Tantalize (3 page)

I would’ve given up ages ago — I had my pride — but Kieren was always touching me. My neck, my shoulders, my hands. I could feel him wanting more.

My lips curled at the TV footage of the female’s mate. Grey-black and extra large. I glanced from the clock on the cable box — 9:16
P.M.
— to the door between me and the kitchen, ate another olive, took another sip. I should’ve grabbed some bread, I thought, something to absorb the sting.

Onscreen, the wolves were going at it. My water hit a wrong pipe, and I was coughing. It got worse when the scene progressed to wolf pups exploring their new world. But it was funny: the idea of safe sex with a
Canis dirus sapiens.
Wasn’t it?

The narrator went on to say wolves had gotten a bum rap from ranchers and tellers of fairie tales. It was the same with shifters, I thought, and those bigots who thought they all should have to be registered and tagged.

As the credits rolled, a wolf’s soulful eyes filled the screen. They looked like they knew something I didn’t.

“Quince!” It was Kieren from the kitchen.
“Quince!”

I clicked off the TV and put down my glass and plate. Did I have olive-habanera breath? I wondered. Probably. “Coming!”

“Quince!”
Kieren again. “
Quince!
Where are you?”

Alarmed by his tone, I hurried. “On my way!”

When I pushed through the door into the overlit commercial kitchen, Kieren was rushing toward me. “Thank you, Jesus. Thank God.”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Whispering my name, Kieren wrapped me in well-muscled arms, brushed a kiss across my hairline. We fitted well, shoulder-to-shoulder and hip-to-hip. Not a big guy, but a huge Wolf. Or at least he would’ve been, if he could only fully shape-shift.

“You’re all right?” he asked. “You look all right.”

Of course I was all right, I thought, blinking at the gleaming stainless steel. The kitchen still smelled like scallops and garlic and marinara but something richer and heavier, too. Something foul.

Over Kieren’s shoulder, I saw shards of glass glittering against a red wine spill on the acid-stained concrete floor. A ragged, seeping scrap of meat had been plopped on the wooden butcher’s block.

My fingers were red, sticky. It was from touching him. “You’re a mess,” I said. There was blood on his hands, his Fat Lorenzo’s T-shirt, even on his faded jeans and black cowboy boots. “Where’s Vaggio?”

Kieren sucked in a breath, moved his hips closer. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

That’s when I saw the disjointed legs lying on the floor, jutting out from behind a prep station. It was partly the dark, irregular pattern on the beige cargo pants and kitchen clogs. It was partly the angle the legs were sprawled at, turned to each other as if for comfort. I smelled blood, urine.
“Vaggio?”

“We have to
go.
Call somebody.”

“But —”

“Don’t look, Quince.” Kieren held me in place, sweat dotting his forehead, tears in his dark eyes. “I tried to help him. But it was too late.”

Twisting out of Kieren’s embrace, I crossed the room to see for myself.

Vaggio lay mauled, bleeding, his skin waxy and gaunt. Savaged. Shirt partly torn away. An oozing claw mark raked across his chest. Blood pooling from the carnage where his throat had been.

I’d seen death before, Mama and Daddy in mortician’s makeup and their Sunday best. It was different without the staging, different when the person had been ripped apart. What was left wasn’t Vaggio anymore. My stomach rolled.

Kieren caught me again as I began to scream. He swept me out of the building to the empty lot next door. Close enough to the street that we were in view of the entertainment district. Far enough away to offer some privacy.

We sank to the warm ground, and he held me, sobbing, folded against his bloodstained T-shirt, his thundering heart. He buried his nose in my hair, rubbing my back, whispering my name.

O
nce I could stand again, Kieren walked me down the street to a nearby motel and used the lobby phone to call 911. I could hear only his end of the conversation.

“Police.

“Kieren Morales.

“K-I-E-R-E-N Morales, with an
s.
”

I sank into the lime-upholstered chair next to the window.

“Someone’s been killed, the chef at my best friend’s family’s restaurant.

“Yeah, she’s here.”

A woman with a spiky blue Mohawk looked from me to Kieren like she was worried he was mistreating me somehow. But then the desk clerk greeted her.

“Upset but okay,” Kieren said into the phone.

“We’re at the Capitol Motel. We’re safe.

“No.”

A young guy with a shiny black cowboy shirt and black jeans joined the woman. She whispered something to him, and he glanced our way.

“My friend was in the break room at the restaurant. I walked into the kitchen through the back door and discovered the body.

“Quincie Morris.” He spelled “Q-U-I-N-C-I-E.”

“Vaggio Bianchi.” He spelled both names. So calm. Like when my folks died. Like when his mama went into labor with Meghan. Almost inhuman.

I closed my eyes against the memory of claw marks.

“Yes,” Kieren said, “the chef.”

He went on to describe the kitchen and say that an ambulance wouldn’t help.

Within five minutes they’d sent an ambulance anyway along with two police cars. I didn’t get a chance to talk to EMS, but back in Sanguini’s parking lot, Officer Walker and Officer Rodriguez of the Austin Police Department introduced themselves.

Officer Walker ushered us to a squad car, away from curious passersby. We huddled in the back seat, and the cop took a moment to study us before shutting the door. Kieren had already explained he was bloody from trying to help, that I was bloody from touching him. He put his arm around my shoulders, and I cradled his free hand with both of mine, studying the dark stains against his skin.

“I was just in the next room,” I whispered.

“I know.”

I tightened my grip. “Do you think the killer is still in there?”

“I don’t know.”

The front passenger door opened, and I saw yellow police tape unfurling.

Officer Walker joined us in the car, asked some basic questions.

“I’d like to take her home,” Kieren said after a lull. “Is that all?”

“No, we’ll need you both downtown.”

Outside, APD cameras flashed.

I didn’t know what time it was when we got to the station, but when I called, Uncle D still wasn’t home. Officer Walker used the moment to separate me from Kieren. Then he introduced Detective Bartok and said she had more questions.

“Where’s Kieren?” I asked, taking a seat in a private room.

“He’s fine,” Detective Bartok replied, pressing a button on a tape recorder. “You’re good friends?”

Jesus. “Yeah.”

“How good?”

I stared at her, blank.

“We’ll come back to that. How ’bout you tell me what happened tonight?”

It was her job to help catch the killer, I reminded myself. “I’d been helping out Vag,
Vaggio
tonight in the kitchen. He’s, he was trying to put together a new menu for the restaurant. It’s reopening soon, and . . . Anyway, Kieren was supposed to meet me there, and I went into the break room to watch TV and wait for him while Vaggio finished up. I never would’ve left him if . . . It doesn’t matter. While I was watching television —”

“What were you watching?”

The wolf documentary. I blinked back the memory, what had looked like an animal attack. What was Kieren being asked? “I, um, I don’t remember.”

“Take a moment. Think about it.”

I did. “I was channel surfing, I guess.”

“And?”

“I heard a couple of noises, like pans being banged around, and I yelled to ask Vaggio if he was okay.” Had the murderer heard me? He must’ve. “I didn’t think . . . I
never
imagined that anything like that could happen. Then Kieren got there and he was calling my name and I went into the kitchen and then I saw. . . . That was it. Kieren led me out, and we went to call —”

“What is your relationship to Mr. Morales?”

I’d wondered myself. “We’re friends.”

“Do your parents know you’re out this late?”

“They’re dead,” I said, wiping away a tear.

“I’m sorry.” She looked at her notepad. “Oh, yes. Your uncle, Davidson Morris, is your legal guardian. Does he know where you are?”

“I wasn’t able to get ahold of him.”

“That’s no problem. You’re seventeen. We consider that an adult.”

It dawned on me that I might be a suspect, not just a witness. “I loved Vaggio,” I said, glancing at the red light on the recorder. “He was like family.”

Detective Bartok offered a brief, respectful silence. Then she said, “Speaking of family, I’m curious about your genetic history. What hospital were you born in?”

Cursing myself for having been caught off guard, I almost asked if I should be calling a lawyer. Or if Kieren should be.

It was common knowledge that werepeople — be they Wolves, Deer, Buffalo, Raccoons, whatever — were never treated in hospitals. Wolf packs had their own doctors, probably even their own clinics. Lone Wolves, like Kieren’s mama, used midwives or volunteer home-visit docs, all of them shifters, too. She herself had apprenticed as a healer before leaving her pack, which was why I still had use of my scarred hand.

I clenched it, telling myself that whoever the murderer had been, it wasn’t Kieren. I knew him. I’d known him all my life. “Seton Medical Center,” I said. “On Thirty-eighth Street.”

The detective made a note.

I
didn’t know Vaggio had had five ongoing love affairs until all the women showed up for his memorial service.

Uncle Davidson had kept it simple, spiritual, and settled for an outdoor thing at the top of Mount Bonnell because the real funeral would be up north anyway. Vaggio’s family had flown down Nancy, a first cousin, to sort through his belongings and drive the Lincoln back to Chicago. She was the one accepting sympathies.

My uncle and his girlfriend, Ruby, were off to the side making inappropriate lusty goo-goo eyes at each other. Kieren was patting the hand of a sweet, sixtysomething lady named Daniela who’d exploded into tears. Kieren’s parents would’ve come, but Roberto was keynoting at some engineering faculty conference in Ann Arbor and Meara couldn’t find a sitter for Meghan. It was still a good turnout though. Vaggio’s neighbors, his poker buddies, several former Fat Lorenzo’s employees, and Detective Bartok with another cop whose name I’d already spaced off.

I soaked in the sun, shuffling my feet on the limestone, trying to appreciate the sweeping views of downtown and the lake. The cacti, the sage.

Vaggio had brought me here once, three years ago, the day he’d said that my uncle might be the one with legal custody, but he too would always be there for me. We’d hiked up the uneven stairs to the top of the park, where stone had been crafted to look like the ruins of an ancient temple. He’d led me to this bench and said, “Close your eyes, and feel that God is with us.” I had felt God then, so I closed my eyes and tried again.

Where was God today?