The Shape of Desire (31 page)

If we have started distrusting each other, lying to each other, I don’t know how much longer this relationship can survive.

I
t is close to five in the morning when I finally fall into a heavy sleep filled with fleeting, stressful dreams that leave my shoulders cramped and my hands clenched. The sound of the doorbell startles me out of bed about three hours later. I actually leap to my feet, staring around wildly, until I realize what the insistent ringing means. I grab a robe and stumble to the door, not even bothering to glance in the vanity mirror as I pass. I know I look dreadful; whoever is at the door deserves to know they woke me up and that I’m not happy about it.

I’m expecting Beth, maybe my mother, possibly some overzealous deliveryman who doesn’t know to just leave packages on the porch and drive away. A tiny, rebellious corner of my brain thinks—hopes? fears?—it might be Dante, human and on my doorstep even though he’s been warned away. But the face looking back at me through the small window in the front door is not one I’ve ever seen at my house before.

“William,” I say blankly as I open the door. The tone of my voice supplies the unspoken words:
What are you doing here?

“Christina said she was worried about you and I came to check up on you,” he says.

I open the door wider and gesture for him to enter. Cold air rushes ahead of him like a playful puppy. “There’s some weird stuff going on here and I’m not sure it’s safe for—” I give him a look, not certain how to phrase it. “Unusual people to be hanging around,” I end lamely.

He appears amused but steps inside. “You look like shit,” he says pleasantly.

“Thank you, so do you.”

He does, too. As always, he is lean to the point of emaciation, wearing clothes so thin and ragged that I can hardly guess where he got them and why he keeps them. Maybe they’re items he’s owned for twenty years and only wears a few days a month when he happens to take human form. They aren’t particularly dirty or stinky, so Christina—or someone—has kept them clean for him. He’s not wearing a coat. His shoes are disreputable old Nikes that can’t possibly have any support left. His hair, in a ponytail, hangs almost to his waist, and his stubble looks like it’s at least three days old. I spare a moment to wonder how fast stubble grows on a man who’s in animal shapes most of his life.

Then I wonder if he was the wolf I saw in my yard last night, and if he’s been here checking up on me for longer than I realize.

I decide not to ask. I jerk my head toward the kitchen and say, “Go make yourself comfortable. Give me five minutes to get presentable, and I’ll come out and make you breakfast.”

“Sounds like a plan,” he says, ambling across the floor.

It’s more like ten minutes before I’ve brushed my teeth, washed my face, combed my hair and pulled it back into a clip, and thrown on some sweatpants and a T-shirt. I still don’t look great, but at least I feel human.
More human than William does, I bet
, I think with a silent snicker. The touch of humor makes me more cheerful than I’ve been for days.

William’s started the coffee—which surprises me somehow; he
doesn’t seem like the type to develop familiar addictions or know how to operate household devices—and is enthusiastic about the idea of eggs and bacon. He sets the table while I cook, though he handles the plates gingerly, as if afraid he will break them.

“So what’s going on here that’s got you so upset?” he asks as he pours orange juice. I notice he’s used wineglasses as juice glasses, and I decide I like the touch of elegance. William has always seemed the most mysterious of the Romano siblings to me; maybe he’s got a poetic streak. Or maybe he doesn’t know the difference.

I try to remember what I said in my e-mail to Christina.
I think one of the neighbors is spying on me…
“Jeez, what has happened
since
makes what I told her seem tame,” I say with a slight laugh.

He looks over at me with an arched brow. “So?”

I’m scrambling the eggs while the bacon cooks in the microwave and the bread browns in the toaster. I concentrate on the pan before me. “Last week, I thought the guy down the street was way too interested in my life. Every time I turned around he was out in his yard, watching me,
filming
me. I don’t know, maybe he got a new video camera for his birthday or something, but it was giving me the creeps. And I didn’t want Dante just showing up and—and—transmogrifying on my front porch while this guy was pointing a camera in my direction.”

I glance at William and he seems suitably impressed. “That would make an interesting bit of footage for the evening news,” he says.

“Funny you should mention the evening news,” I say. The microwave beeps just as the bread pops up. “Can you get that? There are hot pads on the counter.”

William fetches the bacon and toast and arranges them on the table while I spoon eggs onto our plates. In a couple of minutes we’re sitting across from each other, munching. I’m not a great cook, and I don’t usually have an appetite first thing in the morning, but even I think everything tastes pretty good.

“We’ve had this awful event at my office. A woman’s husband was murdered,” I say around a bite of toast. I figure I don’t have to be too specific; I don’t think William watches much TV. “Which was bad enough, but yesterday some Channel 5 reporter and cameraman showed up at work and started interviewing people about the murder. Our office manager kicked them off the property, but they went nattering on about freedom of the press, and I have this terrible suspicion they might start coming to people’s houses to ask them questions. And that would be even
worse
than having neighbors spying on me! If some reporter got shots of Dante changing shapes, it would be disastrous.”

William is licking jelly off his fingers. I notice that his hands are clean enough but his nails are dirty. “I don’t tend to panic, myself, but you seem to be showing a reasonable amount of caution in this instance,” he says. When I give him an indignant look, he grins. “I’m serious. It wouldn’t be so great for Dante to get caught on film.”

“Or
you
,” I say pointedly. “So I hope you were careful about how exactly you materialized on my front lawn this morning.”

He’s still grinning. “I’m always careful. Don’t live too long as a shape-shifter if you’re not.”

You don’t live too long as a shape-shifter even if you are
, I think. “So you’ve seen Christina lately?” I ask.

He nods. “Yeah. I don’t usually stray too far. Don’t go more than a hundred miles from St. Louis, as a general rule. So I go by her place once a week or so.”

I tilt my head. “And turn human?”

He smiles again. “Not usually.”

“So she—what?—she talks to you while you’re in animal shape, and you understand her?”

“Something like that.”

That’s evasive enough to make me wonder if the Romano kids have other supernatural powers: telepathy, ESP, mind-reading abilities. If so,
Dante has never mentioned them. I decide I wouldn’t believe it if even William claimed it was true, so I just drop that line of questioning. “How’s Lizzie? Did you see her?”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head admiringly. “She’s something special. Cutest thing I ever saw. And not afraid of me at all.”

I decide not to follow
that
opening, either. “Well, you can tell Christina I got in touch with Dante and I’m going to meet him in Kansas City next week. So neither of you has to worry.”

“Good to know,” he says, nodding. He doesn’t add aloud the thought that is clearly visible on his face.
I wasn’t worried to begin with.

I’ve now pretty much exhausted any conversational topics I have in common with William, so the sound of the doorbell is almost a relief. Except…the same question arises that I asked myself the first time I got an unexpected summons this morning. Who would just show up at my door before nine o’clock on a weekend morning? I give William a considering look.

“If this is my mother or my cousin—I have no idea how I’m going to explain you.”

He shrugs. He’s not worried about my reputation any more than he’s worried about Dante’s safety. “Tell them I’m the neighborhood homeless guy and you take turns feeding me breakfast on Saturdays.”

“You certainly look the part,” I retort, “but they would consider the behavior out of character for me.”

“What, you don’t take in stray
people
?” he asks. “You’re willing to take in stray
dogs
.”

Which is the first time this morning I remember the white husky sleeping in the dishwasher box alongside my house. The husky that I am half-convinced is just as human as William. “Shit,” I say under my breath. The doorbell rings again and I come to my feet. “This better be someone trying to sell me magazine subscriptions so he can finance his way through college.”

It’s not, though. It’s Brody Westerbrook.

And his cameraman.

For a moment, I am too dumbfounded by the sight of them to do more than stare through the layer of glass, the layer of screen, that separate me from disaster. I hadn’t
really
thought they would come to the house; that was just one of those stories that you tell yourself to whip up a level of fear that’s already beyond the level of sanity. Brody is on the porch, a microphone in his hand. His colleague is a few paces behind him, standing in the grass, his camera pointed straight at me. A red light is blinking above the lens. I don’t know for sure, but I think that means the camera is recording.

“Good morning, Ms. Devane, I’m Brody Westerbrook from Channel 5 news,” he rattles off, speaking loudly enough that his words will penetrate through the storm door. “I’m doing an investigative piece on the series of murders we’ve had in the St. Louis area over the past six weeks, and I understand you’re a coworker of the woman who recently lost her husband—”

“Go away,” I say.

He steps a little closer, although he’s already close enough that he could fog the glass with his breath. “Wouldn’t you like to share your thoughts on—”

“No, I wouldn’t. Please go.”

He raises his voice. “You do realize that all these murders—and possibly more that we haven’t been informed about—have been committed under mysterious circumstances by wild animals—”

“If you don’t go away
right now
, I’m calling the police,” I say, hoping I sound threatening instead of hysterical, which is how I feel.

I sense a shape materialize behind me, and suddenly William is at my side, sliding my cell phone into my hand. “You heard her,” he says. “Get out.”

Brody’s attention instantly shifts William’s way. He opens his mouth
to ask the same set of questions, but I see him hesitate and reconsider, taking in William’s ragged appearance and subtle aura of menace. Even I feel a sudden prickle of unease at William’s proximity; he radiates a cold, coiled danger that was entirely absent as we shared our breakfast.

“Sir—” Brody begins, but William whips the door open and knocks the microphone out of Brody’s hand before the rest of us have even reacted. Then he punches Brody in the chest, hard enough to make him stumble backward. He moves so quickly that the cameraman doesn’t even think to come to his colleague’s aid. He just stands there, staring, the camera blinking its red eye.

“I said, get the fuck out of here, asshole,” William spits out. “And don’t come back.”

Brody straightens up and stands still for a moment—proving, I suppose, in some macho way, that
he is not afraid
—and then he nods once, short and sharp. He bends to retrieve his microphone, then jerks his head toward his cameraman. They cross the lawn to where the white NBC van is parked in the street. William steps inside and through the glass we watch in silence until they’ve climbed in and driven away.

Then he closes the door and turns to me with an amiable smile. “And here I thought you were exaggerating,” he says.

That quickly, he is the old William, loose and relaxed and ever so slightly amused. But my head is suddenly filled with images from that fight between Ritchie and Dante, three weeks ago, right here inside the front door.
I will take your fucking head off
, Dante had said, and he’d meant it. I have no doubt at all that, if Brody had provoked him, William could have done some major damage to the reporter.

Why have I never seriously entertained the idea that shape-shifters might kill a man? These two incidents have made it chillingly obvious that they
could
. The only question left is whether they
would
.

“Yeah,” I reply, making no attempt to erase the shakiness from my voice. “I kind of wish I had been.”

“I don’t think he’ll come back,” William says. “But if he does, call the cops. He has his rights and all, but so do you.”

I nod. I’m still so unnerved by the whole brief exchange that I can’t think of what to say. “Okay. I’ll do that.”

He sticks his hands in his worn pockets and glances around, as if looking for any items he might need to collect before he goes. “Well, I guess I found out what I came here to find out,” he says. “Let Christina know if you need me for anything, and I’ll be back.”