“Not here,” he said.
So the trip was a bust, a big anticlimax. I wasn’t that displeased; I was tired and sore and the last thing I wanted was another deadly confrontation. Maybe I’m getting old, but I prefer a good night’s rest before battling monsters.
But it wasn’t over yet. As we stood crowded together in the tiny apartment, the sound of steps echoing on concrete reached our ears. They stopped outside the door, and then it slowly swung inward. Ramsey was home.
EIGHTEEN
USUALLY IT’S UNWISE TO BREAK INTO THE HOUSE of a fellow practitioner. There’s a universally accepted convention that anyone who does deserves whatever they get. And every practitioner, no matter their level of talent, is stronger on their home turf. Partly it’s psychological—the small dog syndrome where a little dog will drive off a larger dog who dares to enter its yard. But it’s more than that—strength is absorbed from home base in a very real way, and even a very ordinary practitioner can be dangerous on his home territory.
There were two of us, though, and even on his home ground there wasn’t much Ramsey could have done to either of us. I’d expected him at least to ask indignantly what we were doing there, but he surprised me. His eyes darted back and forth between us, and when he finally spoke it was a total non sequitur.
“I don’t know where she is, honest,” he said.
So he immediately assumed we were looking for Ruby. Interesting.
“Bullshit,” Victor said. “Spill it.”
I looked over at Victor and mouthed, “Spill it?” in mock amazement. He must have been watching too many late-night movies on TV. Ramsey didn’t seem to notice.
“Really, I don’t. I haven’t even seen her for days.”
Of course he hadn’t. Ruby was dead. But why would he assume we’d broken into his place to look for her? Or was he the shape-shifter after all, stalling for time? Then I had that intuitive flash, the one that’s almost always right.
“You knew,” I said. “She wasn’t using you—you knew all along what she was.”
He tried on several expressions—bewilderment, fear, defiance—before settling on the truth.
“No, not at first. I swear it. I ran into her one day, and she seemed to like me. Then I started doing little things for her, just to hang around, you know? I mean, she was out of my league, really.
“I just thought—I don’t know what I thought. I didn’t think much about it, really. I was afraid to, if you know what I mean. And then she . . . Well, the sex was incredible.”
There was an image I could have done without. Victor looked puzzled.
“But Ruby was gay.”
“Maybe
Ruby
was,” Ramsey said. “But the shape-shifter wasn’t, at least, not completely. She was addicted to sex—couldn’t go long without it and didn’t care who it was or what gender they were. Something in her makeup, I think.” He paused, and a faint smile came over his face, showing even through his fear. “She could become anything, or anyone. You have no idea.”
So he’d been screwing her all along, knowing she was a monster, but not caring. Now, Ramsey was bound to have been hard up for sex, but this was beyond belief. I try not to be judgmental, but the very thought was enough to make me feel sick. I could barely wrap my mind around it.
“But you knew what she was,” Victor said. “How long did it take you to figure it out?”
“A while. By the time I figured it out, I was in a bind. I was afraid to leave; I was afraid to tell anybody. She would have killed me.” He shuddered. “And eaten me.”
“So you helped her out? Helped her find her victims, helped her avoid detection?”
“Never,” he said. “Not the victims. Swear to God.”
I didn’t believe that. But I did believe it was the real Ramsey we were talking to. If it was a shape-shifter, it was more than a fine actor. Then again, if it had killed and eaten Ramsey, it would in essence
be
him. So how could we tell the difference? Even Lou couldn’t tell, if it had consumed someone’s essence. Victor was thinking along the same lines, I was sure. Earlier, he might have tied Ramsey up and taken him off to Bertram for some special questioning, but after the debacle with me, he wasn’t quite so eager to go that route. Ramsey looked back and forth at Victor, then me, twitching like a lizard.
“You’ll protect me, won’t you? If she comes back . . .”
“She’s not coming back,” Victor said. “We killed her.” Ramsey looked blankly at him, then a slow expression of immense relief spread over his face.
“Oh, thank God,” he said.
It couldn’t be an act. But Victor wanted to make sure.
“But she wasn’t the only one. There’s another shape-shifter, and it could be anyone. Even you.”
“Don’t,” Ramsey said. “That’s not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
“That’s crazy.” Ramsey turned to me and held out an imploring hand. “Tell him, Mason. You know me. That’s crazy.”
“Sorry,” I said. Victor glanced over at me and then leveled the Glock at Ramsey’s head.
“I’m sorry, too,” he said. “But there’s no way to tell if you’re really Ramsey or not. We just can’t take the chance.”
He cocked the hammer back, which made a little snicking sound. There’s no need to cock the hammer on a double-action automatic; in fact, it’s overkill. Cocking the hammer to make it single-action is dangerous. It takes only the lightest imaginable pressure to fire, and the slightest flinch can be enough to accidentally discharge the gun. But the sound itself is enough to make one go weak in the knees, especially when the muzzle of the gun is pointed directly at your head.
So Victor was running a bluff. Even he wasn’t harsh enough to coldly execute a fellow practitioner, or anyone else, based on mere suspicion. Then again, maybe it wasn’t a bluff at all. Ramsey had assisted Ruby, or at least kept quiet about her, even knowing what she was and what she was doing. Maybe Victor didn’t care whether Ramsey was the shape-shifter or the real thing—in Victor’s eyes he was equally guilty, and I’m not sure I disagreed. Still, I could never execute someone in cold blood. That’s why Victor is a chief enforcer and I’m a jazz musician.
In any case, the sound of the hammer being cocked would be the test. If Ramsey was really the shape-shifter, it wouldn’t stand there meekly, accepting death without a struggle. It would launch itself forward and go down fighting, if it went down at all. I took a step back and gathered energy.
But it wasn’t the shape-shifter after all. Ramsey collapsed on the floor, his legs no longer able to hold him upright.
“No, please. No. Don’t kill me. Dear God, please.”
He was speaking halfway between a whisper and a cry. I couldn’t really feel that sorry for him; he was culpable in the deaths of more than one person. But he was so pitiful I got no pleasure from seeing him grovel. It was sad and pathetic, and it made me feel slimy and nauseated.
Victor waited a few long moments, giving him a chance to launch an attack if that was what he had in mind. But it was no act. Ramsey bowed his head, stared at the floor, and sobbed uncontrollably. Victor eased the hammer back down and put the gun away under his jacket.
“I’m not done with you yet,” he said. “I’ll be back when this is over. I may kill you yet.”
He jerked his head at me and started out the door. Even in a situation like this, Victor had to be the drama queen with an exit line.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You spent a lot of time with Ruby. You knew what she was and you didn’t care. Here’s your chance to make some amends. There has to be something about these shape-shifters, some way they’re different, some little tell we can use that gives them away.”
Ramsey was now sitting up, back against the wall. He looked eager to please now. He was more afraid of Victor than he was of any shape-shifter. He paused almost imperceptibly, then shook his head regretfully.
“You hesitated,” I said. “You know something.” Victor stopped in the doorway and reached back under his jacket.
“No, no,” Ramsey said, panicking. “There was one thing I noticed, but it wouldn’t be any use to you. That’s why I didn’t say anything.” Victor and I waited, but he didn’t go on.
“Well?” I prompted.
“It’s about the sex. You know, we had a lot of sex.” He seemed half ashamed, half proud. “Well, it was pretty normal, nothing weird or kinky or anything.” Not unless you considered having sex with a homicidal shape-shifting monster kinky. “Anyway, she always got off.” Ramsey actually smirked as he said that. “And when she . . . ah, came, she made this funny noise. I guess it was the shape-shifter in her coming out.”
“What noise?” Victor asked. I didn’t say anything. My throat had suddenly closed up.
“A weird kind of trill. Almost like a hummingbird.”
NINETEEN
I WALKED OUT OF RAMSEY’S WITHOUT ANOTHER look at him. He had told me all I needed to know. A trill, he’d said. A goddamned trill. I was as creeped out as I’d ever been in my life. I might never have sex again.
This explained why I hadn’t heard from Morgan. How foolish of me to have worried about her. She wasn’t at her parents’ house; she wasn’t out of state. She was holed up over at her lair in Bernal Heights, figuring out new and better ways to eliminate dangers to her existence like Victor and myself. And snacking on unfortunate acquaintances.
That thought hit me full force. Morgan was dead, of course, probably killed at the same time as her beloved dog. When I’d shown up there, the shape-shifter had taken the form of Beulah. When I drove it off, it had circled back and reappeared at the front door as Morgan. The real Morgan, or parts of her, had probably been down in the basement all along.
Victor followed me outside, but I didn’t stop walking until he grabbed me by the arm.
“You got something,” he said. I nodded. “And?”
“Morgan. She’s the shape-shifter.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, then stopped and cocked his head to one side, thinking. I could see his quick mind turning it over. Ramsey’s comment. My reaction. The night I’d called him when Morgan had spent the night. “Oh,” he said. Then the further implications struck him.
“Oh,”
he said again. “Well, you certainly can pick them.”
“Let’s get out of here,” I said.
When we got back to Victor’s, everyone was still up. Timothy and Sherwood were talking quietly in a corner of the study, and they were relieved to see us safe and sound. Eli had made it back from Berkeley and had to be filled in on the night’s doings.
“So it imitated me,” he said. “Fascinating.”
“Frightening is more like it,” said Sherwood.
“And you couldn’t tell?” Eli asked.
“It wasn’t perfect,” Victor said. “But in the heat of the moment, it could pass.”
“There’s worse,” I said. “It took over Morgan’s persona, and that one
was
perfect. Which means Morgan’s dead, and has been for a while.”
I sat down heavily on a small chair by the stone fireplace. The weariness I’d been keeping at bay washed over me. One thing was all too clear—I had royally screwed things up. Again. I sat there feeling sorry for myself, then realized how petty that was. It was Morgan who had paid the price, not me. Not only was I a screwup; I was an ass.
Maggie walked over and jumped into my lap. I was so astonished I almost fell off the chair. She’d never done such a thing before. She didn’t even like me much. Comfort and pity from an Ifrit with attitude. How low could I sink?
I hadn’t known Morgan that well, but I’d certainly liked her. And due to me, she was dead. If she’d never met me, if I hadn’t pulled her into this, she’d be blissfully going about her life, unaware and unafraid. If I hadn’t flirted with her and invited her to hear me play, if I hadn’t thought it would be neat to date a nonpractitioner for once, she and her beloved Beulah would still be alive.
I’m a practitioner; I deal with demons and monsters all the time, and even though I’m not that good at it, I can take care of myself. But she couldn’t, and I’d had no right to drag her into my world.
Sherwood came over from her spot in the corner and put an arm around me.
“You couldn’t have known what would happen, Mason. It’s not your fault.”
“No? How is it not my fault?”
“It’s not, son,” Eli said. “You can’t foresee everything.”
I looked over at Victor. He understood, and unlike Sherwood and Eli, wasn’t about to comfort and excuse me. He looked back at me for a long time, and finally gave a slight nod.
“Welcome to the world of grown-ups, Mason.”
“One thing I don’t understand,” I said. “Morgan, the shape-shifter Morgan, was with me all night after I brought her home. Why didn’t she just kill me while I slept?”
“Well, that might have been tricky for it,” said Eli. “It takes a while for it to change, does it not? It can’t just revert back to form instantly?”
“Apparently not.”
“And where was Lou?”
“On the end of the bed.”