She took it and sighed, her voice softening and the Russian accent gone. She sounded old. “You know, it is very difficult to raise a witch so that they do not self-destruct. I myself had six siblings and only two of us survived. My sister had no talent at all. The temptations are so great.”
She looked at Nadia. When she looked back at me, the accent had returned. “She had a crush on you, my little Texas bunny. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been so foolish as to do this where I might find her out.”
“She knew that I’m g*y,” I told her, startled.
She laughed. “Forbidden fruit is the sweetest, Warren, my darling. She thought she could change that if you would just look at her. I imagine getting paid to kill your boyfriend was too much temptation for her to resist.” She smiled sweetly at me, waiting for me to understand that this was all my fault.
She cared for Nadia, I thought, but she cared more that I’d robbed her of the opportunity to get more power. Maybe she was also ticked that I’d seen what was going on under her nose before she did.
I hate witches.
“Nadia made her choices,” I said abruptly, standing up. “I need to get home.”
As I walked out of the bedroom, Elizaveta said, “Tell your Alpha that Nadia has decided that she wants to explore the world. She already has tickets to France. No one will much notice when she doesn’t come back.”
Meaning that Elizaveta would live with my killing Nadia and wouldn’t break the deal she had with the pack. When I’d called Adam to warn him what I had to do, he’d told me that was what Elizaveta would do.
I didn’t slow down or reply.
• • •
Despite what I’d told Elizaveta, I had one more stop to make. For this one I would be the wolf. It took me a while to shed my human form for the wolf, longer than usual. Probably because I’d been shot; physical weakness makes the transformation harder for me.
The second-story window, the bedroom window, was open, and I jumped through it from the ground. I landed with a thud, but my victim, like Nadia, didn’t wake up. I needed this one awake. So I made more noise, letting my claws tick on the hardwood floor.
It wasn’t hard. I was very, very angry.
“Wha—”
He turned on the light, but I was already out in the hall. Just around the corner. I made a little more noise.
He grumbled, “Damned mice.”
He walked into the hallway where I waited for him.
• • •
I crawled into bed, exhausted, weary to my soul.
“Warren?” He pulled me close. “Baby, you’re freezing.”
If he asked, I would tell him.
“Can you sleep?”
I nodded.
“Fine, tell me about it in the morning.”
I took the comfort he offered gratefully.
• • •
We were awakened by the ambulance.
Kyle went out to find out what he could while I showered. He came in while I was drying off.
“Mr. Francis died of a heart attack last night.” He had an odd expression on his face. Hard not to feel some relief, I guessed—and harder not to feel guilty over it. “I guess we won’t be getting any more notes.” He frowned at me, then donned his lawyer face. “Warren?”
Among the health issues our neighbor had retired with was a weak heart. Much easier to explain a heart attack than death by wild animals. This was the twenty-first century after all, not the nineteenth.
“I’d have gotten more satisfaction if I could have sunk my teeth into him,” I told Kyle, rubbing the towel over my hair with a little more force than necessary. “Apparently he decided that you’d never be a neighbor he could cow properly. He hired Nadia, Elizaveta’s niece, to kill you.”
“Mr. Francis?” Kyle said incredulously. I pulled the towel off my head to see him standing slack-jawed. “Mr. Francis hired a witch to make a zombie to kill me?” After a moment, he shook off his shock. “I thought for sure it would be Nyelund.”
“Covington said she’d pay for half if we told her who hired someone to kill you,” I told him. “It was Sullivan who shot me”—Kyle looked at the red mark on my shoulder that was all that was left of the wound—“but he won’t be a threat to anyone anymore.”
Nadia broke Sullivan—but she’d aimed that magic at me, too. I wasn’t supposed to think about Kyle anymore, I was supposed to leave off the investigation with the feeling that everything would be all right. And I wasn’t supposed to remember the magic she’d worked to ensure that result. She’d spent so long teaching everyone to underestimate her, she’d overestimated herself.
Kyle frowned at me. “Tell me.”
So I told him about Sean Nyelund while I got dressed. I paced restlessly and told him about Nadia while he sat on the bench at the foot of the bed and watched me.
“Justice was served, Warren,” he said when I finished. “I’m sorry it had to be you who served it.”
“I’m not,” I told him. I’d only done what I needed to protect my own. I’d do it again.
He smiled a little as if he knew something I didn’t. “If you say so.”
“She was right,” I said.
“Who was?”
“Nadia. She said the red dress might be useful in finding out who’d killed Toni McFetters.”
He reached up and caught my hand, pulling me down to sit beside him.
“You liked her,” he told me.
“She had a prom photo in her house.” On top of the curio cabinet. “Toni’s husband had taken Nadia to her high school prom. That red dress Toni was wearing? It was Nadia’s prom dress; so were the pearls and shoes, near as I could tell. He’d taken her to the prom and hardly remembered her.” She’d remembered him, though. I’d expected to have to search her house for Toni’s missing belongings or, if that hadn’t worked, wake Nadia up and question her. She’d made things easy for me.
“Elizaveta only objected that she’d exposed herself as a witch to the humans,” Kyle said. “If you hadn’t told her that, she would have left Nadia alone. You didn’t have to kill her.” He put his arm around me. “Tell me that’s not what you’re thinking now. Tell me that’s not what is bothering you.”
It wasn’t. Not quite. I was thinking that she had attacked Kyle and part of me would have been happier if I’d eaten her. It had taken more will than I’d thought I had not to eat the old man next door, who was even more to blame than Nadia.