She got in her car and drove home, but only opened her front door to throw her purse inside the living room. Then she put her key in her pocket and headed back out.
The way to the castle was quick enough and at this time of morning there wasn't really anyone out. Kyrie could walk unnoticed down the streets. Which was good, because whether Frank and his girlfriend were shifter beetles or not, Kyrie didn't want him to know that she suspected him or his girlfriend. She wanted him to think that she had gone home, normally, and stayed there.
In a way she wished she could. Or that she—at least—had Tom or Rafiel with her. She couldn't believe that both of them had turned on them at the same time, and she wondered if it was some argument they'd had, of which she was only catching the backlash. Who knew?
The castle looked forbidding and dark, looming in the morning light. Most of the windows were boarded up, except for some right at the front, next to the front door. She supposed that Frank's girlfriend, not needing all the rooms—at least until such a time as she opened a bed-and-breakfast, if those plans were true—had opened only those in which she was living.
Kyrie wondered what Frank's and whatever her name's plans were, if they really were the beetles and if they truly were in the middle of a reproductive frenzy.
Were they intending on having all their sons and daughters help in the bed-and-breakfast? Or simply to take over the castle with their family? Kyrie seemed to remember that beetles were capable of laying a thousand eggs in one reproductive season, so even the castle might prove very tight quarters. And how would they explain it? And would the babies be human most of the time? Or humans all the time till adolescence?
There was no way to tell and Kyrie wondered if other shifters worried about it. She did. But others were, seemingly, in a headlong rush to reproduce, regardless of what it might mean. She thought of Rafiel and scowled.
As she approached the front entrance to the garden, Kyrie saw a woman in a well-cut skirt suit and flyaway grey hair walking away from the alley where the back entrance opened. She was walking away from the castle, toward Fairfax. Maybe she was going to pick Frank up from work.
Which would mean, Kyrie supposed, that they weren't guilty and were just an older couple in dire need of social skills.
But it would also mean it was safe to go into the castle gardens. Kyrie ran in.
The gardens were thick and green in the early morning light. There was dew on the plants, and some of it dripped from the overhead trees. Above, somewhere, two birds engaged in a singing competition. She started toward the thicker part of the vegetation, where she could undress and shift. She didn't think that the woman living here now had any domestic help, but if she did, Kyrie didn't want some maid or housekeeper to scream that there was a girl undressing in the garden. Embarrassing, that.
Avoiding a couple of spiders building elaborate webs in the early morning sunlight, Kyrie made it all the way to the center of the garden, somewhere between the path that circled the house, and the outside fence.
There were ferns almost as tall as she was and she felt as if she'd stepped back into another geologic age when the area was covered in rain forest. She removed her clothes quickly and with practiced gestures. Shirt, jeans, shoes, all of it neatly folded and set aside. And then she stood, in the greenery, and willed herself to change.
It came more easily than she expected. The panther liked green jungles and dark places. It craved running through the heavy vegetation and climbing trees.
Kyrie forced it, instead, to stand very still and smell. It didn't take long. The smell was quite unmistakable.
* * *
"Hello," Edward said into his cell phone in the back of the car. "May I speak with Mr. Lung?"
There was no answer, but a clunking sound as though the phone had been dropped onto a hard surface. From the background, Edward could hear the enthusiastic voice of a monster-truck rally narrator. Then, as if from very far off, the shutting of a door echoed.
Edward hoped this meant that someone was calling Mr. Lung. It was, of course, possible that once it had been determined that Edward hadn't called to order an order of moo goo gai pan with fried rice on the side, the cashier had simply left. Or gone to the kitchen to pinch an egg roll or his girlfriend's bottom.
It took a long time, but at long last, Edward thought he heard, very faintly, approaching footsteps. And then—finally—the sounds of a phone being moved around on a counter.
"Mr. Ormson?" Lung's voice asked.
"Yes. I have what you . . . I have the object you require. I'm heading to the restaurant to return it."
"You are? And your son?"