do that?”
   “There’s only two dancers there older than me. Julie is on vacation with her husband, and Moira had a sick kid tonight. So I really was the mom tonight and still had to dance. The human girls hate it when I’m on point like that. We’re not like Feathers. Have you ever been there, just off of downtown and behind the rest of the places?”
   “Not enough in my wallet for their drinks.”
   “Well, I put more effort into things than some of those whores. Feathers is nothing but an overpriced brothel as long as you wrap it. Mr. Feathers is racist as fuckall, won’t hire anyone but white or asian girls, and the place had rats twice in the past year. The Harem, The Polebarn, Tommy & Arnold’s, they’re all alike. I couldn’t get a job there. No puppies, no kittens.”
   “You care about the place?”
   “Of course I do. Almost ten years. If you stick it out and keep clean you make good money. But I told you, the job is a drag and it takes that first scare outside the club and away from safety to wake a girl up. After I modified my stun gun they were treated to a demo after close. Do you know how many of the girls there less than a year wanted one? Zero. One called it a concealable cattle prod. They don’t understand. Pepper spray might as well go on your food. A whistle is useless late at night, you’re already in the van and a mile away to get raped. My standard is a matched pair of stun knuckles. I’ve used them too. Then followed up with the stun gun, and a testicle stomp or three.”
   “That wasn’t the question and you know it.”
   The sound of her breath synced to the fan overhead. “Yes, it was. Hurt girls don’t show up for work. I was only the third tail there back then. Rebekah had a coat that only looked decent if she oiled it, some odd skin condition. And Naomi, this Native American girl. Her one trick was tribal dances when everything else was techno or pop. There was one, just one, black girl, and she was so light-skinned that she could pass as white in the right light or camera angle. There’s smaller places in town that are tail only, or have a mix, but we’ve cornered the fucking Baskin-Robbins angle. Some of us have real dance training or learned on the job, some are just good at working the floor. But it’s our place, and if Vinnie ever pulls his head out of his half-Italian ass and lets me buy in, we could put half the larger clubs out of business.”
   She rolled over, towards my waist and feet, and placed her head on my stomach. I moved my hand to her ass and kneaded the muscles under the tailored skirt. “So what now? Who goes first, Morgan or Jeffries?”
   “Don’t say that whore’s name again tonight. And what the hell are you talking about?”
   “Do you want to sit back now or not?”
   “There’s really not an alternative. But my clever one just figured something out, did he?”
   “Do you want to know now or in the morning?”
   “It’s already morning. I need some dick first, then a nap, and then you’d better hit the grocery store and have lunch for me when I wake up.”
   “Bossy as ever, and you never answer questions simply.” A man has priorities, a good man reminds the priorities of her best qualities.
   “I’m taking this skirt off, then everything else but the garter belt and stockings. I expect you to be ready. Did the detective say anything flattering about me?” She stood, and the zipper to the skirt hissed open.
   My eyes wandered down her form as the knife and sheath followed, and she muttered that it needed sharpening after tonight. “Plenty. First, he thought it was funny you were getting boned by a human.” She folded the skirt and started undoing buttons.
   “I’ll bet. He talk about his wife?”
   “Yes, he actually did. More than once.”
   “She’s a nasty piece, one of those rare ones that gets off on smelling another woman on him. She’d divorce him if he did much more than window shop. Except for me.”
   That had to be a story. “Conceited, Ms. High Class?” She folded the shirt and stretched out.
   “When they moved here about four years ago, and after his first encounter with me, they came by the club. Don’t get couples much, and she was dressed like she wanted to try the stage. We went in the back, and I told her what I don’t do. So she did it for him, and kept looking at me like I could join in anytime I wanted.” The bra snapped off and that went atop the rest of the outfit. 
   “A different kinky than you’re used to?” She undid the pins in her hair and ran fingers through.
   “If I didn’t have standards to uphold, I’d break his mind and make her my little pet. I could get them his and hers matching collars for their anniversary.” I harvested eyefuls as she turned in a slow circle.
   “That wasn’t it. He had the opinion that you could beat Morgan in a fair fight, and that all the act you do on the police is a calling card for her.”
   She laid down on her side, and smacked me to get into place behind her. “I’d break the whore. Multiple sex toys, base of the tail, ass, cunt, nipples, ears, everything at once and keep it on until I melted her brain. And I’d never give her a fair fight. That’s lesson one of fighting.” I guided her as she pushed back and lifted her tail out of the way, her hands moving my stiff cock from against her ass to between her legs.
   “Well, at least it makes sense now why he said he’d knot you. Among other things.” She guided my hands, insistent on her desires.
   “He can go knot his hand for all I care and keep dreaming. Stop talking about other men fantasizing about me. It’s time to do what they can’t.”
   I pushed, and she opened, arching back against me. It took time to match rhythms while adjusting positions, holding back and then surging. With our movement limited, each bit brought us together with the smallest motions. She spread her legs further to give me more room, and our movements kicked something off the bed. We used each other as we had since first meeting, differences forced into new shapes. Our needs were maddening for her as me, wanting to feel the piston and cam race along the bore but restrained and redirected. Her free arm tried to reach back and guide the tempo, but she couldn’t maintain grip or concentration there, her short-trimmed nails scratching at my hip and thigh.
   She kept pushing back, preventing me from rolling over and taking her, restricting me to guide the dance of her hips and grind away at the walls, eroding barriers with no reason to stop.
   The words were whispered in her ear before I finished the thought. “You’re enjoying this too much.” And she twitched ears back to tease me and my perception.
   “I usually tie my toys to the bed and ride them until I’ve had enough.” Her head turned a fraction, the cords of her neck moving, her smile and unvoiced laugh. “Self-bondage was never my thing. Nor is being submissive, and you’ve managed to make me consider it. If I surrender, I’m not doing it half-assed.”
   “If you want it, don’t play. Say it. Make it real. You’re the clever and devious woman that likes snaring people in her plots.”
   “And I caught you. You’ll do everything I want. All of it. Before it’s all over, you’re going to tie me up, discipline me, force me to worship my master, beg to be collared, fuck all my holes, tease my ears and toes, control me by my hair and tail, make me smell your scent on me, possess my body and mind. And that entire time, I’ll be the one in control of you.” Her body twisted snakelike in a flash, showing me that the possessed and possessor weren’t so different. “And you will learn all my tricks. You’re going to practice a lot, on me, on any woman I bring you, bending the minds of any woman on the street.”
   “You talk like a woman that’s found love.” If this was the good girl, I wondered if the bad one was naughtier.
   “I might have found my match. You can’t own a person, you make them want and need. And I lust.”
   “And what is it you need now?”
   Her body said she wanted to be the teacher and the lesson. “More like what I want to try.”
   “Everyone else might say that could be another one of Tahlia’s catalog of threats.”
   “You’re enjoying this just like me. I’m less likely to stab someone when I’m full of your cock.”
   I gave her a hard smack on the ass and pulled out, but with reservations. “Then get on with it.” She got up, staring back before flipping her tail.
   “I swear the only reason I’m doing this is because I already came within a moment of killing you. After that you lost the fear of staring me down, and started talking to me, accepting me.” I watched as her tail drooped, and then curled between her legs defensively. “People get to change, or so they think. The world has a price for everything.”
   She knelt to recover something on the floor, and continued. “Part of the payment between us is this. My life detoured from the minute I left home. I closed off, and it made every night of dancing less about my body and more about pouring myself into something without reserve. In time, I just accepted myself, at least my body. After everything everyone else has tried...” She looked at me unmasked.
   “If this isn’t what you want, don’t do it. Fuck, woman, I might be worse at expressing my emotions than you, but I doubt a relationship counselor would have this on their top ten ways to strengthen a relation.”
   A slow and lopsided grin cracked. “Really? I hadn’t noticed. Since we’ve been having so much fun together, to hell with the normal mores. So here’s the price for the promise in exchange: I’m not going to accept less than someone that wants to be my other half. This isn’t what you think. Zhalin did say you were crazy to want to collar a bitch like me, but he’s the one with the cross and I’m not, so don’t expect him to know my psyche.”
   I waited while thumbing through a thick catalog of my failures, and added that to the embers of memory. “You’ll have to put this in human words.” The ash blown back onto mental hands knew the words already—what’s one more?
   “That might be why this will be best for us. We’re going to have to bridge all the gaps the hard way. So here’s what I want now. I love anal, at least with toys, but I told you I never found a man I could trust enough to give that part of myself away. But here I am, turning my life upside down.” She sat back on the bed and handed me a small bottle of lube.
   “You don’t have to prove anything here, you don’t have to attack—”
   “Yes, I do. Either I learn, or you’re going to slip and I’m going to turn full dominatrix on you. My match needs to know when I want to lead, and when he needs to be the one in charge, but most of all we can’t run over each other. The rest of the world, OK, but...” She trailed off, those words too different now. “Either you’ve done this before, or not.”
   “I have.” The girl in question had been really drunk, very high, and claimed all she had to do was lie back and take it.
   “Good. I prepped earlier tonight, so all you have to do is lube me up and get me ready for that girth. I’m crazy to do this with you. You’re thick and going to give me one pretty gape tonight. Do your job, loverboy.”
   She turned over on hands and knees, hiking her tail to wave it back and forth in eager anticipation. Then she moved over me so I could reach her ass without getting up, but also within attack, no, sucking and licking range for her. Her earlier comments about it came back to mind after she dipped the tip of her tail, smacking me across the face with it, quite deliberate given her awareness and humor. I punished her by grabbing the base of her tail with my left hand, thumb underneath, and waited to smack her right-handed until her muzzle cleared my cock. The crack sounded sharp and she couldn’t jerk away, her hands digging into my thighs.
   “This, or is there another technique?” I let my thumb massage firmly but softly the few inches on the underside without squeezing with the rest of the hand, the flesh under firm like a wrist instead of a finger.
   Her response was immediate. She pushed her ass back and I caressed it with my right hand while keeping her controlled with the left. Down the back of her thighs and up again, feeling closer each trip to the inside, drawing it out, and I exchanged precise fingertip strokes with broad brushes using the back of my knuckles or hand. She responded by trying to move from side to side, so I kept her restricted and spiraled inward over muscled thighs and ass, tight and relaxed. The further I went in, the more desperate her attempts to break the cycle and alter the rules I’d made.
   It was still a good, no amazing, feeling, but her tongue didn’t have same the paralyzing surprise now. Long licks up the shaft, back down the underside, swirling around the cockhead and enveloping it, reaching down and along the sensitive sides of my testicles—none of it could completely break me. As much as I’d enjoy it to just lie back and let the tides of sensation drown me, I’d already cast the die and committed to proving I could match her, taking the reins at will, and that I’d be the redoubt she’d always dreamed of. The combination of teasing and stimulation, of her allowing a man to do that to her, became chains as much as the thoughts in her head. As it should be, as it is, as it had not been before she’d threatened me for the first time and given the chance to prove what waited behind my eyes.
   I broke the round, and smacked her ass again. “Hold still. Time to get you prepped.” She doubled down on the tongue bath, wiggled and added that tailtip smack again.
   “Teasing me is not allowed.” She accented that with a long lick that traveled up and spiraled around, then took me deeply before coming up again. “I might want revenge later.”
   I cracked the bottle, and drizzled some of the slick and thin lube on fingertips, circling them over the puckered dark flesh. She wasn’t trying to break my mind anyways, just advising that she was still capable of it. Each trip around, the stakes rose and I pushed in gently with my index finger. Minutes passed and my finger orbited tightly to ease the hole open. I added more lube and went back to massaging the delicate nerves at the base of her tail. She opened up just enough for the first knuckle to lever her wider, then deeper, and then a second finger. Again, more lube and I felt her grip and bear down, not quite used to another doing this to her yet. Deeper, to the second knuckle, then twisting and deeper still.
   “Is this enough or do you need more time to prepare?”
   “As long as you go slow, let’s do this. No more playing around.” She rolled off and nudged me out of the way.
   We fussed with pillows and blankets, getting one underneath to adjust her angle. Her anticipation was toothy as I found a balancing point, trying not to lean in too hard nor lean back so far that we broke contact. The steps were like an old poster of dance steps, two different colors broken into simple mechanics. Grip leg, press in then pull away, brush down, let partner hiss and sigh, lock eyes while she executes the stretch and sheet clench, finally push in as she surrenders. We moved to the next section, both breathing heavy from the activity.
   Her breath caught and I felt her relax. She opened further and I gave her precious seconds to adapt. Pulling back, then reapplying pressure, I kept at it until little chance existed of becoming dislodged. After reaching to one side and finding the all important lube, I dripped more along my shaft and her hole, then worked it in.
   She grabbed her legs just above the knees. “No teasing, no playing. Fuck me.” I should have guessed this was going to be a thing, her growling, ears pulled full back, baring her teeth, and repeating herself with a mantra-like snarl over and over.
   I knew when I’d hit the spot. Flecks of spit boiled off my chest as I matched her wildness. Tired calves and ankles found renewed energy under my hands to resist her opponent. Her hands dug into her own legs deeper as the taut tendons of her hamstrings popped out beneath curling fingers and nails close to drawing blood. Emerald green eyes snapped wide in shock. The litany stopped and each movement elicited a breathless gasp.
   “Is this too much for you?” Her head shook in response. Vain attempts at speaking only managed a single silent no. “Then you want more? Are you begging?”
   She tried to nod and her eyes pleaded. I pulled almost all the way out and thrust back into her slowly, drawing out the intensity when I pushed against one of her most sensitive areas. She closed her eyes and her ears went loose, neither back or forward. Attempts to whimper or whine failed at even a breathy non-sound. When she finally gathered enough breath, she lost it to a shaking orgasm. Each stroke started a new wave of contractions and pulsing. My pace slowed to let her recover.
   When her eyes opened again I started fucking her faster, deeper and rougher. It didn’t take long for another orgasm to roll over her. This time her head fell back and her mouth relaxed, the tongue hanging out to one side as her gasping pants fell in time with the end of each thrust. The fine fur at her throat shivered, and soon after so did I as I lost control.
   
Morning came and she remained asleep, exhausted from work and me. The smells of coffee and food, and my noise, only caused her to twitch an ear and roll away with an arm over to deaden the sound. Old pipes were the least quiet part of showering. One, two, and then a third cop car flew past as I drove unmolested. The radio chirped with a coffee bright prerecorded loop about current events before going back to commercials. Today’s rounds of crowds would be competing with a crumbling nosecandy infrastructure for police attention. There’s the truth—give your attack dogs a chew bone or they chew on you. The ones on my mind had other problems than me this morning.
   “We’ve got a twenty percent chance of rain later today. I’m hoping it holds off long enough, because as soon as I’m out of here I’m headed to the concert. We need a break from all this depressing stuff in life, you know? So grab your friends, the neighbors, kids, just come out and say hi while we get some classic music. After this, The Dead, The Doors, and how about some Petty, yeah? But first, I know a few bad boys and girls out there. You’re not that vain if you think this song is about you when an ex sings it.”
   He died too young. If he was still around, Zevon could have supplemented his income by doing for relationship counseling what Nicky did for the betting man. Also, if you cut drag revues out of the running, where else were you getting someone to rhyme gender and blender? That took balls, a mound of cocaine, or both.
   As I pulled in the sky rumbled with warning of an early morning storm, which was the fate of a meteorologist in Florida—wrong again. Inside the grocery store, the too cold air conditioning worked its magic on the mix of young families, students, and people that might not have slept yet. At least the playlist wasn’t so depressing as the radio.
   I picked carefully, getting a few cuts of meat for Tahlia and supplementing from this week’s sales. Breakfast sausage, eggs, and more went into the cart. I’d fail at being a chef for her, but it didn’t take a genius to pick enough tolerable for both of us in the short term. There’d be plenty of time to learn and adapt to each other. On a whim, I added a moderately priced bottle of wine, a quart of ice cream that wasn’t chocolate, and left to get rung up.
   The petite siruean girl, young and service bright, smiled. “Find everything you were looking for?” Only two lines open for the light morning crowd. A plastic tag labeled her an Elise.
   “I think so. Is there anything here that wouldn’t be good for you? Girlfriend is like you and don’t want her to think she’s got to make a grocery list every week.”
   Most of her fur was a medium brown and her ears twitched once. “Well...you’ve got enough meat for a week, plenty of veggies, let me see...” She turned each can and package over.
   I turned around and saw a familiar face in profile.
   Dark brown and black fur, almost all black clothing, a jacket despite the heat outside, baseball-style hat pulled low, and a piercing stare aimed safely away.
   Morgan.
   She loomed at the far end of the aisle, easily a couple hundred feet away. I turned and slumped a bit, thankful when a mom about my age rolled up with a full cart and three loud children in tow. Elise played it straight and talked over the beeping scanner.
   “Unless she’s on a restricted or special diet, you should be fine. No chocolate, enough protein. Next time, just look for the safe/unsafe symbol. It’s hard to go wrong that way, and at worst it’s just an upset stomach, you know? I mean, I love ice cream, but that much sugar isn’t the best for me.” The damned machine took three tries to read that. I made a show of a shrug to the woman behind as she pulled a coupon wallet, looking past her. “I wouldn’t worry about it that much. And I think it’s kind of awesome when people just follow their hearts and, you know, just care about each other. Because you’re not hurting anyone, right, so being there for each other is what matters.”
   Elise continued, too bubbly for this early in the day as she bagged and I loaded them back in the cart. One of the kids babbled loudly about the fuzzy lady, and got shushed by the mother. The kid was too young to understand the world, just the experience of a different face and shape. She kept smiling and extended her hand towards the youngest, maybe just two years old, to feel and giggle over after finishing the last bag. I walked away and let out a long breath, out the door and onto the asphalt, sky above rapidly turning to the same shade.
   I opened the passenger door and loaded the first two bags before hearing a throat clear behind me. Slowly, I turned.
   Morgan stood close enough to touch me.
   “You won’t make the same mistake twice.” Her voice was low, threatening, and cold enough to keep ice cream from melting.
   I wanted to laugh at her, unhinged. “There’s frozen things in the bags.”
   And she smiled. It was unsettling in a way that Tahlia couldn’t manage, snake still and dead-eyed. “This will only take as long as you force it to be.”
   I turned away, placed the remaining bags on the seat, and closed the door. Turning back, I put the truck behind me and stared her down. Let her take it how she would, I wasn’t giving her a second chance.
   “Three minutes. If you have more to say than that, schedule an appointment.”
   Tahlia would have tilted her head just so, Morgan didn’t but kept gold eyes square on me. “Actually, that’s what we’re doing. You have something. You’re going to return it. And then you’re going to stay nice and quiet.”
   “And what if that doesn’t happen?” Other people walked past in the distance and the next lane over of the parking lot, but no one walked close enough to listen in.
   “I doubt it. I didn’t have your plate the other night. Now I do.” She spent a precious second on intimidation. “I could show up at your door anytime I want. I could bring a warrant and a few deputies. It’s better if we handle things quietly.”
   She’d been watching, and we’d walked right across the hunter’s path at the debate. It didn’t matter what her agenda had been the past week or so. Fourth quarter, score tied. Time to see who was prey and who had the brass balls.
   “Unlike yesterday morning?”
   “Unlike yesterday morning.”
   “You get chewed out for that?” Without Tahlia I wouldn’t have seen the shift in body language.
   “I get to do what I want. I’ve done worse. Remember that.”
   “At least you’re consistent, from what others have said.”
   I received confirmation that one of my guesses from yesterday had been right. “Is that so? I doubt that’s one of the words Roberts used for me.” If it had been the newer and more personable Tahlia, her ears would have flipped back, but Morgan’s didn’t.
   “The first part compared you to a delivery service.”
   She smiled again. “I actually don’t mind being compared to Amazon.” When I tried to stay blank, she continued, her voice dropping closer to a growl with each word. “I’ve heard it all, now and in the past. Bitch. Wolf. Puppy. Feral. Hound. Canine. Should I go on? There’s worse.”
   “I don’t doubt there’s less polite things out there.”
   She stepped forward, right up against me. “Good. As long as we have that understanding.”
   “It goes both ways.”
   Her nose crinkled, and she breathed in slowly. “You smell of her.”
   Turnabout was fair play, so I leaned in even though it didn’t force her to look higher. “And you have room to talk?” The woman was taller than Tahlia by at least an inch, and I scheduled another asskicking for confusing her and Amanda.
   “You aren’t the first man to fantasize about taming me or raping me.”
   “Go spread your kinks somewhere else.”
   “You tamed her, so why not me? Or so part of your brain says. Put it out of your mind, unless you want to repeat yesterday.”
   “And you never answered. Did you get chewed out?”
   Morgan was curt. “Yes. Happy?” I couldn’t visualize that emotion striking her. Maybe she needed a dose of the Magic Kingdom.
   “Not really, except that doesn’t count for shit.”
   “Exactly. All that counts is you bring everything back. I don’t care that you or her might have read it. You don’t get to keep it. Then you and her walk away, unharmed, and this ends.”
   “One condition.”
   “You don’t have room to bargain with me.”
   “Wrong. You don’t know everything we know. You’re not buying, so it could go to someone else.” I left the meaning open.
   “If you knew enough, you’d offer to escort me back and hand me everything right now. More than that, and you’d come to us willingly. I have things to get to first. The two of you are not my only problem. You have until tonight. No conditions. Understand?”
   “You had the chance to do this easy. Tahlia will have questions. Understand?”
   She drew a card from the pocket of her jacket and handed it over. “Wash up better. You smell like ass.” Her time up, she walked away and I realized the difference less than twenty-four hours could make.
   Safely back in my truck, I dialed the radio station for the second time in twenty-four hours to tell them that Zevon couldn’t write a song that fit an early Saturday morning to save his life. As an afterthought, I added that my girlfriend was siruean, and she’d smack me if there was a coke-fueled ‘Aaoooooo’ out of the speakers while riding in the truck.
   After I thumbed the phone off, I figured she probably put that song in rotation around Halloween and did an English accent for the night.
   
“She what?!?!” Tahlia bristled and clenched her jaw while wearing only a blue cotton bra and matching panties.
   I returned Morgan’s card to my back pocket after Tahlia flung it to the counter. “I told you already. If you want breakfast, or is it lunchtime now, then go put more on and you can ask questions while the food is on.” She didn’t drop her voice to opine on the situation or me as I finished unpacking.
   I chose eggs, prepped some bread, then sliced up sausage and bacon. The smell of butter, oil and meat filled the room, the crackling making her louder so that I didn’t miss anything. When she came out in a crop top and a wrap skirt, she gave me the upset look and softened it by playing a pout just long enough for me to notice it.
   “That was dumb, dumb, supremely and idiotically dumb, human mine. If I didn’t want them whole, I’d squeeze your nuts for her then call to correct her prediction models about me.” Her ears twitched, and fabric hissed from the tail lashing. “Never go toe-to-toe like that again with a trained killer. The whore could have killed you right there, a narrow stiletto through the ribs or in the heart so that the wound bleeds out as little as possible, and followed you down with a hand over your mouth until you lost consciousness. Actually, if she was that close, she might have ripped your throat out.”
   “That seems to go against the goal of nice and quiet.”
   She stalked back in the bedroom, returning with a hand mirror and to the stool on the other side of the counter. Considering for a few seconds, she turned it on me. “Look at it.” I didn’t. “Damn you, don’t make me put this right in your face. Turn around and look!” It was purely the old Tahlia, no niceties or gentle compassion. I turned to look at green eyes, avoiding the reflection she held lower. “You can’t do it, can you? What is it going to take?” Her voice fell quiet, barely above a whisper. “I have things in my past I’d rather not face down again. Sometimes dead and buried is the only chance you get to move on. And sometimes that’s literal. You met her once. I knew her for eleven goddamned months!”
   I turned away and stirred the food. Plates clanged against the counter. And without eyes, I saw her still and waiting.
   “Once was all it took.” The rising tide of pain in her face lapped over the banks as I turned with breakfast.
   “We shouldn’t be fighting over this. I...I can cry later. If I can still cry. Food, now. And if any of that juice is still good, I need some vodka in it too.” 
   She chewed and swallowed robotically. There was juice, and enough vodka for two. I sat beside her and waited.
   The glass raised in her hand, liquid swirling. “Fuck this. It was hard enough looking at the scraps they found of Jimmy.”
   “Maybe you should talk about it. Or not. What did Doc Leonora say back then?”
   She shifted to appraise me. “That he was a bad choice and that I shouldn’t have gone to ID what they found of him.”
   “Was that it?”
   Her ears didn’t come forward much. “You never really get over something like this. Jimmy wasn’t the first bad ending, just the worst up until now. I’ve managed to insulate myself, go cold, move on, but it’s never going to end. One of these days, you’re going to wake up. She’s going to be staring back at you, dead. And you’ll scream or cry or just sob. That will pass, and then it’ll happen again. I don’t know what’s worse, facing that alone or knowing that one person is going to have to see that happen over and over to you.” She left the third option unvoiced, suicide.
   “Your enemies would have the party of the year.”
   “Disappointing a few assholes like that is all it takes at times. Others, you wonder.” The rest of the meal was silent.
   After, she went in the bathroom, making sure the fan was on and the door closed. When she came out, she’d scrubbed her face, teeth bright and clean, but her eyes were frozen jewels.
   “After you left, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I finally got the fuck up and thought this through. My plan for yesterday busted completely, except we got the files out. It would have been justice to use the law office computers to nail our shadows to the wall.” She motioned me over to her computer, tapping a key to bring it to life. “I don’t want to be certain this is them.”
   It was a distant shot, but her finger circled off two people. There weren’t many others that didn’t fit in and seem local. I scanned back and forth from top to bottom, looking for a human man with a military look, and failed to find one. That one? No. Maybe that one, mostly hidden by the locals.
   “No names, but there’s not that many of us in the armed forces. You figure a few million over all the branches, and include ex-military, active police, and intelligence in that. Now figure sirueans are maybe a eighth of the US population, extreme lowball. Apply a really low number for those that may have ever worked out of uniform in a foreign country, which almost certainly means you knowingly worked as a spook or for the spooks. Follow me?”
   “How small of a number are you saying?” I stared intently at the siruean woman to one side of the picture, in pants and a jacket.
   “Down to a few thousand. But what gets me is that some coat patterns are rather common. Me, I’m light enough that in the wrong light I could look cream, true gray, or almost white. I have almost no variation, just gradients within the hair, so I look more or less even-coated. Brindling or merling is less common for us that it would be for domesticated dogs that have been specifically bred for coat patterns. So make it half a percent or so that would have brindling in that range and combination of colors. Now, age range. I’m down to a handful, if that.” I looked away, to her, and then back at the image on the screen, waiting for it to move and stare with golden eyes. “Take a guess at the height and subtract off anyone with the wrong eye color. I didn’t even need to find Waldo a few feet away.”
   Morgan stood frozen, maybe half a second from sweeping her eyes over the camera.
   “How the fuck did you get this?”
   “Amazing what machine learning can do. And that was the second way I ID’ed her.” She didn’t explain.
   God or Goddess of Thorough, thy servant is Tahlia.
   “How certain didn’t you want to be?” Jeffries stood about ten feet closer to the camera and half turned with the same haircut that screamed up to no good with the public’s tax dollars.
   “Enough. That picture was about three years ago. ID’ed the location, took a few other guesses, and it’s really fucking unlikely they were tourists there in the off-season. Our Mutt and Jeff team is a pair of ex-spooks, as guaranteed as a Bond movie to have a ridiculous chase scene. I’m unlikely to get real names, but...”
   “So what you’re saying is...umm...”
   “That you just stared down a ex-CIA, or some other ex-TLA, operative that’s not just dumb muscle. As in someone has been paying for the two of them to be here. If that isn’t the truth, they’re making money somehow. Maybe they made their fortune already and socked it in long-term investments, then came here because it sounded like fun.”
   “Should you go back to the doc and have yourself examined for crazy conspiracy theory tendencies?”
   “I don’t think so. Take a look again. Their wrists.”
   Same watch.
   She flipped for the video at the lawyer’s office. Zoom in. Same watch.
   “Coincidence, thy first name is Sorry-I-Forgot-The-Lube.”
   “Middle name, But-This-Isn’t-A?”
   “You got it loverboy. What I want to know from the source, just because, is why they’re here? What I’m really betting is that the pair of them are better at observing details than the average moron, and I’d love to know what they saw and thought about the crime scenes. We can chase tail all day or claw out of this mess. I’ve been wrong before, but never this wrong. Zhalin is wrong about Morgan too. I’d be a chewtoy, but on the off chance she’s uninvolved maybe I can get her to show some fucking loyalty and help her own.”
   
Tahlia’s idea of help seemed to mean spreading three sets of paperwork across the floor. Deidre Molineaux, twenty-four years old, all the small details, including the decomposing corpse, hidden under the blown-up head and shoulders picture. Victoria Jarrett, twenty-one years old, likewise reduced to a few lines of information on a page. Amanda Ulrich, just turned nineteen, a senior class photo with her in a white dress demurely cut on the neckline to show what must have taken a salon visit’s worth of brushing and trimming, the copy of a picture that proud parents would want to keep on a shelf for thirty years or more and show it to the grandkids. Now the only thing that smile could do was hold down an angry memo cursing the lack of a single print or hair that wasn’t her. Every time Tahlia turned toward that last pile, her ears flipped to pin back hard. After the fourth time, it was too much.
   “Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” She got up but there wasn’t room to stalk or pace.
   “If you don’t sit down...”
   “Go ahead, say it.”
   “This takes two, and there’s a deadline here.” I grabbed a fresh packing list and flipped it to the blank side. Empty pizza box, old ballpoint pen—what a reporter I was.
   “I need to get this straight in my head. Whormazon. Tuesday, two weeks ago. You walk into the club. Last party we’d done the week before, I stayed at the club. So there’s this little tiny annoyance that pops back up unexpectedly a few days later. I’d already left to beat the shit out of someone with too much money. Amanda goes and gets weepy where Bobby can see, then mopes around the rest of the night. I go back because I’d left my bags and to say goodnight. Three AM, we leave, I walk her to her car.”
   “Slow down.” I tossed the latest victim of events and tried to shorthand Tahlia’s rant with her pen.
   “Less than ten minutes later, she fills her tank at a twenty-four hour station and goes inside to grab something to eat. Now, our standard procedure is you get home and check in with a friend.” I didn’t like this. She shuffled through papers until the envelope she’d been drawing and writing on the other day came to the top, a rough sketch of something with notes in a cramped hand. “7PM, you meet with Morgan. Morgan isn’t in Amanda’s car, but she’s slapped a generic enough sticker on there and relied on no one remembering what make or the team name. It’s not like she had much time to prepare.”
   “She—”
   “Shut it and let me think out loud.” Half the stuff she’d said before the past day or so, or muttered under her breath about it so much that it felt familiar. “What’s their alibi? They must have went to her place to collect her, planning to go in and out without a struggle or evidence. No vehicles; she’d have had to walk off with someone. Also her bag was in her apartment. Lights off, and the first cop car doesn’t get out there until Wednesday evening.”
   “Tahlia...” She kept going, right over me and flinging sheet after sheet of paper at me.
   “Now put it all together. Victoria Jarrett got abducted after midnight about a week later, and the same morning we happen to stick a bundle of leftover firecrackers up the collective ass of the county LEA. They get an american-sized fuckton of info flooding in, and buried in it is a few things regarding a woman that didn’t show up for work that day. And just by chance, some unlucky joggers end up finding her body mid-Saturday, dead since Thursday morning. PD goes batshit. Everyone puts in overtime, and by Monday evening there’s a second body. Deidre Molineaux, went missing more than a week before that. Had that Friday off, and no one saw her pop out for groceries or a movie. Looks like she was dead almost that long, signs of sexual torture or rape. No easy extraneous fur on her either, but forensics hasn’t finished getting all possible matches accounted for and alibied.”
   I reached over and pinched her, two pale strands sticking to fingers that waved before her eyes. “Call me crazy, but I think these reports aren’t complete.”
   She slapped my hand down. “Because that part is ongoing and Zhalin isn’t that sloppy. Remember that by that point they’ve also had us waving a big dick in their face and reminding them about duty. Now, regardless of when Zhalin entered the picture, he’s been reconstructing a timeline. Maybe he knows about the parties, maybe not. Zhalin and his partner have just enough to go to Abernathy and said, ‘Maybe these are connected’, so they start that up. Now we’ve got three investigations, one real, one quiet, and us. By Wednesday, there’s enough questions that Abernathy’s wondering. But by Friday morning, we’re back to normal.”
   I gathered a thick stack, now out of order. “Are you through?”
   “Not by a longshot. I’ve got an idea about the crime scenes. But first, I want you to think like Abernathy.”
   “I need a mindset. Toy monkey or not?” She closed her eyes for a second and let the humor pass as I handed the sheets back one by one. “Right, serious. Let people do their jobs. Over the weekend you grab the pet spooks. Re-assign them from trying to track us down, and ask them to go look. By Wednesday there’s some real things lining up between the two. Keep it quiet, even though you’ve already got some nuts on a silver platter. And somewhere, you have to grab a pen, write down and ask, ‘where the fuck were they?’ because everything they said came back perfect. Look here, check this, whatever, after all their job is security or another vague title. Sorry, but someone’s playing a waiting game. I’ll put money that forensics already knows if Amanda’s dead or in protective custody. It would make sense. Given the advantage of surprise, any adult male can subdue a woman instantly. No matter the motive—fetish, misogyny, standard raceplay, or psycho domination fantasies—the result is the same. An outsider returns our goons to their day job, eliminates the problem of everyone’s alibis, and Abernathy would have already broken if he knew the truth. Two cases get tangled, the obvious answer is tempting, but here we come wanting to play dodgeball at the chess tournament. The Feds are the refs, and Zhalin’s making noise to attract them.”
   “Your obvious answer is clusterfuck? Fine. If you really want to add fuel, let’s go pull off some robbery and have me funnel the money to PD funded charities. A few million should get everyone dancing. Fuck ’em all. Only thing your right about is the capacity of the rugs and closets around here.”
   I pulled a Nicky and perked up in a late-night commercial before rolling on. “But there’s more! Unless Zhalin was lying to check stories, he got info last night that led to one hell of a drug bust. He would have said thanks, but it would have been for peanuts if it had been small. This was more than big enough. Look at it this way. Abernathy knows he’s had people at parties that have turned BYOB, so it would be a wonderful parting and consolation gift if he hands out warrants the day after he wins the election. If Roberts and Zhalin are right and he’s clean himself, then he does it that way, else he tips later and hopes no one shits in his cereal. What if, for the past few years, he’s done the same as Harold? Don’t want to think about it, it’ll work out.”
   “Which leaves our mystery gift.” That was punctuated by the slap of resorted documents.
   “Exactly.”
   “You’re taking some in the near future. Please, Jacob. I need to know what the hell this really is.”
   “Don’t they have kits for that?”
   “Not on the shelves at WallyWorld or the dollar store. And you’re right about one part of it. Jeffries and Morgan are too obvious, and well examined, of a suspect based on available evidence, but Abernathy made that mistake with me, and now us. So let’s wrap back to the murders, but first them. We’ve got neapolitan shit ice cream here, murders, a drug ring, and what the hell evidence planting. You and I agree the police are wrong. It’s too easy to guess that our spooks have gotten involved with drug running before. Then the question is what they know. This could be really double-agent shit by them if they’re strong on Abernathy’s side. Hey, you two used to work in intelligence, right? I’ll be OK if you hear some stuff and work for yourselves off the clock, as long as you make me look good later. That would fit pretty good. Fuck, half the justice system in the South is off the books anyways.”
   I threw up my hands and went for the last of the old juice. “You can’t have it both ways. Either he’s an idiot or a mastermind.” Tahlia shuffled paper until I returned with two glasses.
   “In a situation like this, I don’t have to pick. He’s ignored what are clear signs to me, but then he hasn’t had a few ounces of cut coke end up in his equipment bag. He’s trying to outposition the enemies he sees. So let’s do the murders and tie in. Jimmy gets sixed, and the local trade takes a hit for a while. The small-timers expand, easy arrests go up, and then it reaches a new normal. Mind you, arrests have been going up for years before that.”
   I blinked and lost track of how many wrong assumptions she’d made. “Are you seriously saying that Morgan and Jeffries must have some connection to Jimmy’s death?”
   “It’s pretty straight-line. All it would take is them being in that area at the time. I sat in a room for almost seven hours getting grilled without a break. Everything I knew was cold or not a help. Like I said, plenty of people had motive. I always figured that Jimmy pushed someone far enough that they decided to settle with him permanently, sent a moron to do the job, and then a third party decided to clean up the mess. Here’s a crazy one. Our two potential suspects are in the Atlanta area. They hear about some easy wetwork from a contact, get instructions, meet second contact and get info, head down and kill Jimmy. They’re the morons, head back up, and hear the second contact run his mouth. They weren’t hired to kill Jimmy, they were hired to test the second contact. He fails, ends up just as dead.”
   My rapid-fire pace exceeded hers quickly. “You’re obsessed and seeing them in everything right now. Amanda, must be connected to them. Two more murders, must be connected to them. Jimmy, they were the ones that chopped him up. You make so many guesses and assumptions that you end up being the root of your own nightmares, Amanda, Jimmy, all of them.”
   “Damned right I am.” She got up and stared me in the eyes, almost no gap between my nose and hers. “This is the first real chance I’ve had to bury the nightmares. He was the last man that had any chance of getting me, and I kept saying no for all the right reasons. Not giving up my life for a crook that’s gone big enough to seem clean, not bending over and being his toy, not taking his handouts. So do me one favor. Roberts wasn’t chewing grass when he said I’ve got the ghost of Jimmy staring people down. That damned ghost keeps whispering to me. Want me to come clean?”
   “About what? That the cops could have had you three, four years into an accessory to trafficking stay?”
   “They could have.” I let that sit. Angels didn’t exist, just mistakes to live with. She turned away to stare out a window that would never be clean. “When I finally finish up my degree, I’m giving up the dancing. Hell, I could have walked away a couple years back, but habits are a powerful thing.”
   “Like changing the subject?” This was probably a bad idea, and going to be one of the few people she’d rather not talk to on a Saturday afternoon, but if the good Doc could be of help...
   Turning, she glared and growled. “You’re growing on me, human mine, but that old woman is going to be like a five year old on the playground if I’m on her doorstep two days in a row. Having you in tow, and us smelling like we’ve been fucking since yesterday morning—”
   “After you spill the goods on the crime scenes, time to go. We’ll have to live with grandma’s jokes unless you’re hiding a less nosy medical professional.” She kept the growl going despite me being completely right, then replaced it with a lashing tail and backpinned ears.
   “Remove the luck they had at finding the bodies after. I agree with Zhalin. The older abductions were cleaner. No loose clues to sniff up into the automatic crime solver. And now I’m going to have Leonora’s nose picking up all the gossip on me.”
   A supernova went off in my head, blinding. “How long do toxicology reports take? The best there is in those stacks, according to you, was Zhalin’s preliminary on it. Neither girl smelled of any drug use, right?”
   “So?”
   “Hundred for one, Zhalin’s spending his Saturday with his nose stuck to a few volunteers, doing the same thing the Doc is going to be doing if she stops meddling or handing you love advice.” She sighed about finding pants and a shirt because no matter how good she looked nude or nearly so, Leonora’s home office wasn’t the place to show up in her underwear or looking too cute. 
   When she came back out with clothing, pulling on the top muffled her voice but not the boot stomping. “First I want to pass by Amanda’s place. If there’s no cops around, you and I need to generate our own evidence. Any ideas on how to check those cameras?”
   
A truck had a tendency to be slower than Tahlia’s racecar, which only left her more time to talk on the phone. While I couldn’t hear the other end, I couldn’t understand her either. She was talking fast in something that wasn’t English and combined the guttural feel of German with the fluidity of a romance language. After a long stoplight and turn, she finally hung up and sunk backwards. Denim and leather, both black and worn to soft suppleness, creaked against the bench seat. Even with the AC on I could hear the whisper and susurration of her top as she breathed, black as her boots and cropped to just under her bust, tight and cut low. The wolveshead nestled between her breasts caught light, and I was dead certain that the choice of her top involved making sure no one missed the symbol.
   “I caught about every tenth word, whatever the ones are that translate to no, stop, and why.” She backhanded me casually and looked out to the side, waiting for the day’s rain to fall. “You’re sore because people are helping you. I swear I didn’t call ahead of time so Leonora could think the best way to rub it in.”
   “I’m sore because you were right. They should have converted the cameras to wireless—”
   “And ran the power inside the pole, not conduit.”
   “Sometimes I like the way you think. Others, I wonder my ancestors let yours into Europe in the first place.”
   “No border control on the budget?”
   “If you keep playing smart-ass, just remember where we’re headed.” Her humor was headless and rotting away.
   The house sounds of children wafted from the backyard, and as I pulled in a woman of an age with Tahlia emerged from the house, more cinnamon than brown and about halfway through a pregnancy, looking to Tahlia then to me as we got out.
   Tahlia cut her off before she asked about me, or anything else. “Let’s get inside. Smells like we’ll have a downpour in half an hour.” The order established, I followed.
   From all angles the sound of more children and family echoed. Two men were arguing sports and the fine art of steak preparation somewhere. A trio of younger guys were laughing over less important matters. Two younger girls were singing a nonsense rhyme, exchanging lines. A small desk and computer sat to the side, opposite that the few chairs of the waiting room from the other morning, and the single exam room at the end. It was more memorable and inviting when you’re not missing it through a pounding head and other issues. Into the exam room we went, packed with me and the three women.
   Leonora didn’t get up from the exam stool, just smiled and scratched at an eartip. “Well, both of you look and smell better today.” Tools of the trade were lined up behind her, a few bottles of solutions, an unopened syringe, and others.
   “Play nice, grandmother, even if it is Saskia.” She lacked the wolveshead and her grandmother’s light tone. Whatever the history between them, Tahlia ignored the slight.
   Leonora switched attention from her granddaughter to Tahlia, to me. “Little girl, go ahead and smell that. Nubile, healthy female. I’m not complaining about yet more great-grandchildren, but doesn’t she smell glorious? Ohh, and him too. Please make an old woman happy. If you’re not going to give me the pleasure of sending you off for prenatal work, Tahlia, he’ll make an excellent consolation. I hope my herbalism was sufficient yesterday.”
   She took the prompt to refer to her rather than me. “It got him moving again, so that was good. But we’ve fucked twice in less than thirty-six hours, I had way too much fun at work last night, and I’m starting to wonder what you may have managed to slip in one of your brews. I’m getting angry every time I have to concentrate and think, which has always been a hallmark of when you compound strong. So what magic did you use this time, old witch?” The younger physician clapped her hands to her muzzle, shocked at Tahlia’s audacity.
   Leonora had the age and experience to look innocent of such a thing. “Why, dear girl, would you suspect that?” All of the women were still, not willing to give up a tell.
   “I own some of the same references you do, and you damned well know it. So don’t bullshit me. You got me good. I could guess, you know my diet well enough to make it strong and safe. Whatever it was, you’d better market it. Bet if you feed it to one of your other granddaughters they would ride the fuck out of their men and pop out another pair for you right on schedule.”
   “If you didn’t deny yourself that much, perhaps a little boost to help that wonderful body heal itself wouldn’t feel quite so strong.” Tahlia’s ears folded back, ignored by Leonora as she waved her granddaughter closer. “Help me here. I’d rather not do this and try to concentrate on vitals at the same time.”
   In short order, both of us wore blood pressure cuffs. Annabelle, the granddaughter, pressed fingertips into my wrist and wrote notes on a pad. The old doc was sunk in concentration, eyes closed while Tahlia sat with crossed arms waiting for her turn at baseline vitals. Once that finished, she waited with furrowed brows and eyes tight for the old woman to start. Leonora shook back into awareness, and Tahlia pounced on the moment, tossing a small packet from her hip pocket on the old woman’s lap. She stared for several long seconds, then picked it up slowly.
   “Annie, I know you told everyone that I was not to be disturbed for a while. Please go and repeat that before someone forgets that Grandma is taking care of something rather delicate.” Annabelle left without question. “Now. I’ve made this very clear to you in the past. I will always treat you like one of my daughters, but you...you...will...not...bring refuse like this into my home.” Her ears reflected the violation, waiting for Tahlia.
   “You don’t get a choice, witch. Either help me, or start feeling why I felt unworthy.”
   “Look around. This is the result of self-worth. I’ve been doing this since before your mother learned to kiss a boy. I’ve tossed children and grandchildren, my own blood, out for less. Nor are you pack mine, so why should I? You said there was something I needed to see. This, in no way possible, qualifies.” I shifted in the chair, ready to move between them.
   “It does if this is part of why three women have died, and how the next never happens.” Leonora turned eyes to me as I dared to challenge, a reminder my Grandma didn’t have such large, threatening eyes. “The cops will bury it in evidence and the horrors continue.”
   I broke down at facing something that was all too safe when it‘d been just pictures on a TV. Tahlia had gotten angry and cold if she thought too long about Amanda. Leonora just picked up the packet and shook it, watching the powder sift back and forth.
   She looked past the bag to me. “Three.”
   We didn’t have all day, so if the woman wanted to use my advice she could listen or stick a teakettle on my temper. “Three that have happened here, in a short period, and have a good chance of being related. There could be more. Victoria Jarrett, the one they found first, was younger than Annabelle, and Deidre Molineaux was the oldest of the trio and probably about Annabelle’s age. So don’t you fucking pull a holier-than-thou and act like—” A hand cracked across my face hard enough to black my vision for an eyeblink.
   “That’s better, young man. Quiet and forgettable suits you better outside the bedroom. And next time you decide to run your mouth, consider that the person across from you might have some clue. I didn’t spend more than two decades advising the police in this state well before K9 units were near-standard kit just to listen to drabble. So?”
   Looking at Tahlia did no good. Fifty-fifty the old woman hadn’t improved the yet to be felt pains from my preemptive jailbreak.
   When neither of us dared to speak up, she tossed the packet aside while rising. One of the cabinets disgorged a small tray and some tools, then she sat again plucking at and rearranging her dress. Old fingers uninhibited by arthritis picked up the packet and opened it. A small amount fell on the tray. Leonora looked up, alternating between Tahlia and me, then selected a long miniature spoon with a flattened end. She pushed an amount smaller than three crystals of sugar on the utensil, sniffing as it met her nose.
   After a couple more minutes, Annabelle returned, cautious of the opened bag and tray while she took her seat.
   “Feels like cocaine.” She dipped a finger in the remainder. “Tastes like it, smells like it.”
   “Which is what I said. Except I know coke all too well from far too many other girls, and from parties where it was the favor. This is cut with something new. It didn’t seem odd to me, same with you. But there’s something else there I can’t make out besides being more pure than the usual grade. It’s not a result of the process. This is something I’ve never smelled the like of. I work out enough to know what caffeine and creatine smell like. It’s not an anesthetic, not an opioid, not something from a drugstore. If he takes a small amount, I’m hoping you can identify the cut. I’ve got a rather far out theory, but whoever killed those girls might have had some of this. They didn’t murder them immediately, and they had enough contact to leave some of the scent on the girls.”
   Leonora turned to me slowly. “You’re agreeing to do this? There’s plenty of chemicals out there that are harmful to primates or canines in general, especially at lower bodyweights. Only the sentient could enjoy the act of poisoning themselves so much.” I nodded, and she scooped up far more than she’d tested. “Get that shirt off so we aren’t listening through your shirt. Annabelle, get closer.” She waited to raise the spoon while my old tshirt fell to the floor. “Ready?”
   Sniff, and the metallic tinge of iron arrived like a flatbed loaded with bar stock.
   Color exploded.
   Moist nasal sounds went out of time, both to my sides and slightly behind.
   The fabric of the old woman’s dress shifted over fur.
   Plastic and steel tubing each were notes from the stethoscope touching my chest. The women had faint differences from body shampoos. Tahlia was a blend of just fallen rain and hardwoods old with polish, Annabelle of linen and cotton and flowers, the doctor of aged jasmine and hibiscus. The last pushed closer, the minute weight of old hands high on my thighs as she balanced too deep into my personal space. Her nose wavered practically against my neck, warm and moist. Primitive impulses reverberated through my entire body, growling at her with the whole of the diaphragm and throat. Centered was a wary and slightly cautious spike of a man easily twice her size, of what was racing through his blood.
   “Get behind him. Control him.” Tahlia’s hands pressed down on my shoulders in response, her muzzle at my left ear and whispering.
   It would be too simple to stand up. It would be too simple to grab either woman’s wrists in one hand and rip her dress off with the other. It would be too simple to allow all the feelings to take control, far stronger than than the other pills, the difference between a bicycle or car and a rocket liftoff. It whispered that I could have anything—sensation, violence, thought, or all of those sharper. Liar.
   “Listen to me. This is far stronger than anything you’d get on the street. Almost everything it’s been cut with must be affecting you as well. I need you to report back. We need to ID this. Does it seem like you can smell better?”
   I forced it past the rumble in chest and throat. “Yes.”
   The grip on my shoulders tried to be reassuring, that this was only temporary. “What about hearing? Can you hear anyone outside the room?”
   It would be easy. Push the old woman’s hands away. But the rest was so overpowering that the readiness of my body, the want to be hard and stiff and find release, trembled in the corner. No matter what I did it would only be such a sweet experience, their bodies and mine, unable to complete it.
   She repeated herself. I couldn’t keep growling indefinitely. It settled and her hands moved down onto my upper arms, but the need remained. I tried to make words come up, alien thoughts that didn’t seem right about myself anymore, and bought a strained breath. Each one was a step closer to being done with this. The odors of fear tendriled around the room. The voices said something. Once I closed my eyes to block out the sharpened stakes of color, the rest faded one by one.
   
The car rested on the roadside, completely off the shoulder. Headlights stabbed through the mist remaining after a light rainfall and the warm nighttime. My ears were still ringing. She stood fifteen feet off, facing away and angled towards the road a fraction. The only sign of her doing more than looking down the empty stretch of road, asphalt so old and cracked that it was the color of sun-blasted concrete, was one ear cocked backwards. A human woman could hide inside the conceits of ignoring me. Tahlia’s message was that she ignored me now, but waited to see if I’d continue the argument that made her pull over.
   “You lied. Flat out, no ifs or buts, you lied. And to the one person you swore you wouldn’t lie to. But you did it anyway. You wove a net of half-truths. You made guesses, and gambled with people’s lives. Each and every time you did it, you had a reason made up, and were like an addict searching for her next fix.”
   “What the hell do you want me to say? That I was wrong? People were getting hurt long before me. So don’t you ever think that argument works. I’ve done what I had to not end up dead here, and now that’s finally over. Get back in the car or not. Your choice.”
   It was amazing that the shouting hadn’t already had the cops on top of us.
   “That car isn’t going anywhere until you figure out what needs to be said.” She spun to face me on the toe of one booted foot and headlights flashed against green eyes.
   “You chose to help me. You chose to rig that banner. You chose to get in my face and force my hand. And you chose to make me care.” She took a step closer, the smell of vomit and bile not far away. “I might have dragged you around in my wake at times, but you followed like a pathetic lost little puppy, all because we fucked each other’s brains out instead of keeping this nice and impersonal. And you made me believe I should care again, that it was the right thing to do. You made promises to me, took oaths but failed to understand the cost. Look what that came to.”
   “Guessing right doesn’t excuse a single fucking thing you’ve done! How many? How many died to make you feel better? How many more are going to end up dead, or worse yet, in a hospital room with a counselor, just another suicide attempt for the stats? When does that end? Three months from now? Six? Ever?”
   She looked away for a second, over her shoulder. “How the fuck was I supposed to guess that it would end up like this, that you’d be here, that I’d be alive? That was the end of it back there. And the worst. So just consider that if you keep nipping at my heels, you’re going to be living with the nightmares in my head. And I’m going to be living with yours. It’s going to be like looking in a mirror every time I look you in the eyes. But if I refuse to look, if I refuse to think about it, I’ll never be able to...”
   “That’s enough.”
   “It’ll have to be. You lied to me too, been too eager for the deed. Sometimes you didn’t realize it, but that’s one of the prices of life. Get back in the goddamned car before I leave you here.”
   And that’s what I did. Get in the car, and let things disappear behind.

Chapter Sixteen

“I need a fucking drink.”
   “Just your luck, tall and ugly. We’re in a bar.”
   My state already counted as less than sober. On the bright side, Alan and the rest of the guys hadn’t dragged us off to a strip club. On the less positive side, I watched as Rachael and some of her friends wandered in. This place had been converted a half dozen times to completely incompatible uses. The last, according to the bartenders, was as an in-the-round dinner theater. The layout remained, but the decor mixed log cabin with frontier outpost. By the time the clock struck eight, there tended to be a handful of women providing a show with the levels of their drunkenness deciding how much they still had on and bouncers removing them before their tabs got paid. Since it was almost nine, the show had hit high fifth gear and would stay there until close.
   “Do you recall what I said when you hired me, Alan? I’m not about to fuck up this time. The rest of the world can go to hell. I’ve been trying to cut out all the little bits of my past that I think were hurting me.”
   His glass scraped against the bartop. “The problem with that, Jacob, is there might not be much left. I never expected to be where I am, have Gina, and for better or worse on that one, or that Malcolm had some moment of insanity to put me in charge. He could have told me I would be the worst choice for Gina, but there you go. Once the train gets rolling, there’s no stopping until the next town.”
   “That’s familiar. I didn’t even have a truck when I left home a few days after graduating high school. I jumped into a passing cargo car on the freight line, jumped off in another state, and lived rough until I worked my way up from oddjobs to a place that needed condemning and a truck that shouldn’t have been street legal. So you get me? I’ve seen not so good. Maybe this is the time I get things together and don’t end up looking for a new place to start over.” Granted, I’d gotten work almost as soon as I’d gotten off the train, and that entire story had been over in a double handful of days.
   Without Gina around, Alan could sleaze all night. “You are one hell of a storyteller, and you make yourself sound like a blues song.” Caroline wouldn’t have approved either.
   “If you buy another round, I’ll tell you a tale from home.”
   “You usually talk about as much as an empty box. This should be a good one.” Alan bought the whole bottle, and proceeded to find out I had a lot of drinking to do.
   “You know how I’ve said I’m from Florida? There’s two parts to the state. There’s the places with roads and stoplights, and then there’s the places where we tell time by lovebugs and alligator mating season. It’s not a state of haves and have-nots, it’s a state of have-money and too-poor-to-have-welfare. The have-moneys run the place, but it’s not like anywhere else. Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana; they’re are all bad in their own way, but the only difference between now and a hundred fifty years ago in some places is that there’s electricity and more drugs than Scrambletown moonshine. We’re like Alaska, but hot instead of cold, and easily accessible by the interstate. If it wasn’t for the retirees, the buttfucking mouse, spring breakers, NASA, and the government’s hardon to fuck Cuba, we’d have a tenth of the population and a few percent of the shit economy we do.”
   The man had half the liquor I did diluting his blood. Still, he snatched the bottle before I could pour shot number no-fucks-to-give. “So, good for your gay-assed theme parks and golfcart-riding grandpas.” I reclaimed the bottle and poured a double.
   “This is more like a horror story than a singalong. My father managed to put down roots enough that my last three years of high school were in the same place. There was a clear line of who had an escape route, who had a certain job waiting, and who’d be like wet leaves in the forest waiting to hit the ground. Laura was like me, one of those leaves. She had talent as an artist, but every fucking one of her family disapproved. Bunch of thumpers, if you catch it. We didn’t have much to hate in that little place. There were maybe a few dozen families each of the tails, several hundred in extended families of the blacks, and almost nothing else. Almost no Mexicans, no Asians, and no Indians owning every piece of shit corner gas station. The racists were too lazy to come up with fresh slurs, but one group was even less inclined to work. The crooks were so negligent you could leave the doors unlocked year round, all for the public good. Sheriff was almost a ceremonial position, and I doubt the asshole wanted to expose his illiteracy by arresting any minorities.”
   He poured another for himself. “Good one so far. I always liked the Andy Griffiths Show.”
   “Reality sucks ass and then gets a wet shit to the face. The sheriff may not have done much, but others did. They used to call it a lynching when you wanted to be polite. So back to the artist girl. Her father fit in, but she didn’t. So he did what any father would do. He corrected her out of sight, and everyone closed their eyes. When she didn’t have any eyes left due to swallowing a shotgun, people opened them. Not everyone, just enough for the job.”
   “Jakey, you’re drunk and you don’t have to impress me or play the wounded soul.”
   “Do you want to hear the end, or do you need another drink?”
   He poured for both of us, and I let it burn. “You dished out a little justice?”
   “Got it in one. We agreed. Me, and five others that had fucked her at one time or another. Nab the dickface, beat him up, scare him shitless, call it an evening. Then we heard the rumor. I hadn’t known the difference between what abuse and self-inflicted wounds looked like, but the ME did. The plan changed. We grabbed the father and by the time we took off the blindfold, we had him in this small clearing. It’d rained earlier, but we’d prepped good. The cross didn’t take much effort to drop in the posthole we’d made, not with a little knowhow and a few pulleys. I argued and left with one other guy. Leaving him there and then cutting him down after he’d shit himself would have been enough for me. They wanted to warm his feet a little, but piled up stuff that was too dry. The gas made it go up quicker. The flames must have caught on his shoes and higher. I never saw that, but I visited later. The cops never touched the place, left that cross of fenceposts up, and two weeks later we graduated. I’ve checked the news to see once every few years, but as far as I know it got swept under a rug of bug corpses and the autumn leaves a few months after.”
   The sloshing lights faded from Alan’s eyes. “Jacob?” I ignored him, and he laid his head on the varnished wood of the bartop. 
   “I need a fucking drink. Pass me the bottle.”

Chapter Seventeen

Too many scraps of memories flit past. Long nights, boring days, the smell of fur, skin, sweat, leather, fabrics; they ticked past like road markings. Each had a pair of eyes watching as I dreamt.
   The clock on the bedside flashed shy of five in the afternoon. Down the hall and below I heard a voice ordering a small army. My nose vibrated from all the smells, more sensitive than any human nose had a right to be, among them Tahlia’s just out of sight presence. The rain through a cracked window overlaid her scent, calming and reassuring, the potential for violence and quiet certainty.
   “Believe it or not, it’s been less than an hour. That old witch stuck you with some kind of tranq, you started to push harder and went still. Annabelle’s OK, but freaked out bad. I doubt she wants to say goodbye, and no, you didn’t even touch her. Leonora’s been in and out. She called someone that wasn’t Zhalin. Whatever it was, she’s turned this into a game of helping Grandma.”
   “Was it bad?” The words were hoarse, and she handed me the water from the side table, waiting for me to finish.
   I’d been avoiding the problems I kept collecting. I had to, no, needed to trust her if I was in this unconditionally instead of settling debts and unzipping for a quick fuck. She hid or left too much unsaid due to old habits. Her default included distraction, intimidation, and outright bullying. The latest dream stayed spring-fed clear. Couples had fights but this never occurred, or maybe hadn’t occurred yet. The other dreams had poked through the gauze between waking and sleep since the first photo of the corpse. I could remember more bits of running, and bits of hunting. Neither were experiences I wanted to relive.
   Leonora appeared at the open door. “I’ve got some bad news, and a little good news.”
   “No games, doc. If I’d known how strong that stuff would be for Jacob, I would have found another way. He may not be the best choice I’ve ever made, and it’s too late for lectures.”
   “That it is, little one. If I want to be positive on the specifics of that devil’s powder, I’d need a lab willing to do personal favors quietly. In absence of that, here’s my best guess.” She handed a folded sheet to Tahlia. “A quarter of that would work on near anyone that insufflated an average amount, unlike what you and I did, and make them smell less like a bathtub of leftover solvents after. So unlike those pills you got me out of bed for, and dragged your human in my house...no offense, young man.”
   “None taken.” I finished the water.
   “Well, just make sure he drinks plenty of liquids the next few days. That help you any?”
   Tahlia unfolded it, scanned, then refolded it to slide in a back pocket. “Except for the fact that I trust your witch teas more, now I have a better idea what you’ve been sticking in them. Like your too good to be true wintertime energy boost. But, thank you.”
   Leonora sat at my side. “Give me a few minutes with him. Go downstairs and console Annabelle again. She’s in the kitchen.”
   I pushed myself into a sitting position. “This must be good if you’re cutting her out of the loop.”
   “She doesn’t need to hear everything. Let’s start simple. You got her to remember her duties, but she’s conflicted.”
   “What was in the brew you gave her yesterday?” I didn’t expect arrow-straight answers.
   “You were suffering a mild case of Stage One Schreier-Gardelli syndrome. Not fatal, but I’d prefer that the two of you receive a full assay. What I gave you yesterday was enough to get you moving and able to heal up. You’ll probably be prescribed a compound like mine that will be fat soluble, so it’ll act like a time-release once it absorbs. As for her, I tilted nature in a better direction.”
   “And was that to help her remember those duties?”
   Leonora sighed. “I’ve been at this since my teens. It’s not unheard of us to be alone and unmarried, as far as the state counts things. But we’re always stronger as a pair, or more. My husband doesn’t wear this, but I have three sons living elsewhere that have taken the oaths. There’s not many of us, and the world’s a bigger place even if faster to navigate. If you care about her...”
   “Fuck if I know.”
   “At least you’re honest. Try again.”
   “It’s been years since I had a passable relationship. She gives as much of a fuck about it as food or breathing. In a strange way, I can deal with that better than if she was emotional. The way she talks sometimes there’s a lot more in her past besides this.”
   “Would you tell her later of all of your failures and demons?”
   “We’re getting around to it. I guess that means some mythical day. Better than what I grew up with at any rate. Should I push the issue with her, or would that be worse than pushing her away? Besides the crap we’ve stepped in and sex, our overlap isn’t much.” On the todo list, relationship counseling for mixed couples with a focus on how to deal with emotion after the amateur hour murder investigation concludes.
   “One of the things you’ll learn as you get older, young man, is what has to be said between people, and what doesn’t. A relationship is a complicated thing. The best ones allow each person a unique space inside themselves and each other. And medicine isn’t just the body, but the tools are different. Let me ask a diagnostic. She’s determined to avenge these girls, moreso now than when it was just this Ulrich girl?”
   “I don’t think either of us will forgive ourselves if we don’t.”
   “And I wasn’t asking about you yet. In my opinion, you’re the best medicine I can prescribe to her. You’re not turning her away, and one day the pair of you might grow real affection for each other, but first this little matter needs to come to a close. She’s had opinions in the past that make you a less than likely choice.”
   “I never thought I’d end up fucking a tail...” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “...pretty much for that reason. I grew up in the less civil parts of here, remember? I’ve gotten better, I swear.”
   “If there’s one thing that gives me hope for my great-grandchildren’s world, it’s that there’s men like you. Species aside, your mouth runs out of sync with your brain, but you stumble around swinging the digit between your legs and somehow manage to do something right despite it. Now, if you’re feeling well enough to walk...”
   “I am.”
   “Then it’s time to have you gone. I can have one of the kids air out the room later and set it back to picture perfect, but do an old woman a favor the next time you feel the need for her potions.” She stood gently and looked over a squared shoulder as she walked out. “Wash up better next time. I’m too old to be embarrassed by sex, but I’d rather having to ask over tea instead of knowing what you did with her the night before.”
   Leonora returned with Tahlia in tow. She helped me stand and walk out, and as I passed Leonora’s eyes followed the wolveshead around Tahlia’s neck.
   From behind, a phantom whispered. “Please protect her and Hers.”
   Once back in the truck, Tahlia took the wheel and stopped at the nearest gas station. “Go grab some Gatorade while I fill up. You’d better keep chugging and pissing like a timekeeping racehorse.”
   When I got back, Tahlia waited behind the wheel again, tapping her fingers in an uneven back and forth pattern. “Going to keep playing designated driver?” I sipped at the first bottle.
   “Just get the fuck in.” She pulled out as if a cop already had the radar gun aimed. A fresh batch of theories crawled over a envelope back. “If we go to meet them tonight, we’d better be prepared. I can still track every cop car in the city, but this vehicle is an easier target.” Her ears pinned back and if the seatbelt hadn’t kept her from it, I’d be watching her pacing and lashing her tail again.
   “It’s more than a little paranoid to think that every cop car out there is reporting the location of one old truck back to the office, and she’s sitting there tracking that on a map.”
   “I don’t give a fuck if you think so.” She stared ahead, waiting for anything to go wrong. I let it draw out until she growled and thumped at the wheel. “Damnit, you didn’t deserve that from me, not right now. And I’m sorry. This has me on edge. It’s all the old shit over again. I’ve landed myself in the middle of it, and...” She turned away as far as she could, which was almost no shield. “I could have given up.”
   I continued drinking one of the newer and less palatable tests of my kidneys. “If that’s what you believe, you deserve to get pinned to the ground and slapped until the real Tahlia comes back to rip through everything.”
   “In case you weren’t paying attention back there, in between what I’m guessing was your first time doing coke...” A poorly tuned V8 passed at at least thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, and her ears twitched in multiple forms of annoyance. “Asshole kids. At least I know how to not tear a car up.”
   “You were complaining again, oh gentle woman.”
   “I was about to scream and thump the wheel until I figured a way out of this grass-chewing meal. And no matter how I look at it, I don’t see much alternative.”
   “Except keep on going, right?”
   “Fuck yes.” She held out a fist, and we bumped knuckles. “And you might have given us a double here. Did Morgan seem...no, did she have any emotion at all when she cornered you?”
   “About as much as a gun. She’s in your face and has the give and politeness of a brick wall.”
   “Well, I owe her something.”
   “Besides a chick fight? Zhalin and some others would pay for that.”
   “I’m not in need of money that bad.” She barked a laugh, then reached over to smack me. “Is interrupting a human habit I never noticed? Doc gave me a few clues while you were taking a nap. Besides spiking your adrenaline, it smells odd. I’ve never quite noticed it from you before. Scratch that. The morning we did the banner. But it was so faint that I probably couldn’t detect it any other time. You smelled clean yesterday except for the pills.”
   “It was Zhalin’s opinion that you might have a better nose, but you don’t know how to use it.”
   “Next time he comes to the club, I’m calling his wife. Then I’m taking him in the back, and while she listens I’ll bust his knot. Extra cayenne lube, no extra charge.”
   “I think he meant the training so he can testify in court.”
   “I can tell the difference when you’ve just taken them.” She pulled up to a red light and turned to me.
   “What about hours later? The way he’d been talking—”
   “It’s about as close to nonsense as you can get. If I turned around, I’d have Leonora tell you the whole damned history of it. We’ve got maybe three decades worth of experience playing at toxicology, compared with over a century and a half of general medical work, nicely cataloged in Matthew’s. Did you know that Florence Nightingale fought to have have siruean assistants? She figured it out, and half the medical establishment has acted like she’s been wrong ever since. Oh, and Dorothea Dix. The little war between her and Barton burned hotter than the battlefield outside, and all we got from that was an indoors war of pre-feminist trappings instead of effectively advocating for their own research. But science marches on, unconcerned with our feelings no matter how we bend the evidence.”
   “Reminder—never argue history or military history with this woman. Takes it seriously.”
   She watched the road when the light flicked green. “On the subject of serious, beside the fact that I want to get close enough to our Mutt and Jeff team to see if we get a match, when was the last time you handled a weapon?”
   “Cheap summer camp. Bow and arrow, plinking with a .22. Not quite twenty years ago.”
   The next light went red early, and she drew a full-framed gun from her back and under the jacket, placing it between us on the seat. At least I’d learned why she had a back-scratching habit. “We need to gear up. And are you sure you’ve never been in the military? Your humor is almost as bad as every tail I’ve known that got close-clipped and put on some camo.”
   “Closest was one of those shooter video games.” I finished off the first bottle and stuck the empty back in the bag while she drove to fuck knows where.
   
There were a few things anyone that survives a few scares has learned and burnt deep in their brain over the years. The first was cities are dirty places, worse than a field full of fresh shit. Even if everything is dark, the surface grime gets washed into pores and cements to any exposed surface. Washing it off only makes everything else around look more polluted for a time. Then there’s what you can see when you really look. Drive anywhere and look down when you’re stopped—there’s flattened cups, straws, broken bottles, the lost clothing ground into scraps of rags. The fresh carcass of a squirrel, legs skyward and tail pushed by the breeze of passing cars. Torn fragments of cardboard, abandoned by the homeless that had scratched a message ending with ‘God bless. Thank you.’ sitting against the base of the crosswalk. The discarded, ground by molars, back into the dust from whence it came.
   The second was that if you want to understand a city, turn away from the light and to the shadow. Nothing of true importance happens in the open, only the horrific or temporary. When you’re ready, anyone that’s been around will look away from the thoroughfares, and towards the rear of buildings in the concealment of loading docks, in the lots of places already shut for the night. The show is on the stage but the business is behind curtains real or luminal. Which was exactly where Tahlia had dragged me this evening.
   Dragged was the perfect word. I’d failed at quite comfortable the past few hours. She’d spent the early evening cursing at a lazy looking man failing to assure her that the small storage unit had been maintained. She’d retorted that if it had, her less metallic toys would have been fine. After him an even lazier man, obviously the manager, showed up and tried to argue that ninety-five degrees did count as climate controlled. By the time he finished I had to hold her back while she tore into the legalese of the lease. The gun had been locked in the truck, but the woman didn’t need it for this.
   After that we’d visited a chain sporting goods store, where she held her temper better. Whatever her previous preparations, she had to settle for fact we were two ordinary civilians. Except that she’d rescued a second rather large handgun—at least I’d suspected it was large for a woman her size—plus another knife and a pair of binoculars from storage. The store had enough ammo in the size she needed and the guy at the counter talked evenly with her, either because he knew what pinned ears meant or the fact that she seemed to know her firearms like her own tail.
   And after that bit of fun, we’d sat in a parking lot for a few hours and snacked on jerky and pretzels while her temper subsided. The food did a poor job of it. The two phone calls she made did better.
   I’d been watching through the binoculars for over half an hour, eyes on the back parking lot in the distance nestled between two sizable strips of buildings. She contributed by debating herself which of the guns was better. I’d bowed out of that after suggesting we restrict concealed carry to the people with permits. Past the buildings a sign designated this yet another fancy nature corridor, and the breeze carried both the slow swamp water past the fenceline and fresh runoff from the nearby open bins. The bundle of folders sat in a bag between us, same as my thoughts of two bullets faster than sound from atop a close building.
   Her response meant not everything was in my head. “He won’t do that. You said she gave her word, and they have to suspect that I setup a deadman’s days before this. Now we have two of them. I’d love to see the look on Abernathy’s face if I forget to call in and tell Zhalin we’re alive.”
   “Perhaps you forgot what you said this morning. Dumb. If he thinks you’re running around behind his back, we’re going to have him on top of Morgan to worry about.”
   She huffed a laugh at that result. “You heard me, or did I just catch you not listening for once? All I said was that they contacted us and we’re returning the copies of the files. We’re two unimportant figures on the edge of his case, but if we don’t check in by sunrise he needs to go find Abernathy’s shadows and start another murder investigation, starting with a thorough sweep of their shit. Ten to one they find traces of drugs in one of their vehicles. Nananana, heyheyhey, go fuck yourself.”
   “You’re just overjoyed at being right, are you?”
   “It’s one of the few pleasures I have in life that I don’t have to take my jeans off for. Don’t forget the plan.” She’d changed to a light jacket with full length sleeves earlier and chafed her wrists again as I looked, but her denim jeans were still molded to her ass, her tail still and contrasting with the almost fuligin cloth. 
   “Simplest thing you’ve ever come up with, but remember which one I am.”
   The familiar large vehicle pulled in halfway down the lot, right under a light. The creep was over forty-five minutes early by what Morgan had written down. Jeffries stepped out, moved into the clear and scanned, turning in a circle twice before patting himself down. He found his phone, waiting for confirmation from us. Same general khaki or tan pants, same dark blond military desk-driver haircut. I let him sweat first, but Tahlia agreed with his response.
   A bit early. Bring the documents, everyone leaves alive. Let’s do this and get out of this heat.
   It was a reasonable request. It had to be a good three hundred yards to where Jeffries waited. I didn’t feel like walking. Tahlia grumbled about the wind direction. The old truck engine took its sweet time idling from one lot to another while she outlined my options. Look big and ugly.
   After parking, the binoculars sat in a case at my hip and the bag with the documents at the other, the straps of each crossing my chest like bandoliers. I gave him my best classic Eastwood impression to complete the image, and for once he looked awake and dangerous. The miasma of full dumpsters rippled through the night.
   The small speaker a couple weeks ago had made his voice sound a little higher. “Evening. You, turn around. He’s walking normally for his load but you’re not. Take two steps to the side, arms out, nice and slow.” Tahlia obeyed and paused when he said stop, unclenching her fists for the moment and raising her arms slowly. He pushed the jacket aside. “That’s a nice one. Good reviews. A bit out of the average personal defense price range, but you have to ask what life’s worth.”
   Tahlia relented as Jeffries removed the holster, cleared the gun at a safe distance from her, and then tossed everything into dead landscaping. Neither seemed happy to be facing each other again after his command to turn to the front.
   Her fists were back the second her arms lowered. “My life is doesn’t have a price tag. Same for trust. Anything else you want to toss in the bushes?”
   “I’m not blaming you. Really. Step further away. You, those bags. Drop them. Good. Open it, slowly. Turn around and arms out.” He confirmed we’d left the second gun in my truck via a quick patdown, then commanded me to step back and away so we formed a triangle with the bags centered. “OK. Just to show you we’re all even, my gun.” He pulled a square-framed gun from his back and placed it on the ground several feet away.
   Her posture was oldschool Tahlia, ears hard forward and laughless, unblinking green eyes. “Happy? Where’s your lady? We need to have a talk about her attitude, especially where it concerns those I care about. And your choice of guns. I’m missing work to do this, so it would be nice if you don’t chew up the entire evening.”
   Both of us stood still, but Jeffries paced like a animal penned up too long. I wanted a villain monologue from him. What we got was a treadmill walk and talk from Abernathy’s PR department.
   “Tahlia, Tahlia, Tahlia. I know we never really talked about this or much else, but you’re less fun than a nest of fire ants. Stick to what you’re good at. She’s off on other business. I hate when we’re separated, and she hates it even more when it’s this long. Besides, she’s the jealous type. You don’t even come close. It doesn’t matter if I’ll never touch another woman, she really doesn’t like that I’ve gotten a long look at you. Or every time she smells that you’ve hitched a ride from me. Then again, that’s why she’s so good at what she does. It would have been better to do this our way, not tied to leashes. But, hey, it pays the bills, and she’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I could use a lazy Sunday evening with my lady and not another care in the world.” I tapped a finger on my thigh at having to listen to this kind of bullshit.
   “So what really happened yesterday? You and her try to get my man arrested. The heat turns up and you’ve got a visible assault and battery charge that could get slapped on your hair-trigger temper. Well, everyone folds on that hand?”
   His grin would have fit a fratboy with a suitcase of beer. “Yeah, that’s my girl. Been like that since they refused her a dream posting. Just have to love that one thing that makes a person less than perfect. But that’s how we met, and, well, here we are. She works at it like a, well, you know, but I doubt she’ll ever get over that one issue. Have to have some motivation to get better. But enough about us. Another few months, and I don’t have to look at this place anymore. A few more, and I’ll be helping to make a few deals. That’s why I’m here. Abernathy’s taking the chance, and we’re going to help. A couple terms in the state house, then a few in the U.S. House, and maybe a Senate bid. Who knows, he does good enough at the man of the people gig and in a few election cycles he could be on the ticket for the White House. But you never know what’s going to fall in your lap.”
   That’s what did it for me. I could still smell a fraction better than a normal human, and the chemical waves weren’t what I wanted to give off. No more downing energy drinks and pills like water and candy. Cut the coffee in half, hell, even I could sense the aroma of it wafting from him like cheap cologne over the nearby trash. Eat better, less drinking, and maybe I’d live to see forty.
   I took the next shot and hoped he kept rambling. “Like a murder case.” It might have been on my far side, but I knew Tahlia’s left fist closed tighter at that.
   “Like a murder case. Sad story, pretty girl.” He shrugged and mimed sorrow for a beat. 
   Anger loosened my tongue and I sensed Tahlia’s annoyance at it. “What’s odd is why the both of you are still walking free. The way Zhalin was talking, he’d love to be able to tie something to you and her, except there’s nothing there. Guess you two weren’t useful as a second opinion, or much else.”
   “He’s an impatient SOB that dislikes any woman he can’t get to slob up his knot. What’s odd about him is IA’s never had a chance to catch him fucking up. Now, I’m by no means a detective. I rarely figure things out when I watch a procedural. He couldn’t find his own tail to stroke it even if his hands were already on his ass. I’ve dealt with fools like that in the past. At least I have a chance here to not get fucked over by how someone handles the details. Especially when it involves someone’s life on the line.”
   She remained composed, filing away all the things he said. “That’s rather cold. Like a corpse.”
   “Good one, girl. Have to remember that for later. Plenty of them too, no matter how many cops you have on the streets. The career criminals don’t know how else to settle scores. But you know that one, personally.”
   “Let’s not drag the few parts of Jimmy that were found out of the shoebox they fit into.”
   “Hey, I’m just saying that if you roll the dice in that game enough, sooner or later you lose. I’m telling the plain truth on that. Abernathy showed us the book. Jimmy played the game and kept going back for more. I know it, you know it. Then someone put a bullet in his head and cleaned up the mess.”
   She turned snake still and her voice froze. “Now why would you say that? They only found parts of an arm and one leg. No head, no torso, not even a hand.”
   “I’ve been in places, seen some rather cold stuff. I was just saying, no matter how good the cops are, you could make everyone that isn’t a criminal all safe and happy and still have a pile of bodies in the morgue. Shit, have you ever seen what the drug cartels do? Once had business down in South America, and this gang of Kadis decides to use Mother Nature to their advantage. They take their shoes off, sneak up to this building, and next thing you know they’re ripping apart their rivals that just happen to be human. Bare hands, chainsaws, acid, once saw an execution done with a necklace of blasting caps. Shock and awe is one hell of a tactic in any kind of warfare. Never make it a fair fight, and you might live to see your next birthday. Even better, make it look like someone else did it and walk away scott free.”
   “So why say he got one to the head?” She tilted hers a fraction, interested in this.
   “Because I can put two and two together, and I can work backwards. He was a message to someone.”
   I drew his attention away from Tahlia. “If you can work backwards, what happened to Amanda, or the other girls?”
   “Same thing that happens to any girl that ends up a cold case, which is what she’s going to end up as once Zhalin hits all the dead ends. Sorry to say that it’s true. They wandered off and talked to strangers. I’ve entertained you long enough and given you more than you deserve to stay quiet. I’m not here to explain all the unhappy things in life. I got out when I did so I could spend more time on my hobbies, and right now you’re cutting into that.” I counted eight steps in my head as Jeffries made them.
   He crouched, letting his fingers drift over the folders that we’d rubber-banded together. “I’m impressed. So many people don’t keep their word anymore. Makes doing business riskier and less fun.” He sniffed loudly and moved to get up.
   I crouched as well, his eyes level with mine. Tahlia’s left arm twisted in a quick twitch as I whispered. “What kind of business? Coke?”
   Jeffries paused, caught in the headlights. “Why would I know anything about cocaine?”
   Before he reacted, she’d closed on him with the sound and smell of her stun gun shredding the cloying overripeness.
   He twitched, hand on the bag. Tahlia covered as I swept his feet out without causing a concussion. He deserved more than the four punches to his chest I landed before backing off out of gripping range. Tahlia hit him again, in the legs this time. Three seconds, then she waited to do the other leg. She cycled through available body parts with her ears back and almost flat to her head, voice serving a cold dish.
   He twisted and tried to scream. “You have the right to answer my fucking questions!” Zap.
   His eyes bugged out a bit as I abandoned him to collect stuff and guns. “Anything you say can be used against you, and will be!” Emphatic zap.
   He gasped, contorted, and tried to straighten out. “You have the right to get your ass kicked some more!” Several staccato zaps.
   His legs fluttered and the other arm twitched like a half-dead cockroach. “If you cannot take this pain, I will provide some fucking more!” She zapped him to the cadence of Jingle Bells.
   I returned as she kicked him in the balls. “This is called a citizen’s arrest. I’ve got a few things I want to know before we have you taken for an all-inclusive stay at Bohica Resorts.” Zap, and the battery called it a night.
   After lifting him in a fireman’s carry, I walked towards the landcrawler while she aimed a disappointed look. “Admit it. You’d let his head smack on the asphalt, even if he is more useful with his brains inside his skull.” Her glare shifted to a warning about being right and showing her up.
   
The beast’s large backseat made for a cozy interrogation room. I worked fast, searching the center console and then the trunk. My second kidnapping had less prep but we still scored a bundle of rope and ties. The rope looked like the kind of stuff you’d pick up at any decent camping or hardware store, the ties big enough to do the whole ran out of handcuffs thing. Tahlia zipped his hands in back, and then looped the rope up and down his legs, just enough to keep him from kicking freely. With that done, she punched him in the face once to make a point, then in the stomach to make sure the message was received. A trickle of blood started from one nostril.
   All of Tahlia’s feelings from this morning were set aside.  “Now, Jeffries, or whatever your name is, we’re going to have a little conversation. There’s plenty you have to answer for.”
   I praised the construction of the ogre once he started. “You fucking flea-colony toting bitch! Arrrgrgrg!” Pulling at the shorthairs by his ear proved a wonderful way for me to teach him the necessity of using his indoor voice.
   “You didn’t know when to stop talking, now you’re going to keep talking until we say stop. Is this understood?”
   He answered me succinctly. “I will cut you apart like Jimmy The Whoops No More Nails!” Tahlia waited a few seconds.
   “I’m going back your truck. I need my bag. Just do that again if he tries to wake up the neighbors.”
   Once she’d gone, I amused myself by taking out a pocketknife and trimming my nails. Each scrap got flung at Jeffries. Hygiene done, I regaled him with tales from jobsites. Everyone has them. Civilian gunshots and amputations are cleaner than the worst I’d seen. Limbs and bodies become jelly, with only a little scrap left to remind you. The worst are the ones where the person survives. Hands ripped off, explosions shearing legs from torsos, or the ever popular anatomy lesson that a degloving gives as a bonus. Jeffries’ mouth moved like he had ideas about spitting, so I punched him in the jaw before he was ready. Tahlia opened the door, observing the change in his position. She pulled out a fresh battery and grinned as it slapped in place while I sat Jeffries back in the full upright position. Her ears were pinned forward, unwavering, and from her tone she was ready to confirm what she already knew.
   “Was he on the naughty list while I was gone? Hmm. I forgot to tell you to be gentle. Mea culpa. It’s question time, Mr. Prime Suspect. Let’s start with Jimmy.” She’d played nice and gentle with Roberts; Jeffries won a free one-handed massage, but at the neck instead of kidneys. “There’s plenty of ways to get someone to pay attention when you have them at your mercy. Those only increase if you’re not worried about the person surviving it or the body being found. So how did you know what actually killed him was a gunshot wound?” He stayed silent, so she gave him a quick zap. “We’ll come back to Jimmy. Why don’t you ask him about Victoria.” He shifted to me, and I got a good look into his eyes.
   I wished I hadn’t. They were cold, empty of the empathy and other things that float behind the keyhole.
   “Victoria Jarrett was out walking her dog. In the process of her abduction, the dog must have gotten hurt or died, so some of its blood was on the sidewalk. Simple and easy, even if she couldn’t tell someone was hiding in the shadows, why wouldn’t the dog have noticed?”
   He raised an eyebrow as if I’d asked the dumbest question possible, and why I’d thought he’d seen the place. I turned to Tahlia.
   She let me take the next one too. “Or there’s cocaine. Sooner or later you’ll get caught. Heard from a good source the other day that even if the market is good, it’s a poor investment tip. It would be a lot of fun for everyone else if they really searched you top to bottom. All kinds of things might shake out.” That earned me a raised eyebrow, as if he had plans already set in case things steered that way.
   Her brow furrowed and worked closer to fed up with him. The thought occurred that if she knew how to mix pleasure and pain, I had a front row seat to a masterclass on inflicting pain. She dipped her eyes to his crotch. Jeffries’ shoulders spasmed, unclear whether from pain, discomfort, chemistry or a combination of them. I grabbed him and moved him back again while she theorized.
   “If you don’t want to talk about any of those, we can talk about Amanda. I’m betting you know exactly what happened to her after 3AM the morning she disappeared, and the reason why is that you were there. Or close by, which comes to the same. So here’s what’s in my head, and please don’t feel safe that I’m thinking out loud, zap zap sizzle sizzle. I could ask a few questions with this.” She let the stun gun crack once. “It’s probably Bobby that saw her. One of the other girls goes and asks, he’s close enough to hear about a bag, a time and place. Now, Bobby wasn’t in here when the bag got tossed out the window, but he makes a quick call just in case and then waits. His instructions are to say when she leaves, so he does that and goes home. She pulls in at her place after stopping for gas. Now, either you or Morgan needs to talk with her, but you can’t leave a trace that you’d been there because that would make the case really simple. She drops her bag inside, and gets something quick out of the fridge, just like she’s been taught. Small, light meal before bed, take a nap, and you’ve got something for the morning when you’re headed to your first class. Follow me so far?”
   He froze for a few seconds then started to wriggle in the improvised bonds, then went still again before starting over. Either I’d hit him again or Tahlia’s patient words would run out. Whatever he was on, he couldn’t sit still for long. Out of frustration, I stomped on his foot. He howled in pain, swallowed the dregs of it, and Tahlia started back up once he fell quiet.
   “Now, if she’d have stayed indoors until morning, it would have been risky to intercept her. She had a morning class, and then she’d have been in public places until she went home in the afternoon. Once home, another nap and then she wakes up again later in the afternoon. At that point, it’s all early evening drive time and you really would have been shit out of luck.” Something beyond my senses piqued her curiosity enough to push her nose by his neck and mouth. “So either you or Morgan are watching her door, and caught a big break when she does something perfectly normal. She walks outside to throw her trash away. One of you two walks up to her, says we have to talk and this will be just a minute. Maybe you sweeten the deal by telling her that there’s a spur of the moment event tomorrow and you need to talk to her first to tell her what’s up. Anything to get her to follow you. Here’s the part I didn’t understand earlier. Ready for it, asshole?”
   He kept to the silent treatment. “He’s not following or ready, Tahlia.” She stuck the stun gun in his thigh, then waited for him to stop twitching.
   “That’s better. Now, where was I? Right, a lack of understanding. My first thought was that something happened as soon as she got home, and that someone placed her bag exactly as it should be. She didn’t text me or anyone else to say that she’d gotten home. But no sign of a robbery, no broken door or windows, nothing disturbed or sloppy like with Jarrett. And her complex has only one entrance, and that has a guardhouse and camera.” Tahlia leaned to his ear. “Vanished into thin air.”
   Maybe he had more experience with pissed siruean women. We hadn’t gathered anything before today on him and Morgan good enough for court, but the continuing non-reaction helped less than a cheap lawyer. All it would have taken was an extractor for tamper-resistant screws.
   I guided Tahlia away but replaced her invasion of personal space at Jeffries’ other side. “I should send you a bill for the day of work I missed. Up until the law office you two were under the radar. But it was too good of a opportunity. With the book straight from Zhalin, staying a step ahead would have been easier.”
   We still disagreed on the fine points. “And that left them three steps behind the investigation. One of the first things Zhalin and his boys would have done is see who else entered and exited that night. A really nice place wouldn’t just be gated but have ID cards so there’s a digital record, but cameras are simpler and cheap. But cameras don’t do shit if there’s a way off the property by foot that’s out of camera range. So that’s what Jacob and I wanted to verify. Two ways in from the street, and both with cameras on them. But the one closer to her apartment had its wires sliced, and I mean at the camera over a dozen feet up.” Jeffries still didn’t crack.
   “Look at me. I wouldn’t be here if you and her were careful. All you needed was a trip each to a hardware store, then an electronics store. But you and Morgan took shortcuts after scoping things out.”
   “I’m more amazed they haven’t fixed it yet. Bunch of lazy bastards. Walked in, got her to walk out under her own power just in case someone else walked out in the middle of the night, and like the dog, everyone missed it the first time. Like you said, the details. Except if we managed to see that one, imagine how many the cops have that only need one extra bit of information to hurt you. Same when you grabbed Deidre Molineaux.”
   I applied pressure to the toes I’d already bruised. “How much you want to bet Zhalin will be double checking the other two places tomorrow morning after we tell him, or maybe that’s another fact he conveniently left out of the reports?” Jeffries fought the bonds as if hearing approaching police sirens.
   “Jackpot, human mine, and wouldn’t have thought to double check without you. As long as they stayed safely out of suspicion, they could keep doing this every so often. But too many and too soon after each other, and it’s easier to question things. That’s how serial killers rack up totals. They have to tell you everything after it’s all over. You can’t cross-check every clue, not back then and not now. All you need is to be careful and minimize the potential for DNA evidence, then hope the cops are tired and sloppy.” Jeffries’ shaking was like minor convulsions now.
   “You two are so fucking wrong it’s funny!” With that he threw himself to the side, while I dove into Tahlia to avoid the swing of his fist.
   He pushed the door open and rolled out hard onto the asphalt, the stun gun just missing him. His cursing echoed back from the buildings as he unwound the rope around his legs. By the time she’d jumped out and after him, he’d gotten several dozen yards on her, heading towards the fencing at the far end. Bullfrogs roared and croaked up ahead.
   The fence shivered as he impacted it, boosting himself with one foot and the next high enough for him to make it over the barbed top. Momentum carried him down the slope into the nearest pond, cursing the muck and mud of Mother Nature with a few splashes. I reached the fence ten seconds after her, a bit more winded but neither of us looking to where he ended up. My jaw dropped open.
   The red and white sign about ten feet away had been designed to be legible enough to read through the dust and dirt on it. Another like it clapped on the fence about seventy or eighty feet in the distance. I’d lived several years with warning and caution signs, but the message wasn’t what I was accustomed to.
DO NOT THROW OBJECTS IN WATER.
TO AN ALLIGATOR, A SPLASH MEANS FOOD.
   A scream snared my attention, then a splash like a loud belly flop flipped the switch on his shouting.
   She looked out over the water and land beyond the fence for about ten minutes, waiting for more than bullfrogs. I didn’t need words to convince her it was time to leave. 
   
I grabbed everything and we went. It was too early for the end of the night rush from the bars and nightclubs, that perfect still hour when you can still call for pizza from somewhere after midnight and have it ready by the time you get there. She remained quiet. I didn’t feel like talking either.
   By the time I parked next to her car, she’d slumped back and stared like there was nothing in the way but air and distant stars.
   “At least we didn’t have to see that.” She shivered.
   “He Wilhelmed nicely. And cleared up a lot.”
   “I wanted to believe his sin was being close to events. Did you see his eyes? Smell him once we started asking about Jimmy and Victoria?”
   I recalled last night at the club. “Zhalin was talking about predators. Don’t think he liked what it could end up doing to him.”
   “I’ve seen some people get hurt bad. He’s right. How the fuck am I going to explain this one to him? Of all the utter crazy things I’ve done since I turned eighteen, this takes first place at the cakewalk.”
   “All he has to know is Jeffries ran off. Maybe they won’t find enough to fill a thimble.”
   “Still, if he wants to, we could be sitting in separate rooms for a very long time sometime before Monday morning.”
   “You could tell him the truth. Leave out the stun gun, and there’s not much to question.”
   “It would depend on how flexible he considers the concept of citizen’s arrest. I didn’t think Jeffries would run like that. What I thought would happen is I rough him up, release him, and he comes to us all embarrassed with Morgan. They lose it, and I get to double tap each of them in self-defense.” She mimed the gunshots. “Given her known temper, I’d just get questioned and released. Now it depends on what Zhalin finds and how badly he wants me to be happy.”
   “Imagine he rolls this into a political career. Be good, or the evil she-wolf of the south will come out and teach you not to edge in on her monopoly.” She stared at me, and I shrugged. “Might as well play it up. Could be a new line of work for you.”
   “Let’s go inside. I need a shower, and then someone to hold me. This is half over. Tomorrow should be even less fun.”
   
Things felt less electric after the shower. I helped dry her, first with a large towel and then a hairdryer. After that, we sat on the edge of the bed so she could teach me how to brush her.
   “Slowly. Haven’t you ever had a woman ask you to brush her hair before?”
   “That’s oldschool movie stuff.”
   Her hair was pulled forward and the pin brush moved down over the shoulder blade and lat. “Well, you’d better get used to this. I can use a manual autocomb to trim and deal with the worst of it, and even if I don’t need it, it’s sexy as fuck to get a good brushing. Don’t humans enjoy a backrub? I could test out and pass a massage certification, so don’t tell me you’re not going to enjoy my hands on you.”
   “Does that come with a happy ending?”
   Her open hand impacted hard high on my naked thigh, followed by the slow reminder as her trimmed nails raised faint welts on the way to my knee. “It comes with an ending. Like everything else, you have to earn the one you get. If you don’t stop pressing unevenly, that ending is going to be you on the couch tonight.” Empty threat or not, I had only so much room to laugh.
   I left to get drinks. Tahlia must have brushed her front side and down her legs quickly because she’d spread across the bed when I returned, one hand kneading a breast and the other tracing lines down her stomach. She’d leaned her head backward and smiling with white-silver ears splayed out on the pillow. The outfit from last night hadn’t been sent to the cleaners yet. I set the drinks down far enough away as the room’s heat drew clean sweat from myself and the glasses.
   “Couldn’t resist, less than five minutes and you’re a finger’s breadth away from showing off your favorite techniques.” Life turned so quickly, considering less than two hours ago we were waiting for the chance of a bullet, and now had to drain off the adrenaline together.
   “High-strength birth control doesn’t mean you don’t get extremely horny. If you aren’t going to sink that cock in me, I’m going to pin you down once you’re on this bed and ride you until I pass out.”
   I flipped a coin in my head. I could give in, or go all in.
   “We have to talk.”
   A dark nipple rolled in lazy loops between her fingers, the piercing catching light. “Hmm, that’s the kind of foreplay you want?”
   “If we don’t talk, you’ll be the one on the couch. How much longer can we rely on luck instead of trusting and having honest emotions for each other?”
   She sat up, pushing as far from me as possible and curling up against the wall. “Fuck you, Jacob. You couldn’t do it this morning.”
   Even if she was strong for a girl, I had her pinned and unable to kick me off after I leapt on the bed and grabbed her muzzle. “I don’t need a goddamned mirror. It took Leonora to open my eyes. I’ve been using you. Either you start to do the same by admitting it, or the next time we might not get lucky when you put us in between the shit and the fan.” She stayed silent as I backed off.
   Minutes ticked off, as much a punishment as a paddle. I gathered plenty of examples that her favored life strategy was to throw herself at it without abandon. One of us had to say this before tonight happened again. I owed her, yet the truth cut wounds in my throat as the words rasped out.
   “If that’s how you’re going to be, Tahlia, sleep on the couch. When you’re ready to talk I’m there for you, but not everything is on your terms.” She got up, eyes downcast. “Take your drink.”
   The thin sheet she took was all I had on the bed. I downed my drink in one gulp, the alcohol’s burn keeping me awake. She was silent on the other side of the door, which was better than loud. Enough of her clothing was out there for her to decide to take off to fuckall-knows-where.
   It took half an hour. My eyes had reached the edge of sleep. Her voice was muffled on the other side.
   “I hate it when you’re right. Scratch that, I hate it when someone’s right about me. I guess that cuts out some men, so I don’t have to face a man with a brain.”
   “You’ve got a sharp one, and you’re still the smarter of us.” I rolled over to stare at where she was.
   “You said you wouldn’t walk away from me, but I’ve been thinking about this. I never said I wouldn’t. The sex was good, and you cracked my shell. I didn’t trust you at first, but you kept chipping away at that. I could have abandoned you and finished this my own way, but I kept kicking my own ass back in line. I’m not one of your human girls. Don’t push it. All we need is to live, but first that means getting through the next few days, whatever they are. After that, yeah, we’re going to have to figure out a lot between us. Right now, what I want and need is you. Let’s do what we’re good at together, and the rest...well, maybe that’s how I need to be collared and disciplined.”
   I opened the door to her leaning with forearms on the frame. Her arms laid over me and she stood on tiptoes for a kiss. This time my decision was delayed. I held her back. We were a combination. I’d be the scope on her sledgehammer. I didn’t know what metaphor I’d be to her, but she suggested one.
   “I’ve never known a guy to get hard over talking about feelings. I might enjoy this new game.” She stroked and nibbled at my neck.
   “Just remember this isn’t Solitaire.”
   “After what you did last night? Zhalin would make a good relationship counselor for us. You’ve made the mistake of your life getting tangled with me, human mine.”
   “Get on the bed if you’re planning to go another round.” I had to wonder how I’d screwed it up so many times before, and why this wasn’t then.
   She had what she wanted and pounced on the bed. I grabbed her by the ankles to spin her to the short side, then worked her toes with one hand while stroking myself. Nipple and metal rolled again in her fingertips, tongue licking teeth in anticipation, and the short fur of her belly shimmered in the ambient light of the small bedroom.
   I rubbed myself into her, her willingness slick and warm, then parting to gasps. I leveraged and choose an angle that would let us last longer but drive her further into ecstasy with each push. She’d crossed the line of no longer strange and exotic, no longer scary, just enough to be an unlikely pair standing opposite the world and every attempt to damn us. Thrust, she wasn’t the woman that lied to me and then ran off with what little I’d kept after signing on the line. Thrust, I’m not the man that promised her that he cared and then fucked another girl at nineteen, her next door neighbor, in her own bed. Thrust, she wasn’t the woman that ran away for three months and then turned back up, only to see her carted off to jail when she pawned the things she’d been thieving. Thrust, I wasn’t the man that introduced her that freshman year to chemical habits she now avoided herself and abhorred in others. Deeper into each other, we mixed.
   “Is this the kind of cuddling you wanted, is it? What would those girls at the club think?” She liked it when my voice dropped to a rougher growl.
   Her words slurred more as I fucked her, involuntary quakes rolling through deep tissues, shaking the peaks and valleys. “Hmmm. You’re my human. They couldn’t take...aahhh!...this, you would...yes, yes...be too much...fuck me...and, and...deeper...ohhh.” I pulled out and watched her unfocused eyes roll and yaw before dragging her onto the floor before me.
   “Or did you want it rough like that? Or rougher?” She stared up and answered by preparing to deep-throat me, her long tongue hewing up one side of my shaft and then underneath to climb the other side.
   She finished teasing, short sentences commanding between her mouth working magics. “How rough can you be? I’m a tough girl. I’ll never completely submit. But I want you to push me. Push me harder. Be my fantasies.”
   “As rough as you can take it before begging for mercy.” That grandiose standard perked her curiosity going by her dedication to oral arguments.
   “Only thing I’ll be begging for is more. Do you want to slap me? Teach me a lesson? Want what no other man can dream of? Want to try and tame me?”
   “You can’t be tamed, can’t be broken.” Green eyes flashed in pride at the compliment as she posed alongside the object of her attentions.
   “But you’re going to try, and give me that refuge from myself. We can’t help being like this with each other. This is what you’ve earned, and you’d better make good on it before I push back and force you to do it.” One hand’s nails dug into my thigh painfully and short of drawing blood. “Slap me like I’m the kind of used whore that deserves abuse! Do it!”
   I didn’t. Instead I grabbed her around the muzzle, fingers pushing into the tender flesh and muscle under, and pulled her to her feet. Holding her head still so she had to look me in the eyes, I reached and smacked her ass. The impact, unprepared, was pain without pleasure. I held her static and captive, then coursed my hand on the trimmed fur over her ass and up, gripping her tail at the root. She raised it slightly without thinking, the opening filled by my fingertips digging against the underside of its base and a handle for me as she spun around. I sat and compelled her to come closer, first to kneel at my side and then lean over my knees. My grip moved her as I wished. Once positioned I let go of her muzzle, and exchanged hands on her tail. Pulling it high, it was easy to study the shape and color of her exposed labia. Head low, ass high, she tried to maintain her precarious perch with fingertips on the floor.
   “You don’t get to decide. You don’t get to choose what happens, and if you’re such a tough girl you’ll take anything you’re given and plead for more the minute no one else can hear you whisper obedience, yield and surrender.” My free hand stroked down the freshly cleaned fur, one side, then the other. “It can be relatively easy, or you can be tied up and have a taste of your own medicine.”
   “That would take guts you don’t have.” I waited for her to add to the playful taunt, then scolded her with three meaty impacts, none of which gave me the victory of her crying out, just more taunting. “Just remember, you can’t stay awake forever.”
   Insolence, thy name is woman. Beautiful, overproud and vanguard defending the past and present mistakes with industrious flair. She attempted to push off, nearly wiggling free and falling to the floor, except that I swung my other leg wide and trapped her thighs between mine. It could give her enough leverage to pull herself up, but that would require me to release her tail. If she wanted to play, we could do it. Gentle was good, and rough worked too.
   “When you beg and sound like you mean it, you’ll be let up and allowed to prove yourself. You have a problem with giving in, and if you looked like you wanted to no one would believe it.” A couple more firm strikes buffeted her attitude. “Better idea, you’re not allowed to prove yourself. Nor do you get to give in.”
   She laughed off another pair of strikes. “Watching you chase a tail you don’t have—” Feather light touches up the inside of her thighs caught her breath.
   “This will be like the eggs. Go get anything that could bind your feet to your hands, and something to keep that mouth of yours from backtalking. You need to branch into another discipline of listening.” Once released, she looked chastised until I told her to move, then had a near invisible flash of pride and readiness for a new game.
   She came back with a sizable quantity of leather and nylon bits, buckles and rings clinking together. “Almost all of this was for a party we never got to have. I’d planned to demonstrate basic BDSM safety, how to tie someone up and how not to get hurt while you’re bound.”
   “And how much of this did you try on yourself at one time or another? It’s a pretty safe bet, now that your secrets are out, that you like to tie yourself up and see how long you can last versus your own evil mind. You’d even deceive yourself and say it was just research. Practical is more fun, however.” Another new achievement, Tahlia was too embarrassed to look me in the eyes.
   “I...” She stopped, made a feeble attempt at looking up, then came up with a better excuse. “The only person I’ve ever felt safe putting my safety in is me. End of story.”
   “You might as well continue.”
   Her ears drooped. “If I say you’re right about the research and self-bondage, don’t get too full of it. It’s an interesting thing to try once in a while, learning about things from a different angle. And I’m far tougher on myself than any dominant could be. It’s as much about the mental and psychological as the physical. I would never put myself in the hands of someone I couldn’t trust. It’s such a foreign word to me, like looking into a broken mirror. So call me whatever you wish when guys complain about their women. The worst I can do is make it awfully fun.”
   “How much?”
   She raised her eyes and the metal parts of the gear rung out as she shook once. “What?”
   “Trust. How much. Pop quiz.”
   She laughed, unready for self-examination now. “Enough that I’ve fallen asleep in the same bed as you, and might do it again.”
   “Then you still don’t.”
   “Not completely.” Her eyes flashed momentarily. “After all I’ve dragged you through, it’s a horrible repayment. But if I’m going to work on that, it needs to grow from me not whitewashing how I feel. You’ve broken me already by trying to put me back together.” I’d never thought meekness was a dominant trait, but she juggled both without contradiction. “If I don’t give you that space, I’ll never change. Love, trust, they don’t accept collateral. You don’t say maybe. You just work on it.”
   There was plenty needed on both sides. “Then you choose what happens. It should be educational.”
   “I have an idea that I need your help on then. I can’t recreate it exactly, and it isn’t going to end the same way, but either your dreams are mostly right and match what the cops have or I’ve been too far off on my theories. It’s far more than I’d ever do alone, which just means if this ends in an ER trip it’ll also make one hell of a story later.”
   She explained, then went to grab a mass of wires and controllers after dumping the gear with me. No sane person should want to recreate this. Not her. Almost as bad was turning it over in her head from all sides and playing with it like a wounded animal. She didn’t do perky or excited very well, so if the roles were reversed I’d need a doctor and pliers to get my testicles to come back out. I hoped future arguments with her never approached that level.
   “This is unhinged, even by the standard that others keep saying you rise to.” Mercurial, but solid.
   “And I read that portion of the file over and over. It was artistry. Any moron with enough gear could overstimulate a submissive. Whoever did this, and if goddess grants said person is currently being digested, balanced the whole of it to make the result inevitable. Add this onto your list of nightmares you’ll have later and prepare to lose that glorious hardon—women who are raped can develop rape fantasies. Rare, but possible.” The angle of her eyes away from me stabbed until she continued. “It’s trauma, it never goes away completely, and then you realize you want a part of it again. I was lucky. He couldn’t subdue me fast enough and I beat his ass before he thought about getting his pants open. Day after that I did best thing to reduce the trauma. I went and shot a pistol for the first time. Then I signed up for self-defense classes, and took advantage of the campus gym.”
   “Please say you did the counseling thing as well.” She handed me the strange devices, and waited for nothing.
   “Not a chance. Had one session, told the ugly bitch that I’d tackle this head on and never look back. I’m not a victim. I refuse to be labeled like that. Before, I’d gotten aroused by bondage, but after I wanted to know more. The why and how of it, all the backwaters. Between that and learning to listen while giving a lapdance, I’ve got a better grounding in psych than a majority of shrinks. People don’t have to make sense to others, just their own little narratives.”
   “And what if this goes wrong? It’s not like there’s a second Tahlia here saying when to back off or not.”
   “Part of the point of this is that what I experience is close to what happened to Deidre. I can’t put conditions on this or it’ll be too weak. If I smell you thinking of this ever again, expect my best threats. But I’m not going to die before the sun comes up, I’m likely to enjoy parts of it, it’ll be good for us, and when I think about it later regarding her I’ll be so angry you’ll need to hold me back. Win-win. Start by binding my hands and feet.”
   The result looked unsettling. Tahlia had devised a way so that her wrists were held to her upper arms, and her ankles to her ass at the crease between thigh and hip. Then I bound her crossways so her limbs were entirely bound. After that she instructed me on the finer points of erogenous zones. One of the small devices clipped around the base of her ears, another around the base of her tail. Others went in her ass, clipped on her nipples, inside her cunt, even a few rigged so that they were held against her toes though she confessed that Deidre showed no signs of that. It was just her own thoroughness that said all available equipment should be used, and that her toes were sensitive. I squeezed the pump on the one inside her, like for Deidre, then fastened the last piece, a ring gag, in her mouth and around her muzzle. I turned everything on as she’d instructed.
   At first gentle, but there wasn’t a place she could escape to as each new piece added to the round. First the pumped dildo knotted in her, then her nipples, and her ass. Her ears, tail, and then the toes. The strongest one pushed into her pubic bone, shaking her clit from just above where the harness held it, sounding like a low wobble as I turned the others up. Once her toes flexed and curled I turned the whole down to let her ride it out, then back up again. If it hadn’t been for the ring and gag holding her jaws and tongue, she’d be making more than agonized rasps. Like she asked, watch the eyes, back off when they lost focus, then pushed through until making peace with the plateau of sensations. She gave one instruction above all, if she closed her eyes and kept them closed, turn everything down and wait. If she still kept her eyes closed, keep turning the intensity down. The goal was to outlast everything, but she’d also pointed out that Deidre had this done to her over the course of a couple days without a break. No food so she hadn’t shit herself, but watered and allowed to piss down her legs and into a pan below her. No sleep, just an unending cascade of one kind of stimulation or the other, whether it be by touch or scent or sound or vision. I understood this well enough, stress the body enough, deny it, and the senses mutate. Two coins in a pocket become an inescapable beating heart chasing your every step. Colors dancing just out of bounds of your eyes, and each shift of the head unable to catch the phantom avoiding you. The brain could exceed the limits of the body, but at some immeasurable line it had no language that normalcy could read. Tahlia wanted to be pushed viciously enough to get a glimpse of what happened to one girl.
   It took over an hour, and stopped being easy to watch after the first minutes. The second time her eyes squeezed shut, she opened them after only a few seconds of rest. I turned the power and speed back up, and had to watch what must have been agony. Waves rippled down her tail, her neck strained, and if she hadn’t made me tie her so that there were lines across her back she’d have pulled into a fetal position. I took a break for myself and returned with a few towels for when Tahlia lost control, but even after the seventh time she closed her eyes the towels under her were only soaked with her own juices. The dials and sliders pulsed up again while she fought the bonds and ties. Her sounds, which had started as forceful pants, had become raw and toneless.
   Her eyes closed for the eighth time, and I bumped the little machines down one by one. The ears were the last this time, but she shook without stopping. Another round of decreases, and she still hadn’t made it back. I gave her a minute at each, and each was too much for her to keep facing. At the lowest settings, I gave her two minutes to no avail. Everything shut off. I unclipped and removed devices, then pulled the straps free from across her back and around limbs. Then came the nadir.
   I had to wait. It took five minutes once her hands were free for her to unclench, then uncurl an arm. Limbs adducted. I swept everything still on the bed to a pile on the floor, speed more important than her twitching and directionless ears. Only then did I crawl back onto the bed with her, body to body. Pulling her close, she molded to my body on the left and the bondage of my arms, breath still uneven. It took until three in the morning for her to come back to a place where sleep was possible, but she didn’t let me go there yet.
   Her voice had nothing left. “Wasn’t easy.” My shoulder nestling her head, muzzle and nose at my sternum, I cradled her with my arm under her jaw and hand firm on the nape.
   “What did you see and feel? Was it worth this?” Maybe a quarter would be useful, but this had run free of the erotic district almost from the start.
   “Need sleep. Hold me. No, and yes.” Her breathing slowed to the edge of sleep.
   The song I hummed was a lullaby to us both, slow and tuneless. She whispered in counterpoint.
   “Now I know.”
   I slipped into dreams before she met sleep.
   
The dream came from a simpler time and place. The crystalline water remained spring cold even during long summer days, without need of anything else, any electricity, to hear the music condense from the air. I remembered being too young to give a fuck about the things that caused older men to drink or curse while hunting stronger amnesiacs, and too naive to recognize the signs. Teetering on this cusp recalled the brief number of days between when memory had enough foundation to sustain itself and the ugly adventures of the first days of kindergarten. The days were long, the seconds drug out into individual hours, and the consequences fell victim to childhood.
   The river bent around and made a peninsula, the perfect place for campgrounds and the like. Set out from the upriver ramp or docks, then drift for about three hours until the bend arrived at the downriver landing. Make the half hour walk back overland, and a person could do the stretch twice in one day. That had been my plan from the start. With no love to spend the day listening to the extended dramatics of family, about seven hours of peace seemed like an executioner’s stay. Add in the double-sized flask I’d borrowed from a friend and filled with liquor flinched from a different friend’s house, and the day melted to dream. The water was either clear to the bottom or mirrored depending on how the sun sparked. I drifted in the early morning sun, warming up and cooling down like an engine in neutral.
   Less than an hour after setting out, I’d stolen all the solitude possible. A few families were downriver, still audible but not close enough to be more than natural sounds like the birds and others splashing at the shallow banks. Spinning around, a few kids shouted in tubes and other inflatables upriver. Once every few minutes, a canoe or kayak zipped past, but nothing bigger since powered boats weren’t allowed on this stretch.
   I heard her call from behind about a third of the way through the run, the slow current rotating me. A girl about my age in a rented kayak raced closer, an orange lifevest over her pale fur and her hands butterflying the paddle in loops. Determined to catch up, she shouted back at a drunk redneck that had wondered where she’d been last weekend when he needed a hunting dog. She slowed at the last minute, back pedaling and then stowing the paddle as she pulled up beside, grabbing the rope loop on the side to flash a wide grin. Shades of sunlight cast into greens from her eyes.
   “It’s kind of silly to set out on this loop alone. I saw you and didn’t think you were meeting up with someone else. Even if you are, and they’re downriver waiting, you gave me one heck of a good workout to get here.” She had a blue and silver one-piece swimsuit on underneath, her ears pivoting in arcs as the world kept splashing and croaking by.
   “Only if you haven’t done this river before. When you’ve done it multiple times each summer since you’re little, it’s silly to see anyone rush down the current.”
   She leaned forward to scoop up cool water, letting it douse her jet hair and run under the lifevest. “Still, it’s likely that you’re nicer than that jerk upriver.” Her ears hung for a split second, then perked back up.
   Rivulets of water cut channels into her fur and showed darker flesh under. Under one eye were a series of bare patches, round and smaller than a pencil. Shouting from upriver drew our attention only to be more of Mr. Hunter. She’d used that to cover an attempt to hide the old scars.
   I relaxed into skygazing on a cloudless day. “They’re everywhere. No one really escapes it, it’s just the number of places you have to go to that’s different.”
   Cynicism filtered her words, hot and haughty. “For some people it’s always close at hand. You would think that after everything we’d be smarter, but picking yourself up and dusting off isn’t always a noble quality. We’ve got a couple hours if we drift with the current. Maybe I can help teach you a little sophistication so you don’t sound like an outcast that picked up a copy of ‘Poetry Writing for the Depressed’, Eighth Edition.” She stopped laughing at her own joke after realizing I wasn’t.
   “Not everyone grows up with the freedom to claim how smart they are. And not everyone has the money to show it off.”
   “If it wasn’t such a nice day, I’d splash you for being a downer, and then stereotyping me as smart and stuck-up. We could start over.”
   “In that case, take a pull.” I untied and handed her the flask floating on the other side, waiting while she sniffed at it before a decent drink. “Relax, lie back, everyone stops arguing.”
   “That sounds like something out of the Grateful Dead or CCR. You’re going to be one of those boys my dad always rants about.”
   She passed the flask back and I tied it to float in the spring water. “Huh? Don’t think this is a pot and kettle river run.”
   “Well, if you’ve got the bad girl, you need a guy to reform her. As I’m not, you need to have something about you my dad would hate. It can’t be that you’re human, because that’s too easy. Have you already picked where you’re going to college?”
   “Nope. Don’t have the grades or money.”
   “Then it can’t be that. My grandmother hates it when he gets on the whole higher education equals brains rant. You’d like her. Barely five feet, pale as me, and full of common sense.” A hiccup made her wince and attempt scraping her tongue clean on teeth. “I think you share the same taste in booze, too. You’re not from a family of weekend druggies or permanently unemployed types, are you?”
   I managed a maligned sigh. “Stick around and you’ll get to see the perfect example of both of those. No one loves Uncle Andy. Got a divorce, his choice, and his family didn’t want him back. So he trails along and acts like he still belongs here. Or if some of the others in back of us pass by, you might get to see the wonderful train wreck that’s acid and summer heat.”
   “Sounds like fun, as long as they stay downwind.
   “Then what else could he argue about? Probably the same as everyone else in this state, the heat melts your brain at some point and you have to hope no one packed a double stupid sandwich.”
   A pontoon boat came around the curve behind us, moving faster than the current, with small speakers blaring and family singing like a revival tent—everyone out of key but combining back in a way you can’t train for, just the rare magic that weeps on down the line, unrestrained and undammed. The song wound down and the wobbling man nearest the cooler took notice as the boat closed, turning to grab fresh beers. He lobbed them out underhanded, aiming perfectly. The can slapped into my hand a beat after hers arrived, and we cracked them in unison as the next sermon started on a perfect summer Sunday.
   We leaned back to watch the riverbirds above. I knew the song, and matched the Texan’s low and whiskey rough growl while she harmonized an octave up in a velvet contralto. Had he known the angels would be coming so soon for him, and played as if each note slowed their approach? I poured a shot of liquor in the beer and wondered who we’d see in the mirror one day, and who would be there when our ghosts visited our survivors.
   The party with its less than legal engine glided on just about as fast as a canoe, keys rattling on a chain that held the choir together. The remainder of the trip was slower than I’d planned on but far better than being alone for a time.

Chapter Eighteen

“How was work?” She stirred food in the pan, the smells of oils, meat and veggies likely on the path to a stirfry.
   “Could have been better.”
   I shrugged off my coat, not wanting to strip down to her level. Caroline had bumped the thermostat in my absence. I could have complained, but all she wore was a pair of ankle socks and shirt with a hemline short enough to tempt a tired man. In particular, to turn the burners down to warm and work off the day’s stress in the bedroom.
   “How about other things?”
   She turned halfway as I set my keys on the counter next to her purse. Nothing had covered up the three small amber plastic pill bottles.
   “Caroline, is your back flaring up again? This isn’t—”
   “Allergies, Jacob. I did my last visit for my back two weeks ago, remember?. As long as I keep up with the exercises, the doctor said the worst I’ll feel is some soreness and tightness. I got lucky, and I don’t recommend a car accident as gym motivation.” The bottle nearest my keys had nothing to do with allergies.
   An hour after we’d finished dinner, I pulled a shopping list from under a fridge magnet. Caroline had conked out on the couch after changing into a fresh shirt, and still bottomless.
   The late January storm that had blown through the past few days hadn’t brought snow, but the wind stuck around. The truck’s heater raised the temp from quick icicle to slow icicle. What little warmth existed inside the WallyWorld meant I could open my coat. Blues and yellows shone under the eternal sunshine of consumerist normalcy.
   “Jacob? I thought you were working late this week?” Annette walked up to me from her cart, the cold still on her and the fleece jacket as well.
   “How have you been?” We smiled, and hugged for far too long if there had been other eyes. “You don’t need to go hiding like that on me.”
   “Same as you. Work calls. Get a basket and keep me company.”
   Ten minutes later we’d made it halfway to the back of the grocery section, and the tale of her latest co-worker disaster dwindled to a close. “And that’s all there was. You told me ages ago about the worst you’d seen, but I hate seeing it play out again. Some people think they can hide it and no one will notice.”
   “On that subject, can I bounce something about Caroline off you?” I tossed a box of the cheaper pasta in my basket instead of Caroline’s request.
   A faceful of spaghetti box waved at me as I turned around, dark pixie hair shining. “Rachael was better for you, no matter what you say. Call it women’s intuition.”
   “Except that one had a lower chance of working out than me ditching Caroline and us running away together.” The pasta slapped my cheek, then went in her cart.
   “You’re a noble oaf, and some woman’s going to unknot their life for you.”
   A passing couple heard that and mirrored my shock at her slip. “Annette, language.”
   “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean anything bad.” Her skin never had been pale enough for a proper blush, but the cold outside had set the stage for red cheeks. “Ughh. It is true. All the meanings.”
   “Don’t play clever. It’s bad enough that I don’t catch myself in time, and now I have you slipping up on the whole politically correct lingo.”
   “Don’t Annette me. You’re making me feel like I should be the one asking for advice on fixing Caroline, or what to expect from my first bondage experience.”
   “Annette!” It had been one of Caroline’s drunken requests during a Christmas party session of girltalk.
   “Sorry, we’ll do your questions first.” I stared her down, and she gave the old no-big-secrets-between-friends shrug.
   “Caroline and I do not do that, period. What’s happening is that I saw a few fresh pill bottles this evening in her bag. Mind lending me your opinion as a nurse?”
   I recapped the accident, Caroline’s admission that she’d found it hard to get off the painkillers from a previous accident and surgery, and how the trio of us and the doctor planned to manage the pain this time without exposing her to as high of a risk level.
   “These things are individual, that’s all I can say.”
   “What I’m concerned about is her spiraling down. It’s been six months. She’s been good at keeping secrets from me, before and now, so the last thing I want to do is confront her when all this could be is an extreme backup plan.”
   “You’re a sweetheart as well, Jacob, but you need to pull your dick out of her mouth if you want a clear head. Whatever she’s doing, you need to stop making excuses. Be proactive and keep notes in a secure place. I’m not going to tell you how to handle your relationship, but the worst Rachael ever did to you was get as stinking drunk as the next person and whine about a hangover.” 
   “Any other sage advice?”
   “Either make her feel needed, or pack your bags. I’m not a relationship counselor, nor am I writing you in prison if she breaks you. Finally tell her what you came from, and you’ll have a chance of her starting to mend. Keep stabbing your trust issues, and sooner or later you’ll hit the heart.”

Chapter Nineteen

The still of early morning ended when she nudged me awake early and demanded for food to be started while she showered off the smell of sex and last night. I shook my head once she was safely away at the play of old woman stiffness and grumpy words as the bathroom door closed. Worse came when the cold water had her knocking on the wall between the kitchen area and the shower to remind me about coffee. A minute later, she added a demand for bacon. She cleaned up quick, but half her time involved shouting through the wall. The majority of comments involved whether to have all the cookable meat in the fridge or just enough to give the Surgeon General a heart attack. Stalking out in yet another of the mostly open and wrap-around high-cut robes, this time in a dark purple, she ordered me to the shower while interjecting a new complaint every three or four words.
   The perfect delay tactic was to set out the plates and cups while I waited for the coffee. After giving up on regular grade complaints, she grabbed a cup and took one last shot when she tasted what the coffeemaker had produced. “Arthur Dent had an easier time getting something related to tea than I do getting coffee in this town. Either you make it yourself, or it’s not coffee.” Halfway through my shower she thumped on the wall to let me know that overnights were going to start being at her place. The fridge and freezer were better stocked, with proper condiments and spices in a rack.
   I had no trouble recalling the broad wash of last night’s dream. The finest details stayed blurred, but subconsciously I wanted a day like that. Then again, the classic Sunday couple fashion wasn’t a bad substitute. Male shirtless, the lady pantsless. She listened to the river trip as we divided breakfast. It also gave me an opening to look for matching scars beneath one eye. If it was something embarrassing, she’d long since learned how to disguise them. No matter how much she’d criticized the coffee, she sipped at the last cup and had more brewing. 
   “Before I moved here, I’d only been to Florida twice. Last time was when I was twelve, and neither time included a full day at any springs. You should have seen the separation anxiety they had when I started here at eighteen. At sixteen, I still wasn’t allowed out of their sight.” She shoveled a mouthful of everything in, then inhaled the aroma of the next forkful. “I’m glad I listened to my aunt’s cooking lessons more carefully than my mother’s. One of the first, and you can bet my mother hated the reality of, is that you aren’t a decent cook if you can assemble a nice to restaurant quality meal for two plus drinks. Nor does it count if you can serve a full table for a party. What counts is fucking a guy and whipping up a feast in the morning out of bachelor scraps. Only then do you understand food.”
   I pointed my fork sideways at her half-finished plate. “At some point, there’s going to be more veggies in there. And there was a very nice person that explained all about how to pick your food. So you might as well accept it before a doctor that specializes in humans decides that one diet is easier to follow than two. If they consult with someone you’d have a hard time saying no to like Leonora, then all the healthy goodness will offset your obsession with bacon.” No one would bet against that she’d heard the speech before and diverted it.
   “Never trust a person that speaks against bacon or steaks.” Her ears made it more than halfway back and one eye twitched. “Which reminds me, I don’t know whether or not to be sure you’ve met Mariah. If you keep up all this healthy talk I’m going to have even more reason to suspect she’s been sneaking around and giving you tips on food and hygiene. You remember the one I’m talking about?” She did the slight tilt of the head and forward ears that seemed to be the key siruean female signs of ‘I’m onto you’, and angled down to add the Kubrickian note of ‘Dangerous and don’t fuck with me’ in the background.
   I shot for too simpleminded and ignorant to play multi-dimensional chess. “You’ve mentioned her, and it wouldn’t be that hard to pick her out of a lineup based on what you said, not unless there’s other girls there that don’t trim their coats short.”
   “Ohh, I’m quite positive she’s had you in the back at least once. Both her and I are suckers for that toe massage thing you did, and that is one tip you aren’t going to see on an online top whatever list of ways to drive the girls wild. Plus the whole veggie angle. Girl’s even gone so far as to give up meat for a while, and one of the few I’ve ever know to do it without fucking their coat all to hell. She spends so much time in the back that’s she’s rarely onstage, and it’s funny how many guys never have her take anything off. Then again, she’s using every lapdog trick in the book and a few of her own. So don’t bullshit me. I’d better not taste or smell any other girl on you that I don’t approve of first.” Her glare was only half serious.
   “No matter how good at guessing you are, it’s completely off the mark this time.” Her eyes rolled as she licked the taste of meat off her teeth.
   “Doesn’t change that you’re the perfect mark for this.”
   Once I had her number dialed in even better, it’d be worth the revenge punch. “Here’s something else. You spend far too much time thinking about other women. It’s almost to the point of voyeuristic fantasy.”
   “When guys cycle through girls at the club, you get used to it. Some just want to try each girl at least once. Others find a girl and will wait all night to have a few songs with her. And don’t think us girls are any different. We know who our men are and the degree that we’ll share or allow one time poaching. She’d get you in the back and whisper how she only goes for human guys, then she’d have you scratch and comb her with your fingers. All her favorites buy her a nice collar, and she doesn’t go anywhere without one on. And here you are turning me into her, bit by bit.” She elbowed me jovially, then went on. “You’re something new for me, so don’t mind me having a lap of fun around the track.”
   “It’s too early for your fun. Is there a reason for this, else you might need some sleep before you head to work tonight and remember that a good chunk of the rest of the world isn’t on your schedule.” We’d be well matched, and better once she learned limits existed on the long line of other women she paraded in front of me for her amusement alone.
   “And that is why we’re up. You let me lead, and this has a chance of going smoother than a fratboy’s dream pickup lines.” With an evil smile she picked up her phone after grabbing another cup of the not entirely unlike coffee. “This is better than revenge.”
   The beeps of dialing were chased by three rings, then a weary voice. “Zhalin here.” The sound of heavy traffic was far off, and lighter vehicles close by.
   Her voice remained conversational but her ears slipped back in annoyance. “Detective, I’m certain you’ll be thrilled to know that little favor I asked you about can be avoided. Two unnecessary deaths haven’t happened.”
   His response to Tahlia’s upbeat mood hardly matched hers, but the sounds were close to things he probably avoided saying around the wife and kids. “Do you want to have a guess where I am? No? I’ll tell you where I’m not. At this hour, I should be sipping good coffee, yelling at kids to do what their mother tells them, and dreading the Sunday morning trip to church. But I’m here.”
   “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time. Just wanted to let you know that I’m trying to be nice and not increase your workload.”
   Other people buzzed in the background, none calling for Zhalin to do anything. “I can tell I’m on speaker. Does that mean Jacob, aka your new boyfriend and accomplice, is nearby?”
   “He is. Say hi to the nice and hard working detective, sweetie.”
   I shot a glare to the side and got no reaction. “Hello, Zhalin. Thanks for the drinks last night.”
   This time there was no mistaking the curses. “You should have listened closer, asshole. But in hindsight, I don’t think this was avoidable. I’m going to have a hell of a time explaining and then making this up to my wife, hear me? Sunday church is one of her you will not miss this activities, and there’s no way I’m making it home in time to get dressed for sermons and trying to wash the things I’m fighting with out of my soul.”
   “Some places have Wednesday evening services. You don’t exactly have the guarantee of a nine to five schedule.” Tahlia’s fast thinking made her welcome like a drunk dinner guest.
   “No, I don’t. I have whatever’s unlucky to happen in this garbage heap end up in front of my nose. Since you’ve avoided it, I’ll tell you where I am. Down on the west side of town, just off the interstate, and in one of the back lots of the wonderful consumerist shopping there. I’m not one to agree with those anarchy screaming leftist punks about capitalism, but it’s times like this that I’m less inclined to tell them to shower and get a real job. When you get woken up and dragged out of bed at three in the morning, your mood has little chance of improving no matter what coffee you get to swill.”
   “We just called to check in. If you need to get back to things...”
   His tone clicked towards measured and wanting results to fall out soon. “I’m just sitting here and wishing I hadn’t been dragged out of bed just in case. You see, I got a call last night, and even though I don’t want to do paperwork after a certain point on a Friday, scum doesn’t always let that be. And believe it or not, the only reason I agreed with you last night was so that if your brains got splattered somewhere, I could have some closure no matter what went down and face the Lord with a clean conscience. I got the story on the drive over. Two-thirty, one of the delivery trucks arrives. Now the only other vehicles that should be in the lot at that hour is anyone from the night shift, but they’ve all parked out front. Truck starts unloading, and one goes to take a look because hitting a parked vehicle is a fuckton of paperwork. They’re smart, and they call for a tow but also call us as a just in case.”
   “Zhalin, if you—” The cut off finished pinning her ears and started her tail tapping a tattoo on a stool leg.
   “What, let you explain? Not much to it. I get out here just shy of three-thirty, and after we do a look over of the place we call for the K9 unit. There’s some signs of a struggle, like a really nice disagreement, but that’s not illegal. After I get to sit down and soak in some coffee, I have to call in narcotics. Guess what? Vehicle has some. Now the keys are in the ignition, forensics is on the way, and I get the job of telling people to calm down and wait for them. We look off in the distance, and what do I see? Bent fencing. So over the fence we go because there’s rather fresh footprint-like shapes on the other side. And here’s the kicker, the one thing that made the doughnut crumbs go flying. Those footprints splashed to the water below and never came out. I didn’t need to wait for forensics to write that one up. So maybe you’d better clue me in on what happened between when you drove onto this lot last night, and then left.”
   “Not much to explain. He attacked us, I tried to subdue him, he ran away.” She put a finger to her muzzle and I waited for Zhalin to tell us to get shoes on and wait for the nice officer coming to pick us up.
   “Vujana, you know how to craft a perfectly true tale that makes Rashomon look straightforward. The good thing is that I don’t have to haul you in unless I want to, because part of what I was doing yesterday, even though it’s not part of my job, was sitting with narcotics and establishing that the two of you had no possible connection to the place we busted on Friday night. No blood there, so I’m staying the fuck away from any self-important feds I didn’t invite. Then you do this. I told you to stay out of it, and you might not have intended this, but shit like this can be a murder charge. What I want out of the both of you right the fuck now is the truth.”
   “We had some suspicion Jeffries had tried to plant stuff on us earlier. We arrived, didn’t want trouble, and then it happened. Everyone was talking, and he said the wrong things. Made me think he might know what happened in a few open cases, and kept running his mouth. Maybe we weren’t meant to leave. Then he said the wrong thing about Jimmy. I tried a citizen’s arrest, he got away.”
   There was a hiss out of him. A zoo of sounds replaced his voice. A pen tapped on paper, liquid was sipped, the scratch of a chin or ear, and last the rasp of cloth over cloth and fur. A prayer was recited sotto voce, rusty but well worn over the past several days. I could hear the phone thump on the console beside him and the speaker turn on. He recited the prayer a second time, chasing it with coffee, and then ruined his own call for help.
   “I understand. Jesus fuck. You going to confirm this, Ainsley? Vujana can lie straightfaced, but you can’t. She BS’ing me to save her coat, or not?”
   “It’s true. Don’t know the past, but—”
   “All that counts now is what’s next. I don’t owe you this, but if I don’t I could still be ID’ing you two in the morgue Monday morning. We’ve got an APB out on Morgan. I want her back in town, and as soon as she crosses the county line I want to be watching her every move. They have a place in town and I’ve got a pair of guys there and waiting. Her phone is off, and I’m taking a huge chance on not having the feds in on that one. If she contacts you, you call me immediately, got it? No more accidents. I’ve got enough paperwork to do and then this isn’t helping me cut into it. By this evening I want this puzzle to look mostly done. I need confessions and solid close the book evidence.”
   All I could give him was my word, little more than an excuse by now. “None of this was supposed to happen.”
   “No it wasn’t. In the kind of world my wife believes in, people like Amanda Ulrich grow up to become like her, and all the things I have to see rarely happen. I want the two of you to make a hard choice. I thought it was an easy one before, and this time you’re going to have to work at fucking it up. All the two of you have to do is sit at home and go to work tomorrow. I’m serious. All I have to do is make a psychiatrist very happy when they have to listen to me try to keep my head whole.”
   The phone clicked off, and I hoped Zhalin could make peace with what had occurred and yet to.

Plates were washed and set to dry, trash collected and tossed in the dumpster. By the time I’d walked back in Tahlia had changed to gray denim, her boots from last night, and a relaxed black men’s dress shirt tossed over a blue sleeveless deep cut top sheer enough to show the texture of the fur underneath. With her hair up, she strode over to take me by the shoulders. Her forehead bumped mine, and I wanted her to have more unguarded moments like this, eyes closed and at rest. They don’t last, they never do, and I dreaded them passing by without the chance to stop all the clocks in the world. My hands dropped to her hips. Pulling her closer, she ran her arms up to rest on my shoulders. As my eyes opened, she felt it and did the same. Moving, I gripped her head with a hand and guided her to a kiss. It doesn’t take any time to make a decision. You don’t even have to think about making one, because sometimes life grants you a gift and smiles when there’s no words possible in return. The muscles in her head relaxed, her body melted, and her tail wrapped around to touch me at the back of the leg. No matter what I’d thought of someone like her before, now was a different land. Heartbeats passed and we released each other.
   “I could get used to this. I could try to puzzle out why, but it feels too easy to follow your lead and just let it be what it wants to be. Maybe that’s it. I’ve been pushing and fighting the world for so long that I’ve forgotten that home isn’t just where you sleep and lick your wounds. It’s the place where you can take off everything the world wants out of you and be what’s underneath. You get to choose what it all means, not anyone else. Except I’m horrible at easy.”
   My smack on her ass was both a reinforcement and a quit the pity party memo. “Then what you’re going to get is a thorough rehabilitation in how to redefine a few words. Just don’t complain to me how high the AC is or your fashion choices are limited when you accessorize with a hand cannon.”
   “You are a work of art, human mine. Caring, honesty, sincerity, love—we’re both in need of a dictionary for them and a map to it. At least you make good company. Now help me pack the computers. This place doesn’t have enough room to work.”
   By the time the last of it was ensconced back at her place the morning temperature approached the kind of too hot that lingers like bad suspense before the storm turns everything to gray. Insects and birds were loud outside, the traffic Sunday dead, and the steady AC hum hypnotic. I laid back on the couch with a beer in one hand while she reconnected bundles of multicolored cables and cursed again about the loss of information sources. When she took a break, I attacked.
   “There’s a lot to talk about. Not quite secrets, but you’ve got a lot to go over.”
   “Like what? Just remember that we’re doing fair play. The more you ask, the more reason I have to come up with a few questions of my own.”
   Pushing backwards, I looked at her upside down. “If you want to start, go ahead.”
   She glanced over her shoulder, showing a hint of teeth. “I’ll keep these as down payment on making you squirm later.” I wondered how many of her outfits at the club were via requests, and how high the tally was for banker.
   “What did you do with the gun from Jeffries? And when did you become Ms. Commando, which shouldn’t be shocking except that the question should really be how many more do you have stashed away?”
   “If Zhalin wants it for evidence he can have it. As for the rest, I prefer my handguns.” She pointed at one of the posters on the wall, a large print of an old photograph with a stiff jawed and moustached man. “I don’t need much more for carry, and it’d be dumb for me to keep more where the cops could hold it against me. Even if I can play the woman card, having a short-barreled rifle with the largest legal magazine in my other hand is not the right way to say hello and see how much I need help defending myself.”
   “After the past few days, it’s debatable that they love you.”
   “Of course they do. I could be sitting in a jail cell right now with a third-degree murder charge. I’m perfectly capable of letting them handle the rest, except that’s not what’s going to happen.” I turned around to give her the bad choice look. “Oh, I could sit here the rest of the day, but I’m not the only one involved. When that bitch gets back, things are going to be a whole new level of fun and games.”
   The silence stretched out, then ended with the beeps and whirrs of hardware powering up.
   “You think he’s wrong. Morgan knows something is up and they already had plans for disasters.”
   “If you’d done the kind of work I suspect that she has, it would be second nature. What was supposed to happen last night is we turn stuff over and leave. If they’re off the legality choke chain that Abernathy has, then whenever she got back today, we’d have had maybe an hour before it happened. It doesn’t matter how. Her options are really limited now that things went south. And Zhalin isn’t dumb either. Our job is bait. All we have to do is hope she stays out of rifle range and makes a mistake.”
   “And after that, it’s all over. It’s just a matter of time for the key points to be found out, sent to labs, and the courts to make decisions. Right?”
   Her hands stretched overhead and her back arched, then she walked over to kneel by the couch. “I wish it was that easy or certain. There’s a chance she just drives away from all of this, starts a new life in another state with a fresh identity or goes overseas and vanishes into her old job. I’ve got so many questions and instead of answers I have guesses and maybes. Last night was a start, and I hope the rest of it falls in place. Roberts was right, nothing’s certain until the switch flips the chair on.” She went to the kitchen, me following.
   The fridge was better stocked all around, including beer. “You’re a touch morbid today.” I leaned against it and opened a fresh bottle.
   “I brought the documents from Abernathy with me. We could look at them again, or you could persuade me to put a movie on and cheer up.”
   “That doesn’t sound like a want to be happy kind of tone.”
   “It is if I add popcorn and a movie. It might take two. Maybe it’s time I teach you the wonders of James Bond.”
   I laughed then broke out in a fit of it, nearly losing my beer. “What the hell is there to know? There’s a stunt scene to start it, then an empty mystery, he seduces at least one of the Bond girls, there’s a chase scene that makes little sense if you think about it too long, he has an array of gadgets to get him out of things, and the villain monologues badly.”
   “Do you want to know what else your uncultured ass is going to have to put up with from me? Opera, which is close enough but with music and singing. So back to the point. Favorite Bond, or I choose.”
   “Ten says you actually like the Roger Moore movies.”
   Her reaction was more quiet patience than faked outrage. We had the old relationship riff down. She tapped a finger on the countertop and waited for me to dig deeper. Firing back with a just one of the guys attitude got me what I deserved. She leaned forward just enough to flaunt her bust and then clawed it back by sounding neutral and unconcerned about eye candy or anything other than herself.
   “Some good humor, amazing set design for the time, and some good effects work. There’s too much hate from the people that wanted more of Connery or preferred the overblown 80s. Not that Dalton was bad. Want another tidbit?”
   The microwave beeped and the smell of popcorn, salt and spices permeated the room. “A no is going to end with a dumped bowl of popcorn, so you might as well geek out.” She tossed a piece and I caught it easily.
   “Answer quick—how many Bond girls have been siruean?” Her grin wasn’t as sharply metallic as some of the henchmen.
   I counted off on fingers after retreating back to the couch. “Umm...five. One for Connery, two for Moore, one for Brosnan, and one for Craig.”
   “Nice try. The real answer is zero.” That lie needed to be called later.
   “What? That can’t be right. Bond fucks everything, just like Kirk.”
   Her cut around the counter was quick and pushed me upright before she had the chance to dump the bowl over me from sheer momentum. “Now you reveal the inner geek!” Plopping down beside, her other hand grabbed the remote and turned on the TV.
   “Thank the magic of syndication.” I grabbed her muzzle and grinned about her inability to mouth off. “That’s about as geeky as having seen Star Wars but not quoting it.”
   Tahlia returned the grin after attacking with the remote. “Liar. We just have to work on you a bit. One of my most popular costumes when I dyed my hair red was a suit and FBI badge.”
   “You’re too tall for a good Scully. She was tiny.” Whatever she’d mixed in with the salt was magical, so I drew it out by taking a handful and eating a piece at a time.
   “And I get good tips whenever I do characters or themes. The other night was so much fun. Anyone can do a metal bikini and draw the surface geeks, but when you walk out to a theme song and get them to remember other movies...it’s as much fun for me as them. That’s one of the appeals. Good girls, bad girls, and plenty of wish fulfillment fantasy. It’s not as fun when you get the dirty parts too in real life, but I’m not crying right now. I’ll give you one more chance or I’m putting on Moonraker.” The menu changed, and she scrolled down the library until that was selected.
   “Anything but that! No! The evil and wicked attack!”
   She raised an eyebrow and waited for the hysteria to end. “I should kick you outside and use you as bait.” Then she thumbed forward and selected a Dalton-era movie. “Enough cops in the neighborhood and she’s unlikely to get very far.”
   “And you’d be left wrapping the wound. It’s doubtful you’d escape with your hide whole from a ass-beating.”
   “Shut up and watch the movie, or the next time the bondage gear comes out it’ll be you that gets tied up so that I have a pussy eating machine.”

By 2:30PM she was lying back across my lap with her legs dangling over the arm of the couch, snoring away a good nap. When she stirred onto her side, I adjusted so that she didn’t pin an ear. A little clock inside my head was ringing with the hands pointed to any minute now. The ringing didn’t stop, and grew more intense until it was numbing and the slow drift into sleep started. A slammed door a couple units down woke us, with Tahlia rolling off and a gun appearing in her hand from fuck knows where.
   The click of the hammer lowering failed to be reassuring. She got up, shoving the gun into the waistband of her jeans, and buttoned the shirt over it before walking outside. Seconds later I heard her arguing with a neighbor about the importance of not stomping around like an elephant on a steady diet of amphetamines and Ex-Lax, to which the response laid roughly within the range of little puppies needing to go bark somewhere else. Whoever he was, he’d won the lottery. I’d take a parting retort about outstanding noise violations than kidney extraction any given Sunday. The door clicked as she slumped against it, eyes closed.
   “I may need to calm down but he’d better learn that his lease has terms and rules. When you move somewhere, you expect nicer places to have a nicer breed of asshole.”
   I walked around the couch to her bookshelves. Kneeling, I took in the titles on the bottom, large format books about the Civil War, the history of sailing ships, and many more. Up one shelf was mostly Roman and Greek histories, the next mostly from the Middle Ages and dealing with the Crusades and some of Renaissance-era Europe. The top of the bookcase and top shelf were layered in modern history, mostly American. The shelf at eye-level was what I needed her to talk about. I ran a finger along the spines as she breathed in and out, still focused on the argument outside. The titles were vague but hinted. Persecution of the Critics. The Failures of Schism: A Cold War Between Human and Siruean. Crusades Within Europe: Reformation Before Luther. European Paganism and Catholicism. The Shattering of the Altar’s Forest. That one turned out to have no pictures, and seemed to be about all the factions of sirueans.
   One phrase was highlighted on a page the book wanted to open to. Once the plague reached Germanic lands, all sides became worried about purity. The last word was repeated to the side, capitalized in red pen.
   I chose one that looked less general. “What does this one mean? The Rites of the Siruean Particular and the Reformation.”
   “It’s dusty old history.” One ear angled to me and her tail tapped the doorframe.
   “Just curious.” I flipped through the table of contents and scanned the first page of a few chapters. “So the sirueans had their own church? Thought the Church didn’t split until Luther.”
   “It’s a fool’s game to try and figure it out. It started long before then, and there were reform movements before then.” The listening ear shifted minutely as I put that book back carefully and picked another, The Pagan Reformation. “You’re really curious about this, Jacob. I don’t know what you expect to find in there.”
   “Sleeping through history class in high school is mainly because the teacher is boring as fuck. There’s a lot here. This the kind of stuff you meant about romance novels?”
   “During one of the most violent times between human and sirueans? Hell no. Set it a couple hundred years after we’d gotten our asses decimated by the plague and war, after the politics had settled down. We’ve never quite recovered our numbers versus humans, but by that point any wise king wasn’t chasing us away from lands we’d held for hundreds of years. They didn’t have to by that point. There weren’t enough of us to resist being absorbed.” She opened her eyes and I saw the weariness around them. “Just think about it. We became a tiny minority, and all it takes is one spark. Then you get culled.”
   I put that one back and tried another title. The Black Plague Among Siruean Europe. She watched for a couple more minutes, then walked to her desk. Removing the gun from her waistband, she carefully removed the magazine and unloaded it, then closed the book in my hands.
   It would’ve been easier if she’d gone cold or turned her back. The past divided us briefly, then nothing hid her eyes. “Why? I told you this is old history. What’s behind this?”
   “My dreams.”
   “Why look for answers in old wars and dusty hymn books? Assuming they’re the ones doing it, but—”
   “Patterns. Like what you were looking for last night.”
   “You’re fucking insane, do you know that loverboy? I was looking to see if what matched the police reports also matched some things buried in those books. What did you see?”
   We both knew that was less than a half truth. “Something from a now, maybe not this now, but a dream within a dream of a rebuilt church. A mix of people singing together. And this is the important part, that it used to exist but will be destroyed again.”
   Tired lines carved deeper into the rim of darker flesh circling her eyes, the old scars under near invisible. “How well can you recall your dream from last night? Is it hazy or not?” She’d thought along the same lines as me but would rather have the subject dropped, at least by the hints her ears gave.
   “About as clear as it was this morning, maybe sharper now.”
   “I’ve gone daft for considering this, but what else is there to do right now? You’re going to take a nap, and I’m going to make certain you dream. Lie down on the couch.” The kitchen swallowed her, releasing the smell of herbs and the sound of a microwave running.
   The textured white of the ceiling was frozen motion. Beeps, the odor of mints and sharper notes filled the room. She came out with a small cup and knelt on the floor beside me.
   “My personal blend of knock yourself the fuck out. Just listen to the shape of my words as you drift off, and whatever you encounter feel free to ask the questions you want. You should know by now I hate it when you’re right.”
   The cup was a hair below too hot, and the liquid already bitter as I drank it down. As I laid back, sleep was near again and her voice sang an old song.

The church soared like one of the real old kind. Stone, wood and glass made it a bubble of quietude instead of the carpeted plastic boxes full of bright lights and flashing screens. Small plants and vines framed carvings of wood and stone. Not a single drop of paint hid the natural colors. Here the only power was from the structure itself, and the sun if daytime.
   Instead of modern electric lights, candles burnt in groupings here and there. The smell of oil and wax overlaid old wood and the staleness of still air, wool and more. The ceiling arched high above, but not so high that one felt dwarfed by it. Taking a few steps, I judged it about seventy feet at most, and fifty minimum. Windows were set high into the stone, showing the night and cold outside. At the far end sat the altar, simple with only a carving of one man and one woman, a monolithic statement. Lecterns set high on the side walls were stone dressed in more wooden carvings. Unadorned but well made and oiled benches stretched from in front of me to the septs in two rows. A woman waited distant at the other end, turning at my sound. Her face waited deep in her habit, not easy to make out until closer and nearly in the same light as me.
   The sound of her clothing—simple, bleached white with a brown layer on top, and a white habit—was drowned by the hundreds of flickering points. A strip of the same bleached white served as a belt. She stepped into the circle of light at the end of the seating, her ears turning to me, then stopped four steps away. Candlelight whipped shadows across us, her almost a foot shorter and with two small items of wood swinging from beaded necklaces. One was a simple, unadorned cross.
   She breathed in deeply and slowly through her nose. “Are you lost, traveler? Do you require food or a place to sleep for the night?” Her voice was soft and light, her visible brown fur longer than most kept it—yet she was brushed neatly and the color faded slightly as it went from cheek to muzzle to nose.
   “Do you have any answers?”
   Again she breathed in, long and slow, this time with a slight tilt to her head. “To what? The Lord God and Lady Goddess do not give or grant. They merely allow us to learn what we already know.” A series of slanted scars weren’t quite hidden under fur, following the line under one eye.
   Her eyes pulled at mine with greater attraction as I avoided them like mirrors. No songbooks waiting in the pew backs. No carpet or rugs. No odors filtered by the omnipresent air conditioning. Plants, wood, natural humidity, smoke—all matched her.
   “She, someone else that is, thought that the questions...well, this place might be able to help out. She looked a bit like you, and wears one of those, so maybe that’s why.” She looked me up and down as I pointed to the other wooden piece on the end of the chain, weighing as women are prone to with men.
   A third time she took in a measured and full breath. “I see. Specific questions that need a certain group of people. And another abbey and abbess could not do this duty for you?”
   I met her gaze directly. Flinching first wasn’t defeat, it was admitting that hers of an undefined age of blue and set in that not quite relaxed manner would wait as I spun around. The faded gray stone seemed right for a church, but the carvings in the wood were too alive. Most looked to be in pairs, carved into the darkened oak and oiled so candlelight danced across the scenes. One nearby had been mounted where the nearby light rolled across it to best effect. On the left was a woman, robes full of folds and holding a child looking not at her but at the trees behind and the sun above, and she looking not at the child but down at the fallen tree before her. On the right was the man, beset on all sides by the world around him, symbols of temptation daring to pull him in all ways from his place within a circle, the wooden cross and his work before him. In relief around the two main pieces were smaller carvings in lighter woods of angels standing their ground against the armies of sin, failing to keep it all at bay but succeeding carving out a space for man and woman to make their life. In no corner could I see anything that looked like art of Jesus, Mary, or Gospel, instead each tale retold as from the life anyone sitting in worship would know. Nor was any of it recognizably human, each having the ears and muzzle like her own. Suns, moons, trees, leaves, water, wood and mountain filled in the backgrounds with the elements of life. When my dervish ceased, azure mirrors endlessly reflected the surrounding symbols. Nothing was so foreign and alien to her that the words and arts failed to aid its comprehension.
   “I don’t quite know where this is. But unless they had another sister like you, it might not be what...”
   Her stare wasn’t accusatory, but it felt uncomfortable nonetheless. She took my hand and led me to the closest bench. “Not many humans that are unfamiliar with this place would stay in here once they knew what lay within, and some of those unwilling but in need. What need drives you here, to get answers from outside your kind?” She motioned me to sit, then followed and folded her hands in her lap, waiting with the peace of stone.
   I tried to form the words, then again with throat sticking, and only on the third time did I find voice to speak. “There were a few people hurt, women like you. Not women of this church, just ordinary people living ordinary lives. Murdered. There’s no real reason to guess why. It happens now, I guess it did in the past, and will again when everyone alive now is long dead.” I thumped back as I finished, snapping forward before it crossed into disrespect.
   She’d noted the trinity. “So why concern yourself with it if you are not of the cloth? Soldiers kill for king or duke, disease takes who it will. What makes the dead any different? I know not the manner of my death, except that could come while at the work deemed good by Heaven above. I do not fear that. As you said, all are going to pass one day and our bodies buried or burnt.”
   “They didn’t deserve what happened.” That earned a reaction, a quick sniff and twitch of her ears to remind me of her hidden tail.
   “Child, we are each sent the fate we are. Even if evil prospers and the devout are cast down while we sit here, they will be judged.”
   The heat in my voice rose with each word until they retreated from my volume. “So you’re not going to help? Just say some old words from a book and wait for a happier future? Who the fuck are you to sit in a place like this and not care about one, just one, person that could be saved for another day? Maybe that one person ends up the key to a brighter tomorrow?”
   “Perhaps you have already forgotten what you’ve seen on your journey here. If I was to set out and choose any road, I would see many things if I traveled long enough.” A hand gripped the two wooden ornaments as if talismans to shield the wearer. “I would see the long cold battlefield of war, pestilence and famine not far behind. I would pass by unmarked graves, victims of those that could not remember the lessons of Cain. Too short a journey for me, and I’d see every commandment that Moses brought be shattered time and time again. Even those of us who take vows cannot prevent the sins that breed everyday. So I ask, who are you to sit in judgment when that is alone the privilege of Heaven?” She refolded hands in her lap, waiting while the lack of easy answers kindled my brain further.
   “I must have had a different curriculum than here. You’re supposed to try, do the right thing, not let it keep happening!” The last erupted as a shout ringing on old stone, the echoes chorusing.
   She lowered hands from shielding her ears. Half whispered words took effort to hear as the building absorbed them. “And at what cost to you and your soul if you sit as judge? Would you take the axe or noose and claim it was justified?”
   “Why not?”
   “You would call it dutiful to take a life for a life, and what of the next time? How would duty guide your hand?”
   The simplest words are the harshest. “As it needs to.” My certainty caused her to consider her next words for several seconds, eyes down initially with introspection.
   “I see. Did you come from the road west of here or the south? Don’t know? I’ll tell you a short tale. Five days ago, I returned to this abbey from a small village west of here. I helped care and minister to one family in particular. Six children, and their father, all suffered from the terrible sickness that afflicts us. Have you watched a person drown in the pestilence that eats them from the inside, then seen to their burial? I’ve watched many times before. And before I was on the road to return here, I watched a man who’d stolen from the local lord take an arrow and choke on his own blood and last breath. Each of those was a failure. With better medicine, perhaps I could have helped save one of those children. With better crops or better morals, perhaps the man would have heeded the words of the Book and taken the hard times as a test of faith, and not turned to thievery. Hardship tests a man. If you let duty guide you in the way you wish, there might be a day I have to watch your eyes fade away and close.” I shook my head, wishing my thoughts knew how to mediate the heart and hands, then her words started unlocking what both had already practiced.
   “That’s not good enough. If people don’t stand together, who can say that you don’t get picked off one by one? How does a church like this get built, stone by stone, right? Like a song is made of the notes?”
   She appraised me again, up and down. “I’d imagine that is good enough for you and I. You don’t quite have the look of a mason or stonecutter, nor the voice for the choir.”
   “So a church is the sum of many small actions.” My hands mimed the stacking of one thing atop another until it was higher than my head. “They add up to something greater and more permanent. Each of those stones was a choice between that and actions that might negate the purpose of the stone being placed.”
   Her gentle laugh nipped my ear. “You are a nimble one, traveler, to argue my points for me now. So what of these small actions you speak of? Every day that I rise is like one of those stones. They are placed and seem unimportant in the now. You can claim they ignore the maelstrom blowing through the lands, but when completed, they might inspire two to do as I have. We don’t dare challenge and create another Babel, but we work to make ourselves the wall that protects.”
   “And every day, you leave those you could help on the wrong side of that wall.”
   She relaxed into a wry smile, knowing the difference between idealism and the grime of life. “If I had one hundred like me, and I spread them to all directions, it still would not be enough to prevent every death. What I can do, I do. We live with our failures. Without them, all that remains are the candles of our success to corrupt our eyes to the dangers that lie beyond their light.”
   “You’ve got that right. And that’s where the trouble is—out there. Is it such a cost to the soul to...” I stopped at the corner I’d talked myself into.
   One candle past her shoulder flickered out to spirals of dark smoke.  “Every action we ever take is a cost to the soul. What matters is how we spend it. Let us say you decide to spend the coin of your life to avenge another’s death. You compound failure with failure. Is there not the leader or general that has taken oath under the grace of god to accept the costs of that duty? When they are born to what they are, they may accept that fate or fight it until they submit in the end. Do not place the stones of your life randomly or without thought. You and I are like the church being built. Ill built walls do not stand up long nor hold the weight they were made to.”
   I broke from her gaze and studied my hands. “Have you ever come to the conclusion, after talking, that someone was that stone out of place? That they have a frightening cost to pay, one that they’re willing to sacrifice for, or already have? If you do nothing, they tumble over, and the sorrow goes on. If you help, maybe they’re never the same, but what’s in their past is a smaller failure than turning away. Why keep them in that place where it’s their own blood that may be the cost?” One finger trembled slightly, back and forth as if trying to pull something, or maybe push free of it.
   She reached out, and with one finger gently raised my eyes back to her. “If that is so, you would not be the first. The girl, did you care for her? What compels you such as if her soul sang like ranks of angels?”
   Despite the reassuring switch to a lack of parable I stood and paced a handful of pews forward, then back. After throwing in with Tahlia, I hadn’t revisited Amanda as more than a concept. Forgetting was damnation. Small wonder I’d been operating on virgin instinct. Forward, then back.
   “I met her once. And her friend wears the wolveshead like you.”
   “This friend, you know her well enough to claim friendship too? Moreso than the girl that you wish to avenge?”
   “She’s alive, and yes.” It’s far too simple a word to be hard to say. “Anyone keeping score would say it’s gone from complete strangers to battle-tested companions in a short time.”
   “And in your heart, how do you consider her? Does she wish as you do?” She gestured for me to sit again, compelling my feet.
   “More than friend.” After the words were out I realized how they could be interpreted, but the habited woman only took a long breath. “It wouldn’t be wise for anyone to put words in her mouth, but she’d use stronger ones than vengeance.”
   “Yet you say she wears this symbol.” The woman lifted the simple wooden round away from the cross. One difference from Tahlia’s—a series of marks under one eye. “Not many of us wear it. It is a steep responsibility.”
   “It seems she doesn’t like talking about it.”
   Wood clattered on wood, and her words were as flat as polished glass. “Nor would I of my own experiences. Are you acquainted with it’s meanings?”
   “Another woman, much older, a doctor, called it a protector. Maybe she meant like a charm.”
   One ear flicked as if I’d made a fine joke on ignorance. “Ohh, it’s a rather old symbol that has generations of meaning. Perhaps you’ve come from far in the east, and perhaps there the meaning is shaded different. It’s not as though we, or anyone, sings with one voice nor any symbol acquires just one meaning down the years. I don’t doubt it was old back when Moses floated down a river. It’s almost heresy to think that this church is a new way to tell some very old tales, but symbols and stories are a language of their own. They repeat through the generations in new forms. Mary is the daughter of the Goddess as much as Jesus is the son of the God in Heaven above. The patterns repeat, good and bad, all part of the skein.”
   She glanced past me, and I twisted around to follow. An old carving in the wall of a man bleeding from grievous wounds and women tending to him, except for one that sat turned away teaching a male child from a book in her lap. Again, the sun sat in the sky between them, shining in all directions.
   “But what does it mean specifically?”
   “For a woman like me, or any that wears it?”
   “Men can be worthy of it?”
   Her eyes matched Tahlia’s steady nature as she spoke. “No less than I, if he can bear the weight of it. The wolveshead, as you called it, is a bit of an order within our order, a mendicant among mendicants. We devote ourselves to exactly what you argue, a wall to protect the wall, a patch to assure those that have taken vows can live to see them done. Where the angels themselves would go, so do I if that is ordered. We are not a military order, but we remain an army of the covenants, and older covenants that march back to Goddess knows when. Where she points, I exercise my abilities. Where there are the sick to restore to health, I go. Where our kinds need a voice betwixt them to urge peace, I stand. Where those who have their souls in my trust are attacked, I defend.” The last was said as plain and immutable as the sun rising.
   “And if you have to kill in that duty?”
   Her voice was military. “Has she?”
   “Yes.” Even if the law never judged, I knew.
   “And you?” She studied my eyes while waiting for the answer.
   “Once. Could happen again, could be soon.” I regretted my harshness immediately, yet she accepted it and added a gentler note to her tone.
   The abbess took my hands, feeling the calluses and lack of major scars. “I would pray that you don’t choose that way again. I’ve ministered soldiers and tended their wounds, and worn the blood of battle myself when trapped in it. You’re not that type.”
   “Who would dare attack you? No, that’s wrong. Why? You’re different. Is that all it takes, hate for the sake of hate?”
   Her grip was stronger than I’d expected. Instead of pulling free as I stood again, she allowed me to lead. The last panel, the one of a woman and child learning from a book, was where I chose to start. She released one hand so I could trace the finely carved wood at the panel’s center. Years of mastery had gone into them. Around we went. She’d told the truth as she received it from some other. Each panel repeated themes. One person, or many, could build or destroy. A tree took time to grow, a forest even longer. No matter how secure one imagined life, disasters happened. Fire burned what was once home. The land turned over, and the ashes of old fertilized new fields. Within every stage laid the chance of regression. The depictions weren’t horror for its own sake. Sometimes the line between justice and murder was murky. Not always.
   We stopped before a panel with a beheaded man and executioner. “Hate, jealousy, envy, all these and more lead the flesh of any born to stray. And when the flesh is commanded by the undisciplined mind, the smallest differences are the seeds of hate. Take this place. It is not what you’ve seen all your life, no? We do not follow the rite as originally written, our particular is for us. Yet I must allow things, command myself in ways that would be considered less than proper in other’s eyes. I will not murder, but when I stand before him with the innocent behind me, I stand as if the angel sent to shield in His name. I will turn my cheek if struck, and if I was found guilty of a crime, then may the headsman’s axe be sharp on my neck. But there is no need to walk to one’s slaughter willingly at evil’s hand.” She released me, waiting with hands folded in her sleeves. Whatever made her, it didn’t get written down first in Rome.
   “So where is the line? How do you decide?”
   Where the eyes would be on the symbol burnt into me, the eyes of the omniscient. “It is a simple matter for one unlike me. I do not pretend to be without flaw. My duty, along with the vows I took, is to be an instrument of Will and to cleanse myself after of sin and the world. Like any other, evil and sin are choices. I guide those hard choices by a simple rule—I will do that which repairs the evils done in this world. If that leads me to stand and share the duties of the angels, then may my faith armor me in my times of need.”
   “It’s not easy. No easy answers, no solutions handed down from old books that make it black and white.”
   “And those of us who risk more do it with full knowledge that it may become an impossible task. But if I carry myself with each of my actions marching to the orders as best I can, then when I stand before that task, I have trained to surmount it. You understand that well, yes? The work of today becomes the steps over the tallest mountain. And no matter how dire and full of despair I could be when the impossible is in front of me, I am not alone.” She waited while I searched for something to grab onto with my thoughts. “You sit and look at me as if I cannot be what I claim. Whatever the teachings your friend has heard, I am not her. You listen, you think, yet I know when the answers I give do not fit the desires of the listener. Perhaps I have treated you as I would any other stranger that looks for the solace of the soul. I’ve asked wrong. What started you on this path? From there we will learn how to deliver you to where your feet are fated to go.”
   “When you dream, how do you consider what you see?”
   “A strange topic. One may dream anything, and whether that could become real is a matter of what we’ve already talked on.”
   I shook my head and hoped she went easy on the psychoanalysis. “No, not that. Imagine you’re dreaming. You see yourself doing something you’d never consider. Murder, torture, maybe what you see your hands doing is even worse. You wake up and you can’t remember it. Then one day it all comes back as if...”
   “As if what? If I asked you now, could you tell me these horrible things as if it was as clear as this?”
   “Just as clear.”
   “Yet you know that the hands you saw were not yours.” An itch inside wanted me to shout at her to just tell me and not lead me by a leash of words.
   “They were real things, in other places. How could it happen not once, but many times?”
   Her ears twitched, then flipped three-quarters of the way back for an instant. “Were all the dreams like that?”
   “Some were, some weren’t, like some had to be seen but others were there to show things yet to happen, or that could have happened long ago.”
   “And how soon did you see these things against when other hands were doing them?”
   Whatever the twist that gave me the strength to lock piously blue eyes before I answered, it stabbed me as well. “One time, it might have been as it was happening.” She let out a humane shiver. Perhaps at one time she’d known that terror.
   This time she lead, taking us back to the rear pew. “This is troubling.”
   The pew arrested my backwards fall as the abbess leaned in close enough for an eye exam. “How so?” If I knew which kind of sin manhandling a woman of the cloth was, my personal space would have felt larger.
   “Either you have the gift of prophecy, or a hand immortal is connecting the minds of the good and evil. It was like looking in a mirror, watching yourself, yet not being? Correct?”
   The words felt like shards, throwing light at every angle but the one needed. “I guess so. Like someone else guided and you just get to watch.”
   “And the other dreams, what were you feeling?” She returned to a normal position, and it took a minute for me to catch my breath.
   “Hunted. She was there, and...they’re going to kill anyone in their way. Whatever they look like, human, like you, anything else.”
   It was more disturbing that she didn’t curse or react to that than if she had. “Do you mind one last story from an old woman?”
   “Doubt there’s an army outside to stop you.”
   “This is a good story. Many years ago, before this church was built and before we followed the Rule, we still had this.” Her finger tapped the wolveshead. “It had a different meaning then, but the change is so small. A person alone in the wilderness can be chased, hunted down, and killed because they’ve been separated from the pack. So we gather and make it so the hunter cannot take us one by one. Once you know the hunter is out there, dreaming of evil against you, you take all the gifts you’ve trained and go hunt the hunter.” The abbess arched an eye until I pulled myself out of a tired-of-the-lecture slouch. “Do you know what is the greatest weapon the hunter carries? Fear will kill as certainly as a sword, with less effort and bloodless. A well trained hunter out to kill an animal, to put food in the bellies of those that depend on him, must conquer his fears. Animals do not think as we do. One that would hunt a hunter, a thinking hunter, must know they will face down something that can match them. When the mind and body are controlled by duty and not desire, then we become the masters and mistresses of the forests and lands between. We rule ourselves.”
   “Yet you submit to this.” My gesture took in the whole building.
   “If I did not, I would have a short life. Outside these walls, there are those that consider us part of the evil that brings the plague to these lands. Some are my own kind, and use digressions on the pure soul to excuse their acts. I’ve long suspected some to heel to jealous lords, killing for them so that the mortal ruler may possess the land under. Nothing is truly ours, not the food nor water nor air, not the stone above nor the ground beneath. We keep in trust for those that will live after us.”
   “So you do as you will, for the future and not the now.”
   “There is so much more. My will has but one purpose. Like the choir is directed in mass or the masons work under a foreman, my will and duty extend outward. My duty is more than me. It is the zeal that allows one to put into practice the words so that others may benefit of them. You remember I talked of the village earlier? I go to minister to the sick and ill. I defend the weak of body and mind from that which would reap them without good reason. In return for my words and actions, guided by and from the grace of God and Goddess, may I be judged for them.” Her head bowed slightly.
   “If you had dreams like that, you’d consider it a window into your duty, yes?”
   Her head tilted again, considering this thrust of thought. “I would have to consider that to be true, or likely.”
   “And another sister here wouldn’t have dreams like that, or you’d call them nightmares. They haven’t set themselves to the standard that you have for yourself, right?”
   “Again, true or likely. I would listen, as some dreams can seem as real as waking.”
   “Humans dream. You called it the gift of prophecy.”
   “I did. And I have not swayed you from the path you’ve chosen. What you’ve seen when you close your eyes, you will continue to hunt its source, despite knowing that the price isn’t named yet? You are alone, yet not alone. I cannot take you in here. It takes years of devotion before you would stand such and wear this.” Her gesture took in the habit and the ornaments of her necklaces. “We are not the only order, just one set of words to cast the shadow and shine against another one. Perhaps to some we are the shadows. But that is not your worry. The older calling is what you hear, wishing to defend more than the immediate pack. You would take all of the people of the Goddess, and care as I would for a time? Perhaps for longer, until death.”
   “That’s what she’d want.”
   I expected another argument, but her voice was even and serious. “I didn’t ask of her. Either it is in your heart and true, or you will fall. Speak true. Do you wish this?” Blue eyes stared at ones alien to her.
   Just one word, and effortless. “Yes.”
   She got up, and walked away leaving me in the flickering light. Her footsteps returned and in her hands was an unadorned dagger, short and gleaming sharp. “Hold out your hand, human.” When I did, she steadied my wrist in one hand and drew the edge of the blade across my palm in a stinging cut that bled easily.
   Her eyes locked mine, and she released me to dip a finger in the welling blood. The dagger rasped into the belt sheath, and the blood smelled as it was marked on my face. A clean finger pressed at my chin, and when my mouth opened a blood-coated finger stained my tongue in the ferric taste. From a pouch she drew a small dusting of herbs and crushed them in the now throbbing wound. Last, she took something else from the pouch, hidden in her fingers.
   “Lower your head and eyes, human.” As I bowed my head towards her, the cord slipped over and came to rest at the back of my neck. “Rise now, and do as you will under the sight of the Divines. May the Goddess take your soul, but not before the duty that calls is complete.” She led me to stand, and the new weight rested heavy on my chest. The sound of rain and thunder cracked on the stone, ringing loudest at the choir seating. Her voice was stern, not judging but teaching. “May you protect Her, and she you. As it was before, as it should be, as it will when all the trees are new.”

The latter half of the afternoon hadn’t brought rain yet, but there was still enough day for the weather to turn around. In the background the pleasant tiny roar of the AC underlined the sound of plates and pans being organized in the kitchen. The ceiling was where I’d left it, and it wasn’t stone that trapped in the perfume of candlewax, oak or walnut.
   Tahlia’s head poked around the divide and she removed something from an angrily twitching ear. “Well, you’ve finally stopped snoring. These things are more annoying to wear when awake than to sleep. No more afternoon naps for you if you’re going to be on your back. Did you have a nice dream or two?”
   “I talked to someone at a church. It’s funny, haven’t been to one in years except for funeral services and weddings.” The other ear twitched alike as she removed the other earplug and sat in the chair by the small couch with tea and a plate of light snacks. “Never been dragged in one that looked like it either. They must have had people there who’s whole day was tending all the plants.”
   The more I talked about it the closer she listened, her ears occasionally pivoting backwards. She didn’t hide the shift of her eyes to the bookcase, and I didn’t hide my notice of what moved her. When I started rubbing my hand, her eyes narrowed. When a remembered taste made me scrape at tongue with teeth, her nostrils flared. And when my hand rose almost to my throat, I left that detail out and her tail stopped the small movements of relaxation. I came to the end, and the end absorbed all the sounds in the room.
   Ringing broke the order. She got up and thumbed the phone on, which continued its assault before she could say anything.
   “You didn’t make the same mistake. You did worse. We’ll settle this tonight, and I won’t make any mistakes when that happens.”
   The phone clicked to silence.


Songs
Line 105
This Is What Makes Us Girls - Lana Del Ray
Line 186
Animal - Def Leppard
Line 578
Bark at the Moon - Ozzy
Line 1019
Elephant Talk - King Crimson
Line 1648
Always Crashing In The Same Car - David Bowie
Line 2190
Murder by Numbers - The Police
Line 2321
Poor Poor Pitiful Me - Warren Zevon
Line 2792
Life Without You - SRV & Double Trouble, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAv5ZuuSxSI
Line 2937
Hildegard of Bingen
 

Glossary
Kadisian, also Kadisi (Orthofelis sapiens sapiens – wise modern standing feline)
A biped species, Felidae derived.  Ancestor species likely derived from Asia.  Short to moderate length (6mm to 25mm), with similar length fur on tail.  Hair on crown of head, coarser in texture.  Coloration range similar to some other large members of Felinae and Pantherinae. Tends to single births as with humans.
 
Siruean  (Peripacyon sapiens sapiens - wise modern walking canine)
A biped species, Canidae derived.  Ancestor species likely derived from either North Europe/Russia, or North America.  Short-furred, with longer fur on tail.  Hair on crown of head, of same texture as fur but longer.  Coloration range from near pure white to black, with reds and browns also possible, and usually little variation per individual.  Brindling, merling, or gradients possible.  Preferentially gives dual births that may be not be of the same gender.
 
Wolveshead
Common name in modern English for variants of a symbol, shaped like a downward chevron.  Approximately twice as high as wide, and able to be manufacture with simple tools or quickly marked into a surface.  Though more broadly known as a pan-siruean symbol in post-WWII times, the earliest usages of it in continental Europe predate the advent of agriculture.  Has had a number of purposes, from mapmaking to military units.
 
ESSA (European Siruean Student Association)
Group that exists on most larger campuses.  Separate from the Siruean Student Association, which is considered by the more politically minded to be a social group.  The ESSA occasionally looks down on the unsanctioned actions of some of its junior members, which have earned them the pejorative of yappers, yet has been viewed with a wary eye due to alumni becoming distinguished in their field and society.  Also pejoratively called werewolves.  Exists alongside the Asiatic Siruean Student Association; siruean faculty have tended to clash with their young generation in these two groups.

Schreier-Gardelli syndrome 
The historic (and common) name of the human version of a mild autoimmune condition derived from absorption of alien proteins, in this case with the donor species being siruean.  First described in the centuries before Matthews, he later collected anecdotal evidence that led to the first practical long-term treatments.  Said conditions are typically inoculated for during and individual's childhood, but acquisition is still possible with sexual activity between different species the leading route.  A persistent infection is considered a risk factor for other opportunistic infections.

Gläubigenheim Abtei
A historic independent abbey that was located in southern Germany near Memmingen and Ottobeuren.  According to attested documents, built no earlier than 1148 on the grounds of an older site.  The newer site included a large church, and acted as the parent of a number of small hermitages in the surrounding countryside.  Aside from the scale of its construction, famous in its day for the attached hospital and abbey library.  Like some other major Church settlements, its independence via act of the Holy Roman Emperor was a political move against popes of the time and further fueled the philosophical innovations of the Abbey.  Despite the leadership balancing the many secular and ecclesiastical challenges it faced in centuries past, successive waves of the bubonic plague and the fracturing of the Church eroded its viability.  Tales of its complete destruction occur in multiple places after 1499, with the most recent date of destruction being a full century after Luther.