Kyrie sat down in Rafiel's car, narrowing her eyes at him. "You won't shift while driving?"
Rafiel gave her a blank, puzzled look. "Why would I do such a stupid thing?" He frowned. "It would end up in an accident."
Kyrie shrugged. She'd rather cut her own tongue out with a blunt knife, than tell him how close she'd come to shifting, herself. "I just thought, you know . . . since one shifts when stressed . . ."
He looked away from the windshield past which Kyrie could see no more than a dazzling whiteness of snow, seeming to radiate from the center of the two light cones cast by the headlights. "Why would I be stressed?" he asked. He held the wheel lightly enough to make her want to growl at him—and she was fairly sure that this had nothing to do with an urge to shift.
He put the car in gear and started out of the parking lot, seemingly perfectly sure of where he was going. How he could be sure, Kyrie didn't know. Perhaps he was flying by instruments. She glared at him.
He looked out the windshield again and drove at what seemed to her a disgustingly high speed towards Fairfax. As the silence lengthened between them, he turned, "What?" he said.
Kyrie was so surprised he seemed to be aware of her disapproval that she felt her cheeks flush and started to open her mouth to justify herself. Before she could, he reached over and patted her arm awkwardly. "I grew up here," he said, in a tone that made it almost an apology. "I learned to drive in winter." He shrugged, as he stopped for a light that was no more than a diffuse red glow ahead. "I'm sure you'll get more comfortable with it in time."
The tone was sympathetic and attempting to be friendly but it felt patronizing and she had to bite back a wish to swat his ears and put him in his place. The image that came to her mind was of a paw swatting at his feline ears. She felt her lips twist upwards, and looked out the passenger window—though she could not see anything more than blinding white snow. "So, how do you think shifters are involved in this?" she asked, in as serious a voice as she could muster.
Without looking, she could sense he'd shrugged. Probably some slight rustle of cloth as his shoulders rose and fell. "I don't know. Not as victims."
"So you think they are . . . ?"
She looked back in time to see him shake his head. "I don't know," he said. "We've already found that some shifters feel the urge to kill in their . . . well . . . their other form. Perhaps that was it."
"Or perhaps just . . . you know, shifters that kill, like other people kill."
He gave a startled bark of laughter. "Oh, yes, very sensible. I should have thought of that, of course. I mean, we're shifters, we're not saints. The animal urge is not necessary to explain killing, is it? As I know only too well from police work."
"Well . . ." Kyrie said.
"No, trust me, it makes sense. Sometimes, with all this, we run the risk of thinking we're completely apart from humanity and different from them, and of course, we're not. We're humans, like all others. Or almost."
"Given a certain tendency to change shapes, yes, exactly," Kyrie said. "Just like all others."
Rafiel slowed down and leaned all the way forward. "I hope this is Ocean Street," he said. "Because I surely can't read that sign."
"So glad to know the superpowers of Colorado natives don't cover everything."
"You should be, otherwise imagine the envy you'd be forced to feel. Everyone would want to be born in Colorado. It would get crowded in the hospitals," Rafiel said. "But what I was saying . . . perhaps I'm foolish to feel guilty for all shifters, or at least to feel I must protect them from . . . you know, the majority of people—like I must . . ." He turned neatly into the parking lot beside a tall cylindrical building with broad rounded windows. "Like I must be the law for our people—those of us who hide amid other people." He looked at her, and for the first time in a long, long time, she detected a look of insecurity about him, as if he were young and not completely confident about what he thought or should be doing. "I guess you think I'm an idiot. I mean, we don't even know how many of us there are, and here I am, trying to keep them safe, as if I knew them personally."
"Not an idiot," she said, immediately, in reaction to his expression more than anything. "You feel a duty to . . . people like us, I guess." A little gurgle of laughter tore through her throat, surprising her. "Frankly, at first, that was why I helped Tom last year, when he found the body in the parking lot. I wasn't sure if he'd killed anyone or not, but I'd never met anyone else like me—you know, never having had a family. So I figured, he was my responsibility to look after. I'd guess you feel something like that."
"Yeah, but I'd feel better, if I didn't have reason to suspect a lot of our people . . . I mean, a lot of people like us have . . . issues controlling themselves."
"Other people do too," she said. And shrugged. "Now, let's go see if I can confirm your supposed shifter-smell. It's unlikely I can help you, since you have a better sense of smell than any of us."
"I just want . . . second opinion," he said. And got out of the car. On the road, behind them, tires squealed.