Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

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.