I’d have spent the night repeating what happened endlessly to a series of people who all would hope for the real story. I’ve done it before. With Adam present, neither of us said anything because they weren’t letting Adam call the lawyer.
Agent Orton of CNTRP, better known as Cantrip, and Agent Kent, the nervous rookie, wanted to arrest us on general principle because Adam was a werewolf, and there was a dead body on the ground. And, possibly, because they weren’t happy with our not talking to them.
Luckily, we were under the local police jurisdiction, barely, because Adam’s initial call had only told them that there was a man who might have been responsible for murder and arson trying to break in to my garage. Human attacking human, even if she was the wife of a werewolf, was not enough to allow Cantrip to take over the case.
We didn’t correct them when they speculated that our intruder was the dead man. We said nothing about a supernatural creature who could turn into a volcanic dog and cause earthquakes because Cantrip was dangerous. There were people in Cantrip who would love to see us just disappear, maybe into Guantanamo Bay—there were rumors, unsubstantiated, that a whole prison block was built to hold shapeshifters and fae. Maybe they would just report that we had escaped before they could question us and hide the bodies. Adam, because he was a monster, and me because I slept with monsters. When I’d shifted to coyote in front of Tony a few months ago, I’d also shifted in front of a Cantrip agent named Armstrong. He’d told me he wouldn’t say anything about it, and apparently, based on these two, he had not.
There were good people in Cantrip, too; Armstrong was a good person, so I knew that it wasn’t just a pretend thing—like Santa Claus. But a growing number of incidents between Cantrip and werewolves or the half fae who’d been left to defend themselves when the full-blooded fae disappeared indicated that the good agents were in a minority.
The fire department arrived on the heels of the Feds, took a good look around for hot spots (none), marveled at the “damned big hole in the floor,” and left with the promise of sending out someone to evaluate the scene in daylight. EMTs arrived while the fire department was still there.
One guy sat me down and looked me over with a flashlight while the younger Cantrip agent took it upon himself to make sure I didn’t make a break for it.
The EMT made a sympathetic sound when he looked at my burns. “I bet those hurt, chica,” he said. “I have good news and bad news.”
“Hit me,” I told him.
“Good news is that these all qualify as minor burns no matter how nasty they feel.”
“Bad news?”
“I think your cheek is going to scar. There’s some chance that it will fade, but you’ve got dark skin like me, and dark skin and burns aren’t a happy combination. Also, there’s nothing to do for the burns. If the air bothers them, you can try wrapping them, but that will only be easy to do with the burns on your hands. If you see any sign of infection, take yourself down to your regular doctor.”
“I can deal with scars,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Who knew I was vain about my face? I wasn’t beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, so I certainly hadn’t expected the pang I felt knowing I’d bear Guayota’s mark the rest of my life.
“It should look dashing,” he told me. “Just a pale streak, and you can make up all sorts of stories about how you got it. Frostbite on your third polar expedition. Dueling scar. Knife fight in the ghetto.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” His matter-of-fact tomfoolery settled me. Impossible to believe in volcanic dogs when this EMT was so calmly cracking jokes as he got over the heavy ground as lightly as he could.
“I do have some advice, before I let you go,” he told me.
“What’s that?”
“Chica,” he said seriously, “next time some firebug starts throwing burning things at you, run away.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” I promised him solemnly.
The second EMT came back from looking for other victims. “There is a finger in the backseat of the car in there,” he said. “Does anyone know who it belongs to and if I should get it in ice? It might need to