Tom opened the door. "Come in," he said.
Keith came in, looking around the room with the curiosity of someone visiting a strange place.
"How did you find me?"
Keith shrugged. "Your boss, at that dive you work in. He said you were staying with the girl, Kyrie? And he gave me the address."
How did Frank know? Perhaps Kyrie had told him. She must have called in sometime after they got back to her place.
"Come on," Tom said. "I'll get you some coffee."
Moments later, they were in the kitchen and Tom had managed to get cups and coffee, and locate the sugar and milk.
"I guess you've been here a lot?" Keith asked.
Tom shrugged, neither willing to lie full-out, nor to destroy this impression of himself as a man in a relationship that Keith seemed to envy.
He wondered why Keith had come over. He seemed to be worried about Tom. But Tom wasn't used to anyone being worried about him. Did this mean the human race wanted him back?
* * *
"There have been," Rafiel Trall said, leaning over the table and keeping his voice low, "a series of deaths in town. Well, at least they're classified as deaths, not murders. Bodies have been found . . . bitten in two."
"Bitten?" Kyrie asked, while her thoughts raced. Only one kind of thing could bite a person in two. Well, maybe many kinds of things, but in the middle of a city like Goldport, almost for sure all of those things would be shape-shifters. People like her. Tom had said that there weren't that many out there. But there were three of them and the triad. Were there more? And if so, what was calling them to Goldport?
"Bitten," Rafiel said, and his teeth clashed as he closed his mouth, as though the words had been distasteful for him to say. And he held his teeth clenched too, visible through his slightly parted lips. "Our forensics have found proteins in the bites that they say are reptilian but not . . . not of any known reptile."
He sat up straight and was silent a moment. "The theories range wildly," he said. From pet Komodo dragons that escaped and grew to huge proportions, to an alligator, somewhere, to . . ." He shrugged. "An extinct reptile that survived somewhere in the wilderness of Colorado and has just now found its way into town. Though that theory is on the fringes. It's not like we've called a palaeontologist in to look at the bite marks yet. But . . ." He took a deep breath, and it trembled a little as he let it out. "But the teeth size and the marks are definitely . . . They're very large teeth, of a reptile type. I . . ." He shook his head. "You must realize in what position this puts me. Everyone at the police is talking escaped animals and Jurassic revivals. They've stopped just short of positing UFO aliens, but I'm very much afraid that's coming up next."
"And meanwhile none of them guesses the truth," Kyrie said, leaning back.
He nodded. "Or at least what might be the truth," he said. "You see in what kind of a position this puts me. . . ."
She looked at him across the table, and could well imagine that sort of divided loyalty, that confusion of identities. There were many things she wanted to ask. How many other shifters he'd met. Why he suspected Tom specifically. Instead, she heard herself say, "How did you become a police officer?"
He grinned. "Oh, that was easy. Grandad was one. Dad is one." Suddenly the grin expanded, becoming the easy smile of the night before. His hand toyed with his silverware on the side of his plate. "If I hadn't become a police officer, they would think there was something wrong with me. The shifting, they can forgive even if they can't understand. Not being a policeman? Never."
It was a large hand, with square fingers. No rings, except for a large, square class ring, and she scolded herself for looking for rings. Yeah. They could get together and raise a litter of kittens. What was she thinking?
Rafiel shrugged. "So, you see . . ."
"And your . . . shifting . . . when did you start?"
He took a deep breath. "It started when I was about twelve. My parents were aware of it first, as I did it in my sleep. They were a little scared, but I was normal otherwise, and how do you go and tell someone your kid . . . well . . ."
Kyrie nodded. "So . . . they aren't?"
"No. And Dad is retired now, but the first he heard about these corpses he asked if I knew . . ."
"And you think it's Tom?" Kyrie asked, her hands unaccountably clenched on the side of the table, as if this mattered to her personally.
He shrugged. "Just . . . the shape matches, and I've never met another one large enough to actually sever a body in two. But if he was in town that far back, and there were no murders something must have happened three months ago that triggered them. And then you say that he was at work on Wednesday. And on Wednesday we found a body right behind the Three Luck Dragon. Well, actually it was found on Thursday morning, but we think he died around midnight on Wednesday."