"Seriously," Rafiel said, speaking in an undertone to Tom's back, as Tom industriously scraped at the grill. "How many of your clients are shifters?"
Tom gave Rafiel a look over his shoulder, half startled. "I told you. You and Old Joe."
"You know better. You know because of the pheromones the . . . former owners . . . sprayed this place with it, attract shifters. They attracted you and Kyrie, didn't it? Right off the bus. Unless you have a better explanation as to why you and Kyrie found little Goldport, Colorado so irresistible. They attracted me, which is perhaps more easily explainable, since I'm a policeman and I work the night shift. So, failing a really good twenty-four-hour doughnut shop in town . . ." He smiled a self-conscious smile, glad Tom was turning around—spatula still in hand—and answered his joke with a chuckle. "You could say an all-night greasy spoon is the closest thing to my natural habitat. But how can you truly believe we're the only ones?"
Tom shrugged. "I don't know, Rafiel. I don't think there are that many of our kind of people, period. There was an orangutan shifter, back in New York. And of course, the Great Sky Dragon and his brood. And there is, of course, Old Joe and you and Kyrie. But that's out of thousands of people, Rafiel. I don't think there are that many of us to gather here. Or anywhere."
"What you mean is that you don't think there are that many of them in the vicinity. But how far does the call of the pheromones extend? How far will it bring shifters, do you know? How many casual travelers, how many students, will stop here and stay? How many of those do you have as regulars, Tom?"
Tom shrugged. He set the spatula down and leaned over the counter, so that they could talk to each other in a whisper and with a modicum of privacy. "I don't know," he said. "You figured out how to smell shifters before either Kyrie or I did. Can't you smell out shifters in the diner, and tell me how many shifters there are here?"
Rafiel shrugged. "Not always. When people wear perfume, or even cologne, sometimes it's hard to tell. When I was in high school—" He stopped abruptly.
"Yes?" Tom asked.
Rafiel shrugged. He'd never told Tom this. He had never told anyone, not even his parents. The incident, secret though it was, had crystalized for him exactly what risk shifters were in, and how their very natures placed them outside the purview of normal legality. Of what other people would see as reality.
Tom was watching him intently and Rafiel sighed and gave in. "When I was in high school, I had a girlfriend. This was around the time I started shifting, but I shifted mostly late at night, and provided I took care not to have dates on full-moon nights, we were okay. She was . . . she seemed very easygoing and was willing to postpone dates and take my less than convincing excuses. Still, when I graduated I went away to Denver to study law enforcement, and it was either break up or get married and, you know, I couldn't get married. Not and risk her figuring out what I really was. So we broke up. Alice stayed behind and worked . . . actually at The George. The Athens as it then was. And then when I came back for Christmas . . ." He shrugged. "Well, you know, being a shifter and all, and the first year at college I had to be in dorms . . ."
"I always wondered how that worked," Tom said.
"Not well. So I was convinced I wanted to quit school, and I came back home for Christmas, and I was going to tell Dad I couldn't be an officer, after all, which would break his heart. Anyway, when I got here I found out Alice was missing. Had been missing for some days. I shifted. I trailed her . . . well . . . her scent. I found her dead. She had been killed because she was a shifter. She was . . ." He looked up at Tom and saw, reflected in the other man's face the strange, hollow grief he himself felt. "She was a lion shifter. And her new boyfriend caught her shifting and . . . you know . . . killed her. He was scared. I . . ." He shook his head, trying to free himself of memories of the past and Alice's soft brown eyes. "I never knew it. Even though I was with her, every day, I never smelled the shifter in her. She wore a perfume that had the same sort of undertone, and it got lost in the perfume."
He was quiet a while, unable to find words to continue.
"I'm sorry," Tom said, in a low voice.
Rafiel managed a chuckle. "Well, it was a long time ago. Ten years. But you see, if I could smell shifters that well, I'd have known. I did not."
"And you became a policeman," Tom said, softly.
Rafiel shrugged. "Someone official needs to be looking out for our kind, which is what this is all about. I didn't count on the diner becoming the center of shifters for miles around." He gave Tom a smile he was sure looked sickly.
"And why are you so interested in how many of our regulars might be shifters?" Tom asked.
"Well, I figure the aquarium isn't that far away, and if there was a shifter . . . well . . . it might have been one of your regulars who was there, and we might be able to tag him on his specific scent. And then I could question him, you know, without seeming to, and if it turned out to just be someone who went to the aquarium for fun or something . . ." He drew to a halt slowly. The truth was he didn't want this murder to involve any shifters. He didn't want to have to lie and skulk and go behind his superiors' backs.
Oh, Goldport was a small enough town, and the police department was somewhat informal and friendly. Rafiel was a third generation cop in the same department. He could get away with a lot. But he didn't like to. He was a policeman because he prized the idea of a justice system based on laws. He didn't approve of anyone defiling it. Not even himself.
"Rafiel," Tom said, laughter at the back of his throat, trying to cut through the words. "Are you truly suggesting we go up to all our regulars and smell them? Half of them are college students or warehouse workers who come here after work. You know what they smell like."
"No. I mean . . . no, I don't think that would work. Perfume and all. But . . . just keep your nose open, okay?"
Tom nodded and opened his mouth as though he were about to add something, but at that moment Kyrie came up to them. "He says he was sent to protect you, Tom. That the Great Sky Dragon said he tried to warn you and you didn't seem to get it."