AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One has returned to stalkyou.
Why?
You’d have to askher.
Will you help me capture her?If this was the same person I’d seen in the parka, she was fast andelusive.
She’s already leaving. I think she knows that I can sense her.Sindari faced the rear parking lot, the alley I’d cut through to reach it, and roared. It sounded partially like a warning and partially athreat.
“Shit, what was that?” someone who’d just driven into the lot yelled, sticking his head out the window and staring up atus.
The lighting on the walkway hadn’t come on yet, and twilight and the mist made it hard to see details. Hopefully, he couldn’t tell Sindari wasn’t a large dog. I’d wandered around in public with him before, but not without attracting a lot of notice and having to awkwardly deflect questions. Someone had accused me of illegally breeding white tigers, even though Sindari was clearly and beautifullysilver.
“Just my service animal,” I called down. “He’s feeling friskytonight.”
Your foot is in so much danger.Sindari planted his large paw on top of it, but he did not proceed to gnaw itoff.
The man swore, rolled up his window, and didn’t get out of hiscar.
You’re not here to scare people. I need you to help me find proof of magical tampering in Colonel Willard’s apartment.I summed up the details for him as I held my lock-picking charm with one hand and placed the other hand against her door. Dwarven made, the charm was for removing minor enchantments and traps from magical gates, but when I’d locked myself out of my apartment once and tried it on a whim, I’d learned it could remove impediments to mundane entrancestoo.
Will the small feline bethere?
No, the neighbor is caring forit.
Very good. Last time, it tried to pick a fight with me while hiding under the bed. The hissing and spitting and fur-raising was ridiculously melodramatic. It is not as if I would eat a fellow predator or the mushy gunk in her fooddish.
I don’t think Maggie liked you either. By the way, if you could refrain from leaving your scent all over the apartment, Colonel Willard would appreciateit.
I wasn’t planning to lift my leg on thecouch.
Willard and Ibothappreciate that, but I just mean, you know, if you could refrain from shedding or shaking off. Leaving skin or fur or whatever would disturb the cat. I’m not supposed to bring youinside.
Hmmph.
The door opened. I paused in the threshold, flicking on the lights and waiting to see if anything plucked at my senses. The last time I’d been here, a hint of lemon and vinegar and natural cleaning detergents had hung in the air, but according to Willard, it had been a couple of weeks since she’d been home. A thin layer of dust marked the wood surfaces, and even though everything was tidy and put away, it definitely felt like nobody had been inside for a while. I wondered if we would truly findanything.
After a single sniff, Sindari wandered in. I watched him, suspicious that he would leave some intimidating sign of his presence that would bother the house cat when she returned home, but he merely sat on the rug in the living area and looked around. The place was as I remembered. Various sports equipment hung on racks near the door, a bicycle dangled upside down from ceiling mounts in one corner, and martial-arts trophies shared space with books on a case behind thecouch.
Willard’s apartment wasn’t any larger than mine, so it should be easy to search. I wandered into the adjacent kitchen and dining room, the faded carpet clean but old. Willard would have had a house to herself if she’d lived on base, but I couldn’t blame her for not wanting to commute through Tacoma and Seattle every day going to and from FortLewis.
Not sure what I was looking for, I poked into drawers and peered under the table and into cabinets. I found a pair of Garfield coffee mugs next to a fancy espresso maker and suspected the slippers hadn’t represented only theniece’stastes. There were Flintstones pint glasses in a cabinet, and I found a cat dish with Smurfs on it. It seemed my no-nonsense boss had a fondness for the cartoons of her youth. I knew she’d been a drill sergeant before switching to the officer route, and amused myself by imagining her barking at privates rappelling down the Victory Tower while sipping from a Garfieldmug.
When I walked into the bedroom, I found Sindari with his tail up and his butt pressed against the comforter on thebed.
“What are youdoing?”
Scratching anitch.
“Are you scent-marking thatduvet?”
Absolutelynot.
“I don’t believe you. You’re leaving your scent all over the place to terrorize that poor cat, aren’tyou?”
Only in this place, and not to terrorize her, certainly. Only to inform her that a superior feline was here. I am an apex predator. It would be against my instincts to mask myscent.
“I bet the dragon doesn’t dothis.”
