Skin Trade(118)

“Let me out,” I said, “and it’ll get better.”

“You cannot stop it on your own,” Paula said.

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Let me quiet you. It is the way of tigers to calm the young and the inexperienced.”

I’d had Crispin do it for me once, when things were much worse than this. But… I did not know her, and she was the dead bad guy’s main squeeze. Would she help me, or hurt me?

“Let me help you, Marshal. One of our people attacked you, and for that our entire clan owes you a debt.”

“It wasn’t a white tiger,” I said, but I’d moved away from the door and was closer to the table.

“Anita,” Edward said, and he reached out, then let his hand drop. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“No,” I said, but I kept moving toward her.

“If it wasn’t a white tiger, then who attacked you?” she asked.

“Yellow,” I said, and I was standing beside her, staring down into those blue eyes. Just that made the tiger inside me stop screaming. It was as if just being closer to another white tiger soothed my beast.

“Yellow tiger,” she said, and frowned.

I nodded.

“The yellow clan has been dead for centuries. They do not exist.”

“She was an animal to call for a really old vampire.”

“What happened to her?” Paula asked.

“She’s dead.”

“You had to kill her.”

I nodded.

“But a yellow tiger attacked you,” she said.

“You say it like that makes a difference. What difference does it make what color tiger attacked me?”

“The yellow, or golden, clan was supreme to all the other clans. They ruled the earth and all the energies on it, including the rest of the clans.”

“News to me,” I said.

She shrugged as much as the chains would let her. “What good does it do to talk about something that is lost? But if a yellow tiger attacked you, then it might explain why you seem to have so much power.”

“She was yellow,” I said. I turned to Edward.

He knew what I wanted without my having to say anything. “She was pale yellow with darker stripes.”

“You were there?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Was anyone else attacked?” she asked.

“Yes, but he tests clean for lycanthropy. I’m the only one that got lucky.” Just standing next to her made it easier to breathe. Maybe the idea that I could travel without my own cadre of wereanimals was just not true. Maybe I’d never be able to travel alone. Shit. If that were true, I might have to give up the federal badge anyway. What good was an executioner who couldn’t travel to where the bad guys were committing their crimes?

The intercom sounded again. “The other tigers are calm again. What are you doing in there, Blake?” It was Shaw, just like I’d known it would be. I was sorry his wife had run off and shacked up with a shapeshifter, but it wasn’t my fault.

Edward went to the intercom on our side and spoke. “We got the tiger energy toned down, that’s all.”

“What’s Blake doing?” Shaw asked.

“Her job,” Edward said, and let go of the button.

I looked into those strangely soothing tiger eyes in the woman’s face. “Did you know what Martin was involved in?”

She blinked up at me. Her face told me nothing, but her lips parted, her breath a little faster. Was that because she knew something, or because I mentioned her boyfriend? Or was it just being in cuffs from top to bottom and being questioned by the police? That tends to make people nervous, even overreact. It’s one of the reasons I prefer to question people at home or some place more casual. But it was too late for casual today. Too late for so many things.

I was staring into her eyes as she said, “No.” I didn’t believe her. I wasn’t sure why, but looking into those pale blue kitty-cat eyes, I knew she was lying. It wasn’t metaphysical powers. It was the same gut reaction that any cop gets after a while. You just begin to know. Now, maybe she wasn’t lying to hide something. Maybe she was lying because she was scared, or just because she could. People lie for the stupidest reasons. But I went with her lying to hide something. She was lying because she had information we needed. That was helpful. That gave us somewhere to go and someone to question. That gave us something useful for all the new deaths I’d seen today. If Paula Chu knew something, then maybe the officers who’d died, and the SWAT who was in critical condition in the hospital… Maybe it all wouldn’t have been for nothing.

I realized, staring down into her lying eyes, that I no longer believed that. Even if she knew everything, the fucking secret to the secret sauce, and would tell us all of it, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to the families of the slain officers. It didn’t matter to the member of SWAT who might never walk again, if he even woke up. That it mattered was a lie that we told ourselves so we could keep moving and not want to eat our gun.