And he shivered. He trembled on the edge of shifting. She realized she had smacked what could be a very large, very angry dragon in a minute. And then she smacked him again on the nose, as if he were a naughty puppy.
She judged how her shifts had left her, tired, witless. He'd shifted twice now. Oh, so had she, but the first time very briefly. How long had he been shifted? What had he done?
"You cannot shift now," she said. And slapped him again.
He blinked. His features blurred and changed. All of a sudden he was Tom, just Tom, standing there, looking like someone had hit him hard with a half brick and stopped just short of braining him. He seemed to be beyond tiredness, to some zombielike state where he could be ordered about.
"Oh, damn," he said, so softly that it was almost a sigh. He looked at her, and his eyes showed a kind of mad despair behind the tiredness. "Oh, damn. I can't be arrested, Kyrie, I can't. I was . . . when I was young and stupid. My father . . . got me out, but sometimes I spent a night in lockup. Kyrie, I couldn't survive it as a dragon. When my dad threw me out, I spent the night in a runaway shelter and . . . it was torture. The dragon . . . The beast wanted to come out. All those people. And being confined. If they take me in on suspicion of murder, if I have to stay . . . Kyrie, I couldn't. I'll kill myself before that."
Suddenly she understood why he'd started to shift, what the words of Officer Trall would sound like to him. She sighed, heavily. "No one is arresting you. At least not yet."
"But he is blackmailing us. He's blackmailing you. About the towels in the bathroom. He knows about the blood. And it's all my fault."
"Yes," Kyrie said, wondering if it was blackmail, or what it was, exactly. She remembered the expression in his eyes. Those eyes . . . If it was blackmail, what did he want, exactly? "He knows about the towels because he smelled them."
"Smelled?"
"He found them by the smell of blood, I'd bet. Before any other policemen got to them. He got to them and bagged them and . . . I presume hid them. You were starting to shift, so you probably missed it, but he lowered his glasses and I could see his eyes."
"And?" Tom asked.
"He had the same golden eyes as the lion in the parking lot," she said.
* * *
"He is . . . like us?" Tom asked, as his mind tried to adjust to the thought. "He is the lion? How can . . ."
"You know the lion was like us," Kyrie said.
He heard the annoyed note in her voice. She had slapped him. Hard. He'd almost gone to pieces in front of her. He felt like an idiot. "But, he's a policeman. He looks . . . he looks well-adjusted. And he traced us . . . And . . . he's in the police?" He swallowed, aware of sounding far less than rational and grown-up.
She nodded. "Yes. I'm very much afraid he's in the police."
"And he's like us . . ." Tom couldn't imagine it. How would he hide his shifts? How would he shift? How would he . . . Did his family know? Or didn't they care? He tried to imagine having parents—a family—who accepted your shifts, who loved you even when you, yourself, weren't sure you were human.
Kyrie shook her head. For just a moment there was empathy in her look. "I can't imagine it either," she said. "I suspect he normally works the night hours, though, just like us. Cops do, too, you know. It's a nocturnal occupation. So we will probably find some of our kind. It's easier to control the shifting if you're awake."
Tom nodded. The whole thing was that even if you didn't shift, if you were a shape-shifter you felt more awake—more aware—at night. It was inescapable. So if you wanted to sleep and actually be able to rest, you did it during the day. And therefore, of necessity, you worked nights.
"Speaking of which," Kyrie said, "sun is coming up soon, and you're practically falling down on your feet."
"You've been yawning," he said accusingly.
She looked at him, puzzled, and he realized he'd said it as if he needed to salvage his manhood. While she'd just been . . . telling the truth.
"I'm sure I have," she said. "It's late. Come on. You can sleep in the back room."
Tom pulled his hair back and very much wished he had something to tie it back with. "I really should go," he said. "The triad dragons are after me and . . ."
"Oh, not that again," Kyrie said. "We've been over it." And she said it in such a tone of great tiredness that Tom couldn't answer.
Meekly he followed her back through the hallway, where she opened a linen closet and got out a thin blanket. And then she led him all the way back to the kitchen and opened a door he hadn't even been able to see, next to the fridge. It was a narrow door, as if designed for very thin people. At the very back of the house, a small room, enclosed all in glass, opened. There were blinds on the windows, which made it not quite like sleeping in a fishbowl. Besides, the backyard was the size of a normal flower bed. Maybe ten feet by ten feet, if that much, and surrounded by tall wooden fences. Not a fence belonging to it, but the fences of other houses that met there.