Gunmetal Magic(18)

“Too expensive?”

“Not too expensive to buy, but too expensive to reclaim. The way it fell, you’d have to shift a ton of rubble before you got to anything decent. Too many man-hours. Ellis started it that May and last February the Garcias were still digging in it when a section of it collapsed. Killed seven workers. Apparently Ellis had sunk all his resources into the building and let the insurance lapse. The insurance companies hate us. The premiums are through the roof. The Garcias did the right thing and paid out the death benefits anyway, out of their own pocket. The company was finished after that.”

“So how can they afford to bid on Blue Heron?” I asked.

“Word is, they got a substantial investment. This was their comeback attempt. They are decent, hardworking people, Andrea. They wouldn’t kill my crew.”

“Somebody did, Raphael. What about the seller?”

“The city of Atlanta.”

That was a dead end for sure. “Did you know about the vault?”

“No.” He scowled. “Rianna, one of the guards, just had her baby three months ago. It was her second day back on the job. Nick is her husband. You remember Nick Moreau?”

“Nick the carpenter? The one that redid our, no, I’m sorry, your kitchen?”

Raphael nodded. “Yes.”

I remembered Nick. He’d cracked jokes while he had installed the cabinets and showed me a picture of his wife and told me she was the most wonderful woman on Earth. He’d said they were trying to have a baby and if it was a boy, they would name him Rory, and if it was a girl, they would name her Rory, too.

Raphael had teased him that they were setting the baby up to be made fun of, to which Nick had pointed his hammer at Raphael and told him that if he wanted to name babies, he would just have to make some of his own.

“Was it a girl?” I asked quietly. “Baby Rory?”

“It’s a boy,” Raphael said.

And now his mother was dead. I would get those bastards. I would find them and make them pay.

I got up. “Thank you for your cooperation. We’re done. I’ll inform you when I have a lead.” This interview is over. Get the hell out of my office and out of my life.

“Do that.”

Raphael rose and left.

Work was the only thing I had left. Everything else was gone now. I would find the murderers. I would find them if it was the last thing I did. I had to do it to prevent them from killing anyone else, to offer their victims vengeance and solace, and most of all I had to do it to prove to myself that I was still worth something.



I pulled out a phone book and tracked down the three addresses of the bidders.

His scent was still here. I snarled at it, but it refused to vanish.

Hurt and frustration bubbled in me. I was keyed up too high, my skin was on too tight, and I wanted to shoot something just to vent all the pain boiling up inside.

So Raphael had replaced me with a seven-foot-tall dimwit, so what? Good riddance. I was better off on my own.

The back door opened with a faint creak. Ascanio walked into the office and froze.

“What?” I asked.

He opened his mouth, his eyes wide.

“Speak!”

“Breasts,” he said.

Female shapeshifters didn’t have breasts in warrior form. There was no need for them. They were either flat-chested or sported rows of teats. I had breasts. They were covered with fur, but they were recognizable adult female boobs.

“It’s not your first time seeing a pair, is it?”

“Um. No.”

“Then do act like you’ve been around the block before.”

Ascanio closed his mouth with a click.

“Don’t test Raphael,” I told him. “If you do, he’ll cut you into itsy-bitsy pieces and leave them in a pretty pile on the floor.” I decided I liked my beastkin voice. It was deeper, more powerful, and sounded better. In an attractive female monster kind of way.

“Oh, I don’t know.” He gave me a look suffused with teenage arrogance. “I think he might find it difficult.”

“No, he won’t. We once fought a dog the size of a two-story house. Raphael ripped one of its heads off.”

Ascanio blinked. “One?”

“It had three.” I got up and pulled a change of clothes from my bag. My other me was about twenty-five percent larger, but my long-sleeved T-shirt had a lot of stretch in it. I pulled it on and put on my pants. They were more like capris now and they were tight on my calves. “I’m going out.”

“Like that?”

I pulled out my knife and sliced the hems of my pants. Much better. “Who’s going to stop me?”

“But you’re…not in human shape.”

Yes, and I was sick of being ashamed of who I was. I looked at him for a long moment. “If I change back into a human, I’ll need a nap. I don’t have time for naps. If someone has a problem with the way I look, fuck them.”