Draw One In The Dark(24)

She didn't know why he'd gone bad. She remembered the smell of blood in that parking lot and the madness in the apartment. Clearly, she too had it in her to commit violence. She would have to control it. Perhaps he was just weaker than her? Perhaps he could not control himself as well.



He put the stuff back in the medicine cabinet, carefully organized, and turned around. "I'll get out of your hair now, okay. Just report your car stolen. You have insurance, right?"



"Yes, but . . ."



"Oh, I'll still pay you for the window," Tom said. "But it might take me a while to be able to get to an ATM. I have some money. Not much. I don't think I'll get my deposit back for the apartment. I thought I'd head out of town, lead the . . . the dragons away from you."



"And leave me stuck in the middle of a murder investigation?"



He opened his hands. "What else can I do? I can't undo what happened." He looked earnest and distraught. "Someone died. And, Kyrie, I wish to all that's holy that I could tell you it wasn't me who killed him. But I can't. He's dead, and I'm . . ."



He opened his hands, denoting his helplessness. "I wish I could tell you I never touched him and that I would never have done that, but my mind is all a blank. I don't even remember being attacked in my apartment, honest. If it weren't for the state it's in . . ."



His hair had fallen in front of his eyes, and he tossed his head back to throw it back. "Look . . . I might very well have done it, and they might find evidence linking me to it. I'm not sure how your DNA works when you're shifted. But if it was . . . If they think I killed him, all you have to say is that I asked you for a ride home, that you had no idea anyone was dead. You could have come out in the parking lot and never seen it, you know? It was behind the vans. I took advantage of your charity and stole your car. No one will hold that against you."



Kyrie bit her lip. There were other things he wasn't even thinking about, she thought. For instance, the paper towels. Properly looked over they'd probably find traces of her hair, dead skin cells, whatever.



But fine, the major evidence would point to him, and she could probably come up with a story that would let her off and get him out of her life forever. So, why didn't she want to? Was it because once he was gone she could go back to imagining that she was just hallucinating the shifts? And she wouldn't have a witness to her shape-shifting.



She put her hands inside the wide sleeves of her robe. "I think that's tiredness talking," she said. "I think if I can come up with an excuse, so can you. You're exhausted from who knows how many hours shifted. And you don't look well." This last was the absolute truth. Tom had started out looking shocked and ill, and he'd progressed to milk-pale, with dark, dark circles under his eyes, bruised enough to look like someone had punched him hard. "You could crash the car out there," she said, and seized upon that. "And I don't want it made inoperable. The insurance never pays you enough to junk it."



He frowned at her, the frown that she had learned to identify as his look of indecision.



"I have a love seat," she said. And to his surprised look added, "In the sunroom at the back. Sleeping porch, really, from when they treated tubercular patients in this region. They thought fresh air was essential, so they had these sunporches. Someone glassed this one in, and there's a love seat in it. Nothing fancy, mind you, but you can have it and a blanket."



She could see him being tempted. He was so tired that, standing in the middle of her little bathroom, he was swaying slightly on his feet. She could see him looking in what he probably thought was the direction of the sunporch, and she could practically hear the thoughts of the love seat and blanket run through his head. She could also see him opening his mouth to tell her thanks but no thanks.



Which was when the doorbell rang.





* * *




The noise of the doorbell echoed, seeming to fill the small house.



Kyrie jumped and Tom turned his wrist toward himself, as though checking time on a watch he didn't wear.



She swept her gaze toward the narrow little window in the shower, instead, checking the scant light coming through, blue tinged, announcing the end of blind night, the beginning of barely lit morning.



"It can't be anyone about the . . . It's too early," she said.



And saw Tom pale, saw him start shaking. "Go to the kitchen," she told him, sure that in his mind as in hers was the memory of the bathroom at the Athens, full of bloodied towels, probably tainted with his hair and skin. And hers.



Why, oh, why hadn't she put the used towels in her car? Dumped them somewhere? But where? Outside Tom's apartment? They hadn't exactly had time to stop anywhere and get rid of things.