“Yes, and she was murdered in such a way as to get our attention.”
I scrambled out of bed as he threw me my shirt and jeans. I pulled on my clothes, not bothering with underwear, and shoved my feet in my shoes as Ryu held my coat out for me. “Where are we going?” I asked, as we left the cottage but walked past the car.
“The bakery,” was Ryu’s only response.
I had to trot to keep up with him, my short legs no match for his long strides. It was only about a five-minute walk from the cottages into the main square of town, but I was breathing hard by the time we got there. Surrounding Tanner’s Bakery were a bunch of squad cars, a fire engine and a paramedic’s van, and the coroner’s hearse thingy. There were also quite a few Rockabill natives standing across the street, in various states of undress, watching the activity. I saw Marge and Bob Tanner, who owned the bakery, and my heart went out to them. They were nice folk, both as plump and soft as their famous potato buns, and Marge was sobbing into Bob’s shoulder. They were wearing matching mauve bathrobes over striped pajamas.
Ryu was tense as we joined the crowd, and I knew it must be killing him not to be able to do anything. I didn’t know how powerful glamours could be, but whammying a crowd, all of whom already had their whole attention fixed to a single situation, must have been too much even for him.
I took his hand as we watched them carry a figure wrapped in a black body bag out of the bakery and into the coroner’s van. Ryu’s fangs were extended and he gave a very catlike hiss as they drove away. Then he looked around as if searching for something and drew me away down the street into the alley that separated the Trough from our little local cinema.
It took my eyes a second to adjust to the gloom as we walked to the back of the alley and out behind the Trough’s rear entrance, but then I saw Anyan waiting near the Dumpster.
He came toward us, his tail wagging as I went to greet him. But when he smelled me his hackles rose and he backed away. I didn’t understand what had just happened, but it made me sad nevertheless.
“Anyan,” Ryu greeted him, perfunctorily. “What the hell happened here tonight?”
Anyan’s voice seemed even rougher than it had before, but he’d probably been woken up, just like us. He spoke to Ryu’s midsection, not meeting his gaze, and I wondered again why they liked each other so little.
“Nell felt the goblin’s death. Gretchen had some sort of emergency beacon that went off at the moment she died. Which means her firm will be aware of her passing, as well, and are probably on their way here. But whoever killed her wanted to keep them busy. They put the body in that bakery oven so that it would be found by the humans. It is burned, but not so badly that it can’t eventually be identified as inhuman. Whoever put it there knew that bakers start early, and that the body would be discovered before it was entirely incinerated—”
“Forcing us to scramble to recover it and any other evidence before her true nature can be sussed,” Ryu finished, and I could see the wheels were spinning once again.
Ryu looked at Anyan speculatively. “Who is aware of your presence here in Rockabill?” he asked, finally.
“No one besides Nell, Trill, and the other natives. But they are either circumspect or unaware of my history.”
“Good. Let’s take advantage of that. Whoever did this thinks that we will have to wait for Gretchen’s firm to take over, which will give the murderer time to escape. But I don’t think that’s what’s at stake, here. I think that Gretchen’s murder is just a smoke screen to keep us distracted, and I’m starting to see the shape of things behind that cloud of smoke.” Ryu fell quiet, thinking, and Anyan kept his eyes on Ryu, ignoring me.
“Can you recover the body and its effects?” Ryu asked Anyan, finally. “And I mean immediately.”
“Not a problem,” the dog answered, straight away. “I’ve done it before.”
“Good. We’ll tell Gretchen’s firm we saw our chance and took it. They should accept that excuse, especially with your involvement. When you’re finished, call me and we’ll plan our next move.”
Anyan nodded his head sharply and set off, without once looking in my direction. I knew things were pretty tense at the moment, and that big stuff I didn’t understand was going down, but I still thought his coldness toward me was uncalled for.Ryu took my hand and we walked back toward his cottage as I pondered the evening’s events. Then something occurred to me.
“Anyan said he has a ‘history.’ What did he mean by that?” I asked.
“Anyan was the leader of our covert ops during the last Great War of Succession. I served under him, actually. We owe a great victory to his cunning and strength, and he could have taken a high position in our Court. But instead he just disappeared.” Ryu shook his head. “I knew he was out here somewhere, but I had no idea I would run into him carving out a little existence on the outskirts of Bumfuck.”
I wanted to tell Ryu that Rockabill wasn’t all that bad, but I knew he wouldn’t get it. I was getting a pretty clear picture of Ryu’s priorities, and neither “fresh country air” nor “scenic views” made the list.
I pondered the implications of Anyan being a doggie general, just as another thought popped into my head. How was a dog going to carry a body and its effects out of a morgue?
But before I could ask Ryu, we were back inside the cottage and he was pulling my coat off me. And my shirt. And my jeans.
“Looks like I won’t be leaving so soon,” he enlightened me, steering me toward the bedroom. “Does that make you happy?”
“Oh yes,” I murmured, helping him undo his trousers. We fell onto the poor overworked bed, which creaked alarmingly. And for the next half hour I showed him exactly how happy the idea of his staying in Rockabill made me.
“Thanks for making breakfast,” my dad said, helping himself to another piece of whole-wheat toast.
“No problem.” I smiled at him. I’d made sure to be home that morning by nine, leaving Ryu fast asleep. I’d managed to snatch a few more hours of rest, which was all I really needed, so I felt fine despite our marathon evening of debauchery. When I woke up at eight, Ryu was out like a light but he’d left a note saying he’d pick me up that evening after sundown. Watching him sleep, I was once again hit by the fact that he wasn’t human. I called what he was doing sleeping, but when I touched him he didn’t respond at all. I shook him gently, thinking he’d want me to say good-bye, but it was like he’d flipped a switch and turned himself off. I knew that he could function during the day; we’d met during daytime hours. But he’d said his kind weren’t at their most powerful during the daytime, so they must choose to take their rest during the hours the sun was up. And when they rest, boy, do they ever, I thought, poking him rather aggressively in the forehead about ten times in a row, just to check. He didn’t even twitch an eyelid, and his breathing was only perceptible if I held my own breath, put my ear to his nose, and waited for what felt like ages. No wonder people have thought they were the undead.
“What are your plans for today?” my dad asked, interrupting my reverie.
“Well, I have lots to do around the house,” I said. “And I’ll make us dinner. Ryu’s picking me up later.”
“That’s great your friend’s stayed so long,” my dad said. “It’s nice to see you busy.”
“You’re just glad I’m out of your hair,” I teased.
“I’m serious, Jane. I’m happy when you’re happy. And I know you feel responsible for me but I hate that I’m causing you to miss out on your life. Your mother and I had a child because we wanted to share our love with someone, not because we wanted a nurse to take care of us in our old age.”
I remained silent, feeling guilty because his sickness wasn’t the real reason I hadn’t had much of a social life.
As if he knew what I was thinking, my dad continued. “And I know things haven’t been easy for you since Jason died, and I know that certain things said about that night made it even more difficult. But you and I both know, even if no one else does, that Jason’s death was an accident. A horrible accident and something that should never have happened because things like that just shouldn’t happen. But it did, and it’s not your fault. You have to understand that, somehow.”
I pushed my scrambled eggs around my plate. What Ryu had said that morning, what my father was saying now, it was a nice thought, but it was untrue. The fact is, if I’d just told him I swam, Jason never would have died. It would have taken less than ten seconds to utter those words, but I never did. And I’d live with that guilt for the rest of my life.
“Anyway,” my father concluded, recognizing my “I don’t want to talk about it” face from long experience, “I’m just glad that you’ve got a… friend, and that you’re going out like a woman your age should. It makes me happy. It’s time you moved on.”
He was right. It was time I moved on, no matter what I still felt about Jason’s death. So I smiled at my dad, acknowledging what he had said, while I took the opportunity to change the subject.