“Before I became Chief of Security, I worked for Wendelin. You remember her?”
I did. Wendelin wasn’t someone you’d forget. When she joined the Pack, she decided to call herself Wendelin Fuchs, which stood for Wendelin Fox, just like I chose to call myself Harimau. With my eyesight and aversion for blood, I knew I would be in for a rough road, so I chose my last name because every time I said it, it reminded me that I was a tiger. Wendelin chose hers because she wanted to mislead people. She turned into a wolf, ruthless, cunning, and so scary, even Mahon, the alpha of Clan Heavy who turned into a giant Kodiak, made the effort to avoid her. I had no idea Jim had worked for her. When I met him, he was beta of Clan Cat and as far as I knew, that was all he did. When Curran made him the Chief of Security after Wendelin retired, everyone, including me, was surprised.
“For the first three years with her all I did was covert work,” Jim said. “Pretend to be someone you’re not. Go to the right place at the right time, listen, talk to people, be likeable and be convincing. It wasn’t my favorite part of the job, but I’ve learned to be what people expect me to be. People expect the Chief of Security to be a scary hardass, so I give them that. Werecats expect their alpha to show teeth every time someone steps out of line, so I give them that, too.”
My heart sank. “Does this mean that if I expect caring boyfriend Jim, you’ll give me that?”
“No,” he said. “You just get me the way I am, which means you’re screwed. I’m mostly an asshole.”
I put my hand on the door handle of Eleventh Planet. “Can you do a comic geek?”
“What will I get if I do it?”
“What do you want?”
“Make me dinner tonight,” he said.
Dinner. Offering food was a special thing to the shapeshifters. Our animal counterparts showed affection with food. It said so many things without words. I care about you. I will share what I have with you. I will protect you. And sometimes it said I love you. I’d made him dinner before, but the way he said it now sent little shivers down my back. I forced my voice to sound casual. “You’ve got a deal.”
THE owners of the comic shop were college kids. We only met one, Brune Wayne, a short blond guy in his early twenties, who spent way too much time at the gym, waved his arms when he talked and immediately explained to us that he was named after his grandfather and lamented that he was only one letter away from being Batman. His partner in crime, Christian Leander, was helping his parents with some furniture today. The comic book shop was just like all the other comic book shops in Atlanta. With computers gone, paper books and comics once again became a viable form of entertainment, and the shop was doing good business.
Jim knew way more about comics than I had expected. He and Brune had clicked and Brune showed us around, talking nonstop. It was too bad about the nice old lady, and they did get a letter but they thought it was a prank, because nobody would pay crazy money like that, so they threw it in the trash. And these are hand-painted miniatures. A local guy makes them. Look, they are magic. The dragon’s eyes glow. Isn’t that like the coolest thing?
By the time we got out of there, my ears were ringing and I had so many comic book titles and superhero names stuck in my hair, I’d need to shampoo twice to get it all out. But one thing was clear. Brune didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
Frustration nagged at me. Anyone who could summon a whole swarm of jenglots was dangerous and wasn’t afraid to kill. So far all we had were possible victims. Pulling off that kind of magic took dedication and years of practice. None of them felt that powerful, magically, and none of them seemed to have the kind of money hiring someone of that power would require, not to mention dropping a million on buying up this property.
We had to make progress and soon, because he or she would try to finish what they started. I couldn’t face going back to the Indrayani family and telling them, “So sorry your beloved grandma is dead because I was too stupid to figure out who was responsible.”
“Look,” Jim said.
A car pulled up to Vasil’s Deli. A man got out. He was in his fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He walked up to the deli’s door, keys in hand. His fingers were shaking. His face was pale, his eyes bloodshot. He dropped the keys, crouched to pick them up, finally managing to get one in the lock, opened the door, and stepped inside.