“I hope not. It took more than a kiss to break that spell.” Once more, I wished I’d shut up ahead of time.
Because it was Morrison’s garden, he was suddenly no longer in front of me. I spun to find him farther away than he’d been, sitting on a picnic table that hadn’t been there before, with a knife and some kind of wood carving in his hands. Morrison. Half dressed, wielding a knife, creating art. And here I thought he’d cornered the market on sexy before. I went back to staring at him wordlessly, aware that my heartbeat had accelerated and my cheeks were growing steadily warmer. The tattoo was still a shadow, distance obscuring it. I really, really wanted to know what it was, but my scratchy voice said, “I didn’t know you sculpted,” instead of asking.
“My dad taught me.” That was clearly as much information as he intended to divulge. I took a couple tentative steps toward him and said, “We have a problem.”
“Yeah, Walker, I know. I chose Beauty and the Beast over Sleeping Beauty for a reason. What are you going to do about it?”
He was a lot tetchier than he’d been last time I was here. I no doubt deserved it, but it made me feel small and unhappy anyway, and I offered my explanation to the ground, instead of him. “I can try changing you back right now. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the raw power.”
“But.”
I looked up, more determined to face that tone than I was inclined to slink away. “But it’s really raw right now. Like I blacked out Seattle raw.”
Morrison sighed, though his attention was all for the carving. Quick knife strokes pared away the wood, small muscle movements in his arms smooth and distracting as it took on a shape I couldn’t recognize from the distance. “And the other choice?”
“You stay a wolf in the real world until I can get you back to the dance troupe, where they can do the transformative dances and I can get Coyote to help me focus so I’m sure nothing will go wrong when you change. The only risk there is you staying more in wolf-brain than I wish you would, but I’m kind of hoping me coming in here to talk to you will wake your human mind up more. The shock of shifting without warning can make somebody go all animal, but you’re obviously still in here.”
“And how do I retain my own mind when we leave here?”
“I don’t know. Focus on me. I’m a constant, I’ll be right there.”
“You’re a constant something, all right.” Morrison stood up unexpectedly and I fumbled the catch when he tossed the carving to me.
It was a jeans-and-sweater–clad woman with short-cropped hair and the most delicate slice of a scar marring her right cheek. I jerked my gaze to Morrison, but he was already gone.
In another moment, so was I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Morrison was standing over me when I opened my eyes. Looming, actually. Officer King’s estimation of Morrison’s wolfy self’s size had been off, but not much. He was a good three and a half feet at the shoulder, bigger than a Great Dane, and broader in the chest than any canine I’d ever laid eyes on. I hadn’t really had time to appreciate that when I’d been wrestling with him in the theater. I wasn’t strictly sure I wanted to be appreciating it now, since I had the very clear impression he could crush my skull in his jaws pretty much on a whim. All in all, I preferred the partially dressed man, not that I would ever, ever say that aloud.
Fortunately, he couldn’t read my mind, and since he hadn’t crushed my skull, I offered a tentative, “Hey, boss. This mean you’re in there?” which got me a steely-eyed glare I interpreted as an affirmative. My shoulders slumped and I rocked forward until my hair brushed his fur, which made both of us startle. “Sorry. All right, look, let’s get you out of here. There are a couple cops up above. Try not to scare them.” I got to my feet. Morrison’s head came up to the bottom of my ribs. I resisted the urge to curl my fingers in his ruff and tried very hard to act like I was just walking out of the marketplace with my boss at my side.
It worked all the way up to the point we were actually walking out, when King and his partner both said “Jesus Christ!” and other high-voiced panicked exclamations of that nature. Morrison, human brain in control or not, growled, and I raised my hands, getting between him and the officers. “It’s okay. It’s okay. He’s…” I was going to get in so much trouble for this. “He’s tame. He just got loose tonight and has been a little freaked out.”
“He should try being me!”
“I don’t think that would make either of you happy. Look, thanks for calling me in.” Never mind that they hadn’t. Maybe they wouldn’t notice. “I’ll let citywide Dispatch and Animal Control know that the wolf has been contained. No more high alert for tonight.”
King blew out a long breath. “Hope not. It’s been a crazy day. You heard about the murder just up the street this morning, right?”
I very much didn’t want his thoughts going that direction, not when Lynn Schumacher’s death had all the earmarks of a dog attack. “It’s the full moon coming on, is all. Everybody’s a little crazy around the full moon. C’mon, fella.” I clicked my tongue at Morrison, whose expression told me I would die soon and painfully, but he trotted along beside me as I hurried up the street, leaving the two young officers behind. As soon as we were out of earshot I muttered, “Sorry,” then called Dispatch as promised. Morrison watched the whole thing, then gave a great huff that I anthropomorphized as relief. Although maybe it wasn’t anthropomorphizing if he was actually a human. Dictionary definitions weren’t meant to encompass my life. Either way, I made the tactical error of reaching out to rub his head as if he was a dog, and discovered that wolves could move very, very fast when they wanted to. My wrist looked astonishingly small and delicate in his mouth. I swallowed and Morrison let me go, but with a dire look which indicated next time he’d probably chomp my arm off.
My vague intentions of bringing him into the Under ground evaporated. “Let’s get you someplace safe.”
He whuffed, and I picked up the pace, heading for the parking garage. I didn’t want to think about his big hoary claws scraping up Petite’s black leather seats, but he stepped into the car with unexpected delicacy, as if the same thought had occurred to him. For a man who considered my relationship with my car to be pathological, I thought that was very considerate. I leaned past him, locked the door, said, “Stay,” and hopped back out of the driver’s side to lock the door behind me. Shapechanged boss or not, there was an I-hated-to-say-it werewolf down below, and half a dozen totally ordinary people standing between it and another potential early-morning murder. Morrison was going to have to wait.
I’d made it forty feet when I heard the distinctive sound of Petite’s door slamming again. I turned to find Morrison with an absolutely filthy look which obviously said, You didn’t think I was smart enough to open a goddamned car door, Walker? A few long loping steps brought him to my side, his expression still infuriated, and I stared between him and the car. “Did you lock her?”
He bared his teeth at me. Of course he hadn’t. Petite required thumbs to lock from the outside. Chastised and grumpy, I skulked back to Petite to lock her up safely once more.
If I thought sections of the Underground smelled, my opinion held nothing on Morrison’s: he sneezed violently for a full sixty yards, and came through the worst bit looking like it was all somehow my fault. I said, “You could’ve stayed in Petite,” which was petty, true, and got me another dirty look. I’d had no idea dogs were so good at looking disgusted without also being threatening.
Most of Rita’s friends had evidently joined her. The remaining two or three were sacked out near the fire and didn’t notice me sneaking by with a giant white wolf on my heels. He and I crept through the tunnel leading to the wolf-woman chamber, and I waved Billy down. He swung up the ladder—one of those chain and metal jobbies they recommended for second-floor fire escapes in private homes—and came nose to nose with Morrison.