Gunmetal Magic (27 page)

“It’s never like it was before.”

“I know that now, but back then I was selfish and damaged, and very young. About that time I met Ascanio’s father. John was gorgeous. Beautiful man. And a bouda like me. A little on the passive side, but he was kind and very proper. Seducing him was so much fun and once I did, he just did whatever I said. I was okay with being in charge. We were together for two months when I got pregnant. I was so happy. I told him and he cried.”

“He cried? Like in joy?”

“More like in horror.”

“Oh no.”

Martina nodded. “Yes, that should have been a clue. Apparently John grew up in this religious cult worshipping some made-up god, and he had been sent out in the world for a year-long pilgrimage. He came to terms about ‘sinning’ with me—probably because I was very good at sinning and he liked it—but a child threw him for a loop. We couldn’t have a child in sin, and he refused to marry me unless we went back and had his prophet do it. The catch was I’d have to sleep with said prophet to have my body purified.”

“No,” I said. “Screw that.”

“That was my reaction. It’s my body and I wouldn’t be abused in this manner. It also let me know real quick that John wasn’t good husband/father material. I told him he was free to hit the road. Me and my baby would be just fine. But John had a change of heart and stuck around. I should’ve twisted his head off right then, but silly me, I thought he had come about because he loved me. I went into labor. The hospital had never had a shapeshifter give birth before and mine was a long and terrible thing. Then I got to hold Ascanio and it was all worth it. He was so beautiful. I was reading this French book at the time about a sculptor and he had this ridiculously good-looking apprentice, whose name was Ascanio. I knew exactly what to name my baby. The hospital sedated me after that to let me rest. When I woke up, my beautiful baby was gone. John took him.”

“He what?”

“He took him back to his cult. He left me a note, the slime. It said that he couldn’t let his son be raised in sin, and since Ascanio was an innocent, he’d be taking him away, but I couldn’t come, because I was tainted by our sin.”

“I would have killed him. I would’ve murdered him right there.”

“I tried,” Martina said. “I looked for him for years. I was bitter and broken by then, and that’s when Aunt B came across me. She was on a trip of some sort. I was, well, the proper term is fucked up. I hadn’t shifted into my animal shape for years. Didn’t seem like there was any point to it. It only brought me
misery. She went after me. ‘Come be with your own kind. You don’t have to do anything. Just come, live with us for a bit, and if you don’t like it, you’re free to go.’ Eventually I went with her. It didn’t matter one way or another. So I came here and slowly, little by little, I thawed out. Then the call came. The cult’s prophet decided my boy was too much competition and was mucking up his harem plans, so he called us to come and get him. We did.”

“And John?”

“He’d died a while back. A good thing too, because I would’ve killed him. So you see it’s difficult for us both,” Martina said. “Ascanio never had a mother and I never had a son. We try the best we can and when we find something that can make one of us happy, we both sigh a little in relief. I make him cannoli and he buys me scented soap with his Cutting Edge money. I have two drawers full of it.” A small happy smile lit up her face. “If you ever run out, you let me know. I’ve got enough to keep the whole Pack clean for a week.”

I really liked her. I hadn’t known I would, but I did. Still, things had to be said. “You didn’t come here to tell me this story, did you?”

“No. I came here to talk about the clan and Aunt B.”

“I don’t mean to be rude,” I said. “But there is nothing you can say to make me play ball with Aunt B. I won’t go over there and I won’t beg and scrape to be admitted into the clan, so I can be one of her girls and run her errands. That won’t be happening. And I think it’s cowardly of her to send you in for this talk. Enforcers didn’t work, neither will you, so I wonder what her next move is going to be. How many will she send?”

“She didn’t send me,” Martina said. “My son did.”

“Oh.”

“Do you know what I do for the clan?” she asked.

“No.”

“I’m a licensed therapist,” she said. “I specialize in the areas of family therapy, anger and stress management, adolescent adjustment, and loss and grief counseling. I’m one of ten Pack counselors.”

“I’m not in the Pack,” I told her.

“I know.” She smiled. “This is a freebie.”

“I don’t need therapy.” It sounded hypocritical the moment
it left my mouth. “Okay, so maybe I do, but I don’t…I don’t know.”

“This doesn’t have to be a therapy session,” she said. “This could be just the two of us talking. We could talk about Deb and Carrie and their conduct in your parking lot.”

I stared at her. “How much did Ascanio tell you?”

“He didn’t say anything about your past,” she said. “Except that you have had a hard time, and there was abuse and it was bouda-related. He did want me to go to Aunt B and explain to her that boudas couldn’t keep trespassing in your territory, because they would push you too far. In his words, ‘They’re trying to punk her in her own place.’ He’s worried you’ll kill someone.”

“He’s right,” I told her.

Martina took out a small recorder. “I made this for you.”

She pressed the button. Aunt B’s voice sounded from the tiny speaker.

“…I said to go over there and find out what they talked about. I said to be slick about it. Did I say to rough anybody up?”

“No, ma’am,” Carrie said quietly.

“So why would you take it upon yourselves to improvise?”

“We thought…” Deb started and fell silent.

“I wouldn’t do so much of that, if I were you, dear. When you think, you end up with broken bones. Besides, it makes me so happy when you let me do your thinking for you. You do want to make me happy, don’t you?”

“Yes ma’am,” two female voices chorused.

“I’ll explain things to you now, because I don’t want you to feel left out. You thought that because Andrea is beastkin, you could easily dominate her. Andrea is a survivor. Never underestimate that. She learned to kill, she trained for it, and she’s had practice. You fight for fun and dominance. She fights every battle as if it’s for her life. If you attack her, she will pull you apart like a badly sewn dress. Andrea also understands how the forces that uphold human law work. And we all know how important that is, don’t we?”

Another chorus. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you understand now why she would be an asset to the clan?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

I was an asset. That was news to me.

“I don’t care if she is beastkin, elephant, or platypus, we need her. She’s like a pine. She won’t bend, she will only break. I’ve spent months trying to convince her that joining us was in her best interests and the two of you decided to throw a wrench into my plans.”

“I’m so sorry,” Carrie said.

“Me, too,” Deb echoed.

“Go away and do try to stay away from me for a day or two, yes?”

“Yes ma’am.”

The door closed. A terrible screech followed, the sound of metal being tortured.

“It was a very nice bookend,” Martina’s voice said.

“Well, now it’s a very nice piece of junk,” Aunt B said.

I glanced at Martina. “Was that an owl?” It was one of a gorgeous pair of bookends, metal and finished in pale bronze, with large amber Swarovski crystals for the eyes. Aunt B used them on her desk to keep the files from falling out of the file holder.

Martina stopped the recording and nodded. “She squeezed one in her hand. If you crushed a jelly doughnut in your fist, and the filling spilled out? That’s what it looked like.” She pushed the button.

“Did Ascanio say what Andrea and Raphael spoke about?” Aunt B asked.

“No. He did bring Rebecca there.”

The recorder fell silent.

Aunt B sighed. “Why is it that we sacrifice and work so hard to keep our children from making our mistakes, and they insist on ignoring everything we say?”

“Probably because they are our children and at their age we ignored our parents also.”

Aunt B sighed again. “Are you going to see her?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me how it goes?”

“You know that anything she says to me is confidential,” Martina said.

“I know. Just tell me if it’s salvageable or not. We need her.”

Martina shut off the recorder and put it down between us.

“This doesn’t change anything,” I told her.

Martina looked at me. “What’s the alternative, Andrea? Where do you see this situation going? You slapped her, in public.”

“She backhanded me down the stairs.”

“That was a gentle love tap compared to what she could’ve done. You challenged her. She can’t ignore you. You wouldn’t, in her place.”

No, I wouldn’t. I would’ve gone after me. Quick, too.

“You can leave,” Martina said.

“I’m not leaving. This is my home now. Why should I leave?”

“Then joining the Pack is your only choice. You can’t be unattached, Andrea. It is our law and you are subject to it, because you are a shapeshifter. You are one of us.”

I clenched my teeth. “I could fight her.”

“You would lose. But suppose you won,” Martina said. “Then what? I won’t follow you, Andrea. You didn’t fight beside me; you didn’t prove to me that you deserve to lead. I don’t know you and I don’t trust you. If you succeeded and killed Aunt B, we would all gang up on you. I don’t know where Raphael’s allegiances would lie, but he would have to choose between the woman he loves and his family. It is a lousy choice to make.”

“Raphael and I are at a complicated place.”

“I don’t doubt it. We’re boudas, after all.” Martina shrugged. “If a woman sees her boyfriend in a restaurant with another woman, she may march over and confront him there. She may wait and confront him later. But if a bouda sees another woman with her mate, she would throw her drink in his face, and then the table, and then perhaps an unlucky member of the restaurant staff if one happened to be nearby. We make dramatic statements, in fight and in love.”

“Life would be easier without the drama,” I told her.

“Not for us. We have to vent, Andrea. That’s the way we’re wired. But back to the clan. B’s current second isn’t fit to be in charge of the clan. She is beta, because nobody else wants the job and responsibility. We would be left leaderless and have to fight it out. Would you really be that selfish, Andrea?”

She was right. I wouldn’t be. I didn’t want to be governed by shapeshifter laws, and some long-forgotten teenage part of me wanted to stomp my feet and scream that it wasn’t fair. But it was. A citizen of the country was subject to its laws, and while some people thought it was unfair, they still had to obey them. When they didn’t, people like me arrested them.

I didn’t want to be treated special because I was beastkin. But I was, because I had forced the situation into a corner, and now everyone was making special allowances for me.

What did I really have to lose by joining the clan? B was right, I did have the proper tools. I could join, take a position of responsibility, prove myself, and when the time came, I would take the boudas away from Aunt B.

I puzzled over this thought, turning it this way and that in my mind. “Logically I know you are right. Everything you said makes sense. But it feels like giving up somehow.”

Martina nodded. “You feel like your hand is being forced, and you have to join the Pack not because you want to, but because you must to do it to survive. This is your home and you want to live here on your terms, not the Pack’s.”

“Yes.”

“What is it you want to do in life, Andrea?”

I looked at her. I had no idea how to answer.

“Each of us selects a purpose,” Martina said. “Mine is to help people heal themselves. What’s yours?”

“I’m not sure,” I told her.

Martina smiled. “Something to think about.”

I was a shapeshifter. Nobody could take it away from me. Nobody could force me into early retirement and the boudas needed me. But I had no idea what my goal in life was. I had never thought about it in grand terms.

“Thank you for coming by,” I said. “Will you tell Aunt B I will be visiting her in a day or two?”

Martina nodded. “I’ll let her know.”

I catnapped after Martina and Ascanio left and heard the phone ring through my sleep. By the time I made it downstairs, the answering machine had kicked in.

“Andi, it’s me,” Raphael said.

I stepped away from the phone.

“I went to see Garcia Senior,” he said. “He says that they were approached by Gloria Dahl and asked to bid on Blue Heron. I thought maybe Gloria and Anapa were working together. It would make sense: he would put in a bid and she would put in the second-highest bid, so in case something went wrong with his bid, he’d still get the building. But Garcia said that Gloria’s bid was almost eighty grand below mine, which would make it one hundred and fifteen thousand below Anapa’s. Basically, she had no chance. If they were working together, their bids would be closer together. Anapa bid way too high and she bid way too low.”

Huh. I could’ve sworn Gloria was Anapa’s flunky. Well, showed what I knew.

“I hope you went home,” Raphael said. “I’ll be driving by later. Don’t do anything stupid without me.”

Don’t do anything stupid without him. I wouldn’t be doing anything with him, stupid or otherwise.

I checked the world outside the window. It was a few minutes past nine and the evening sky was vast and dark. Perfect.

I had to go back to Gloria’s crime scene. It was highly likely that Gloria, whoever or whatever she was, and her pals must have murdered Raphael’s people. That explained both the wide fang spawn and the location of the bite wounds. But I had no concrete proof. I didn’t have access to Gloria’s corpse, so I couldn’t measure the exact distance between her fangs and I still didn’t know where her associates were or what she was after.

I had a good suspicion that the knife in the photo that I’d seen in Anapa’s office was involved. In fact, I was sure of it, but again I had to obtain evidence of that. I had to figure out what the knife was and what it was for, and the only way to shed light on this situation would be to break into the crime scene and I would have to do it alone. If I got caught, I’d be detained, but I was just a private citizen. If anyone from the Pack was detained with me, the matter would take on a completely different light.