“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” I SAID TO ELI. “IS IT possible?”
Sherwood had dropped her bomb of an idea on Victor and Eli the minute we got inside the house.
“Oh, quite possible. The real question is, is it true?”
“But how could she fool us all so easily? It’s not just that she looks exactly like Ruby; she is Ruby, for all intents and purposes.”
“Remember what Richard Cory told me?” Sherwood said. “That once it consumes its victim, it becomes that victim? Not just the looks, not just the memories, but all the quirks, all the habits-everything that makes someone what they are.”
This was wandering into territory too deep for me. I could see Eli’s eyes light up behind his glasses, though. This was what he lived for.
“In essence, it is the victim, but at the same time, of course, it’s not. That makes for an interesting metaphysical speculation. What is it that makes us what we are? Does it have a soul?”
“Who cares,” said Victor. “As long as we can kill it. Let’s leave the speculation for another time and look at the facts. We’re looking for a shape-shifter, one so good it can fool even Lou. Ruby shows up at an opportune time, and tries to convince us that there is no creature wandering around. Instead, she points Mason in the direction of a mysterious ‘practitioner.’ One that lures Mason to an out-of-the-way corner. He attacks him, turns out to be a shape-shifter himself.”
“And she describes the supposed practitioner for me, but is conveniently missing when he shows up,” I said, slowly.
“Exactly. One and the same, perhaps. Add to that the fact that Sherwood finds her oddly opaque, and you’ve got a hell of a lot of coincidence.”
The chain of logic was flimsy, but it was one of those things that felt right-it had the ring of truth on an emotional level, and that’s often more reliable than cold fact. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before.
I offered a few halfhearted objections, but it was more just to excuse my own lack in not even thinking of it in the first place. It was still hard to believe that none of us, even Lou, couldn’t tell the difference between a child in a Lion King costume at Halloween and a real lion.
Timothy had been listening quietly, but he had a puzzled look on his face.
“I have a question,” he said. “You were over at your friend Morgan’s yesterday, right? When the shape-shifter was there?” I nodded. “But Ruby was over here almost all of yesterday. So how could it have been her?”
Damn. The idea had made perfect sense, only to be torpedoed by an inconvenient fact.
“That is a problem,” I admitted.
“It would seem so,” said Victor, “but something’s not adding up here, and I think at the very least we need to pay Ruby a visit. Unannounced and unexpected. Mason?”
“Now?”
“When better? After the next person dies and we figure out the details?”
Point taken. We decided just Victor and I would go-maybe we could catch her by surprise. If we all showed up en masse, she’d know something was up right off the bat.
A half hour later we were looking for a parking space for Victor’s silver BMW. Ruby’s place turned out to be on the second floor of a small apartment building in the Richmond, not far from where Eli lived.
Victor wasn’t relying on any use of talent this time. Anything that involved talent would be up to me-he was going with firepower, a Glock.40 that he had taken out of his safe and put in a shoulder holster.
When we arrived in the area he parked two blocks away, as a tactical move. We walked over to the building separately, a half block or so apart. If true, it was entirely possible Ruby had realized she’d been outed-Sherwood might be as transparent to her as she was opaque to Sherwood. No point in providing her an opportunity to take us both down at once. I wasn’t that worried, though-between Victor and myself, I thought we could handle her. But we didn’t know the extent of her powers, and it never hurts to be cautious.
Victor entered the building first, and I entered behind him a few seconds later. It was an older building, with three apartments on the ground floor and three more up above. We climbed up the stairs to the upper landing and stood outside Ruby’s door, listening. Victor knocked, loudly. It was silent inside. Either she hadn’t got home yet or she was very sound asleep. Or she was quietly awaiting us.
Lou gave a little snort and wrinkled up his nose as if there was a bad smell in the air. I took a deep breath, but couldn’t smell anything. But when I took another, I could just sense the faintest whiff of something, sweet and cloying like rotten fruit. Or meat. It sent an atavistic chill up my spine to the back of my neck. The reaction to that particular smell is rooted deep, and is never good.
“No wards,” Victor said quietly.
I checked; he was right. No practitioner leaves their home unguarded. But perhaps Ruby wasn’t precisely a practitioner, was she, now? He tried the door. Locked, of course. That wouldn’t be a problem for Victor, however. Mechanical devices are very difficult to affect using talent, but in addition to his talent, Victor was a regular James Bond. I had no doubt but that he carried a handy collection of precise lock picks in his wallet.
He reached inside his jacket, pulled out the Glock, and held it six inches away from the striker plate where the lock met the doorjamb. So much for precision and subtlety.
“Muffle the sound for me, will you?” he said. “We don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”
He half expected me to have trouble with that, at which point he’d sigh and whip out some preset spell and do it himself. But a thick carpet covered the hallway, and overhead, a cone-shaped metal shade held a ceiling lightbulb, the kind you slip over the bulb and then screw the bulb into the socket.
I used the funnel shape as a template and curved a line of talent around the gun, then another line spreading out into the floor of the landing. When the gun fired, the sound would bleed off into the carpet. People in the adjacent apartment might feel a slight vibration, but in San Francisco occasional tremors are hardly worth remarking on.
Victor put two silent shots next to the doorknob. Splinters of wood flew off, one almost gouging my face. He shoved the door open and stood in the doorway, gun ready, scoping out the inside. After a few seconds, he motioned to me and eased his way into the apartment.
Inside, it was a mess. Half-eaten pizzas falling out of their boxes littered the floor, along with crusted cartons of takeout. Clothes strewn about, dirt everywhere, empty wine bottles collecting dust on the floor. A mattress had been shoved into the corner of the living room, up against a wall. On each end, blankets and sheets had been torn into strips and jumbled together into a nest, with indentations at either end where a heavy body might have laid at rest. The lair of the beast. The whole room smelled like the big cat house at the zoo, overwhelming that first faint whiff of corruption I’d noticed in the hall.
A bathroom, surprisingly clean, was off to one side, and next to it a closed door, apparently to a bedroom. Victor crossed the room, crouched down so that his head was below the level of the doorknob, and reached up for it. Anyone inside the room would be expecting someone outside to be standing erect, and the most common attack is focused at chest level. The split second it takes to adjust can make all the difference.
I moved out of the line of sight from the bedroom door. A couple of years ago Victor would have needed to remind me, but I’d at least learned the basics by now. He swung open the door, whipped his head into the doorway for half a second, then whipped it back before anything inside could react. None of these precautions turned out to be necessary. There was nothing in the room. At least, nothing alive.
Ruby was there, of course. The real Ruby. Parts of her. She lay crumpled on the floor next to an unmade bed. Her chest had been torn open and there was an empty cavity where her heart had once pumped merrily away. Her head had been detached from the rest of her body, and the skull had been cracked open like a walnut. What was left of her face was swollen and barely recognizable, smeared with blood and gray brain tissue. Her long red hair was clumped and matted, like stuffing in an old pillow, and its once-vibrant color was dull and washed out. Everywhere, flies swarmed greedily around the carcass.
I walked over to the doorway but didn’t go in. With the bedroom door open, the distinctive sickly sweet odor of rotting flesh was now evident-not overwhelming, but enough to make my gorge rise. I had to swallow several times to keep from throwing up. Lou backed away and went over to the front door, pretending to stand guard. I wished I’d thought of that first.
Victor walked into the room and knelt down by her body as if this were something that happened every day. But he straightened up quickly and got out of there before very long. He wasn’t anxious to linger any more than I was, and there was little point in performing forensic tests. It’s not like there was any mystery about what had happened here. We took a brief look around the apartment to see if there was any indication of where Ruby, or rather, the shape-shifter, might be now. Papers were strewn over a table in the living room; handouts promoting bands and clubs, a brochure from a show at the Asian Art Museum, a flyer titled: “Open Studios at Hunters Point.”
“Not much here,” Victor said. “She’s probably gone for good.”
“You think? Maybe we should wait here in case she returns.”
“No, I don’t think she will. She knew her game was up as soon as she met Sherwood. We won’t see her again, at least not in that guise, and definitely not here. She wouldn’t have had just this one spot-she must have known it might be discovered at some point, and a predator always has a backup lair, just like prey will have more than one bolt-hole.” He glanced through the door into Ruby’s bedroom. “If they realize they’re prey, that is.”
“So how do we find her?” Victor pointed at Lou, but I shook my head.
“I don’t think so. It’s like the fake Ifrit and the Wendigo-anything from the energy pool seems to be immune to his tracking sense.”
“Yes, but he’s a dog, remember?” Lou whipped his head around and fixed Victor with a disbelieving stare until he amended his statement. “At least, he’s got some of the same capabilities. He doesn’t have to use his Ifrit sense. If we can narrow down her location, he can track her by scent alone.”
I wrinkled my nose, smelling the overwhelming cage odor permeating the apartment. Victor had a point; I could almost track the scent myself.
“Maybe,” I said. “But how are we going to do that?”
“First things first. He needs to fix the scent in his mind.”
Lou looked up at me inquiringly. He can’t really follow conversations, but he gets the gist of most things. But he wasn’t taking directions from Victor.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
I walked over to the corner where the nest of blankets and sheets lay, bent down, and took several deep breaths to illustrate the point. I instantly regretted it as the musky odor made me gag again. Lou followed me over and sniffed delicately. He probably didn’t need to, with a sense of smell as sharp as his, but he enjoys humoring me occasionally.
“What now?” I asked.
Victor didn’t immediately answer; he just looked at Lou and then back at me, as if considering something.
“Wait here,” he finally said. “I need to get my bag.” Before I could say anything he was out the door, leaving me and Lou alone with a rotting corpse, slowly decomposing ten feet away. The room seemed suddenly hotter than before, closed in and claustrophobic. My chest felt tight, and I started to get dizzy. I’d been unconsciously breathing in shallow pants, trying to ignore the combination of feral reek and dead flesh. Carbon dioxide had been building up in my blood and I needed to get out of there before I passed out. I stepped out and waited in the hall until I heard the downstairs door open and Victor’s footsteps on the stairs. Then I ducked back into the apartment-I wasn’t going to show weakness in front of him.
He came in, carrying his old black doctor’s bag, the one he keeps in the trunk of his car when it isn’t in his safe. Pushing papers aside, he set it on the living room table. Out came a knife, an old-fashioned mortar and pestle, and a vial of yellowish powder.
“Okay,” he said. “Now, Lou can’t track a shape-shifter, but he doesn’t have to. We can use the same method that we used with the lead and the shotgun pellets-a little more subtle, but the principle is the same.”
“Something in common?” I thought for a moment. “I can’t think of anything.”
“Well, the shape-shifter devoured part of Ruby, and imprinted her essence on itself. But the rest of Ruby’s body is still here in the apartment.”
I didn’t like where this was going. Victor’s knife implied some use of blood, and dealing with a corpse as well had definite overtones of the black arts. But I still didn’t see what he was driving at.
“How does that help us?” I said. “You can’t very well…” I stopped, feeling sick. The stench of the apartment wasn’t helping.
“Yes,” said Victor. “I can. A drop of blood. Some magnetized filings, and a bit of Ruby’s flesh. And Lou’s help.”
“No way,” I said. “He won’t stand for it, not if there’s blood involved. Especially his.”
“Not his; mine. All I need from him is a bit of his hair, taken while he’s focused on finding someone. Then I can track the shape-shifter myself.”
I saw what he was doing-it was like what I’d done when I ran energy through Lou and into Sherwood so that she could borrow his tracking ability. Victor had his own ways of doing things, though. He picked up the knife and handed it to me before walking to the door.
“I’m going down to the street. Tell Lou to find me, and then slice off a bit of his hair while he’s focused. Put the hair in the mortar bowl. Got it?”
This sounded a bit convoluted to me, but I shrugged my acceptance. Victor nodded, stepped outside, and a moment later his footsteps echoed down the stairs. I sighed.
“Lou,” I said. “Find him. Find Victor.” Lou slowly turned his head toward me, checking to see if I was serious. Didn’t I know this was no time to be playing hide-and-seek?
“Just do it,” I said. He stared at me long enough to let me know he thought I was deranged and started toward the door. I caught him by his collar and brought the knife close. He stopped and half opened his mouth. He didn’t like knives, not at all, and was letting me know that if I tried for a blood sample, I was going to lose a couple of fingers. He’s a patient guy, but there are limits.
“Take it easy,” I said. “I just need a snip of hair.” He let me saw off a little tuft, but didn’t relax until I moved the knife away. “Okay. Relax. Forget Victor.” Now he knew I’d gone off the rails. He walked over and sat near the door, keeping an eye on me, as if I might start dancing and gibbering at any moment.
Victor was back in the apartment a minute later. He took the knife back from me, used the tip on his finger to get a drop of blood, picked up the mortar bowl, and mixed it in with Lou’s hair. A sprinkling of powder from the vial was next, and he mashed it all together. He started at the mixture blankly, then took a deep breath.
“One final ingredient,” he said and moved off toward the bedroom where Ruby’s body lay. I’d seen all I wanted to see.
“I’ll wait outside,” I said and headed toward the hall. Lou was out the moment I opened the door. If Victor saw this as sign of weakness, fine. It was better than throwing up all over the potion he was mixing up.
Just mixing it was bad enough. I didn’t know how he meant to employ it and I didn’t want to, although I could make a guess. I sat on the stairs and waited, trying not to think about it. After a while, Victor joined me, bag in hand. He looked a little green around the gills.
“Did it work?” I asked.
“Oh, yes.”
“You know where she is?”
“Not yet. Ruby’s body is too close and its proximity too powerful; it overwhelms everything else. It’s like trying to see a candle flame in the distance while you’re standing next to a bonfire. I need some distance.”
We left the apartment. The shattered lock was going to present a hell of a problem for the police department when they discovered the body. Their theory that an animal was responsible wasn’t going to hold up much longer, but they’d never come close to understanding the true state of affairs. I was beginning to regret having called Inspector Macklin earlier-Victor was right; it would make him wonder what I knew about it and why I was so interested. Maybe homicide would hush it up, though, put it on a need-to-know basis. If I was lucky, maybe Macklin would never even hear about it.
Once back on the street, we walked for a block and then Victor stood, concentrating.
“No good,” he said. “Nothing in this direction.” We retraced our steps until we were well past Ruby’s apartment in the other direction.
“Got it,” he said. “East. Maybe across the bridge.”
We got in his car and he started driving east. Victor drove almost as if he were in a trance, sitting stiffly erect, following his new sense. I hoped he wouldn’t crash the car, but there was no point in offering to drive. We ended up continuing east on Cesar Chavez, but instead of heading for the bridge, he angled off onto Third Street and through the Bayview district.
“Hunters Point,” I said, suddenly. “There was a flyer in the apartment, remember, about the open studios there.”
“Good guess. Out of the way, lots of space. That wouldn’t be a bad choice for her.”
Hunters Point Shipyard lies at the end of Bayview, right on the water. At one time it was a thriving port and shipyard, but those days are long past. Now it’s mostly a toxic waste site, with a huge power plant that dominates the landscape. The old buildings of the shipyard have been converted into artists’ studios, where painters and sculptors work in happy isolation.
Bayview is almost entirely African American, an urban slum rife with drugs and gangs, like Big Block and West-mob. Shootings are common, and it’s a dangerous place. But it doesn’t look dangerous, and it doesn’t look like what people think of as a slum, either. Older, detached houses sit on tree-lined streets, businesses dot the landscape, and people go about their daily life. It looks peaceful and rather pleasant. Appearances can be deceiving.
At the very end of Bayview, right up against the edge of the bay, the old shipyard sprawls out across the shore. Victor drove partway down the sloping driveway that leads into the complex, then stopped. Spread out down below were the studio buildings, looking more like military barracks than artists’ studios, which is logical since that’s what they once were. Off to the north side a large expanse of tangled scrub and low bushes covered a steep slope, crisscrossed by narrow gullies. A perfect place for the lair of a beast, or maybe Ruby had taken on the persona of a random artist in one of the studios. That would be more likely, considering her habits so far.
“She’s here,” he said. “But exactly where, I can’t tell. My locating sense is too diffuse.”
“It’s a pretty big area,” I said. “It’s not going to do a lot of good to wander around there hoping we’ll bump into her.”
Victor gestured at Lou.
“This is where he takes over.”
“Ahh. You have a plan.”
“Lou picks up her scent and pinpoints her exact location. You follow him, keeping an eye out for her.”
“Great idea.”
“But I don’t think he’ll have to track her for very long-I imagine she’s already aware you’re here.”
“Why?”
“Because you were present when the energy pool was formed and helped in its creation. That provides her with a connection to you-not a strong enough one to track you down, but enough to feel your presence as soon as you get close.”
“But if she senses me closing in, won’t she just take off again?”
“Not necessarily. I might be wrong on the connection part. And anyway, I think it more likely she’ll try to ambush you and rip you apart.”
“I see. And what will you be doing when this ripping apart thing is taking place?”
“Well, that’s the rub. I’ll have to stay up here. The point is to tempt her into an attack, and I don’t think she’ll take on both of us at once. After all, she didn’t have much luck even when she caught you alone, so she’ll be cautious. So I’ll hang back, far enough away so she doesn’t sense me, but still close enough to jump in when she attacks. You just have to fight her off long enough for me to get to you.”
I thought about the body in the next room, torn apart and partially dismembered. Then I thought about Morgan and Beulah.
“Okay,” I said. “But I’m going to need that gun of yours. She’s resistant to talent, remember.”
“The gun could pose a problem. If you’re armed, she might be able to tell. And then she’ll slink away and wait for a better opportunity. You need to make her feel confident enough that she can take you so that she’ll launch an attack.”
“Maybe you should just truss me up hand and foot and dump me somewhere she can find me,” I said. “Then, while she’s busy eating my brain, you can sneak up on her.” A ghost of a smile flitted across Victor’s face.
“That has crossed my mind. Anyway, try to keep an open line of sight between us. And if you have to move behind a building, do it slowly and I’ll angle over to where I can keep you in sight.”
This seemed like a haphazard plan to me, but I didn’t really care. I’d driven the shape-shifter off once already and I could do it again. I nodded and headed into the compound with Lou. We reached the bottom of the access road, where there was a large parking lot of gravel and dirt, muddy, with pools of standing water that had nowhere to drain. Across from it was where the first buildings started.
“Do your stuff,” I said to Lou. “See if you can sniff her out.”
He put his nose to the ground and started searching, moving out in concentric circles, adroitly avoiding the areas of mud and water. It wasn’t long before he raised his head slightly and moved off toward one of the buildings on the far side of the parking lot.
I looked up to make sure Victor was still in sight. He wasn’t. I cursed quietly, trying to figure out where he’d disappeared to. If I’d pulled that kind of sloppy backup on him, he’d have ripped me a new one. I hesitated a moment, then followed Lou. I was going to find this shape-shifter, whether Victor was paying attention or not.
Then, as we passed by the first building, I saw Victor come out from behind the rear of it. He put his finger to his lips in an exaggerated fashion and motioned to me. As I turned toward him, his body was violently jerked back around the corner as if something had grabbed him from behind. I heard a triumphant sound, somewhere between a snarl and a roar. Holy shit.
They say a sudden shock or fear can paralyze you into immobility-the body just shuts down. Not so. My legs were carrying me toward the building, sprinting at top speed, before my mind fully took in what had just happened. Lou was right alongside of me. With his speed he could easily have outpaced me, but he’s no fool.
Right before I rounded the corner of the building Lou let out with a volley of warning barks. Kind of superfluous, I thought. But then he sprinted ahead, turned on a dime, and launched himself through the air at me, striking me square in the middle of my chest. At twelve pounds that wasn’t enough to knock me back, but it certainly slowed me up for a second, long enough for my brain to start functioning again. Why had I assumed that was really Victor?
I was going too fast to stop, but I swung wide and sprinted past the corner of the building, angling away in a straight line. When the shape-shifter waiting there for me sprang, it missed me by a good six inches.
It hadn’t had time to completely transform itself back from its Victor persona. Maybe being in the midst of a change had made it clumsier than usual. What I saw was a caricature of Victor, twice life-size, claws like a bear, but with a face almost unchanged. That typical, somewhat supercilious expression remained fixed on the shape-shifter’s face even as its arms grew longer and its teeth lengthened.
I didn’t stop running. I sprinted toward the adjacent building, and by the time it saw what I was doing I had a good head start. It bounded after me, now on all fours, its transformation almost complete. I ran through the door at the end of the next building, a long, low structure with a corridor that ran all the way through. Before I was halfway down the corridor, it had appeared in the doorway behind me. I wasn’t going to make it out the other side before it caught up with me, and even if I did, what then?
I frantically tried several doors until I found one that was unlocked and ducked inside. It was a sculptor’s studio, and thank God the artist wasn’t home. The room was full of large twisted metal sculptures, elongated figures that were all sharp angles and rough surfaces. Interesting, perhaps, but of no use to me. I can work with metal, but barely, and it takes me forever to accomplish anything.
But there was clay there, too, bags of it, and that I can work with. The first thing I needed to do was buy some time. That’s always the case-every time you really need a moment to come up with a clever spell or elegant solution to a problem, something’s just about to rip your heart out. So first things first-block the door and keep it from getting in until I was ready to deal with it.
I grabbed a lump of clay and threw it toward the door. Then I poured some talent into it, expanding both its properties and its size, until the entire door was covered with a thick, gluey coating. More energy, not quite heat, but a magical analogue. It was like having a giant kiln operating at unheard-of temperatures. In seconds, I had the door layered over with a hard shell of baked enamel.
She didn’t even try to open the door. She hit it full force like a grizzly separated from her cubs. The door splintered, and the hardened shell I’d so cleverly constructed shattered like a vase dropped on a stone floor. Shards of hardened clay flew everywhere, and then she was inside, standing in front of me, finally in her true form and glory.
She stood on two legs, like a bear, six and a half feet tall. She was thick, long fur covered her, and long claws grew from the ends of powerful arms ending half in paws and half in hands. Her muzzle was narrow and elongated, like an anteater’s, with an almost perfectly circular mouth like that of a giant lamprey. Useful for sucking out the brains of her victims, I would imagine. A long snakelike tongue flicked in and out the mouth, and when she opened it a double row of teeth gleamed wetly. Where the hell was Victor?
Lou took one look and dove under a workbench, hiding behind a rolled-up tarp. I scrambled behind one of the sharp metal sculptures, putting some cover between her and me. She made a keening sound and reached out with those half-paw-half-hands, hooking a claw over one of the metal struts of the sculpture. Lou came out from under the bench and bolted past her through the ruined door and was gone. So much for the faithful dog defending his master to the death.
The sculpture toppled with a crash, and then she was scrambling over it to get to me. I reached out with talent to the fluorescent light fixture and diverted the flow of electricity into the metal sculpture. The effect wasn’t much; fluorescents don’t use much current, but it was enough to make her howl and jump away as if she’d landed on a hot stove. She stumbled back and tripped on a pile of scrap wood in the corner.
Without thinking, I reached out and gathered up the wood, using one of the metal sculptures as my pattern, and fashioned a creature of my own, one to rival even her. It was tall and spindly, but full of jagged wooden edges and sharp points, and it projected an aura of power and menace. Several of the wood pieces were studded with nails, and I turned those into jaws capable of rending flesh. It was a golem, insensitive to pain, neither alive nor dead, and a formidable creature indeed.
Not really, though. It was all bluff. At heart it was nothing more than random pieces of wood, and one good blow from her paw would scatter it over the room. She didn’t know that, however. I moved it toward her and it creaked noisily forward like a clockwork monster in an old horror film. The bluff wasn’t going to work for long, though. She automatically backed away until she came up against a wall, and I could see her tensing for a desperate spring.
But the distraction worked. I took my chance and was out the door in two seconds. I was halfway down the corridor before she figured out the golem was no real threat at all, destroyed it, and came after me again. She was no more than fifteen feet behind me when I heard a volley of high-pitched barks from up ahead, and then the door at the other end of the hallway flew open and Lou came charging through, followed closely by Victor, Glock automatic in his hand. I stopped short and plastered myself against the corridor wall, giving Victor a clear shot.
The sound of the Glock going off in the confines of the corridor wasn’t nearly as loud as I’d expected. More of a flat cracking sound, a quick series of pops that seemed almost harmless rather than lethal. But that was deceptive.
The shape-shifter jerked, stumbled, and went down snarling. She got back up to her feet, took a few more hesitant steps, and crumpled to the floor again. Victor ran right past me up to where she lay and put two more shots into her head from close range. She jerked twice, quivered, and lay still.
I expected doors to fly open at any moment, questioning heads to appear, and horrified screams to start echoing through the hallway. None of that happened. Maybe there was no one in the building right now, or maybe anyone working there was too immersed in creative throes to notice. Or more likely, they had developed a finely tuned sense of urban self-preservation, and well understood that when you hear gunshots in the hall, sticking your head out of your door to see what is going on is not the smartest thing to do.
But now we had another problem. We were standing in a hallway next to the body of a monster out of a Hierony mus Bosch painting. Somebody was bound to wander in before too long, and we could hardly leave it there to be found. Victor had obviously been thinking the same thing. He straightened up from where he had been crouched down examining the body.
“We need a tarp,” he said.
I remembered the tarp I’d seen in the sculpture room, under a bench. I ran back, squeezed through the ruined door, and pulled it out from under the bench where it had been stashed. We spread it out in the hallway next to the shape-shifter and rolled her onto it. Then we rolled it a couple more times until it was covered up. The shape-shifter was hidden, but now it looked exactly like what it was: a tarp containing a dead body.
Victor bent over the tarp, made some gestures, and tensed with effort. The tarp shimmered briefly and then I was looking at an old spruce tree, like something left over from a long-ago Christmas. It was a perfect illusion-the needles were brown halfway along their length, and little piles had apparently fallen off and onto the floor. The man has ability.
We grabbed the corner of the tarp and pulled it along the hallway and out the door.
“I’ll get the car,” Victor said. “Watch the body.” He disappeared around the corner of the building.
“Try to make it back this time,” I called after him.
With a little effort I could cut through the illusion and see the tarp, bulging in the middle. I watched it anxiously, afraid beyond reason that it would start to move. I was sure the shape-shifter was dead, but that didn’t stop me from obsessively checking every few seconds.
I was starting to get nervous when Victor returned. I didn’t think there was going to be enough space to cram the body into the small trunk-a BMW M5 is not a family sedan, after all. But she hadn’t stiffened up yet-that takes a number of hours-so we were able to force it in with some judicious pushing and folding. Squishing sounds could be heard from under the tarp as we squeezed her in, which made me queasy. Once we got the body stowed securely we drove slowly away, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Okay, where the hell were you?” I said as we drove away from the shipyard. “That thing almost got me, you know.”
“That was unfortunate. Just after you walked down the driveway I got a call on my cell. From Eli. He said to wait, he was almost at the front gate and it was crucial to meet him there.”
“And you just left me to fend for myself?”
“He said you’d be in no danger. He had Ruby in sight.”
“That’s insane. What was he doing here? And how the hell did he know where we were? And why-” I broke off. Victor turned his head and favored me with a quick glance, and didn’t answer. “Oh,” I said, after a few seconds.
“She was a perfect mimic. A voice is even easier.”
“How did she get your number?” This time I didn’t have to wait for Victor’s look. “Oh, right. She had it from when she was Ruby. She had all the info she needed, including your cell number.”
“I should have realized,” said Victor. “The number came up on the display as blocked, which should have been the tip-off it wasn’t really Eli calling. But it wasn’t until Lou came tearing up the road that I knew I’d been had.”
That’s about as close to an apology as Victor’s capable of.
“What are we going to do with the body?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said. We drove in silence the rest of the way until we finally reached my house. I turned to him before I got out.
“One thing still bothers me. When Ruby was at your house, the shape-shifter was at Morgan’s house at the same time. How did she pull that off? Did she leave for a while? Was she around where you could see her the entire time? Did she split herself in two somehow?” The minute I said that, I got it.
“Oh, shit,” I said. Victor looked at my face and knew I had something.
“What?” he said.
“Think back. Think of what we saw in Ruby’s apartment. The mattress.”
I flashed back to the scene there, the mattress in the living room with two piles of torn sheets and two piles of wadded-up blankets and sheets and two indentations. Victor looked off into the distance as he did the same. His visual recall was as good as mine, possibly better.
“Two of them,” he said. “Goddamn it. There are two of them.”