Night Shifters by Sarah A. Hoyt Page B

smelled of vanilla. His hair, too, yielded quantities of red bloodstained water.
    What would the police think? Would the police track him? And Kyrie? He’d tell them she was innocent. He was the murderer.
    Was he the murderer?
    He couldn’t think about it. Stepping out of the tub, he heard Kyrie knock at the door. She then opened it a sliver, and held out a towel. “Sorry. Forgot to give them earlier,” she said.
    And she was being kind to him. Far kinder than anyone had been in a long time. He thanked her, dried himself, combed his hair with his fingers, the thick black curls falling into their natural unruliness, and dressed in her jogging suit.
    Coming out the door, he had his words ready. About how he would be going now, no time to chat, really, best thing would be to get out of her hair as soon as possible, and then—
    And then she was waiting at the door and smiled at him. “I made coffee. It’s in the kitchen. Do you drink coffee? I won’t be a minute.”
    And she went past him into the steam-filled bathroom.
    He couldn’t exactly leave when she was being so friendly, so he went into the kitchen, where she’d run the coffeemaker, and set cups, sugar, and cream out. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry that one of the cups was embossed with a dragon, but he took it anyway.

    Kyrie showered quickly, wondering what was wrong with her. Didn’t she want him out of the house. Now? Yesterday?
    But she’d never talked with another of her kind. And perhaps he knew what had happened. Perhaps he’d remember if he’d killed the person in the parking lot. And perhaps she’d be able to figure out how he’d got involved with the triad and if she’d now be in danger.
    And perhaps tomorrow it would rain soup. And cream.
    But there were more material considerations, too. Her arm, where Red Dragon—the one who in human form had two red dragon tattoos—had got in a glancing bite at the panther’s paw. It looked like the tooth had pierced her arm. It wasn’t exactly bleeding—just a trickle of blood that increased under the warm shower. She examined the puncture dispassionately. Her memory of the adrenaline-fueled fight had fuzzy edges and she could not remember if the bite had released, or if it had been fully completed before something she did caused the dragon to let go.
    If the first, it was probably a narrow, not-too-deep cut. If the second . . . Well, she could easily be looking at a puncture all the way to the bone, and at an infection. She couldn’t afford that, but neither could she afford to go to the hospital.
    Oh, she could afford it monetarily. She probably could scrape up the money for a quick visit to the emergency room or one of the twenty-four-hour med centers. What she couldn’t afford was for doctors to ask how she got her wound or for them to notice anything at all strange about the shape of the wound. For them to remember her wounds when someone brought the corpse in, certainly with similar wounds. No. Better to trust in Tom and ask him to help her clean her arm and perhaps bandage the wound. Better the devil you know.
    There were other wounds too. One on her hip, which she could bandage herself, and then one across her shoulder, at the back, which she didn’t think she could take care of without help.
    She got out of the shower and dried a little more vigorously than she needed, to punish herself for her stupidity in getting involved in Tom’s affairs. She bandaged her hip and her torso before putting on her robe again.
    Frank was going to make her pay for the apron. But at least she still had a job. She’d called while Tom was showering. While Frank had been none too pleased to hear she wouldn’t be back the rest of the night, neither had he fired her.
    In the kitchen, Tom stood, holding the cup of coffee. The one with the dragon. Kyrie smiled. She hadn’t even thought about his reaction. It had come, like most of her dishes, from the Salvation Army thrift store. She picked up the cup