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But this mess wasn’t at all the Ordo’s style. I very much doubted they’d employ a vampire to do their killing for them, since they seemed to hate every type of Arcanid out there and also weren’t shy about stabbing people all on their own.
So that meant this was somebody else.
Fucking great.
And we still had some other sort of canid shifter and a fifth shifter of unknown species still missing—who might be either running or injured somewhere, or maybe who had been recaptured. Or who might be dead, but since neither ghost was able or willing to share names or provide precise descriptions, Ward’s ghost-wrangling hands were tied.
Which meant I was shit out of metaphysical luck.
So I called out the proverbial cavalry and set them to canvas the entire downtown.
And that was why it was almost midnight. We hadn’t found either of the missing shifters, either alive or dead.
We’d gotten almost no description of the missing man from Tatiana, who could only tell us that he was “tall” and “smelled interesting.” She’d also only given us the adjective “shaggy” for our missing “dog,” which I was guessing meant one of the larger canids—a wolf or coyote, probably, since shifters were all wild predators.
My new hairless friend, from what I got out of Doc, was some sort of ancient wild dog, although there were modern domestic versions of his species that were a good deal smaller and less capable of biting your hand off. I was taking Doc’s word for it. I don’t have an extensive knowledge of Central American indigenous canids, although I was proud of myself for at least knowing where the Aztec empire used to be given just how very white and Midwestern my upbringing had been.
Doc and Ward had left the scene around nine because they had to go pick up Doc’s nephew. The boy lived with them, and it had gotten plenty late for a kid on a school night.
I, on the other hand, was there until the bitter end. A couple of night-shift uniforms would guard the crime scenes until photographers could come back in daylight and cleanup crews could be called, but the CSIs were finishing packing up as I walked back toward my car, rubbing my arms against the cold that had well and truly settled into my bones.
I might be a Midwesterner, but I’d been outside in sub-forty-degree weather for the better part of seven hours in nothing but my shirtsleeves and gun holster, and I wascold. Cold and tired and hungry and had a damn dog-that-wasn’t-a-dog in my car who needed medical attention.
What I was hoping was that the unfurry little asshole would just shift once I got it away from the crime scene and the several dozen cops who it clearly didn’t trust as far as it could throw.
I got in the driver’s side, immediately turning the car on and cranking the heat. Beside me, the Xolo dog lifted its head to watch me. I blew on my hands, the fingertips slightly bluish from cold.
“What?” I asked it.
It let out a soft whine that sounded a little bit like a question.
“I’m fucking freezing because you’re on my damn coat.” And my gloves were in one of the pockets, but I hadn’t actually been able to bring myself to make the dog move to get them.
It pushed up on its front paws as though trying to stand, and—feeling like the guilty asshole I clearly was—I reached over to put a hand on its head.
“Don’t bother. We’re done here.”
The dog settled back down, then looked at me again, turning its head to regard me with its one brown eye as though asking me what we were going to do now.
And I had no fucking idea.
My stomach growled. Loudly.
I sighed. “Clearly, I need dinner. What about you? Hungry?”
The dog made a funny chuffing sound.
I looked over at it, raising one eyebrow. “Is that a yes, then?”
Another chuff.
Which maybe meant yes or maybe not, and fuck if I could tell from context.
“Okay, this isn’t helping. How about, hypothetically, you tell me what ‘no’ is.”
The dog stared at me for a few seconds, then growled.
“Okay, ‘no’ is a growl, ‘yes’ is that huff. How about ‘what the fuck’ is a whine?”
