Back home, I found the house dark and silent. I killed Bitsa’s engine before I arrived, walked her to her parking space, and pulled off my boots to enter the house. I carried a mug of microwaved tea back to my bedroom, closed the door and riffled through my files again, spending a lot of time arranging and studying the new files I’d photocopied from the woo-woo room. There was one file I had never seen before, signed in by Jodi less than a week ago. In it was a photocopy that wasn’t a police report. It read like scientific speculation on the history, mythos, and possibilities presented by the appearance of shifters. It also contained suggestions on how weres or shifters might be located and studied.
Meaning trapped and dissected. I wasn’t stupid. Sections were brutal in their analyses, as if psychos had gone to med and postgraduate school and then become animal trappers and taxidermists.
A less bloody section followed, compiled by geneticists and virologists, consisting of explanations of the way that viruses affect genetic structure, followed by some calculations I didn’t understand about how physics might allow a shape transformation, and how shape transformation might in turn affect the understanding of physics. Large portions had been whited out and photocopied with the changes intact, not that reading the scientific particulars would have made a lot of sense to me anyway.
I ignored all the technical stuff and turned to the last section where the words CURRENT SUMMARY OF GEO-POLITICAL HISTORY attracted my eyes. There was a copied e-mail—addresses whited out, of course—whose author noted that no were, walker, or shifter of any kind had come out of the closet in Europe, Asia, or parts of the Middle East, or at least not yet. He posited that there were several possible reasons: that they were fearful of exposure due to cultural stigma, that there had never been weres or shifters in those parts of the globe, or that any weres, walkers, or shifters had become extinct in those parts of the globe. According to the writer, shifters had possibly been a big part of the settling, growth, and expansion of Middle Eastern, Asian, and European culture. No surprise there, guesswork disguised as logic.
I read, “This raises tantalizing hints about the brothers Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf-bitch, and who settled Rome. It suggests the possibility that the satyrs and centaurs of ancient Greece, who were half-man, half-animal creatures, might have been shape-shifters. We might consider the tales of Celtic selkies, pre-and post-Columbian American Indian skinwalkers. The Egyptian god Ra had a falcon’s head, Sekhmet the head of a lion—”
It was all guesswork. Educated guesswork, but still just guesswork. I set it down and went online to discover that the writer was correct. To date, no European shape-shifters, no Middle Eastern shifters, and no Asian shifters had come out of the closet. And Kemnebi claimed that his kind had killed the last European werewolf during Charlemagne’s reign. Maybe he had been declaring a truth; if so, the weres knew their own history, which meant that they might know about shifters like me, if only in theory.
I found something in the file that looked like parts of a photocopied journal. It was handwritten with that lovely script that people used to learn and use in school, that had been the mark of a well-educated person. The photocopied pages had been highlighted here and there with names, some of whom I recognized: Leonard Pellissier, Lady Beatrice Stonehaven, Grégoire, master of Clan Arceneau, Ming Mearkanis, who was true dead now. I flipped through and nothing else caught my eye until a name popped out at me. The section read:
Magnolia Sweets, Leo’s primo blood-servant, is gone. Her son, though young, was groomed as secundo, to take over her duties should she be unable to perform them. But yesterday Magnolia left, and with her his Blade. She abandoned her son and her vampire, impossible as it seems. Leo seems unable to maintain his previous stability and slides into devoveo; this morn, in a rage, he banished his secundo. Terrance has lost mother, position, and clan. He is only a child, angry and lost.
I have prepared a letter to the Rochefort clan, and purchased the child a berth. He goes to France, to sign in blood and servitude there. I hope I do not live to regret my decision, but it seems the right and proper decision, and the action of one who was once Christian.
The words “who was once Christian,” bothered me, though I didn’t want to look too closely at why. I flipped through the pages but found no indication of the original writer, and whoever had made the photocopies had not been interested in the bit of history. Nothing else caught my attention.
I stretched out on my mattress, staring up at the ceiling, the laptop open on the floor at the foot of the bed.
The ceiling was dusty. It hadn’t been dusty when I moved in. I wondered if I was supposed to clean it. Not that I would.
Woolgathering wouldn’t help me solve this case, and so far, my search had found nothing that jumped up and squealed, “This guy is the murderer of Safia!” I couldn’t see how it all fit together, not yet, but I was certain that it did.
Back online, I did a quick search on the Cursed of Artemis, the proper name for weres. There was a host of info on the goddess Artemis and not much on the cursed. I marked several sites to go back to if needed and studied the dusty ceiling some more, my eyes on a cobweb draping a corner.
Kem had also claimed that all weres were predators. But I was pretty sure skinwalkers could take on forms other than predator. Beast growled at me. Beast is not prey.
“I know,” I murmured to her. “You’re not a dog either, but I appreciate the willingness to let me shift into one.”