For A Few Demons More. Kim Harrison

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СКАЧАТЬ looked insulted, and I thought Kisten was being unusually insensitive. Maybe he was jealous. “You know what?” I said, spinning to Kisten. “You need to shut up.”

      “Hey, I’m just saying—”

      David jerked as if remembering why he had gone into the kitchen, popping open a tin of cat food and shaking it onto a plate before setting it on the floor. “Rachel, would you refuse to talk to a man you’d slept with, even if you were mad at him?”

      My eyebrows rose. He hadn’t just dated six women in six weeks, he’d slept with them, too? “Uh …” I stammered. “No. I’d want to give him a piece of my mind at the very least.”

      Head lowered, David nodded. “They’re missing,” he said. “I’m killing them. I know it.”

      “David,” I protested, seeing a hint of concern on Kisten’s face, “Weres don’t black out and kill people. If they did, they would’ve been hunted into extinction hundreds of years ago by the rest of Inderland. There’s got to be another reason they aren’t talking to you.”

      “Because I killed them,” David whispered, hunched over the counter.

      My gaze drifted to the ticking wall clock. Two-fifteen. I’d missed my class. “It doesn’t add up,” I said, coming to sit at a barstool. “Do you want me to have Ivy track them down? She’s good at finding people.”

      Looking relieved, he nodded. Ivy could find anyone, given time. She had been retrieving abducted vamps and humans from illegal blood houses and jealous exes since leaving the I. S. It made my familiar rescues look vapid, but we each had our own talents.

      My motions shifting the stiff barstool back and forth slowed. Since I was here, I ought to see about taking the focus home with me. Anyone who cared to look it up would know that I belonged to David’s pack. Being a loner and trained to react to violence, David was a hard target. Anyone he worked with, though …

      “Oh, shit,” I said, then put a hand to my mouth, realizing I’d said it aloud. Both Kisten and David stared at me. “Uh, David, did you tell your dates about the focus?”

      His confusion turned to a soft anger. “No,” he said forcefully.

      Kisten glowered at the smaller man. “You mean to tell me you nipped six women in six weeks, and you never showed them the focus to impress them?”

      David’s jaw clenched. “I don’t need to lure women to my bed. I ask them, and if they’re willing, they come. Showing them wouldn’t have impressed them anyway. They’re human.”

      I pulled my elbows off the counter, my face warming in indignation. “You date humans? You won’t date a witch because you don’t believe in mixed-species pairings, but you’ll sleep around with humans? You big fat hypocrite!”

      David pleaded with me with his eyes. “If I dated a Were woman, she’d want to be a part of my pack. We’ve been over this before. And since Weres originally came from humans—”

      My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, I got it,” I said, not liking it. Weres came from humans same as vamps, but unlike becoming a vamp, the only way to become a Were was to be born one.

      Usually.

      My thoughts zinged back to yesterday morning and being woken by a demon tearing my church apart looking for the focus. Oh-h-h-h, shit, I thought, remembering to keep my mouth shut this time. Missing girlfriends. Three unidentified bodies in the morgue: athletic, professional, and all with a similar look. They were brought in as Weres, but if what I thought happened had happened, they wouldn’t be in the Were database but the human. Suicides from last month’s full moon.

      “David, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and Kisten and David stared at me.

      “What?” David said, wary, not distraught.

      I looked helplessly at him. “It wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I shouldn’t have given it to you. I didn’t know all you had to do was have it in your possession. I never would have given it to you if I did.” He looked blank at me, and, feeling nauseous, I added, “I think I know where your girlfriends are. It’s my fault, not yours.”

      David shook his head. “Give me what?”

      “The focus,” I said, my face wrinkled in pity. “I think … it turned your girlfriends.”

      His face went ashen, and he put a hand to the counter. “Where are they?” he breathed.

      I swallowed hard. “The city morgue.”

       Chapter Nine

      Two trips to the morgue in as many days, I thought, hoping I wasn’t starting a pattern. My gardening sneakers were silent on the cement; David’s steps beside and a little behind me were heavy with a deep depression. Kisten was behind him, and the vampire’s obvious unease would have been funny if we weren’t trooping down here to identify three Jane Wolfs.

      The focus was in my bag now, silent and quiescent this far from the full moon. It still held the chill from David’s freezer and made a cold spot against me. Experience said that next Monday it would have shifted from a bone statue of a woman’s face to a silver-sheened wolf’s muzzle, dripping saliva and making a high-pitched squeal only pixies could hear. I have to get rid of this thing. Maybe I could use it to pay off one of my demon marks. But if Newt or Al sold it in turn to someone else and it started an Inderland power struggle, I’d feel responsible.

      We reached the end of the stairway, and with the two men trailing behind me I turned smartly to the right and followed the arrows to the double doors. “Hi, Iceman,” I said, smacking the left side of the swinging door open and striding in as if I owned the place.

      The young man sat up, pulling his feet from his desk. “Ms. Morgan,” he said. “Holy cow, you gave me a start.”

      Kisten slunk in after me, eyes darting everywhere. “Come here often?” he asked when the kid behind the desk put down his handheld game and stood.

      “All the time,” I quipped, extending my hand to meet Iceman’s grip. “Don’t you?”

      “No.”

      Iceman’s attention flicked from me to Kisten, finally lingering on David, standing with his hands at his sides. His enthusiasm to see me dimmed as he realized we were here to identify someone. “Oh, uh, hey,” he said, his hand slipping from mine, “It’s great to see you, but I can’t let you in there unless you have someone from the I.S. or the F.I.B. with you.” He winced. “Sorry.”

      “Detective Glenn is on his way,” I said, feeling bouncy for some reason. Sure, I was here to identify a corpse or three, but I knew someone Kisten didn’t, and that didn’t happen often.

      Relief turned him back into a young kid who should be serving smoothies at the mall, not morgue minding. “Good,” he said. “You’re welcome to sit on a gurney while you wait.”

      I glanced at the empty gurney against the wall. “Ah, I think I’ll stand,” I said. “This is Kisten Felps,” СКАЧАТЬ