Nicky’s mouth and feeling the pull and push of Nathaniel’s body, and it just didn’t seem that different from the three of us being in bed together when we were all human. Maybe I’d gotten too big a dose of leopard in my head.
‘The police are almost here,’ Ares said.
We pulled back so that by the time Al and the others arrived we weren’t cuddling, just standing waiting for them. Nope, no snuggling going on here, no kissing, and then I realized I’d been wearing red lipstick. I had time to glance at Nicky and see the lipstick tracing the inside of his lips. He was wearing the go-faster stripe. We’d kissed neatly enough that I wouldn’t even be smeared, but there was no time to hide the evidence. If he wiped at it now it would just smear worse. Maybe they wouldn’t notice in the dark? Of course, they came with the sweep of flashlights, ruining our night vision and theirs. Did some of the lights go back to Nicky’s face more than once, or was I just being paranoid?
‘I’ve never seen anything move like you all did,’ Al said, as he walked up to us.
‘Sorry you had to wait so long for the rest of us mere humans to catch up,’ Travers said, ‘but I guess it just gave you time to make out a little bit instead of looking for the missing men.’
We couldn’t explain, so the only option was a bold front. ‘We could just stand here and twiddle our thumbs while you guys catch up, if that would make you happier?’
‘Little Henry is a friend of mine, and the thought that you were up here kissing while he could be hurt, or worse, instead of looking for him … yeah, that bothers me and it’s damned unprofessional.’
Nicky stood up a little taller, and Nathaniel made a harsh sound low in his throat, not exactly a growl, but not a happy noise either. Ares moved a little between us and the police, hands to his side, feet placed to move, but it wasn’t that kind of fight.
I took in a lot of air and let it out slow. ‘You’re right, it was unprofessional. It won’t happen again.’
Travers didn’t seem to know what to do with the apology. ‘I heard you had a temper and never backed down from anything, Blake.’
I shrugged. ‘I do have a temper, but when I’m wrong, I’m wrong.’
‘While we’re on the wrong thing,’ Horton said, ‘could you all stay with the group a little bit more? It’s hard to coordinate our resources if they’re scattered all over the woods.’
I nodded. ‘Agreed.’
All the flashlights, even pointed at the ground, gave enough light for me to see Horton frown. ‘Officer Travers is right; you have a reputation for being harder to get along with than this.’
‘When I was younger I was grumpier,’ I said.
It made him smile, and then he tried not to. He looked perplexed as he said, ‘You can’t be more than twenty-five now; how much younger could you have been?’
‘I’m thirty,’ I said.
‘I saw your age on paper, but you still look younger than me.’
‘It’s because you’re tall and I’m short; tall looks older and short looks younger, just does.’
He smiled again. ‘True enough.’
‘Can we actually start looking for my friend again?’ Travers asked.
I looked down at the big leopard sitting at my side. He gazed up at me with the pale leopard eyes. I said, ‘Find them; find the scent.’
The leopard gazed up at me. I thought, visualized what I wanted him to find. I pictured the jacket and the rag he’d smelled, just in case words weren’t that important to him right now.
He got to his feet, turning in a graceful half-circle to head the way we’d been running. He didn’t even put his face to the ground, or scent the wind, nothing, as if he knew where we were going.
25
The body lay in a grove of aspens so that the bare white trunks rose around the dead man like ghostly sentinels. It was a pretty place to leave the body; sadly, what they’d done to the body wasn’t pretty at all. It was one of those crime scenes where the eyes don’t want to make sense of it at first. If you look away and don’t look back, then your brain will protect you. It will keep you from seeing the true horror of it, but it was my job to look, my job not to look away,