The Shape of Desire (35 page)

C
ALL ME LATER
, she writes.

I shut the phone and lay it very, very carefully on the marble counter surrounding the sink. And then I lower my face into my hands and begin crying. I am biting my lips, I am pressing my palms against my cheeks, I am doing everything I can to muffle the sound, but the tears pour out, unstoppable, inexhaustible. They must be laced with acid; they burn against my face, against my hands. But they are sweet as well as bitter. I taste one against my tongue and I swear there is sugar mixed with the salt.

There is a knock on the bathroom door and Dante’s voice outside. “Maria? Are you all right? Maria?”

“Yes,” I choke out. That’s one lie he recognizes because he comes in to see for himself. His face, already concerned, creases in real alarm, and he drops to a crouch beside me. He is naked, his dark hair loose around his shoulders and tousled from sleep, and he is utterly beautiful.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, his voice fearful. Balancing himself on his toes, he wraps an arm around my shoulder and insinuates his face under the fall of my own heavy hair. “Maria? Did I hear the phone? Did something happen to your mom or your cousin or somebody?”

“I can’t—” I start to say, but the sobs obstruct my throat. I try again. “They’re fine. Everyone is fine.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“It’s too terrible,” I say around a hiccup.

“Is someone dead?”

Yes, but not the way you mean. Not someone I know, not someone I love.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I choke out.

“Then what is it? Tell me.”

I don’t even want to answer that, but the words come out in a rush. “You’ll hate me,” I say. “You’ll never forgive me.”

His eyebrows shoot up, and then he frowns. Before I quite know what he’s planning, he straightens, scoops me up, and carries me out to the couch. Then he pulls a blanket off the bed, bundles me up in it, and fetches me a glass of water. Finally he sits beside me, puts one arm around my shoulders, and takes hold of my hand.

“Whatever it is, I won’t hate you,” he says. “I swear. Now tell me what’s wrong.”

I sip the water to force my throat to open, and I will myself into a state of semi-calm. But I cannot look at him as I begin to speak. “When Ritchie died—when he was killed,” I stammer. “Before we knew
how
he died. My first thought was, ‘Good thing we didn’t have to call the police
when he had that fight with Dante, or they’d be here asking questions now. And maybe they’d find out that he and I go to Babler State Park all the time, and that wouldn’t look good.’”

I feel him nod. “Yes, that makes sense. But since it was drug dealers—”

I shake my head. “It wasn’t. I lied about that. There was no heroin at the scene.”

“Then—hold on—are you saying they don’t
know
who killed him?”

“They have a theory,” I whisper. “But it’s not who. It’s what.” I risk a quick glance at his face. He looks puzzled, a little alarmed, but not angry. “They think it was a wolf. Or some kind of wild animal.”

He gets it immediately. His whole body stiffens; his arm turns to iron across my back. But he doesn’t pull away from me. “And you wondered—”

Now I can’t speak fast enough. “At first they didn’t seem sure what kind of animal. Wolf? Dog? Mountain lion? And I couldn’t help thinking, ‘What if it was more than one kind of animal? What if it was something that shifted back and forth between shapes?’”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he says in a muffled voice.

I can’t read his tone, but I stumble on. “And then. At the crime scene. They found human footprints, right there, like someone was watching or someone arrived practically the minute Ritchie was killed—”

“Or a shape-shifter committed the murder,” he says in an even voice.

“And I didn’t think it could be you. Not you, not
human
you. But I thought maybe—when you’re in animal form—you see the world differently, wilder instincts kick in and I—Dante, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to tell you this. I never wanted you to believe that for one moment I doubted you—”

He lifts the hand that was holding mine and places it against my cheek, his fingers hooking behind my ear. He pulls me close enough that our foreheads touch. “And even thinking I might be a murderer, you wanted to be with me? You wanted to meet me here? You wanted me to stay out of St. Louis so that
I
would be safe?”

My eyes are filling with tears again, the big quiet kind that just keep forming and spilling over. “Yes,” I whisper. “I will protect you with my life, no matter what you do.”

He kisses me softly on the mouth. “I don’t think much of your morals. Or your instincts for self-preservation.”

I free my hands from the blanket so I can wrap my arms around him. His skin is smooth against my palms. “I love you,” I say. “That changes the shape of everything else.”

“You love me more than I deserve,” he whispers back, “and I can’t even tell you how much that means to me.”

He closes his eyes and we rest that way for a moment. I feel hollowed out, riven, as if I have just survived a brush with death or surfaced after too long under water. My breath makes a thready sound when I inhale.

“So what changed?” he asks, and opens his eyes again. “This morning. What upset you?”

I probably shouldn’t be lying to him quite so soon after this gut-wrenching confession, but I don’t want him to know that I have told Ellen his secret. So I offer a partial truth. “Ellen texted to say there had been another murder this morning in Forest Park. Someone else killed by the same kind of animal. We’ve all been so obsessed with this case that we can’t talk about anything else, and she knew I was out of town and probably wouldn’t see the news. And I realized—you couldn’t have been in Forest Park this morning. You couldn’t have done it. And that means you didn’t do
any
of the killings.”

He pulls away so suddenly my head snaps back. “
Any
of them?” he asks sharply. “How many have there been?”

Suddenly I feel nervous. I don’t think he’s mad at me, but something has clearly upset him. “With this murder, there have been four. Well, five, because two people died at one scene.”

“And they were all at Babler? Or Forest Park?”

“No,” I say uneasily. “One was out near Rolla.”

Now he looks thunderous, and then sick. “Dear God,” he says, and drops his head in his palms.

My hands flutter around his ears, pick at his shoulders, his covered face, like little birds seeking a way past a closed door. “What? Dante, what? Do you think—who do you think—”

He lifts his head and then sags back against the couch. His face looks lined, weary, limned with darkness. He endured with equanimity the news that his lover believed him capable of murder; what thought could turn him so grim, so miserable? “William,” he says.

Now I collapse next to him, my thoughts in a whirl. To comfort him or myself—I’m not sure—I take his hand in both of mine. “Why would you think that?”

He hesitates, but I can tell whatever the reason is, it’s a pretty strong one. Finally he says, “I told you he got hurt a while back. Needed a blood transfusion.” I nod. “What I didn’t tell you is that people like us—shape-shifters—we can’t always tolerate other people’s blood. A transfusion can have terrible side effects.”

“What kind of side effects?” I whisper.

His shoulders lift in a helpless shrug. “Madness. Violence. Basically, an entire breakdown of someone’s personality.”

I open my mouth but struggle to frame a question. “And you think—you’ve seen this kind of change come over him? I don’t know him that well, but he didn’t seem out of character when
I
saw him.”

Dante rubs his forehead. “Yeah. Mostly he seems normal. No wild mood swings, no crazy talk. But he’s been a little—erratic—lately. I’ve been thinking he was hiding something. I can usually find him hanging around Christina’s when I want him, but lately he’s gone more than he’s there, and he’s vague about where he’s been.” He gives a tired shrug. “Hell, I can’t always account for my whereabouts, and we all might have
things we want to hide from our brothers, but—William has never been like that. I asked Christina and she said she’d noticed it, too, but with the baby, she hasn’t had much attention to spare for anyone else.”

My thoughts are racing, tripping over themselves like runners with their shoes untied, and struggling to rise again. “But—would William have reason to kill Ritchie? I mean—I suppose all the murders could have been completely random, it’s just that—it never even would have
occurred
to me that you might be involved except that you had a reason to dislike him—”

He nods slowly. “I’d told him about the fight.” He looks over at me miserably. “We went by Ritchie’s house. It made sense at the time. He said, ‘I ought to know where he lives in case he tries to intimidate Maria while you’re out of town.’ I just didn’t think—” He spreads his hands. “This is terrible,” he breathes.

I wrap my arms around him and pull him over so that his head rests against my shoulder. “Now you know how I felt when I suspected you,” I whisper. “Awful. So awful. And there’s probably equally little reason to suspect William. You’ll feel wretched when you realize he couldn’t possibly have done anything so dreadful.”

Not lifting his cheek from my shoulder, he tilts his head back to gaze up at me. “Five people killed by a shape-shifter. Who wasn’t me. William is a prime suspect.”

“You don’t know they were killed by a shape-shifter,” I argue. “Maybe there really is a rabid wolf loose in the city.”

“Covering that much ground? Between Rolla and Forest Park?” he asks derisively. “I don’t think so.”

“So maybe it’s someone else. You said there are a lot of shape-shifters in the state—”

“I said there are
some
. Not a lot. And I don’t know any others who might live in the St. Louis area.”

“But then, if it’s William—” I say, and stop cold. I remember him
showing up at my front door, cheerful and smiling, sitting down with me at the breakfast table. I remember him taking a sudden aggressive swipe at the news reporter, exploding into an instant ferocity that had the potential to be so much more brutal. I remember the amber eyes staring at me from the darkness in the middle of the night. If William turns out to be a killer…“Oh, God,” I say. I am lucky to be alive.

I feel him shake his head against my shoulder. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do,” he says very quietly. “But he’s my brother. I have to take care of this.”

I don’t know what that means. I am afraid to ask. I scoot my butt closer to the edge of the couch cushion, so my face is down at the same level as Dante’s. “Not just yet,” I say in a small voice. “Give me one more day. In case something happens to you. In case—just in case. One more day. And then we’ll go back to St. Louis and you can do whatever you need to.”

I see the words hover on his lips:
What if someone else dies while we’re taking the time for some long, selfish good-bye?
But he doesn’t say them. His dark eyes are as vulnerable as I have ever seen them, his face is bruised with emotion. Dante has so few people he feels safe enough to love, and he might have just lost one of them in the worst way possible. At this moment, he needs me as much as I need him, and he shows it. I meet his desperate kiss with one of my own; I gladly submit to his crushing embrace. Only love can make up for the defection of love. No other substitutes exist.

W
e spend Thursday in Kansas City, but we are no longer the carefree couple so in love that people smile to see us. Our waiter from last night would not mistake us for newlyweds today; he would guess we are in town to bury our only child. We don’t talk much. We catch a couple of movies, holding hands as the films play out. We buy newspapers and cheap novels and sit together in the coffee shops, reading in near-total silence. We sit at adjoining computer terminals in the hotel’s business center. I check e-mail while Dante surfs news sites, looking for more details about the murders. He doesn’t share with me anything he learns.

Unexciting activities, even a little grim, but I treasure these hours nonetheless. It is impossible not to realize that change is in the air. We might never have such a day again.

I cannot bear to think about it.

Friday morning we check out and drive back to St. Louis with Dante behind the wheel. He expects to be human at least three or four more
days, but he wants to begin the hunt for William right away. He doesn’t think the search will take very long.
I know where he goes to ground. Unless he’s off on one of his mysterious excursions, I ought to find him in a few days.

And then he will say what—?

For much of the time, we ride in silence. I rest my left hand on his leg, just to reassure myself that he is near, but I keep my eyes on the view alongside the road. Once we get clear of the city, the landscape is mostly composed of farms and open prairie, with rolling tree-covered hills in the middle distance. Here in mid-November, most of the trees are wholly naked, and their dense, contorted branches appear to have been flung up to protect them from the ill humor of a gunmetal sky. Here and there, against the fawn-colored grasses and the dull brown tree trunks, brilliant spots of color leap out, marking a few stubborn trees just now surrendering to red. I can’t tell what they are, maples maybe, burning with rebellious color. Twice along the highway I spot weeping willows whose long, trailing branches still clutch handfuls of green leaves, though the color has faded like an old woman’s hair, bleached pale by time.