Date: 2014-01-01 08:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Mystery
Description: In this delectable fantasy romp, a shape-shifting private detective with sexual identity issues hunts a serial killer preying on the Supernatural community Who but the indomitable Piers Anthony could write a hard-boiled detective-novel-fantasy-comic thriller featuring demons, succubi, zombies, ghosts, serial murder, gender bending, and a healthy dose of good, clean sex? Anthony’s remarkable imagination has taken glorious flight once again with WereWoman —and no one does it quite like Piers Anthony! The classy dame who walks into fledgling private eye Philemon’s office is like Venus in motion a
Publisher: Open Road Media
Rights: All rights are reserved.

WEREWOMAN

Piers Anthony

Contents

1. Witch

2. Bear

3. Sydelle

4. Suspects

5. Searching

6. Memories

7. Demon

8. Ghost

9. Succuba

10. Zombie

11. Trap

Author’s Note

Chapter 1:

Witch

It was the first hour of my first official day as a Private Investigator, and I was nervous. What did I really have to recommend myself for such a job? I was abysmally untrained, with no experience and little idea what to do despite having passed the night school PI courses. I had rented a modest office with borrowed money and hired the secretary/treasurer who made the loan; she at least had some faint notion what it was all about. I had put out my PI shingle just as if I were a pro. Would I actually get any paying clients, and would I be able to satisfy them? There was an almost tangible cloud of doubt surrounding me. Normally I was a reasonably confident ignorant young person, but now I had the shakes.

“Relax; it’s not you, it’s me,” Syd said from her desk. More specifically, Sydelle, the name meaning “enchantress,” though she wasn’t. She was five years my senior, a dishwater blonde of modest proportions whose face was not her fortune, and my best friend’s girlfriend. That last surely accounted for the majority of her support for me.

“You?” I asked somewhat blankly.

“You know my secondary is intuition. I have a feeling of disaster, and it’s happening within twenty-four hours. I’m drum-tight, and you’re picking up on it.”

Her secondary: all Supernaturals, Supes for short, were reputed to have three powers: primary, secondary, tertiary. Secondary was almost universally the semi-telepathic ability to recognize another Supe. But with some it was more. Syd could also foresee the future, or at least a bit of it. “Disaster? You mean I’m going to bomb out on my first day.”

She smiled, briefly. “No. You’re fine, Phil. You’ve got what it takes, once you get it muscled into shape. But something dreadful is going to happen. We just have to be ready for it.”

“Like closing the office until tomorrow?” I asked almost hopefully.

“No! The office is our main defense against it. I’ve known this all along. Known that we had to get it moving today, so as not to be too late.”

So she had had more than just friendship motivating her. “Too late for what?”

“The horror.”

“You aren’t reassuring me much, Syd,” I said.

She opened her mouth, but paused, looking at the cheap glass door. I followed her glance. There was the blurred outline of a person approaching the office. A client—or a horror?

The door opened and a lovely young woman entered. Perfect face, flowing long dark hair, hourglass figure under a slightly translucent dress, legs like a statue of Venus in motion: the kind I dreamed of dating, knowing it would never happen. Oh, I was handsome and smart enough, but I had no money and less self-assurance. Women picked up on that rapidly.

“Hello,” she said. “I’m Nonce.”

She was a Witch! I knew it the moment she spoke.

“Hello, Nonce,” I responded with more confidence than I felt. “I’m Phil, PI. What can I do for you?”

“My cousin Standish was murdered three days ago. You must find his killer.”

“Now wait two seconds,” I said. “Murder is way beyond my competence. That’s for the police to handle.”

She reached out and took my hand in hers. I felt a tingle; she was just so pretty. “Phil, you know better than that. He’s a Warlock.”

A male Witch. It figured. Supernaturalism did not run in families, but neither did it avoid them. No Supe wanted the mundane police getting involved in their business; mundanes simply did not understand about Supes. It had been that way since soon after time began; we were off the radar, written off as folklore. That was the way we wanted it. “Warlocks are notoriously hard to kill.”

“Precisely. We believe that only another Supe could have done it. So this is a matter for a Supe to handle.”

“A Witch or Warlock,” I said. “I am neither.”

“You’re a Were and a PI. You will do.”

“You need a thoroughly experienced investigator,” I argued. “Not a beginner.” No need to mention that I was only eighteen with no more than a high school education and a trade school certificate; I was already doing a competent job of denigrating my qualifications.

“I need you, Phil,” she insisted, kneading my fingers with hers. The result was electric. “I know your secondary.”

I glanced at Syd, who was sitting at her desk without expression. That was a bad sign. Was this the disaster she anticipated? It seemed likely. “Nonce, I’m not eager to make a fool of myself on my first day. I don’t think I can help you.”

“Are you trying to make me use my power?” she asked.

“I am trying to be candid. I think I would make a mess of this case.”

“Because if I use my power on you, you will fathom my Name. As I said, I know your secondary.”

Which was to fathom the essential magic of other Supes, including their most secret Names and thoughts. When they exercised that magic. Nonce had evidently done her homework, as that was not a talent I bruited about. “I wasn’t trying to trick you,” I said. “Murder is not for a beginner.”

“If I employ my magic, I can make you commit to this case,” she continued inexorably. “But then you’ll know my secret nature. I’m not ready for that.”

“So go find a PI who can do what you need,” I said. “I’m not the one.”

“So I’ll have to persuade you by hand,” she said.

By hand? “I don’t think I understand.”

She dug into her purse and brought out a shining gold coin. I knew at a glance that it was worth about two thousand dollars. “That would cover my retainer,” I said. “But I’d be cheating you.”

She brought out another coin, and a third, watching me. “There’s more where this comes from. Universal currency. You can surely use it.”

I surely could! “Nonce—”

“But it seems you are not for sale for money alone.” She set the three coins on Syd’s desk. “I like that. But more is required.”

“I’m trying to avoid wasting your money,” I said. “I’d love to take your case if I thought I could manage it, but—”

“In addition, this.” She stepped into me and kissed me on the mouth. The impact was like a velvet-lined sledgehammer. I had heard that Witches could kiss. That was an understatement.

It took me a timeless moment to disengage my mouth, grab desperately for a thought, and speak. “I can’t—”

“And this.” She caught hold of my hands and set them on her pert posterior. Oh, what evocative flesh! It conjured surging desire. I had to resist it while I still could.

“Please, Nonce, don’t—”

“And this.” The front of her dress fell open to expose splendidly bare breasts. She caught my hands again and placed them on each globe.

“What are you doing?” I demanded, unable to keep from squeezing those phenomenal orbs.

“I’m seducing you by hand,” she said. “No magic. Commit, and I’ll be your girlfriend for the duration of the case, with all that implies. You will have the friendship of my thighs.”

She was serious! That frightened me. She was using no Witchly magic, yet she would soon have me into sex with her right here in front of Syd. The potential friendship of her thighs was maddeningly conducive.

“I’ll consider it!” I said desperately. “Give me twenty-four hours.”

“That will do,” she agreed. “I knew you would be reasonable once you appreciated the gravity of the case.” She stepped back, her dress closing up. “He was shot through the head with a silver bullet from his own gun, still in his hand. A sightly woman was seen with him shortly before.”

“It could have been depression over a failed romance,” I said.

“No. It was posed as a suicide, to fool the mundanes, but it wasn’t. I think the woman was a Supe, maybe a Succuba, and she had a grudge of some sort and killed him.”

“How can you be sure? Men do get ensorcelled by women, even without magic, as you just demonstrated with me. A Succuba would certainly be capable.”

She smiled. “The friendly thighs, of course. Nature does have the best magic. But this was not the case with my cousin.”

“Why not?”

“Because he was gay. He didn’t advertise it; I was one of the very few who knew. But even if he had been depressive, which he was not, he never would have suicided over a woman.”

“You may have a case,” I agreed reluctantly. “Give me his personal data, and I will ponder overnight. I still think this is too much for me.”

“I hope you change your mind.” She gave me the Warlock’s home and office addresses, but didn’t know what projects he was working on. She kissed me again, lightly. In a moment she was gone, leaving only the coins behind, and my whirling emotions.

“She wants you to take the case,” Syd said with classic understatement.

I wanted it too, against my better judgment. If only to satisfy the passion the Witch had so artfully instilled in me. Those thighs! “But is this the disaster you intuit?”

She considered. “I think not. That still looms. Nonce seems to be innocent, at least in this respect.”

“So I can take the case without triggering the horror?”

“And get a temporary girlfriend in the bargain. I understand that Witches make the very best lovers, when they try, and she seems inclined to try.”

“But I’m not competent for this level!” I protested. “Murder of a Warlock? That’s heavy-duty mischief.”

“She certainly is a looker. No magic, no illusion, just garden-variety makeup and clothing. I appreciate why she eschewed magic, considering your ability, but why is she so eager for you to take the case? Something doesn’t add up.”

“It doesn’t,” I agreed morosely. “What should I do?”

“Send Mena to check out the Warlock.”

“But he’s dead!”

“Phil, I don’t think we have yet ascertained the limit of your power. That Warlock must have been into something deep, and had a powerful presence. You may be able to relate to that. We need to know why the Witches want a Were to do their dirty work.” She glanced at the coins still sitting on the desk. “And we can certainly use the money.”

I nodded. “Mena it is.”

At one a.m. I parked a discreet distance from the office building where the Warlock Standish had worked, according to Nonce’s information and Syd’s spot research. It was closed for the night, with only standby lights on. I walked to the front entrance and used my skeleton card to finesse the lock, gaining admittance without setting off the alarm. Par for the course; the building thought I was a legitimate late visitor. And I was, in a way.

The office was on the fourth floor. I took the elevator to the sixth floor, then walked down two flights, routinely concealing my target floor. I was a new PI, but I had I hoped mastered the basics. There wasn’t even an electronic alert on the office, let alone a magical ward; that was foolishly careless of the Witches. But the alerts had surely been active when the Warlock was killed, here and at his home. Who had done it, and why? Syd’s research showed he had no serious enemies, and not many friends either; Nonce had been the main one, working closely with him on more than one Witchly project.

Nonce. Just how close had their relationship been? They were cousins and coworkers and friends; had they been more than friends? The Witch hadn’t hesitated to use her considerable sex appeal on me; what about on him? She said he was gay, but that wasn’t necessarily the case. To Witches, sex was a tool like any other, to be used when required. Or could he have spurned her, and she killed him, then sought out a marginally competent outside Were investigator to bungle the investigation so that any suspicion would be diverted from her? I didn’t like to think of her that way, or myself, but as a PI I had to consider all likely suspects.

More likely he had gotten into something that impinged the prospects of another Supernatural, and paid the penalty. That, too, could have a romantic twist: if another Warlock was hot for Nonce, but she was hot only for Standish, he might have eliminated Standish so as to have free access to her. Furious, she might suspect the killer, but need more evidence than she had. To be sure of privacy, she might have elected to go outside the Witch community, and hire a Were.

But all this was blind speculation. I needed to know more about the Warlock before I even decided to take the case. I charmed the door’s lock and entered the office. The gentle illumination of the night lights sufficed; I had no trouble navigating it. I stood before the central office desk and looked about.

There was only the desk; other furniture had been cleared out. The desk had manually locked file space. This was almost too easy; anything of substance must have been removed, so there was no point in securing access to whatever remained. But if the Warlock had been cunning, he might have hidden his most important files in plain sight. Those were the ones I needed to see.

I jimmied open the central drawer. It was empty except for a single key. Voila! I took the key and used it to unlock the file drawers. There were several file folders, real ones, not electronic imitations, maybe copies for safekeeping, or simply avoiding the inevitable snooping that occurred on electronic files. It had long been known that few secrets could be kept on the Internet, regardless what claims were made for privacy. A Supe could not be too careful. I withdrew one folder, extracted the first paper, and focused closely in the faint light to read it.

It was notes for a Witchly project reminiscent of one known for decades in fantasy fiction: a room whose six walls (counting floor and ceiling) were television screens, so that they could form a complete visual, auditory, and perhaps tactile environment, immersing the occupant in the scene. A notable fictive one had featured a children’s room attuned to “The Veldt” with African plants and animals, and a pride of lions feeding in the background. As the story went, when the parents threatened to turn off the room, lest it corrupt the children, the vengeful children arranged to make it real, and the lions ate the parents. Impossible, of course, scientifically.

But this wasn’t science. This was magic using the science concept as a model. With magic it might indeed become feasible to make a room that could become a real veldt, or any other global scene. And Standish was evidently one who could make it happen. That might indeed incite a killing frenzy, if some other Supe believed he was the target for such a trap. Lure him into the innocuous seeming room, change the setting, send him somewhere lethal, change the setting back to innocent after he was gone, and no one would know what happened to him. Who might that be?

The client’s name was in code; no help there. But I might get it anyway, using my power. Because the ambiance of the Warlock was strong here; he had touched this file often, imbuing it to an extent with his potent magic. I just might be able to fathom his essence, his secret Name, from this file. With that, the avenues for information were magnitudinally greater. Syd evidently thought this was a possibility. Normally I gleaned Names only when a Supe did magic in my presence, but possibly this counted.

I focused, expending my special awareness to intersect the lingering aura of the Warlock Standish, and slowly it came. His Name was—

Hool, I breathed.

Suddenly the office was flooded with light. Oh, crap! I had avoided the ordinary wards but been caught by the key one: the Name. The trap was to catch whoever uttered it. I couldn’t use it for magic myself, because it was not my Name; I could only try to fathom its connections. I had been a fool.

“Mena, I presume?”

That was Nonce! But at least I had the wit to pretend not to recognize her. “You evidently know me better than I know you,” I said as my eyes adapted. I conjured patches of illusion color to cover my bare breasts and crotch. The Witch was just as shapely as she had been in my office, but she did not turn me on now.

“I am Witch Nonce. I invited you here so I could talk to you, Mena.”

“I have nothing to say to you, Witch. I am on my own mission, uninvited.”

“Let me be a bit more clear: yesterday I approached the private investigator Phil Were to hire his services to investigate the murder of my associate the Warlock Standish. I knew he would try to investigate first, by sending his female agent. In this manner I succeeded in isolating you so I could talk with you alone.”

“I do not talk with Phil’s clients,” I said. “I only investigate. He wants the late Warlock’s Name, so he can learn more about the man’s supernatural activities, which may have gotten him killed. I have gotten the Name and will report to Phil in due course. He will tell you more thereafter if he chooses to.”

“Therein lies the rub,” Nonce said. “Phil may not commit to this case. So I want to hire you, as you evidently have the required skills.”

“I am not for hire,” I said stoutly. “I work only for Phil.”

She viewed me assessingly. “And what else do you provide him, apart from your investigative skills? I see you are a pretty woman.”

“Nothing!” I retorted hotly. “Our relationship is not of that nature.”

“That’s good. Then it won’t concern you if I have my own little affair with him.”

“He mentioned your friendly thighs,” I said derisively.

“I can offer you gold,” Nonce said. “Enough to make you independent.”

“I have all the independence I need.”

She sighed. “So I can’t hire you directly.”

“No one can hire me directly. I am committed to Phil. Now if that’s all, I will be on my way.”

“That is all,” Nonce agreed. “I appreciate your loyalty.”

“Well I don’t appreciate yours. You’re trying to undercut Phil, and I won’t have it. When I report to him, I’ll tell him not to take your case. Which is too bad, as he was really intrigued by your friendly thighs.” I walked past her, out the door, and took the elevator down, a little surprised that she didn’t try to stop me.

Outside I ducked around a corner, cut back, and watched the building from another street. There was no pursuit. So I returned circuitously to the car, got in, and drove away, still alert for any tail. Only when I got safely home did I exert my primary power, speak my Name, Vul, and transform back to male. My night’s stint as the WereWoman Philomena, Mena for short, was done.

Had I really fooled Nonce? I tried to keep my Were-form secret from all but my closest associates, like Syd, but that was one canny Witch. I could not be sure what game she was playing.

Well, perhaps the morrow would tell. I did think it was best not to take this case, but now that I was male again, with the male hormones, I feared that I would be unable to resist the Witch’s allure.

Chapter 2:

Bear

“So that’s the story,” I concluded next day at the office. “Nonce tried to hire Mena away from me, in case I didn’t take the case.”

“She’s devious,” Syd agreed. “But that sort of thing goes with the territory. Witches are seldom straightforward.”

“You still don’t think she’s the disaster?”

“I don’t. But it’s looming. It will happen within the hour. Phil, I’m afraid.”

That made me nervous again. Syd was a pretty solid person, psychologically; she didn’t scare readily. So I changed the subject. “So should I take the Witch’s case? I admit I like the notion of her friendly thighs.”

“And I like the money.”

“Now that I know the Warlock’s Name, I should be able to track some of his supernatural contacts, and maybe identify his killer. At least now I have a slight grasp of the case. But I have to say that Nonce herself must be a suspect.”

“I doubt she’s the murderer, but you don’t have to guess. Get her to do her magic. Get her Name. Then you’ll know whether she’s guilty.”

“True.” I smiled. “I like the way you encourage me to get at those thighs.”

Sydelle was no prude. “She’s seducing you to get your business. Turnabout is fair play. Make her pay for your favor.”

The phone rang. Syd stiffened. “That’s it! I can’t answer!”

“I’ll do it,” I said. I picked up the phone. “Yeah?”

“Police notification of next of kin or closest associates for one Bear,” a gruff male voice said. “Only Philemon and Sydelle are listed.”

I felt a chill that froze my feet to the floor. “Philemon speaking.”

“Bear was in an auto accident. He’s being airlifted to the hospital. Not expected to survive.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Please keep us informed at this number.” I hung up. Then, to Syd: “It’s Bear. Probably dead.”

She screamed and dropped her face to the desk. Bear was her fiancé, and my closest friend. Her disaster had struck on schedule. Much worse than I had feared.

I sank into my own reverie of memory as my association with Bear flashed before me.

I was maybe eight years old when I first met Bear, then ten. I was trying to evade a bully who lurked on my route to school, and took a circuitous route. There he was, a hulking boy even at that age, walking the opposite way. Was I in even more trouble? I was wary of another potential bully, but could not avoid him.

He paused as he passed me. “You’re an odd one,” he said.

“Odd?” I asked nervously.

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“You’re a Were.”

“A what?”

“A Were. You can Change into another form.”

“Not that I know of,” I said. What kind of ploy was this?

“Come into the alley and I’ll show you.”

“Oh, no!” I said. “You beat me up, you’ve got to do it out in plain sight.”

“You’re getting picked on? It figures.”

“Yes. Something about me that turns other boys mean. I don’t know what.”

“Well, I do, and we can stop it. Come; I’m not going to hurt you. Weres don’t hurt Weres.”

There was that word again. There was something about his attitude that reassured me. “Okay.”

We went into the nearest alley. “Now watch,” Bear said. “I’m going to Change, but I’m still the same person inside, except stronger and less smart.”

“Okay,” I said uncertainly. I heard the capitalized Change; what did it mean?

“I have to use my secret Name. Don’t tell.”

“I won’t tell,” I agreed.

“And keep an eye out. If anybody comes, warn me.”

“I will,” I promised. This was weird.

“I got to take off my clothes first.”

I was too young and lucky to have encountered child molestation, so this meant nothing to me. “Okay.”

He stripped, revealing a powerful body. Then he stood there naked, took a deep breath, and said “Bar” in a kind of grunt.

And he Changed. His nose elongated, his ears became pointed, his eyes round. His teeth expanded. His arms and legs thickened and became hairy. He grew a tail.

I stared. This really was different! I had never seen anything like it.

In fact he was a small bear.

The process must have taken fifteen minutes, but I was mesmerized. Now I understood. He was like a WereWolf, only he was a WereBear.

“I see,” I said, too impressed to be afraid. “You really can Change.”

The bear nodded. Then he grunted. “Rab.” And he started to Change back.

When he was fully human again, I handed him his clothing, and he dressed. “I would never have believed it if you hadn’t shown me,” I said. “Thanks, Bear. This is awesome.”

“That’s what I figured,” he said. “You really don’t know. I had to show you so you know what you are.”

“I’m another WereBear?”

“No. Just a Were. One Were can tell another, but it’s foggy beyond that. I don’t know what kind you are, just that it’s odd.”

“How do I Change?” I asked, intrigued.

“First you have to devise your Name. That concentrates your magic essence and helps you do it.”

“I don’t believe in magic.”

“You’ll get over that.”

“I can just choose a Name, and be magic?”

“No. It has to be the right one. You’ll know it when you find it. When you do, don’t tell anyone else, because that would give them power over you. Keep it secret.”

“But you shared yours with me.”

“I sense that you can be trusted. You can be a friend. I don’t have many friends.”

“Neither do I,” I said. And that seemed to be the turning point; we became friends.

Bear walked me on to the school. I had started early, to avoid the bullies, so we weren’t quite late. But the bullies were there. “Philly!” one called gleefully. “Comere! Gimme a kiss!”

“A kiss?” Bear asked quietly.

“They say I’m handsome,” I explained. “Or pretty. A boy’s not supposed to be pretty. They tease me all the time. I hate it.”

“We’ll fix it,” he said confidently as we came up to the bullies.

“Philly’s got a boyfriend!” a bully exclaimed. “Kiss him, pretty boy!”

Bear’s hand reached out so fast the bully couldn’t avoid it. He caught the front of his shirt and almost lifted the boy off his feet. “How’s that, craphead?”

“Hey, let go!” the bully exclaimed, outraged, and his friends closed in for the kill. Bear was bigger than them, but not by much, and there were three of them. This stranger had the temerity to take them on?

Bear shoved him into the other two so hard all three stumbled awkwardly. “What’s this about kissing?” he demanded.

The three did not scare readily. They came forward together. “Now you’re going to get it, prettyboy lover.”

“Are you threatening me?” Bear inquired. “Because if I thought you were, I’d do this.” His fist struck the center boy in the chest so hard it knocked the wind out of him. Without pausing Bear caught the other two by their heads and knocked them together just hard enough to hurt. “In fact I might get mad. You wouldn’t like me much when I’m mad.” It was a play on a popular movie, but he wasn’t smiling.

They did not reply. They were too busy rubbing their bruises.

“Now get this, morons,” Bear continued. “Phil here is my friend. Anybody beats on him or even teases him will answer to me. Got it?”

They stared at him rebelliously.

He stepped toward them, his strong arms reaching. “Got it?” he repeated with more force.

Now they answered. “Got it,” the leader agreed, intimidated. He knew when he was up against a bigger bully.

Bear nodded. “Spread the word. It annoys me when kids are stupid. I don’t want to have to do this again.”

The two of us walked on, leaving the bullies behind. “That was something!” I said, awed.

“Weres look out for Weres.”

“You sure looked out for me! But I don’t know how I can repay the favor.”

Bear shrugged. “You don’t have to. Just be my friend.”

“I’ll be your friend,” I agreed, dazed.

He walked me to my schoolroom, then went on to his. I was in third grade, he in fifth grade, same school.

Between classes I passed the bullies in the hallway. They completely ignored me. They had gotten the message. They never bothered me again.

I walked home with Bear, not for protection but because I liked him. He was the first boy who had stood up for me. Also, there was this “Were” business. He could Change into a bear, and he was sure I could do something similar. I wanted to know what. There was something about him I could sense; it could be that I was picking up on his Wereness, as he said Weres could recognize each other. We walked to and from school regularly thereafter, and no one ever even looked askance. The word had indeed gotten around. Just as well, because if they ever tried to gang up on Bear, he could Change and really maul them.

I looked up WereWolf in my dictionary, and learned that it meant man-wolf: a man who could become a wolf. Or, in India, a tiger, or in South America, a jaguar. There were many types, and certainly a WereBear was within the framework. Were obviously meant man as in mankind, not gender, so theoretically there would be female Weres too. So was I a wolf? Bear didn’t think so; he called me odd, with no disparagement. What could be odd to a Were?

Time passed, and I studied the subject without letting others know. I knew that just as there was continuing if muted prejudice against minorities, such as foreigners, Jews, or gays, it wouldn’t be muted against Weres. The consensus seemed to be that there were limits, such as the conservation of mass: there could not be a WereHummingbird or a WereElephant. Bear was a big boy and a small bear. Whatever I was had to be my same weight.

One day I passed a new girl in the school hall, and felt it: she was a Were! I halted, turning to look at her, only to find her doing the same. “You’re one!” she breathed.

“Can we meet after school?” I asked. She was ordinary, neither pretty nor plain, with short curly brown hair and brown eyes, but her Were-aura made appearance almost irrelevant. In fact it made her supremely attractive to me.

“Yes!” She was reacting to me the way I was reacting to her. We were like two magnets.

We did meet in the few minutes before she had to board her school bus home. We exchanged introductions. She was Molly, my age of eleven, just transferred here because of brutal teasing at her prior school.

“I know how it is,” I said. “You must meet my friend Bear.”

“Is he—?”

“Yes. He scared off the bullies.”

“Girls are mean in different ways.”

“But maybe he can help. Look, Molly, can you miss the bus? I know my folks will drive you home if I ask them to. We’ve just got to get to know each other better.”

“The bus is worse than the classes,” she said, signaling her acceptance of the deal.

I took her to meet Bear. He too spotted her nature instantly, and she his. They shook hands. “I’m a bitch,” she said. “A female wolf.”

“I’m a bear, like my name.”

“I don’t know what I am,” I said, feeling vaguely excluded.

The three of us walked to my home, talking all the way. Bear left us there, and I took Molly inside. “Mom, my friend Molly missed the bus, and I told her—”

Mom assessed the situation instantly. She had never said so, but I knew she was a bit wary of my close association with Bear, maybe fearing I was going to turn out gay. I was with a girl! “Of course. Get in the car.”

“It’s so wonderful to meet you and Bear,” Molly confided as we rode in the back seat.

“We’re glad to meet you too.” That was about all I could say, because of course my Were nature was secret from my parents, as Bear’s was to his folks, and surely Molly’s to hers. We all instinctively knew that we could reveal ourselves only to our own kind.

We arrived at her house in the suburb. “Thank you so much,” Molly said to Mom. Then she quickly kissed me on the cheek and got out.

I was eleven, too young to date. Theoretically too young to love. But that kiss electrified me. I had an instant crush on Molly.

Mom had seen it in the rear view mirror. She said nothing, but did not disapprove. I had a girlfriend. No one teased me about it, maybe because that would annoy Bear. No one teased Molly either, maybe for the same reason. Bear was the toughest boy in school, and girls admired that.

Both Bear and Molly worked with me to find my Were-form. First I had to find my Name. I struggled, and finally centered on Luv, maybe because I loved Molly and Bear, in different ways. I repeated it endlessly, concentrating on changing, while they urged me on. And finally it happened: I felt the shift beginning. I hastily got out of my clothes, knowing they were an impediment, not caring that Molly could see me naked; she understood absolutely, and had been naked before me when she Changed.

And I became—a girl. Both Bear and Molly stared. Then they both felt me, thinking there was some mistake. But it was true. I lost some height and got broader across the hips, and my legs filled out somewhat. I did not have breasts, but I had lost my penis and formed a vulva. I was definitely female.

“That’s why you’re odd!” Bear said. “Maybe a girl is a different kind of creature.”

“If Were means man, woman means not-man,” Molly said. “You’re a WereWoman.”

I looked at her with dismay. “Does this finish you and me?”

She laughed. “Not at all! Some time we’ll go out together in a forest, woman and bitch. Otherwise I know you, Phil. You’re definitely a boy.”

“I definitely am,” I agreed. “I’m in a girl’s body, but I’m still male.”

“Just as I’m still a girl when I’m a bitch,” she agreed.

“And I’m a boy when I’m a bear,” Bear said.

“But I think you need a little help,” Molly said. “I’ll get you one of my old dresses, next time, and show you how to do your hair and makeup.”

“Thanks,” I said weakly. Then I spoke my Name backward, Vul, and slowly shifted back to male. I had accomplished my first Change.

As a male I was Philemon, Phil for short. As a female I was Philomena, Mena for short. I did go for walks in the forest as Mena, with Molly the Wolf. That gave us both practice in the forms. Sometimes Bear joined us, as the bear. It was great.

In the course of the next few months not only did I become practiced in changing forms, I began to fill out in the female manner. Molly lent me her old training bra, then a fuller one, glad to facilitate my conversion. She taught me how to be a girl. When we went on a three-person date to a movie, Bear with two pretty if rather young girls, and the only stares we got were of envy, I knew I had graduated. I would not have chosen to be female; I would much rather have been an ordinary wolf like Molly. But at least I was getting competent with what I was.

Next year Molly and I were twelve and Bear was fourteen, in ninth grade. She was forming into a shapely young woman. Other boys took an interest in her, but she brushed them off, staying with me. I too was maturing in my Were state, actually into an even more shapely creature. “You’re a knockout!” Bear said, and Molly agreed, without envy. But I still didn’t feel female; it was strictly an act, apart from the body.

We saw less of Bear now, because he was in high school, but we remained in touch on weekends. We became aware of a problem. “I’d like to attend the Prom,” Bear said. “It’s the prime social event. But I have no date.”

“There are many girls who would like to go,” Molly said. “Ask one.”

He fidgeted. “I’m not good with girls. I like them, but I can’t handle them the way I can boys.” It was true; he had no girlfriend. He was big and strong, and girls admired him, at least from a distance, but he wasn’t much for social graces. He would mess it up if he tried to ask one, humiliating himself.

I remembered how much I owed him. I thought of a way to perhaps repay some of it. “Maybe you could take Molly. There’s no age limit on dates.”

“She’s your girl! I wouldn’t touch her.”

Molly picked up on it. “You wouldn’t have to kiss me or feel me. Just escort me and dance with me. Treat me like a lady. I could show you what to do, beginning with some dancing lessons. It could be fun.”

He gazed at her with dawning hope. He was a klutz with girls, but Molly was different, being another Were. “You’d do that?”

“Weres look out for Weres.”

He was almost tearfully grateful. “Thank you! Thank you!” Then he looked at me. “If it’s really okay with you.”

“It was okay with me the moment you took care of those bullies, that first day.” It was true; I’d do just about anything for Bear, and I know he wouldn’t make a move on Molly.

We prepped him, helping him pick out the right clothing for himself, and a corsage for Molly. She danced with him, teaching him the steps, until he got it right. It was time consuming and expensive, but worth it. In the process I learned about dancing and proms too; that should help when I got to high school. I even practiced some as Mena, learning to let the man lead, learning to be girlish. I needed to be able to fake it, if I ever got caught out in that form.

The day before the Prom, Molly came down with the flu. No way she could go; she could hardly make it out of bed. “Oh, hell!” she swore, in angry tears when we visited her. “I’m letting you down.”

“It’s all right,” Bear said. But he was in grief. He had paid for everything, and now it was wasted. It was too late for him to get another date, even if he had the social grace to do it. He needed the support of Molly.

“Phil—” Molly said.

Oh, no! Was she thinking what I feared?

She was. “Mena knows the moves as well as you do,” she said. “My dress would fit her, with a little loosening in the bosom and hips. I think I could do that much, before I conk out entirely.”

“I—” I said, in a swirl of confusion. A public event, as a girl?

“We owe it to Bear,” she reminded me.

What could I do? “I’ll do it,” I agreed glumly.

So it was that I attended the Prom as Bear’s young date, using Molly’s dress, slippers, corsage, and makeup. She even managed to do my hair before she collapsed into the oblivion of the flu and medication. Yes, I was twelve, but Mena was a remarkably pretty girl, externally. My Phil handsomeness, I now appreciated, was probably a function of my Were status: there was a bit of the girl in me, carrying across. Conservation of appearance as well as mass, maybe.

We explained at the entrance that Bear’s date Molly had the flu, and I, as her friend from out of town, was substituting. All of which was true, if incomplete.

And it was glorious. I saw immediately that half the attendees were no more experienced than I was, making gaffs that embarrassed them and gratified me. I danced with Bear as we had practiced, thinking of myself as Molly, emulating her moves, focusing on making him look good. I drank punch in delicate sips, spilling none. Between dances I sat on the sideline and did not cross my legs.

Then came the other boys asking me to dance. I tried to demur, but then other girls took Bear onto the floor and I knew that this was a social coup for him I didn’t want to mess up. So we danced with others, and Bear was thrilled, and I was thrilled for him. Meanwhile I focused on not embarrassing him, by being the best dancer I could be, so they would know he had a quality date. It worked; I was amazed to find myself dancing with juniors and even seniors five years older than I. Not bad for a girl of twelve!

But there were negatives. Some of them danced me into obscure corners and grabbed feels, and I couldn’t stop them without making a scene. I simply took their hands and removed them from my buttocks as if the touches were accidental. It was harder to stop the looks down into my décolletage, or the too-tight embraces, or the rubbing bellies. But I realized that these were problems every girl faced, and consoled myself imagining their chagrin if they realized that they were doing it to a boy.

It was a relief to get back to Bear, whose hands behaved themselves. We finished out the Prom in excellent style.

And to my amazement, Mena even got an award for “most appealing visitor,” voted by the boys. I was more of a success than I had realized. I did not care to speculate whether the subtext was “most appealing ass.”

“Thanks!” Bear said as we got our ride home.

“Thank you for a wonderful evening,” I said graciously, and we both laughed.

We never spoke of it thereafter, because Mena had officially returned to her town, and Phil had not even been at the Prom. But we remembered our success. I understand that Molly got several requests for the address of her friend Mena, but she refused to tell.

Next year Molly’s family moved to another state, and she had no choice but to go with them, being only thirteen. I was heartbroken; maybe I was considered too young to be in love, but it certainly felt like it with her. We went on one final date the night before she left, and to hell with being too young; we had one thoroughly adult fling, the first sex for each of us. We exchanged letters for months thereafter, but gradually life got in the way, and we lost touch. But again, we remembered.

Then Bear made a remarkable contact. “There’s a club for Weres!” he exclaimed. “No listing of members, no ads in the media, but they know who we are. We’re invited to attend.”

We attended, I then being fifteen and he seventeen. It was like stepping into paradise. Every person there was a Were; we could feel it. There were fourteen, beside ourselves, and all of them sincerely welcomed us. They were from all around, some in town, some thirty miles away: all the known Weres of the region. Maybe only one person in ten thousand was born a Were, but we felt like a community.

It didn’t take us long to learn the rules of association: don’t inquire about what form of Were a person was, or about his or her Name. These things were kept private partly so that if any hostile force wanted to make a member betray the others, he would be largely unable. Also, there turned out to be other Supernaturals; Weres were merely a subdivision. There were Witches, Demons, Vampires, Incubi/Succubi, Ghosts, and Zombies, each with their own gatherings. The larger class of them was the Supes, for Supernaturals, and just as Weres looked out for Weres, Supes looked out to a lesser extent for Supes. Weres could learn to recognize the other types. All of them were hiding from the naturals, the ignorant mundane folk, who tended to react with dangerous fear. There had been too many pogroms, Witch burnings, Vampire stabbings, Demon exorcisms, and Ghost banishings. So it was best to treat other Supes with cautious courtesy, and never betray their secrets.

One more thing: they had classes in the power of illusion. All Weres, maybe all Supes had it, to one degree or another. It was invaluable as a supplement to changing forms; in fact sometimes illusion could substitute for form changing, and since it was instant, that could make a huge difference. We studied hard to master it.

Bear found a girlfriend in the gathering, a remarkable WereSerpent two or three years his senior but socially knowledgeable and happy to take him on. Paradise doubled!

And now he was dead. I wept together with Syd, both of us desolate for our separate reasons. She was the girlfriend he had found at the Were gathering. It was how we had come to know each other, both being close friends of Bear.

“Maybe we should shut down the office and go home,” I said.

She raised her tear-stained face. “We can’t. We have to deal with the Witch.”

So we did. We’d turn her project down, then go home to mourn unfettered.

What an opening week this had turned out to be!

Chapter 3:

Sydelle

Witch Nonce arrived promptly twenty-four hours after her first appearance at my office. I did not waste time with pointless politeness. “I can’t take your case.”

She gazed at me with those large blue eyes. “Tell me why.”

“We have problems of our own. My best friend has just been killed in an accident.”

“That was no accident.”

“So I’m in no condition to focus on—” I broke off. “What?”

“A Vamp was killed last week. Then my cousin. Now your friend. All were made to seem like accidents or suicide. Actually they were murder. We have a common cause.”

I stared at her. “How can you know that?”

“Witches have avenues. Phil, I can’t say that these killings are linked, but I strongly suspect it. I think we have a serial killer—of Supes. I want to locate the one who murdered my cousin. You want to find the one who killed your friend. The Vampires have similar motive. We have to work together.”

I looked at Syd. “Can this be right?”

Syd concentrated. “It is right! My premonition agrees.”

“The gold is yours regardless,” Nonce said. “Likewise my friendly thighs. I believe you can solve this ugly mystery, Phil. Commit.”

“He commits,” Syd said.

She had made the decision for me. I didn’t resent it; I was grateful. It meant that she now approved of our collaborating with the Witch, friendly thighs and all, and believed that this would lead to the answer we all wanted: who had killed Bear, and why?

This sent me into another tour of memory, this time of Syd.

It wasn’t long before Bear introduced me to his new girlfriend, Sydelle. She was older than he, and not really pretty, but she had compensating virtues. Notably her precognition, her sense of what was to come. It was necessarily vague, because specifics led quickly to paradox, as she explained, but it served to guide her when in doubt. It had guided her to make shrewd investments, and she was financially comfortable. It guided her to Bear as her ideal man, and really, he was. He was a big unhandsome lunk of a young Were, needing social and supernatural guidance, eager for the willing companionship of a woman. It might have taken her all of five minutes to persuade him that her interest was genuine, and he was immediately in love with her. I was younger but more cynical, distrusting this.

“Talk to her,” Bear said. “You’ll see.”

We arranged a time and setting, her house, I being fifteen, she twenty, but I was the cautious one, concerned for my friend. And Sydelle persuaded me. It took longer, maybe ten minutes, but was just as certain. Her candor was devastating.

“You can see I’m no beauty,” she said. “But I long for love. To be genuinely appreciated for myself by a man, not for my money or intellect or appearance. And Bear does. I’m the first woman who showed real interest in him, and he can’t keep his hands off me. He desires me, and I desire his desire. We had sex four times in the first hour we were alone. I’d give it to him a hundred times in a night if he were capable of it. The fact that we’re both Weres is almost incidental. I love him.”

I knew as she spoke that it was true. She was not playing Bear; she truly loved him.

“He wants the two of us to get along, because you’re his best friend and he trusts you,” she continued. “And so do I. I will give you my Name.”

Her Name! “But—”

“I have given it to no one else but him, and now you. I want your complete trust in me. Because you and I will go far together.”

“Now wait!” I protested. “I’m not going to—”

She laughed. “Not romantically, silly! As friends. We can do a lot for each other.”

“A lot?”

“My primary is WereSerpent. My secondary is premonition, or intuition. My tertiary is the usual, a bit of illusion.” She smiled. “I could be prettier than I am, but Bear doesn’t need it.” For a moment her dull features sharpened into beauty and her bosom swelled; like most Weres she could indeed enhance her appearance. “It’s the second that guides me to Bear, and now to you.”

“The premonition?” I asked, swept along by her attitude. She had a compelling personality.

“It’s necessarily vague, because specifics tend to invoke paradox. If I knew I was going to die in an airplane crash tomorrow, I wouldn’t catch that flight, which would spoil the prediction. It’s also limited to me: how I am impacted by a coming event. The closer I am to a person, the more my premonition relates also to that person. I knew that Bear and I would hit it off, that he was well worth my while, and that has been amply vindicated already. When I met you, I knew that we would have just as powerful a connection, albeit of a different nature. That it will do us both good in significant ways; change our lives, in fact. We just have to find out what that nature is.”

“I really don’t see how,” I said. “I’m just a teen boy. I don’t know anything.”

“You are young. It’s your potential I’m picking up on. There’s something special about you, as there is about me. We owe it to ourselves to discover what it is. Let’s start by changing. In Weredom there is truth.”

“I—I’d have to get naked,” I said, disgruntled.

“As would I. Once again, Phil: we’re not lovers. This isn’t sexual. This is Were.”

“I—I’d get a—I can’t control it.”

She laughed again. “Do you think I haven’t seen it before? If it bothers you, cover it with illusion.”

She had more answers than I had objections. “Do you know what my form is?”

“No. Bear didn’t tell me, respecting your privacy. Just that it was odd. I can tell that myself. It wouldn’t even be any of my business, except that my premonition informs me that it is. We need to be close enough to know each other’s secrets.”

I would have argued further, but my own secondary was telling me that she was sincere and knew what she was doing. There was a deep core of rightness in her that I had to respect. So I told her. “I’m a WereWoman.”

She gazed at me, surprised. “You change genders?”

“Yes. I turn into a girl.”

“You’re not an Incubus?”

“No. Once an Incubus has sex, he has to become a Succuba, and she can’t Change back until she has sex with a man. Passing the— the semen back and forth. I’m not that way.”

“Remarkable! I didn’t know there was such a thing. But I suppose it makes sense, in the sense that some folk consider men and women different species. But it certainly is odd.”

“I’m odd,” I agreed.

“Let’s get to it. I’ll go first, if you prefer. As a python I won’t care what state you’re in.”

I bit the bullet. “No, we can do it together.”

We stripped and in moments stood facing each other, naked. I saw her bare breasts and the mound of her pelvis, and sure enough I got a stiff erection.

“Actually, you’re handsome,” she said. “You’ll be a fine man.”

“Too handsome,” I said. “I used to get teased. Before Bear.”

“Of course. When I was younger I got teased for being a late bloomer. Now I will Change.” She focused, and I heard her Name in my mind: “Sss.”

Then I said my Name, and started my own Change. My swollen penis quickly shrank, replaced by a swollen vulva and vagina. The flesh on my chest filled out into breasts. My pelvis widened. My legs thickened. My hair lengthened. I became Mena.

Meanwhile Sydelle formed slowly into a sixteen-foot-long serpent. She lifted her snake head, and I reached out my hand so she could sniff it. We had shown each other our Were forms.

Actually hers was more remarkable than mine. Most Weres were wolves, and most of the rest were large mammals. To become a reptile—that was rare. To be one without limbs was rarer still. I was impressed.

But I sensed that more was needed. I could not exactly read her mind, but I picked up on her need. She wanted something from me. What was it?

I focused, and got it. She wanted me to trust her. How could I demonstrate that? In another moment I got the answer.

I stepped close to her, reached down, and hauled up the center of her body. She weighed the same in serpent form as in woman form, about a hundred and twenty-five pounds. I hauled a segment of her up close to my belly. Her head moved around me, sliding across my shoulders, and her tail section wrapped around my hips and legs. Soon she spiraled around me from head to foot. Pythons were constrictors; she could tighten up and suffocate me if she chose.

She didn’t. She slid on around and down and off me. Then she hissed her Name and started shortening and thickening into her human form. As she did, she stayed close to me, in contact, so that I felt the changes against my body. I stood there, unchanging, sensing that that was what she wanted.

At last she was the woman again, plastered to me breast to breast. She kissed me, then separated. “Good girl. You trusted me.”

“Thanks,” I said somewhat lamely. “I’m Mena.”

“You read my Name. I saw your surprise.”

“I did,” I agreed. “It just came to me.”

“That may be your special secondary: to fathom Names. That will give you power over other Weres, especially if they don’t know it, and maybe over other Supes too.”

“Maybe so,” I said, surprised.

“You’re remarkably pretty, even without illusion or makeup. A combination of the two should make you virtually irresistible to men.”

“I don’t want to be like that!”

“Ah, but you need to be. Not so that men will mindlessly chase you, though of course they will, but so that you have control over the situation. A smitten man is a malleable man. You have to use what you’ve got, and you’ve got a lot.”

“I’m a man, inside!”

“Of course. Just as I am a human person inside my serpent form, to the extent feasible.”

“Feasible?”

“There’s not room for a human sized brain in my serpent head. Some brain tissue gets converted to muscle. So I know what and who I am, but I’m not smart. When we work together, you will need to guide me.”

“Work together?”

“It is slowly clarifying. I think we are destined to go into business together, with our forms an integral part.”

“What business?”

“Something that requires private information about clients. Maybe you could become a private investigator.”

“I don’t know anything about anything like that!”

“Think of it, Mena: As Phil you can be a PI. But a female client does not tell you everything, which hinders your ability to help her. So you set up a meeting with your associate Mena, and she wheedles news, woman to woman, that Phil couldn’t get. It could make you a superior PI.”

“But I have no training, no expertise.”

“You have three years to get it. Not by formal schooling; by anonymous online courses. By day you can be a schoolkid; by night, and in summer, a forming detective. You can do it.”

“Three years?”

“Until you’re of legal age to go into business for yourself.”

The idea was beginning to appeal. Me—a private eye! But I was not so foolish as to think it would be that easy. “Those online courses cost money, especially if they’re private. And a PI needs a front office, and a secretary and computer and stuff. I have like two dollars to my name.”

“I will sponsor you. I will rent the office when the time comes. In fact I will be your secretary-treasurer, so you won’t have to worry about drudgery like bills or records or sweeping the floor.”

“You’d do all that? Suppose I get no clients, or mess it up, and can’t repay you?”

“You will owe me nothing. I will own the business. I will issue you a regular paycheck. All you’ll need to do is satisfy clients.”

“Sounds like a dream job. But you’d be taking an awful gamble.”

She put her hands on my shoulders and faced me squarely. “You trusted me when I coiled around you. Trust me in this.”

“I do, I guess. But what do you get out of it?”

“My intuition tells me that this is my dream job too. That I will never regret it. That you have what it takes to make us a success, and we’ll both be fulfilled. I trust my intuition.”

“If you’re willing to gamble like that, then so am I. Let’s do it.”

“We’ll do it,” she agreed. “Now before you change back, let me help you with being a woman. We don’t want anyone to catch on.”

Since Molly left, Mena had lain fallow. I did need help making her viable again. “Okay.”

Syd took me to the bathroom and did things to my hair and face. “Illusion is useful, but it tends to fade when you’re not concentrating on it, while makeup is relatively permanent,” she explained as she brightened my lips and darkened my eyebrows. “You’ll have to carry a small compact with the essentials even in your male state, so that you can Change on short notice. You’ll have to learn to flaunt your femininity. To seduce a man when you need to.”

“Now wait on that! Have sex with a man? I’m not gay!”

“You can’t afford to deprive yourself of a primary tool. Some men become more talkative after sex, and it’s not just a function of the alcohol. Sex brings out the hormones, the endorphins, changes the brain for a while. You need to be as competent here as when sleuthing for clues at a crime scene.”

“I’d retch.”

“You’ll need practice to get over that. I assure you that many prostitutes are gay, doing it purely for the money. If they can, so can you.”

“I just can’t.”

She let it drop, to my relief, and in due course I Changed back to Phil. It had been a most remarkable session.

Thereafter I went into the program. Bear and I were still pals, and Syd was Bear’s girlfriend, so sometimes I Changed and we made a threesome for dinner or a movie, Bear with two girlfriends as had happened with Molly. We were careful to keep the PI project secret from everyone except Bear, who understood and supported it. We had directions in life.

Bear graduated and got a stevedore job that kept him in shape. Syd had an office job that bored her. We were marking time, as I learned the things I needed to be a decent private eye.

When I was sixteen Syd brought up the matter of sex again. By then I had more experience with occasional girlfriends and pretty much knew what it was about. I agreed that she had a point: to be completely reliable, Mena needed to be able to perform completely, in case there was ever an emergency need. She would have to have sex at least once.

Bear and Syd set me up at her house. I Changed, put on a sexy dress with a pushup bra, did my hair, put on makeup, and put in a female condom. Bear agreed that I looked the part; I was a stunning creature. Then Bear and I left and went down to a local bar that was notorious for prostitution. Bear faded back, becoming anonymous. I sat on a bar stool and ordered a drink. I waited for business.

It wasn’t what I expected. A genuine harlot pushed up to me. “What you doing in my spot, bitch?” she demanded.

“It’s a free country,” I said, irked.

“No it ain’t,” a tough looking man said. “You ain’t one of mine, slut. Get out of here.”

Then a heavy hand fell on the man’s shoulder. “Let’s talk,” Bear said.

They went outside together. Only Bear came back. He evidently had not lost his touch. The whore disappeared, having gotten the message: I had my own pimp, and he was tougher than hers.

It wasn’t long before a man picked me up. He had alcohol on his breath and was looking for action. “How much?”

I named a low figure. “But I don’t have a place. It’ll have to be your car.”

“Car it is,” he agreed. He was half drunk, but driving: par for that course.

We pulled into a private alley and he had at me. There was no subtlety. He just kissed me with his stinky mouth, grabbed at my breasts with his sweaty hands, and hauled out his grubby penis. I barely had time to get my legs apart and my panties pulled aside before he jammed in, pumped for about thirty seconds, and spewed his gluey jism into me. Then I got out and he, satisfied, drove weavingly away.

Bear pulled up, and I got in his car. “I need a barf bag,” I gritted.

He had one. I spewed into it, then yanked out the loaded condom and added it to the vomit. There was no other dialogue; he knew I wasn’t in the mood.

As we drove, my disgust at the process slowly gave way to a deeper aversion. I had had sex with a man! I had never felt like a woman, only a man garbed in a female outfit. I had evidently performed well enough; the drunk might hardly have noticed even if I had been a male body. But I hated the very notion of it.

I Changed in the moving car, not caring that it messed up my clothing. I just had to get away from what I had been.

We reached Syd’s house and I stumbled into Syd’s embrace. “It was awful!” I said. “I feel so damned dirty!”

She took me into her bedroom and got my ruined clothing off me. She took a cloth and wiped off the smudges on my body. I let her do it, shuddering with delayed reaction.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You weren’t as prepared as I thought you were. It’s my fault.”

“I feel unmanned. My mouth, my chest, my groin feel filthy, and it won’t wash out.”

“Maybe we can fix that.” She stepped back, got efficiently out of her clothing, and came to me naked.

“What—?”

She drew me down on the bed with her. “Hush.”

Then she started kissing me. I tried to protest, but she continued, and soon I was kissing her back. My limp penis stiffened. Then somehow I was on her, and my member was sliding into her cleft. Her hands clasped my buttocks and hauled me into her. I was hardly aware of thrusting before I was jetting inside her.

As it ebbed, I came to my senses. “What have I done?”

“You re-manned yourself,” she said. “The filth is gone.”

And it was. I remained disgusted with Mena’s experience as a whore, but now there was a more recent experience that overwrote it, making it a bearable memory.

But that was not actually my question. “You’re Bear’s girl!”

“He understands. I did what had to be done, as a friend. I stanched the wound. Now you can heal in private.”

I stared at her. This was a new dimension of friendship. “You’re some woman, Syd.”

“Thank you.”

And Bear, knowing about it, had stayed clear. He was some man.

“Your premonition—did you see this coming?”

“Not in detail. I just knew there would be some stress, and that I could handle it. If I had seen that mistake farther ahead, I would have spared you the horror.”

“It was horrible, but I have gained some understanding. Of more than sex. Maybe I’ll be a better person for it.”

“You’re already a good person, Phil.”

Then she fetched our clothing, and dressed, we rejoined Bear. Nothing more was said, then or ever. Friends did not need to review such details. But they would never be forgotten.

I never had sex again as Mena, but at least I knew I could if I had to. That was what counted. I continued my studies, with Bear and Syd’s support. I graduated from high school, and passed my PI courses, legally qualifying for the position. And so we came at last to the first day of business. And the awful second day.

The extended memory had been covered in an instant. “Assuming we have a serial killer,” I said to Nonce, getting down to business. “What background do we have on the victims?”

Chapter 4:

Suspects

“Why don’t you go with Nonce for that,” Syd suggested. “I think I need to close the office for the day, and go home and cry.”

“I know how it is,” Nonce said sympathetically. “I had to brew a powerful grief-null potion just to get through the day after my cousin died. He was my closest friend.”

Syd nodded, appreciating the understanding. I realized that she had been functioning on desperate reserve power, to do what had to be done, but that was running out. “Will do,” I agreed.

“I’ll take you to my apartment,” Nonce said. “It’s comfortable and secure from snooping. Wear this.” She proffered a pin-on badge with the glowing letter A.

“What is it?”

“An anonymity spell, so that folk won’t recognize you and wonder what you’re doing with a Witch. Not that they’ll recognize me as such. We need severe privacy.”

I donned the badge. We stepped out to the street, and Syd exited and locked the office door behind her. Then we separated, Syd and Nonce going home, I tagging along with one of them. There were people on the street, but they glanced at us without really seeing us. Since Nonce was a remarkably pretty woman with more than enough flesh showing to attract attention, that indicated that she too wore an A-Badge. I would have to make a deal with her to get a couple we could use in the business.

Her apartment was in an upscale complex, on the third floor. From the hall it was just one door of five, suggesting a cramped efficiency apartment, but inside it was huge and opulent, with a picture window opening onto an inner court with palm trees, though this was not tropical country. The other doors must be dummies; she obviously lived anonymously well. Which wasn’t surprising, considering the gold she had given us. Witches did indeed have their resources.

There was even a neat broom. “No we don’t actually use them to fly,” Nonce said, catching my glance. “It’s more of a symbol.”

“A symbol,” I agreed.

“Now about my friendly thighs,” she said as she set her purse on the table.

“I didn’t come here for that!” I snapped. “My friend is dead.”

“You need to distance yourself somewhat from that, emotionally,” she said. “So you can be properly objective.”

Syd had taught me that technique, but I balked. “That will take time. I don’t think I can afford to wait. Not while the killer is loose.”

“I can help you with a potion. The same one I brewed for myself.”

“I don’t want a damned potion!”

“You’re being difficult, Phil. Maybe you would be more objective as Mena.”

I stared warily at her. “You knew.”

“I guessed. Now I know. I’m not stupid, especially about magic. I did spot research; Mena has no known identity. She appears only when you want her.”

I was disgruntled. “We Weres don’t regard ourselves as magical. It’s a form of science, or biology.”

“Science fantasy. Call it what you will. Here is my point of the moment: I just tricked you into admitting something you thought to conceal. You’re vulnerable, Phil, because of your understandable grief, and making slips. You can’t afford that, especially when interviewing suspects. Take the potion.”

She was maddeningly right. “Okay.”

She brought a steaming cup from her refrigerator. I didn’t question it; her magic was everywhere. I sipped the hot frothy brew. It was surprisingly good, tasting like soft summer air in a flower garden.

“It will take about half an hour to take proper hold,” Nonce said. “No point in talking business until then. So now the thighs.”

“Nonce, I don’t want your thighs!”

She slipped out of her clothing, showing them.

What a luscious creature she was! I did desire her.

She stepped into my embrace and kissed me before she murmured a spell that made my own clothing leave me and strew itself on a nearby chair.

Everything I had ever been told or ever dreamed about the eroticism of Witches was soon amply confirmed. We spent a remarkable half hour on her plush bed. Every time I thought I’d gotten enough of her, she took a new approach and my desire surged again.

“Are you using magic?” I asked.

“No. I don’t want to mix spells; that can lead to unintended side effects, like impotence or a sexual passion for frogs. But after the grief potion has set, which will be soon, I will do magic if you wish.”

“I prefer to be as objective as is feasible. I love your thighs, but maybe it’s time to turn it off for a while.”

“It has been fun. You’re so young and new and helplessly virile it turns me on. But all good things must come to a pause.” She made a gesture, and we were both clothed.

“How do you do that? I thought your magic was with potions and things.”

“It is. I clouded your mind briefly so that you were tuned out when I washed and dressed us both. It was hypnotism rather than magic. I did it for effect.”

I had mixed feelings about this. “You washed and dressed me?”

“We were pretty hot and heavy for a while. There was sweat and whatnot. I couldn’t let you go out in that state; any Witch would have known immediately what we had been up to. You might have been needlessly embarrassed.”

“I appreciate your concern about the state of my moods,” I said wryly.

“Oh, don’t be a bore, Phil. I’m trying to impress you so we can be a proper couple.”

“A couple? I thought we came here to work out a strategy for running down a serial killer. That it was a business association.”

“That, too, and it’s truly serious business. We’ll work better together if we really know and trust each other.”

I remembered how Syd had said something similar, and proved it. But she had not sought to seduce me, then. “Why do we have to be a couple?”

“Because one of the most powerful facilitators of magical empathy is love. We can do twice as much together if we are in love.”

“Love—as a business deal?”

“That’s putting it a bit unkindly, but yes.”

“So your friendly thighs aren’t just a spot inducement for me to take your case. They have a price.”

“They always do. Ever since Lilith seduced Adam.”

Lilith—the mythical first wife of the biblical Adam, before she was banished and the more conventional Eve substituted. “And Witches descend from Lilith.”

“Of course. That’s our legend.”

The problem was, she was getting to me, and not just because of the phenomenal sex. “Was there something else in that potion? Like love elixir?”

“There was not. You must love me naturally, Phil, or it won’t work.”

She plainly had the equipment to make me love her. Rather than admit that I was losing this game, I changed the subject. “You washed and dressed me. Can you show me how you did that?”

“I will be glad to. Remember my gesture?”

“Yes.”

“Focus on that.”

I focused. Then I saw her come to me where I stood, take my hand, and lead me to the bathroom. I seemed to be in a daze, obeying without resistance. She stood me before the sink, took a wet cloth, and ran it efficiently over my body, cleaning me all over, paying special attention to the thoroughly used genital region. Then she washed herself similarly. Then she led me back to the bedroom and dressed us both. When she was done, she repeated the hypnotic gesture, and I came alert.

“I’ll be damned,” I breathed.

“More fun the other way, no?”

“More fun for me,” I agreed. “You did all the work.”

“I enjoyed it.”

“Now how does love facilitate our mission?”

“True love is an overlapping of the spirits. It can amount almost to telepathy. To the sharing of awareness and abilities. To complete trust.”

“There’s that word again,” I said. “Why should we trust each other to such an extent?”

“Because we’re both suspects in murder cases. We have got to know, each of us, that the other didn’t do it. Telepathy can reassure us.”

“Suspects!”

“Review your PI classes, Phil. When there’s a murder, the earliest suspects are those closest to the victim, because that’s where the passions are strongest. You were closest to your friend Bear, except for Sydelle. Maybe you killed him to gain access to her.”

“Never!”

“Or maybe she killed him because she wanted better access to you. She’s a suspect too.”

“Ridiculous!

“And maybe I killed my cousin because I had a secret hankering for him and he repulsed me, making me a woman scorned.”

That got to me in part because I had entertained just such a thought myself. She was a suspect in that murder. And Syd and I were natural suspects in the Bear murder. “We are suspects,” I agreed morosely.

“An investigation should clear us, in time. But you and I need to trust each other now. So we can nab the real killer before he strikes again.”

“Or kills one or both of us,” I agreed.

“So now the trust. I am going to do my magic in your presence, so you will fathom my inner nature and know I am innocent, at least of that particular incident. You will do your transformation in my presence for similar reason. We will be connected. Telepathy doesn’t lie.”

“Telepathy doesn’t lie,” I agreed. “Unless a person is lying to himself.”

“It’s not perfect,” she agreed in turn. “But it’s the closest thing we have to absolute certainty. Now how close are you to loving me?”

I had to laugh. “Closer than I like. You are playing me, and I fear you are better at it than I am. But I doubt you love me.”

“Maybe we need another session on the bed.”

“That’s sex, not love.”

“The two connect. There are hormones, mental sets, associations.”

“I think you can make me love you,” I said candidly. “But I don’t see why you should love me. You are getting what you want from me without that.”

“Not entirely. I can let myself love. It would be easy with you, because you have a talent I genuinely admire. But I won’t do that unless I am sure of your love first. The bed?”

“No! At least not right now. This business of doing our—our magics—in each other’s presence. I don’t trust that.”

“I believe you are sincere and honest in a way my greater experience has spoiled me for. So I will trust you first. Except that if you don’t love me now, you will when I enchant you. Are you ready to risk that?”

“Enchanted love is temporary. I’ll risk it.”

“Temporary only when it goes against the natural grain. If you would love me in time naturally, the enchantment will merely make it happen now. It won’t necessarily fade.”

“Do what you’re going to do,” I said. The truth is I was curious about her actual magic in this respect. Could it really reach into my core and put me into love?

This time she didn’t gesture. She just stood there and gazed at me. I met her gaze. Her eyes seemed to expand into whirling saucers, or maybe miniature tornadoes.

And her power reached out and caught my mind and heart and wrapped them into her essence. Suddenly I was absolutely bursting with love for her, and sex was only part of it.

But I also knew her Name: Wons, a combination of Witch and Nonce, modified.

And I knew her inner spirit. Indeed she was innocent of the murder of the Warlock. She was guilty of many other things, such as seducing men to gain advantage over them, but her love for her cousin had been Family. They had grown up together and shared secrets. They had explored each other’s bodies as small children, she amazed by his penis, he surprised by her lack of any such member. They had advised each other on dealing with the opposite gender. She had been truly crushed when he died. The grief-null potion served like a wall between her and the dreadful desolation of his loss. She had been as close to him as I had been to Bear. I knew this with the certainty of mind-sharing.

And she knew me similarly. We were indeed telepathically connected, and it was as close as two people could be without sharing a body. She knew I was innocent too. I knew she knew this, and she knew I knew her innocence.

We came together and embraced. “Oh, Nonce!” I breathed.

“Oh, Phil,” she echoed. “I am letting myself go. I love you.”

After a timeless time we separated, physically. “I think now we have another problem,” I said. “All I can think of is you.”

“We’ll burn it off on the bed.”

We had another half hour session before, sexually exhausted, we lay beside each other and gazed at the ceiling. “Now maybe we can discuss investigative strategy,” I said.

“That is simple. You will interview the suspects, fathom their Names, and their states of guilt. When you find the right one, we’ll act.”

“How will we act?”

“We’ll kill him. No one will question it; the Supes will know that justice has been done. The mundanes won’t know anything. They never do.”

And all Supes labored diligently to see that it remained that way. Our peaceful residence scattered among mundanes depended on not arousing their superstitious terror of the supernatural. “They think magic is fantasy,” I said, laughing. “But how do we locate the suspects?”

“You know that, Phil. We’ll go to the Clan leaders. They’ll cooperate. None of them like Supes getting killed.”

They probably would cooperate. But I still had a doubt. “I can fathom Names when a Supe does magic in my presence. But that won’t necessarily give me the identity of the murderer. I may not even get to interview the right suspect.”

“We’ll get information on the victims from the Clan leaders, who they associated with, who their friends and lovers and rivals and enemies were. The main chore will be the tedious interviewing of scores of folk who will be innocent but maybe resentful about being suspects. You can’t make them do their magic in your presence. So there may be challenges, yes, but you can do it.”

“How can you be so sure? I’m not sure.”

“Phil, your WereWoman ability is unusual. But it’s your Name fathoming that really counts, for this. It’s a form of telepathy that I haven’t heard of any other Supe having. That’s your key asset. That’s why I wanted you in the first place.”

I sighed. “I hope I can live up to your expectation. It would be a shame for you to waste your love on a washout.”

“It would be a shame,” she agreed, kissing me. “Now let’s get busy on the case. Time is surely of the essence.”

“First we have to exonerate a major remaining suspect.”

“Your office girl,” she agreed.

“Sydelle is a hell of a lot more than an office girl. She owns the business. She set me up in it. She had a premonition that this was appropriate, and followed through. I owe my career to her.”

“Yes, I picked up on that when I researched you. And I’m sure she is innocent. But we need to prove it.”

“Yes. She’ll return to the office tomorrow, and I will update my take on her.”

“Meanwhile we can start with the Witches. I will contact the Coven Mistress. I know her well; I’m sure she’ll cooperate.”

“I’ve never talked with any Clan leader outside the Weres,” I said.

“Then this will be the first of several. You need to establish connections for future cases.”

“You’re assuming that I’ll be successful in this business.”

“I am. You have the potential.”

“That’s what Syd says. I’m not so sure.”

“I’m calling the Mistress.” She lifted her cell phone.

“Not magically?”

“Phil, apart from certain potions and hypnotic techniques, we’re pretty ordinary folk. Even if I could signal her telepathically, I wouldn’t unless it was an emergency. This is routine.”

“Routine,” I agreed.

“Temblor,” she murmured into the phone. “I have enlisted the PI Phil Were to investigate the murder of Warlock Standish. May we talk with you?” Then she smiled and disconnected.

“She agreed?” I asked, slightly dubious.

“She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Here? I thought we’d have to get an appointment.”

“This case is important to us. We want it solved, so we’re facilitating things. It is also off the record, so there’s no formal appointment.”

“I don’t know what to say to her.”

“You don’t need to say anything. Just let her meet you.”

“This is almost too simple for me to grasp.”

Nonce smiled. “Simple on the surface. If she vetoes you, you can keep the gold and my love, but you’ll do no work for the Coven.”

“I’m being judged,” I said, catching on. “The rest is dross.” Not that gold and her love really answered that description.

“She respects my judgment. It should be okay.”

There was a single knock on the door. Nonce opened it to a homely short-haired older woman in a dull business suit. Nonce nodded silently, as if bowing to a superior, and ushered the woman in. “Phil, Temblor,” she said, introducing us to each other.

“You let yourself love him?” Temblor inquired sharply as if I were not there.

“I did.” No explanation, no excuses.

“You are satisfied with his competence?”

“I am satisfied with his potential.” Which was not the same thing.

Now the Witch turned to me, catching my eye. Suddenly she became a lovely young sprite with flowing knee-length hair and a dress made of green leaves that hardly concealed her remarkable curves. Her face would launch a thousand ships. But I had no hint of her Name; this was incidental illusion, not solid magic.

“He will do.” Temblor departed.

Nonce sank back as if released from an ogre’s grip. “That’s a relief.”

“You weren’t that sure she’d approve me,” I said.

“I thought she would, but there was doubt. Now we’re on.”

“You could have seduced me without love. You didn’t. That impressed her?”

“Yes. But she’d have vetoed you in an instant if she hadn’t verified your potential.”

“How did she verify it? I never picked up her Name.”

“She verified it through my mind.”

“Ah. Bypassing my mind, so as to protect hers.”

“We are not amateurs,” Nonce said half ruefully.

“Do we have information on suspects?”

“Yes. Now that you’ve been approved, I can share it with you.” She brought out a folder with files similar to those I had seen in the Warlock’s office. “There’s his business associate, his mistress, his—”

“Mistress? I thought you told me he was gay.”

“He maintained appearances. She shares a small apartment with her brother. When they went there she kept watch while he made out with the brother. The siblings were very good at keeping secrets. She could answer questions that only a lover would know.”

“Go on.”

“His leading client. No one else was close enough to him to have managed the killing. Except me.”

“So that’s four for me to interview: associate, client, mistress, brother.”

“And all are innocent, as I’m sure you will verify.”

“But if no one else was close enough—”

“That’s the mystery. I don’t see how he could have been murdered.”

I thought of something. “It is possible he’s not dead? That he faked his own murder, so as to get away from it all?”

“No. I would have known. I was close enough to have a bit of telepathic rapport, and I felt him die. He is definitely dead.”

“I will have to think about this.”

She did not argue with me, but moved on efficiently. “Meanwhile, you’d better see the Vampire Chief. We have time today. I have his name and address.”

I felt a cold clutch in my gizzard. I didn’t much like Vampires. “I don’t suppose you are personally acquainted?”

“Not at all.”

“So this is a cold contact.”

“Frigid,” she agreed.

I sighed. “Let’s get over there.”

Nonce drove me. Her car was a silent electric, breathtakingly expensive but a pleasure to be in. “It’s a far drive out to the castle,” she said. “Let’s get in the back seat; it’s shielded from observation.”

“While driving?” I asked, alarmed.

“It’s self driving. I put it on autopilot.” She lifted her hands away from the steering wheel, and I saw it steering itself.

What the hell. My passion was still new, and evidently hers was too. We climbed into the back seat and made out while the car found its own way to the programmed address.

“Approaching destination,” a soft voice said.

“Damn,” Nonce said. She gave me one more kiss, and put herself back together. We resumed our proper places up front just in time for the car to park.

VAMPIRE VANTAGE, the sign said at the entrance to the gloomy castle. It was a tourist trap, obviously faked up. The tourists didn’t know that the realistic Vampires weren’t men and women in costume, but real ones, and that when they sprouted fangs and wings they weren’t faking them. But of course they didn’t actually feed on tourists, because that would very soon have destroyed their secrecy.

We approached the front desk inside. “We need to talk with Vomish,” Nonce told the beautifully fanged desk clerk. “Business.” I noted mentally that some Clans had personal names starting with any letter, as was the case with Weres and Witches, while others all started with the Clan letter, like V for Vamps. To each its own convention.

“We can make an appointment for next week.”

“We need it now.”

“That is not possible. Vomish is away this week.”

Nonce reached out and touched the woman’s hand. “Supe business.”

The girl’s eyes widened as she recognized the aura of the Witch. Supe business indeed. She glanced at me. I extended my own hand, and she took it, becoming aware that I was a Were. Now she knew this was serious; a Witch and a Were did not just drop in on a Vamp leader to play tiddlywinks. “His assistant Vachelle is available.”

“That will have to do,” Nonce said.

We were ushered into a somber private office buried in the depths of the interior. A sultry black-haired creature greeted us. “Welcome to our humble demesnes, Phil and Nonce,” she said. “I am Vachelle, assistant to the Clan Chief Vomish.” She smiled, showing her dainty fangs. “Perhaps I can help you.” She wore a dark cape, a skintight bodice, and a very short skirt. She was clearly formidable in bed.

“We hope so,” Nonce said. “Our business is urgent.”

“A Witch and a Were,” Vachelle said. “An unusual combination.”

“We are lovers,” Nonce said. “Sometimes odd liaisons happen.”

“I might be able to serve you even so,” the Vampiress said. “I am what you might term a switch hitter, comfortable with both men and women, apart or together.” She stroked her bodice delicately, making her breasts quiver, and her skirt seemed to hitch up a notch. It was sexy as all hell, by no accident.

“Strictly each other,” Nonce said. “Our love is new.”

Now I understood why Nonce had mentioned our relationship. Vampires used sex as a device to make victims amenable. Who minded losing a little blood, considering the phenomenal sex? Nonce was letting her know we weren’t in that market.

“Ah, well. Maybe next month.” Then she gave us a straight gaze. “I was only teasing. What is your business?”

My turn. “There have been three recent murders of Supes. We suspect they are related. That a serial killer is going after Supes. This alarms us, and we want to stop it as soon as possible.”

“What Clans?”

“Were, Witch, Vamp,” I said. “The Were was my closest friend. The Warlock was Nonce’s cousin. We don’t know the Vamp. That’s why we need your help.”

“You are thinking of Vulcan. He died suspiciously four days ago. We have not publicized his demise. You evidently have your sources.”

“We Witched out the news of the death,” Nonce said. “Not the details. We would not have been so much concerned, had it not been followed by deaths among our own Clans.”

“We are interested in your quest,” Vachelle said. “But we require some authentication of your status. We seldom indulge in extracurricular liaisons.”

“By that you mean close work with other Supes?” I asked.

“We do normally prefer to stay within our Clan.”

“What kind of authentication?” Nonce asked tightly.

“A little blood. That will tell us whatever we need to know.”

“We don’t like giving blood,” I said. “There are said to be consequences.”

“Sit down. Perhaps I can reassure you.”

We sat in the plush low couches she indicated, and Vachelle sat opposite us, crossing her legs. Naturally this exposed her thighs to the crotch, which appeared to be bereft of panties. My own crotch pulsed in involuntary response; I had a sudden urge to make close contact. Nonce, oddly, seemed to be similarly fascinated. “Cut it out!” she snapped.

“There is a reason,” Vachelle said. “I am not asking to feed on you. Merely to take a single drop of your blood. That will enable me to attune to your sincerity of nature and purpose. If you are trying to deceive me, this will expose it. If you are sincere, this will conform it. Then I will assist you to the limit of my ability. The taking of that drop will not poison you or convert you to Vampire status. It is merely the way we invoke our magic. If you want my trust, you will have to trust me to that extent.” She smiled. “And the glimpse I provide you of my body will make the taking of that drop painless, even pleasurable. It seems a fair exchange.”

She had put it on the line, and it did make sense. Every Clan had its own ways. “I will do it,” I said.

“I am glad of that.” The Vampiress uncrossed her legs, in the process providing me an even better glimpse that nearly anesthetized me by itself, and came to me where I sat. She bent forward at the waist, showing me the marvelously intricate curvature of her breasts within the bodice. She kissed me on the mouth, and I seemed to float toward the ceiling. Then she kissed me on the neck and stepped back.

“Aren’t you going to take the blood?” I asked.

She laughed. “I have taken it. I sucked it in as I bit you on the neck.”

I touched my neck with my fingers. There was a bit of dampness there. “I thought that was another kiss.”

“It was. Our kind.”

“Oh.” It had indeed been a pleasure, both the glimpses and the touches.

Vachelle approached Nonce similarly, leaning down to kiss her mouth, then her neck. “I’m not a lesbian,” Nonce said. “But with you I could almost do it. You certainly have the touch.”

“Thank you. Now I will provide you full information for your quest. You both have satisfied me as to your sincerity.”

So just like that it was done. Vachelle produced paper files on all Vulcan’s closest associates, which were all females. I knew right away it was going to be devilish (bad word) to untangle similar motives. But at least we were ready to proceed. We thanked her and departed.

“You knew we’d face seduction,” I said back in Nonce’s car as we rode back to her apartment. “That’s why you tackled me on the way.”

“I suspected. Vampires have a reputation.”

“So do Witches. Is it okay with you if we focus on business now?”

She laughed. “We now have three sets of suspects. It’s probably best to tackle them one Clan at a time. Where do we start?”

“With yours?”

“There’s still time in the day. I can take us to the brother and sister.”

But at that point I realized that I had had enough for one day. “Let’s wait until tomorrow. I need to sleep on what I have.”

“At my place or your place?”

To spend the night in her embrace. I yielded to temptation. “Your place.”

“Done.” The car changed direction.

Chapter 5:

Searching

I woke beside Nonce, holding her hand, after a night that had delightfully worn me out. She remained asleep. I paused to look at her, curious about how much illusion contributed to her appearance.

She was mussed but lovely, with only a tiny mole on her chin. She really was beautiful! That reassured me. She was older than I, probably by five or six years, but Witches were as ageless as they wanted to be.

Then she stirred. Her eyes opened. “Hello, beloved,” she said. The mole disappeared.

“Hello, beloved,” I echoed, and kissed her.

No more was needed. We got up, showered together, and dressed. She served a nice breakfast whose details I hardly noticed, being too absorbed in loving her.

Somewhere along the way it occurred to me that she might not really have been asleep. She might have been trying to reassure me about her natural appearance, putting on just enough of a blemish to be persuasive. Did it matter? I realized that it didn’t. She was what she was, and I loved her regardless. How much was natural and how much magical I couldn’t be sure, but I was committed. For the nonce, I thought with a mental smile. She was a creature of the present, as her name suggested.

Her car took us to my office. Syd was already there. “Did you have a good night?” she asked brightly.

“It was divine,” Nonce answered. “He’s a great lover.”

That saved me from having to answer on that score. Syd of course wasn’t fooled; she knew that the experienced Witch held amateur me in thrall. She didn’t object, which meant she had checked out the Witch and found her sufficient. “She gave me a grief-null spell. We got suspects,” I said. “Witch and Vamp.”

“And we know who the Were suspects are,” Syd said. “Beginning with me.”

“I know you didn’t do it,” I said quickly. “You were here in the office with me when it happened.

“I could have hired someone to do it.”

I spread my hands. “I’m a suspect too.”

“Not any more,” Nonce said.

Syd glanced at her. “So it was more than idle fancy that motivated you to get into his mind.”

“Considerably more,” Nonce agreed. “We have cleared each other.”

“Clear me,” Syd said to me.

“There’s no need.”

“There is need. You have not read my mind since the murder. Bear and I could have had a falling out.”

I nodded regretfully. She had evidently gotten her grief under control overnight, and was now focused on vengeance. Nonce and I sat down to watch.

Syd pulled the shutters on the front window and door, then doffed her clothes. She made her hissing Name and started shifting. I read her mind the moment she invoked her power: she was innocent and hurting. She truly loved Bear.

“That’s something,” the Witch murmured. “I’ve never seen a Were shift before.”

“We’re in this together,” Syd said. “We have to trust each other.”

Soon she was the complete serpent. “She has dog doors to the office and storage closet,” I said. “Actually round holes, concealed by curtains. So if she forgets the key, she can still get in and out.”

“Nice touch.”

I got up and talked to the huge snake. I lifted her mid section and she coiled around my body, including my neck. “She’s not smart in this form, but she knows me,” I said. “We trust each other. And she is innocent.”

“I never doubted.”

Syd slid off me and changed slowly back to human form. Nonce helped her dress. “A necessary formality,” the Witch said.

“Now we have an appointment to meet the Were Chief,” Syd said as she tucked herself together.

We rode in Nonce’s nice car to the nondescript suburban house where Jim the Were Chief lived. All Supes tried to be anonymous except to other Supes. He was a tiger: a huge man, small tiger, committed and sharp.

“You know Phil and me,” Syd said as we shook hands. “This is Nonce Witch. She hired Phil to investigate the murder of her Warlock cousin. She and Phil have become an item.”

“Witches can be fun,” Jim agreed. “When they want to be.”

“So can Weres,” Nonce said a trifle sharply.

Jim smiled tolerantly; he had surely known a Witch or two in his day. “Make your case.”

“We believe that my friend Bear was murdered,” I said. “And that it may be linked to the Warlock case. And to a Vampire case. A serial killer of Supes.”

“An inter-Clan matter,” Jim agreed. “We will cooperate, of course. Just let us know what you need.”

“Just your approval,” I said. “We are well aware of Bear’s contacts, and will interview them. If any balk—”

“None will,” Jim said. That sufficed.

“Thank you,” Nonce said, and kissed him on the cheek. He liked that; he had to. But his decision had been made, for Supe solidarity, not to please her.

Back in the car we organized. “I will mind the office,” Syd said. “I will prepare a list of Bear’s contacts.”

“Meanwhile we’ll tackle the Witches,” Nonce said.

We left Syd at the office, and moved on to Nonce’s residence, and considered the main Witch suspect: the client seeking the reality room. I had not had time to ferret that out when I was in the Warlock’s office, but now it was no problem: Nonce knew it. He was a wealthy Goblin named Burket. Goblins were squat, ugly, ill-tempered, and generally hard to get along with, but they could tolerate extreme heat and pressure underground, were not claustrophobic, and could ferret out gold, gems, and whatever other valuables were hidden there. So Burket’s riches were no coincidence; they were typical of the Clan. Goblins normally bought what they wanted, including especially the favors of nymphly ladies. Money made up for ugliness.

“But he didn’t do it,” Nonce said.

“How can you be sure?”

“That project was invaluable to him. The death of Standish puts it out of reach, until he finds and hires a new Warlock at great expense. He would never do that. Goblins are rich, but they don’t waste money.”

“Unless Standish changed his mind about the project, infuriating him.”

“Standish didn’t change his mind. He was intrigued, and Burket was paying extremely well. I didn’t know what the project was, but I knew he was committed.”

“Still—”

“Phil, I know the Goblin didn’t do it.”

“How—”

“I seduced him. I read his magic when we connected, same as I did with you. Goblins can be mean as hell, by no coincidence, but he was innocent of any desire to hurt Standish or torpedo the project.”

“You seduced the Goblin,” I echoed, hurt.

“Oh, don’t be that way, Phil. That was months before I met you. I’m a Witch. Seduction is part of my nature. I didn’t give him love, just artful sex. It was part of our due diligence before Standish accepted the project. We had to be sure Burket was legitimate.”

It did make sense. “Sorry. My love is still new. I’m foolishly possessive.”

“Of course you are,” she agreed fondly. “I apologize for inadvertently teasing you. Possess me.”

“I don’t—”

She kissed me and guided me to the bed. I knew she was mainly trying to abate my mood and dissipate my spot jealousy, but such was her expertise that I was helpless to resist. In five minutes I no longer cared who else she might have seduced; I was in sexual heaven.

“Still, I should interview the Goblin,” I said

“You will. After we clear it with Goblin HQ. Today we must tackle the siblings, who are also innocent.”

“How can we nab the murderer if every suspect is innocent?”

“That’s why I hired you, remember? I couldn’t figure it out, but you surely can.”

Oh, joy! I would have to find a way.

We drove to the siblings’ residence. It was a conservative single story cottage beside a small lake, not the kind of place you would ever expect to find a Witch or Warlock. Because they had to be of that Clan; Standish would not trust his secret of gayness outside the Clan, and really not much within it either.

“Not so,” Nonce said, picking up on my thought, as she could do now because of our physical and emotional proximity. “Delle is a Witch, Donald a straight human. Standish acted to facilitate her acceptance by the Coven, and she is duly appreciative. So is Donald; he honors our conventions because of her. He is completely trustworthy, a rare human who knows about Supes. And as it happens, he found another way to relate to Standish. They keep each other’s secrets.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that siblings could differ in the Supernatural respect, but of course they could and usually would; Supes occurred seemingly randomly.

Nonce knocked on the door. It was opened by a young woman. “I am Nonce Witch, Standish’s cousin and friend. I have hired the private investigator Phil Were to look into his murder.”

The woman hesitated visibly, then invited us in. I knew it was because she didn’t want to have anything this potentially messy spread about the neighborhood. “Standish spoke of you, Nonce. He trusted you.”

“Yes. We were very close. I knew his nature. I have shared it with Phil because it may relate to his death. Phil will not tell.”

Delle nodded uncertainly. Obviously she was not comfortable with the sharing of her status or her brother’s. I couldn’t blame her.

“You are all suspects in the Warlock’s death,” I said when we were settled inside. “Being those closest to him. I do not mean to insult you; I am similarly suspect in the death of my closest friend. Our purpose here is to clarify your status. Nonce is sure you are innocent, but I have my own ways.”

“I thought he committed suicide,” Donald said. He was a handsome man of indeterminate age; I could appreciate how a gay man might like him. “It was an ugly shock, because I never dreamed he was depressive.”

“He wasn’t,” I said. “He was murdered, probably by another Supe, and framed as a suicide. I am certain it had nothing to do with you.”

“That’s almost a relief,” Donald said. “He and I were close.”

“Yes. I’m sure you grieve for him as I do for my close friend.” I glanced at Delle and made a snap decision to trust her and her brother. They had been trusted with the Warlock’s secret and not betrayed it; that reassured me. “I will ask you for two things. The first is to do a Witchly enchantment in my presence. The second is to keep my secret.”

“Secret?” Delle asked.

“Secret?” Donald echoed.

“In addition to my Were nature, I have the ability to fathom a Supe’s Name and inner nature when he or she performs magic in my presence. If news of that got out, it would damage my ability to perform as an investigator.”

“But then doing magic in your presence would be like stripping naked before a stranger,” Delle protested.

“You don’t want to strip before a man?”

“Of course I don’t!”

She had a point. “Then I will extend my trust before asking for yours,” I said. “I will show you my other secret.”

“I am not promising anything.” Her discomfort was growing. Again, I couldn’t blame her.

I smiled and removed my clothing. Fortunately the distractions of the moment prevented me from getting the masculine reaction.

“And I’m not having sex with you,” Delle snapped.

“Neither am I,” Donald said, half smiling. He evidently knew that I knew his orientation.

“Just keep my secret,” I said, and murmured my Name.

“This is special,” Nonce said.

The three watched as my transformation commenced. Nonce had not seen me Change before, though she had encountered Mena, and was plainly interested. Delle and Donald seemed curious where this was leading.

“Oh, my,” Donald said as I lost my penis and grew breasts.

“A Succuba!” Delle said, alarmed. Obviously she understood the nature of Succubi, and wanted no part of it.

“Not so,” Nonce said. “This is not sexual. That is, it’s a change of gender, sex being no necessary part of it.”

I completed my Change. “I am a WereWoman,” I said. “I am Mena, who does interviews that Phil can’t manage. Will you do your magic now?”

Delle’s mouth worked for half a sentence before she got it in gear. “I think I have to. Obviously you’re not looking lasciviously at me. But my magic doesn’t compare to that. I make Penny Curses.”

Nonce laughed. “Those can be fun. But they cost more than a penny.”

Delle brought out a penny. “They are cursed pennies, not curses sold for pennies. Give one to a person in Change and he will suffer minor bad luck until its limited power is expended. Drop one into a vending machine and it will likely jam. Put one in a shoe, and that shoe will trip over something. Put it in a hat, and the wearer will have uncomfortable thoughts for a while. It’s strictly minor magic. I’m not a high power Witch.”

“Make one for me, please,” I said.

Delle focused on the penny. It glowed, then faded. And I read her Name and essence. She was indeed innocent, in more than one sense; she was a virgin.

“You’re clear,” I said. I turned to Donald, mildly bemused to find him studying me with clinical rather than sexual interest. Had he not been gay, my phenomenal bare body would have stirred him. “Do you have an old-fashioned alibi for four nights ago, when Standish met his end?”

He winced, remembering his lover. “I was home with Delle. I don’t know if that counts; of course she would cover for me.”

“Of course,” I agreed. “But now I know she is pristine.” I turned back to Delle, who was coloring faintly, recognizing the allusion to her virginity. “Do you confirm that he was home with you?”

“Yes,” she said with complete sincerity.

“And I believe you. I have read your mind and know you speak truly.”

“So we’re both clear,” Donald said, relieved.

“You are. We regret having to put you through this, but we have to run down the murderer.”

“Yes you do,” Donald agreed with feeling.

“We understand,” Delle said. Then: “In this form, Mena—do you ever—? ”

“Have sex with a man? I did once, to make sure I really could do it. But I’m still a heterosexual man inside. I retched, after. There’s no art to it. What sensible woman would ever want to have sex with a man? They’re clumsy, sweaty, and disgusting, and the moment they get what they want, brupppt! They’re gone.”

Nonce was stifling laughter, and Donald was also amused. But Delle was reassured. “I think I like you, Mena. Maybe we could be friends.”

She was lonely; that was another thing I had read in her. But she was a nice person. Could Mena have friends that Phil didn’t? Why not. “Maybe after we nail the murderer,” I agreed.

“That would be nice. Here’s your penny.” She handed it to me. “But about sex with a man. I’ve never done it, but I would be glad to if I found the right man. I don’t see men as disgusting, and I wouldn’t care how he looked, as long as he truly cared for and appreciated me.”

“Delle would date a Goblin if he were sincere,” Donald said. I realized that he wasn’t joking. He knew what a sincere and giving person she was.

“I have done so,” Nonce said. “Goblins aren’t bad when you allow for their taciturn nature. They are also rich, and can be generous if pleased.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t do it for money,” Delle protested.

“Of course not,” Nonce agreed. “But it is a corollary that can be endured.”

And I knew also from my glimpse into Delle’s mind that they were close to the wire financially. Probably the Warlock’s generosity had helped them, but that was gone now.

I invoked my reversed Name and started my Change. But something was wrong; it wasn’t going right.

“The curse!” Nonce exclaimed, catching on. “It’s messing up your transformation.”

So it was. I set the penny down, and things were back on track.

Then I changed my mind. Mena needed more practice time, and this would do. I reversed my reversal, which had hardly started, and firmed as Mena. “This will do for a while,” I said. Then I remembered a detail. “Only I don’t have my dress here.”

“Borrow one of mine,” Delle said quickly, hurrying to fetch one. “You’re more buxom than I am, but this one is too large for me, and maybe it will do.”

I put it on; it was tight in places, but sufficed. I also borrowed a pair of her panties, and slippers. I didn’t bother with a bra, knowing none of hers would fit me. So I would jiggle and bounce; who would object?

“I’m not sure I can keep the penny,” I said once I was dressed and ready to go. “Not if it messes up my magic.”

“Put it in this,” Delle said, proffering a miniature change purse. “It’s shielded. They keep better when shielded, because they’re not interacting with passing things.”

“Thank you.” I put the penny in the purse, and its faint dissonance faded.

We bade farewell to the siblings and returned to the car. “Two more down,” Nonce said.

“Was I being foolish?”

“About Mena being Delle’s friend? I thought that was sweet. Mena needs a social life too, so she can become a real person.”

“Maybe that was in the back of my mind. I guess it does make sense.”

“But after her description of sex with a man, I’m not sure I want to touch you again.”

Oh, damn! But then she let her laughter out. She was teasing me.

“Now the Goblin,” I said.

“We’d better check in with Goblin HQ first, lest we provoke an inter-Clan incident.”

“Um, it just occurred to me: will I be, er, safe there?”

“Never fear. I will run interference if I have to. But Goblins can be surprisingly courtly about women. It’s the one weakness in their wall of surliness. They know their appearance isn’t impressive, so they try to make up for it by manner.”

That was reassuring, but not completely.

Nonce gave the car the address, and it smoothly conveyed us there. This turned out to be a squat stone building without markings. It looked like a deserted warehouse. We parked behind it and walked to the front, two pretty girls.

There was a Goblin on duty at the entrance office. He was squat and ugly, like the building, and he scowled as he blocked our way. “No admittance; didn’t you oafs see the sign?”

This was courtly?

Nonce smiled, leaned forward, and kissed him. “We’re Supes on business, as you can surely divine. One Witch and one Were. Now show us to your crew boss, or I’ll kiss you again.”

The Goblin considered that, scowling. “You’re not scaring me, BeWitch.”

Nonce laughed. “Then I’ll try harder.” She caught hold of his head and made a flurry of kisses all over his face. “Does the threat of that scare you?”

“No. You can kiss me to oblivion, but I will not yield.”

I wasn’t sure what game they were playing. It seemed to be a kissing contest that they both not-so-secretly enjoyed, but where was it leading?

“You’re bluffing, Gob. Oblivion coming up.” Nonce inhaled and puckered.

A door behind the desk opened and a really homely Goblin in a dress appeared. In fact it was a female. “What are you up to, Clunker?” she demanded.

“Oh, snot!” Clunker mumbled. Then to the Gobliness: “Wretcha, these jokers want to see the Chief. I’m balking them, of course.”

“By kissing a Witch? She’ll soon have you eating her pie à la mode.” Wretcha faced the visitors. “Now get your hairy bottoms out of here, you obscene intruders. The Chief won’t see you.”

“Hairy bottom!” Nonce said, outraged. “What do you call this?” She pulled up her skirt to flash her absolutely smooth posterior.

I might have cautioned her, but realized that she had something in mind. She was putting on an act. Why?

“I call it a marvel of illusion,” Wretcha retorted. “You Witches can cover up the foulest malformations.”

“Malformation!” Nonce’s outrage shook the office walls. I realized that she wanted to be heard well beyond the office. Whom was she signaling?

Another Goblin entered. This one wore an expensive suit, and was clearly a top executive. “What’s going on here?”

“Chief Hardknock, this BeWitch is mooning us!” Wretcha said indignantly. Somehow the internal E and W did not sound clearly.

The Chief studied the exposure carefully, which remained defiantly visible. “And she’s certainly making a good job of it.” His gaze swept across to register on me. “And a buxom braless Were! To what do we owe the dishonor of this intrusion?”

“I am Mena Were, investigating the murder of a Warlock,” I said. “Burket Goblin is a suspect. We need to interview him.”

Hardknock nodded. “Come into my office. I’ll knock some sense into your thick noggins. Good work, staff.”

We entered his office, which was surprisingly spacious. He closed the door. Then Nonce stepped into his embrace, kissing him firmly on the mouth, something she had not done with Clunker. Obviously these two knew each other.

After some time they separated. “It’s good to see you again, Nonce,” the Chief said. “If you should ever need a man again—”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” she said. “But I seldom do repeats. You know that.”

So they had been lovers. I was annoyed but not completely surprised; Witches were notorious, and Nonce clearly got around. If all the Chief had in the way of women was a Gobliness like Wretcha, he would be hungry for a dream like Nonce. I understood that Goblin males and females were chronically antipathetic, getting together only briefly for the purpose of propagating the species. Also that Goblinesses, too, bought the kind of handsome company they preferred.

“And your friend?” he asked, eying my bounce.

“Mena’s not into Goblins.”

“Too bad,” Hardknock said with what appeared to be genuine regret. I really would have felt better in a bra. “So what’s your pretext this time, Witch?”

I explained our mission.

“Burket didn’t do it,” the Chief said firmly.

“So Nonce says. But we have to be methodical. Someone did it.”

Hardknock nodded. “We don’t want any suggestion of murderers in our midst. It gets in the way of making money and buying pretty houses and fair maidens. But his shift is six hours from conclusion. He’s on Level 92. You’ll have to go down into the mine to meet him.”

“We’ll do that,” I said.

“We’ll set you up with breathers, but you won’t like the pressure, so I’m sure you won’t linger long.”

“Just until the job’s done,” I said.

He provided us with oxygen kits and escorted us to an elevator. The two of us got in, the door slid closed, and the bottom dropped out. I flailed wildly, but Nonce caught me. “It’s a fast descent,” she said. “Goblin mines are deep.”

So it seemed. It felt as if we were plunging miles. Then it came to a bone-bruising halt and the door slid open on Level 92. Heat blasted in, and the air pressure increased, making my ears creak. I was having trouble breathing.

“The kit,” Nonce reminded me, putting the mouthpiece to my lips. I sucked on it. Invigorating oxygen emerged, marvelously improving my condition.

We walked down the hall. The walls and floor were hot; this could have been a passage in Hell. It led to a cave where a single Goblin worked. He was ugly in the normal fashion, decked with tools. The wall before him glinted with embedded gems.

I took a gulp of oxygen. “Burket, I presume?” I said.

“What’s it to you, gasper?” He did not stop working.

“I am Mena Were, a PI investigating the death of the Warlock Standish.”

“That donkey hole ripped me off for a pile of gold!”

“By getting himself killed? I’m sure it wasn’t intentional.”

“Killed? He suicided.”

“Not as we see it. Somebody murdered him, and you are a suspect.”

“Oh, you’re trying to make me buy you off? Cornhole it, jerk; I’m not paying.”

Nonce stepped in. “We are here to exonerate you, handsome miner. You were his closest business associate of the moment. We need to be able to tell others that you are innocent.” She smiled fetchingly.

Burket was plainly flattered by her attention, probably remembering their prior liaison, but he rallied. “No Goblin is innocent! But I didn’t put him down. I need that reality room! Now I’ll have to shop for another Warlock.”

Nonce took a breath that emphasized her décolletage. “All we need is for you to do a bit of your magic. Then we’ll depart.”

“Whatcha offer in exchange?”

“One Witchly kiss.”

“That’s not enough! I can buy—”

He was cut off by her ardent kiss. I could practically see the magic shimmering; she was putting everything into it.

When she finally let him go, the Goblin wavered slightly on his feet. It was clear he had not before had a kiss of that caliber, maybe not even when she seduced him before. Then he focused on the nearest projecting gem, which looked like a blue diamond of incalculable value, even raw. He touched his finger to it, exerted his magic, and it dropped into his hand. “You’ll want to get it faceted,” he said, giving it to her.

“Thank you.” Nonce glanced at me. I nodded; the Goblin was clean.

Burket paused before addressing the next gem. His gaze fell on my too-tight bosom with an almost tangible impact. I tried to stop breathing, but it was impossible; I had to sip the oxygen. He opened his mouth.

“Mena’s not into Goblins,” Nonce repeated.

Burket struggled to tear his gaze away from my burgeoning décolletage. “You wouldn’t happen to have a sister, would you, Witch?”

Nonce considered. “Will a virgin Witch do?”

His surprise was genuine. “There are virgin Witches?”

“Not many, and they don’t remain so long. Look up Delle Witch. I’ll tell her to expect your visit. Be gentle and generous; she’ll be shy at first. Virgins are.”

“Where’s the catch? She ugly?”

“No, she’s rather pretty, and a nice person. She knew the Warlock passingly. She just hasn’t found the right man.”

That sufficed. “I’ll go to her tonight.”

“Clean off the rock dust before you go. Don’t use four letter concepts. She’s a pristine gem that requires careful handling.”

“That’s the kind I want.”

“Her magic is slight. She makes Penny Curses. Compliment them.”

“Got it.”

We returned to the elevator. “Was that wise?” I asked.

“He’s a good sort, for a Goblin. He’ll bring her a corsage of diamonds and take her to the town’s richest restaurant where the management will fawn over her in order to impress him; they know their business. She’ll never be poor again. All she has to do is be nice to him. She can handle it; she’s a Witch. She might even come to like him. It’s easy to like a generous rich man.”

I shook my head. “Maybe I have lived a sheltered life.”

“Indeed,” she agreed. “I’m attracted to innocence too.”

I knew she wasn’t fooling. “So we have exonerated all the suspects who might have had motive to kill your cousin,” I said.

“Yes. That does make it difficult.”

“Not necessarily. Murders of passion require motives, but serial killers require only opportunity. It simply means that we do have an outside killer to deal with. We’ll have to run down any common elements in the three murders, in case they point to any particular person.”

“That seems like a long shot.”

“It is. But there might be evidence left at the crime scenes, if the killer gets careless. That’s where the straight gumshoe labor comes in.”

“Make Phil do it.”

The elevator forged upward with the same intimidating power it had descended. I hesitated to estimate how many Gs acceleration we were enduring.

When the door opened, I sucked in cool fresh air. The Goblins endured eight-hour shifts in that inferno? Well, that was part of their magic.

We returned the oxy kits and departed the premises. It had been an interesting experience.

“Now I’ll tell Delle to expect a suitor,” Nonce said in the car. “Then I’ll see to you. Has Mena ever made out with a woman before?”

I didn’t argue. It should be interesting.

Chapter 6:

Memories

Next we tackled the Weres. Nonce was resting after her efforts of the morning, and I returned to the office and to my male form. I had been perhaps foolishly free in revealing Mena to Delle, but I did like the Witch and the idea of being her female friend. Now it was time to put Phil back in harness. Syd ran down all Bear’s significant contacts, and we set about verifying them. Bear had not been a social animal, like his Were-form, but he had interacted with a number of people.

First there was the sensei, or martial arts instructor, at the dojo where Bear worked as a record keeper. His name was Oto, a severe contraction of a complicated Oriental name. Bear wasn’t a great martial artist himself, but he had a lot of power and nerve, and that counted for a lot. With Sensei Oto’s advice Bear had gradually improved, and actually won some low-level recognition. Mainly he liked to be around martial artists, and especially around Oto, who was a Were Jaguar. On occasion they would Change together and range the wilderness, as bear and jaguar, loving the sheer animality of it. But they never spoke of it at the dojo, the martial arts shop, because the majority of its students were normals. Still, it did attract some Supernaturals, including Weres, Goblins, Witches, and Warlocks. They wanted to be ready to defend themselves in case magic failed.

Syd and I talked with Oto in his spy-proof office. He knew Syd as Bear’s girl, and she had taken some classes. She had also invested some money in his business, helping him get started. That was not the kind of favor he was ever likely to forget. He knew me as Bear’s closest friend, and I also had taken an occasional class, though I was no combat specialist. He understood our compelling desire to run down Bear’s murderer.

“The mundane police believe that Bear’s death was an accident,” I said. “That some careless driver collided with his car and sent it out of control. He smacked into a tree and was impaled on the steering column. That may have happened, but we believe it is far from the full story. There was one report of a man in the car with him shortly before it happened. There was no sign of a man in the car after the accident, but if he had a way to escape he might have drugged or pushed Bear so that he lost control and crashed.”

“Bear was a good driver,” Oto said. “And a bear of a man, not exactly a pun. I don’t think anyone could have pushed him into that kind of trouble.”

“But with a gas bomb, or an anesthetic dart, whose effect would dissipate rapidly and not leave a trace in the body?”

Oto nodded. “Such things exist. It is possible. But why would anyone do such a thing? Bear was well respected at the dojo.”

“What about the bullies he suppressed?”

“They understood him. To them he was a bigger bully. They just stayed out of his way and he didn’t pursue them. Not much motive there.”

“What about his other contacts?”

“He wasn’t much of a mixer. He mostly minded his own business. I don’t believe anyone connected to the dojo would have done it, and he didn’t have many other contacts. Certainly no one important, apart from the two of you.”

“Now we come to the awkward part,” I said.

“I am a suspect.”

“We don’t believe you did it,” I said quickly. “But you could have, and if there had been any private bad blood between you—well, we just have to be sure.”

“Only if he tried to cook my books. He didn’t. No bad blood.”

“It’s really a formality,” I said.

“I know your talent,” Oto said, standing and doffing his clothes. He was a compact but muscular man, and Syd eyed his body appreciatively. At such a time as her grief for Bear subsided, she might become interested in a man like Oto.

Oto murmured his Name and began his Change. I read his nature immediately: innocent.

“I have enough,” I said. “No need to complete the transformation. You are vindicated.”

Oto nodded and reversed course. He had known he would be exonerated, but also understood the need to nail it. “I will miss those romps in the wilderness,” he said.

“I will go with you, if you care for the company of a serpent,” Syd said.

“I care for your company, whatever the form.” Now that he had been cleared, he could afford to express guarded interest.

“It will be a while,” she said. “I was going to marry Bear.” But I could tell she was intrigued.

“He loved you absolutely. I would not want to tread on his memory.”

“We could compare memories.”

“There are many good ones.”

“Is there anyone else you know of that we should verify?” I asked.

“There are a couple of ladies who admired him, but they knew he was committed. No motive there.” Then he paused. “Which reminds me, Phil: Molly is back.”

“Molly! My old girlfriend?”

“The Were-bitch,” he agreed. “When she reached the age of 18 she slipped her chain and returned here. I saw her yesterday. She asked after you.”

That stirred old emotions. I had loved Molly. Maybe I still did. “I—have another girlfriend now.”

“The Witch,” he agreed. “I think that’s why Molly did not approach you directly. She doesn’t want to complicate your life.”

“All the same, I think I’d better interview her. She could be a suspect.”

“She could never hurt you or Bear. She’s a sweet girl.”

“I’m sure. But I want to exonerate her at the outset.”

“I will tell her to contact you.”

“Thank you.” We shook hands and departed.

We stopped at an eatery along the way, and talked as we ate burgers and shakes.

“Imagine that,” Syd said. “Molly back from limbo. She was gone before you joined the Clan, so I never met her, but I feel I know her. You and Bear told me so much about her. She must prefer the Supe environment here.”

“I hope this doesn’t make mischief with Nonce.”

“Phil, Nonce is a Witch. They are notoriously good lovers, but also notoriously fickle. Your liaison with her is unlikely to be of long duration. When it expires, I suspect you could do a hell of a lot worse than Molly.”

“I know it. But right now I don’t know how I feel.”

“Let’s nail Bear’s murderer. Then our feelings should sort themselves out.”

“With no other suspects among the Weres, you will have to move on to the other case, the Vampire.”

“We have contacted the assistant to the Vamp Chief. She was very helpful.”

“Vachelle. I understand she’s every man and woman’s girlfriend.”

“Pretty much. She impressed me.”

“She would. If you have a weakness, Phil, it is for pretty women. Which is surprising, considering that you are one.”

“No, I’m always a man, even in the woman’s body.”

“So some time you may find Mena making out with a woman.”

“I already did,” I agreed.

“Nonce?”

“She was fun. I was not revolted. Women really are cleaner and more sensitive. But it’s still better as a man.”

We arrived at my office. There was someone familiar waiting by the front window.

“Molly!” I exclaimed, going to her.

“That’s her?” Syd asked, surprised. “Oto said he would pass the word.”

“He did,” Molly said. “I came immediately.”

“That was fast,” I agreed as I hugged her. She was older now than she had been, and better filled out; in fact she was an attractive woman. “And this is my associate Sydelle.”

The two women shook hands guardedly.

“I know you have another girlfriend now,” Molly said.

“A Witch,” I agreed. “I thought you were permanently out of my life.”

“It wasn’t just you I missed. It was the Supe community. I feel more at home here.”

“Look, Molly, Bear was murdered. You were close to him, as I was. We need to clear you of any complicity.”

“I wasn’t even here. But of course I could have sneaked in, killed him, and sneaked back out. So yes, check me. I don’t want anyone ever to think that I could hurt Bear. I was going to attend the Prom with him, way back when.”

“Before you got the flu,” I agreed. “So Mena took your place.”

“Weren’t those the days!”

“What you need to do is start your Change, in my presence. I’ll read your Name and nature, and know. That’s all there is to it.”

“Except that my Name and nature are more intimate than my body. I’d much rather have you see me naked than read my mind. But for you I’ll do it.”

I understood how she felt, but it was necessary. “Thank you.”

We were in the office. Syd locked the door and drew the shutters. Then Molly stepped out of her dress. She wore no underwear. I knew that wasn’t intended to be seductive; it was that Weres didn’t like to be hampered when they Changed, so they dressed simply. Did I say she had filled out? She was a buxom beauty!

Then she started her Change. I tuned in on her mind—and was nearly blown away. Not only was she innocent, she still loved me, with a deep emotional and sexual passion. She had been away for years, but the flame never faded. That was why she had returned.

“I have it,” I said. “You’re clean. Change back.”

She reversed the fur that had been forming on that perfect body, and firmed back into a woman. She donned her dress. “How much did you read?”

“Too much,” I admitted. “It was inadvertent. Oh, Molly, I truly didn’t know you cared! Not like that, after all this time. I am unworthy.”

“Well, I didn’t mean to tell you. I hoped that you would not pick up on that aspect.”

“It was like stepping into a tornado. I couldn’t miss it.”

“The love of Witches generally doesn’t last long,” Syd said. “Now Phil knows where he can go when the Witch fades.”

“I do indeed,” I said. Already I could see a future with Molly. “Meanwhile, I have to solve this murder.”

“I know. Bear was a great guy. My roommate Queue knew him too.”

“Roommate?”

“I needed a place to stay, and she had room. Weres look out for Weres.”

“She knew Bear? I never heard of her.”

“She told me she met him about six months ago in Oto’s dojo. They worked out together. They were casual friends. That was all there was to it. He wasn’t one to make moves on girls.”

I sighed. “I had better check Queue, just to be sure. Can you ask her to come see me?”

“You can check her now. She’s waiting for me in her car.”

That was how she had gotten here so quickly. “Okay. Bring her in.”

Queue turned out to be a tall, buxom, black-haired black-eyed woman, pretty and self-possessed. Her midnight tresses contrasted with Molly’s curly brown hair, being luxuriously waist length.

We shook hands. “I’m Phil Were, investigating a murder.”

“Queue Were. Molly said I might be a suspect.”

“It’s a technical thing. We are checking out all of Bear’s closer acquaintances.”

“We weren’t close. Oh, I suppose we could have been, as he was a good man, but he was locked in.” She glanced briefly at Syd, signaling that she knew the lock.

“I need to see you Change.”

“The hell! I’m not exposing my body to a stranger.”

“It’s that my secondary is to read a person when he invokes his Name. I can tell guilt or innocence. You could start your Change in clothing, and reverse it soon.”

“I reversed mine,” Molly said.

Queue surveyed me speculatively. “Like a lie detector. You tune in on the Name because that’s the very essence of a person’s magic.”

“Something like that,” I agreed.

“I’ve got reason to keep my clothing on. I’m unusual. I’m a WereMan.”

I thought I had misheard. “A what?”

“A WereMan. I Change into a man, complete with genitalia. It can freak folk out.”

“I’m a WereWoman!” I said.

“You’re like me! Only reversed.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me: when you Change, are you male or female inside?”

“I’m a man in a woman’s body. So I don’t do it often; it’s not comfortable.”

“And I’m a woman in a man’s body. Same situation. I don’t sexually hunger for women in either form.”

I nodded, understanding perfectly.

“She’s a better match for you than I am,” Molly said sadly.

“You assume I want him,” Queue said. “I’m not looking for romance with anyone. Not since my boyfriend dumped me three months ago.”

“You’re still hurting,” Syd said wisely.

“Yes. These things take time.”

“Now about the verification,” I said.

“Ah, yes. That. I’ll make you this deal: I’ll strip and Change if you do too. So if it’s awkward, we’ll both be similarly embarrassed. Is that a fair compromise?”

Was she really a WereMan? I wanted to verify that too. In fact I was overwhelmingly curious about this aspect, so similar to my own. “Deal,” I agreed.

The two of us faced each other and stripped, while Syd and Molly sat watching. Queue was a luscious creature, generous in breast and buttock. I did start to get an erection, but quickly progressed with my Change so that there was nothing to erect. Meanwhile she shifted, her breasts flattening into chest and upper arm muscle, her bottom condensing, her groin growing a fair sized phallus. She was definitely a man in form.

The point of this was almost lost along the way, but I did accomplish it in the moment she invoked her Name: she was innocent. Good enough.

Our transformation complete, we stood and looked at each other. The figure before me was now taller and more muscular, but had similar long dark hair. Hair was difficult, because it wasn’t exactly alive and changed reluctantly; I wore mine long but bound back so it looked short, so that Mena could have it, unbound. Pubic hair wasn’t a problem because it didn’t need to change.

I had no interest in bedding him, and knew that he had a similar aversion to bedding me. I remained male, the other female, in outlook, despite our bodies. We understood each other in that respect in a way that perhaps no others would.

“I am Quent,” he said. “Short for Quentin, close as I could get to Queue.”

“I am Mena, short for Philomena, similarly.”

“Now that we’ve shared our secrets, let’s Change back.”

“Let’s.”

We invoked our reversed Names and Changed. I reverified her innocence of murder, not that I needed to. She was at heart a nice person, not capable of any such violence.

In due course we were back to our original forms, and clothed. “This has been interesting,” Queue said. “Let’s not do it again.”

“Agreed.”

Queue and Molly departed, leaving Syd and me to unwind. “I never saw the like,” Syd said. “Man to woman, woman to man, together. You may be the only two Weres like that.”

“We may be,” I agreed. “I’m glad she checked out, not that I ever thought she was guilty.”

“We seem to have eliminated all the suspects in Bear’s murder.”

“Just as Nonce and I eliminated them in the Warlock’s murder,” I agreed. “So far, as an investigator, my score stands at zero.”

“I don’t think so. Eliminating false leads is just as important as locating the right one.”

Nonce arrived. “I thought you’d be needing me about this time,” she said.

“Yes. I eliminated two more suspects, finishing the Were contingent. Now I think it’s time for the Vamps.”

“I will take you there. Meanwhile you can tell me about those suspects. I take it neither would apply to the Warlock.”

“Neither would,” I said, and told her about Molly and Queue as we drove.

“Your former girlfriend! And a Were who is the mirror of you. Now I won’t need to be concerned about where you’ll go when my Witchly passion expires and you’ll be cast emotionally adrift.”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry to expire. I’m way short of being ready to drift.”

“Of course. As long as you know that we Witches burn too fiercely emotionally to endure for long. We’re great passing company, but not good marriage material.”

So I was coming to understand. Another Were, however, might be excellent material.

We arrived at a fenced estate resembling an overgrown mountain with solar collectors on it. There was a little shack near the gate. It wasn’t very impressive. But I knew better than to judge by appearances. Vampires had suffered more than Weres or Goblins, and were more careful about showing their nature. There was a worn sign saying, perhaps facetiously, PARADISE MOUNTAIN.

There was an old man snoozing in a chair by the iron gate. That too was deceptive; I smelled his Supe nature. And he wasn’t asleep; he was alertly watching us. In fact he wasn’t old, either. It was all an act to fool mundanes.

We halted before him. “Hello, Vamp,” Nonce said. “We are Nonce Witch and Phil Were, here on business. We have clearance from Vachelle.”

The man abandoned his act. “She said you were coming. Go on in.”

“Thank you.” She leaned down and kissed him. Nonce kissed folk freely, and it was apparent that they liked it; it seemed to be part of the Witchly protocol.

We entered the gate and discovered a wooden cellar-type door at the base of the mountain. We opened it and descended into a gloomy storage room that smelled of decaying potatoes. Still not impressive. No one would be looking in here for anything. We turned a dark corner, found another rickety wooden door, opened that, and entered a dank tunnel. It curved, then opened out into an amazing brightly-lighted subterranean cave. We were on a ledge looking down into its central valley.

The heart of the mountain was evidently hollow, and this was the inner sanctum. It was an amazing garden with all manner of exotic plants and trees, and a lake in the center. Animals abounded, with squirrels in the trees, deer grazing in the glades, birds in the air, and fish leaping in the water.

“This is paradise,” I murmured, awed.

“So it is labeled,” Nonce agreed. “The solar lenses direct the sunlight down here to make a very nice greenhouse.”

“But to what purpose, since there’s no indication that this is a tourist attraction? In fact this is perfectly hidden.”

A Vampire lass approached us, as lithe and lovely as they all seemed to be. “I am Veera, caretaker of the day. How may I help you, honored visitors?”

“We are Phil Were and Nonce Witch, here to interview suspects in the recent murder of Vulcan Vamp,” I said. “We admit to being impressed by the setting.”

“We do enjoy it,” Veera said. “Perhaps before you meet the suspects, I should acquaint you with the nature of this retreat.”

“Please do. I had no idea that such a garden existed, and I am quite curious as to its purpose.”

“As you surely do know, we Vamps can assume the form of human-sized bats,” Veera said, shifting briefly to exactly that. “But we would be unable to fly, because of the square-cube law. That is, our mass is much greater than our wings can lift, at this size; only much smaller birds and real-life bats can fly naturally. So we require magic to increase our strength and decrease our weight, to make flight feasible. To gain that magic we must drink fresh blood.” She smiled. “Don’t worry; I am not going to bite you. We don’t prey on Supes. Or on normal humans, for that matter; it’s too dangerous. Instead we raise blood-rich animals, harvesting their blood carefully so as not to damage them. They are used to it, and really don’t mind; our bites are anesthetic and we give them treats. This is our hunting ground.”

“Amazing,” I said. “But couldn’t you do it more efficiently with caged animals, the way commercial interests farm for eggs and meat?”

“We would never do that,” Veera said, making a brief expression of horror. “It is important that our animals be happy. It affects the taste and vigor of the blood.”

“Or a preserve in some isolated region,” I said. “That would surely be much cheaper to maintain, with happy animals.”

“Not necessarily, because we would not control the environment and would not get maximum growth. There could be poachers, too. Also, we would not be free to fly by day.”

“You don’t fly by day?”

“Our bat forms are quite sensitive to direct sunlight; in fact it is rapidly lethal. It’s a side effect of the magic. So at times we turn off the sunlight here, and fly in the gloom. It’s highly refreshing. And that is how Vulcan was killed. There was a glitch in the timing of the cycle, and he was caught in the sunlight while flying over the lake. He died within minutes.” Veera shuddered. “It was horrible.”

“He was flying in the gloom, and suddenly the light came on?” Nonce asked, getting it straight.

“Exactly. That should never have happened. We discovered that someone had modified the computer program to make it malfunction, and he was the one caught.”

“Don’t you have technicians keeping an eye on things?” I asked.

“We do, and these are your suspects. Any of them could have introduced that error, and perhaps one of them did. We hope you can discover who; we do not want to blame anyone unfairly.”

“Would any of them have reason to kill him?”

“No. Vulcan was popular with the ladies.”

“Jealousy?”

Veera laughed. “I gather you are not familiar with our subculture. We are not romantically possessive. There can be individual liaisons or group liaisons, no jealousy. The only negative is forced attention. Vulcan was smart and handsome; no lady refused him. All hoped he would consent to give them a baby.”

“All?” I asked. “Including you?”

She blushed. “Including me. I was horrified when the light came on out of turn, but I could not help him; I had to get under cover myself.”

“Then you will not mind if I verify your sincerity.”

“Not at all.”

“All you need to do is change form for a moment.”

Veera didn’t hesitate. She unwrapped her light robe to stand splendidly nude, sprouted wings and fangs, then reverted to human and re-wrapped her robe.

That was enough. She was innocent. Had she deliberately flashed me? Probably. Did it matter? Probably not. As she said, they had a different romantic culture, and I was a handsome male. Casual trysts were where you found them. Had I not been with Nonce I might have been quite interested. Would such a liaison take? It was possible. All Supes were really subspecies of humans, and though interbreeding was not common (in contrast to sex, which was common), it happened on occasion. But the children were always mundane.

“We will need to check the other suspects similarly,” Nonce said.

We checked them. All were innocent, and broken up about the loss of Vulcan. As far as I could tell, he had not been slain by a Vamp. Someone else must have done it.

But who had pied the light program? It did not seem to be a Vamp, but who else was there? That was the mystery.

“Stay a little longer, and you can watch us disport ourselves in the night cycle,” Veera said.

I glanced at Nonce. “That interests me, for purely shallow masculine reasons.”

“By all means,” she said. “I think male Vamps will be flying too. I hear they can be well hung.”

Soon the light dimmed to comfortable gloom. The Vampires did come out, getting bare, changing, and launching into the air over the lake. They were all fine figures of nudes, female and male; doubtless it was because they had to be trim and healthy to facilitate flying, regardless of the magic boost provided by the blood.

A human bat swooped down, landed before me, and opened her arms to me. It was Veera, in full bat mode, but also delightfully human. I embraced her, and she was as much fun to touch as to look at. “If you are ever in need of company…” she murmured in my ear.”

“I will keep you in mind,” I agreed. “And dream of you between-times.”

She smiled, kissed me without drawing blood, and took off again.

A male Vamp addressed Nonce similarly. “Not today,” she murmured, openly admiring his equipment. “But not far in the future, either.”

It was indeed a pleasant interlude.

“We have three murders and no remaining suspects,” I told Nonce glumly on the way back to the office.

“I feared it would be so.”

“It does seem to be a crime of random opportunity. That’s the hardest kind to solve.”

“And we do have to solve it.”

Of course we did. But so far I was spinning my wheels. This was not my notion of a successful PI business.

Chapter 7:

Demon

There was news at the office. “I didn’t call you because it could have queered your investigation,” Syd said. “There’s been another murder.”

“Just in time,” I said wryly. “We were running out of suspects.”

“This one’s a Demon. The Demon Chief knows you’re on the case, and figures this could be part of it. Here’s the address.”

“You want to come along?” I asked Nonce.

“You bet. I’ll take you. I know the Demons.”

I was sure she did. She had probably had an affair with their Chief. It was probably expedient not to mention that.

We came to an amusement park, HELL’S HEAVEN. I had heard of it as being fabulous but expensive, so my limited budget had kept me away. The front sign said RANDOM BARGAIN DAY: ALL VISITORS ADMITTED FREE IF ACCOMPANIED BY GUIDES.

“Oh, one of those,” Nonce said. “It’ll be jammed.”

“Free admittance?” I asked. “How often do they do that?”

“About once a week. Visitors watch for it, and flock in when the announcement is made. Other days are charged, and admittance isn’t cheap.”

“And individual guides are provided, also free?”

“Yes. They are said to be very knowledgeable and helpful.”

“So the park loses money?”

“Not really.”

“But unless they limit the free passes, most visitors will hold out for the next free day, and business at other times will be low.”

“True. The locals are especially savvy about timing. Tourists less so, so they generally pay unless they can wangle spot free passes.”

What had I missed out on, by not learning more about this park? Free tickets! “I take it that Demons are not ace businessmen.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

I glanced sidelong at her. “Is there something you’re not telling me?”

“Of course. A little teasing is good for the relationship.”

I let it be. I would surely find out soon enough.

We joined the line and approached the admittance gate. “We’re together,” Nonce told the Demon at the booth.

“One guide per person; that’s the rule,” the Demon said. “So you don’t get into trouble. Unless you prefer to pay for admittance.”

“Pay!” Nonce exclaimed with finely crafted annoyance. “On a free day?”

“Wear your numbers,” he said, handing us two tags. “So your guides won’t risk losing you.”

“What, aren’t the attractions marked? How can we get lost?”

“On crowded days, it can happen,” the Demon explained patiently.

We pinned our tags to our shirts. Hers was 923 and mine was 924. That hinted how busy the park was today. The two guides had matching numbers. Nonce’s guide was a handsome Demon with small goatlike horns, furry body under his suit, a long forked tail, and cloven hooves. Mine was a lovely Demoness with cute horns and an infernally shapely torso distending her blouse and short skirt. Her tail flicked restlessly; it would not be inappropriate to call her a piece of tail.

“This way, beautiful Witch,” the Demon said, putting a hand on her back as if helping a date.

“We’ll go the same way, handsome Were,” my Demoness said. “Unless you prefer to separate and rejoin them in a bit?” Her blouse went translucent, flashing her firmly braless breasts.

“I’d be lost without my date,” I said. In more than one way.

“We’ll stay close.” She nudged into me, and somehow I found my arm about her hourglass waist.

“The Tunnel of Love will do to start,” Demon 923 said. “It’s a busy day and we need to route around the crowds.”

We got into a four-seater boat with Nonce and her Demon in front, me and my Demoness behind. The boat glided smoothly into the dark tunnel.

“We are invisible,” my Demoness murmured as she guided my arm further around her body and my hand to her blouse. Her anatomy was just as shapely to the touch as it had been to the sight. Was Nonce being fondled similarly? “In fact we could doff our clothing and no one would know.” She breathed deeply, filling my hand.

She was interested in making out like that right in the presence of my date? I did not trust this, evocative as her body and manner were. But her hands were busy, and I felt my clothing loosening. She was undressing me herself. I tried to grab her hands, to stop her, but they puffed into smoke and reformed beyond my grasp.

Then one of her hands reached into my trousers and took hold of my member, which eagerly inflated. “Hey!” I whispered.

Her face intercepted mine. She kissed me, her hands never faltering. I tried to push her away, but wherever I touched her body it smoked out, leaving me with nothing. I was helpless to balk her depredations, and beginning to lose my wish to do so. She was sexy as hell.

Then she lifted herself, slid across, and her bare bottom came down on my exposed groin. “Hey!” I said, almost in an anguish of temptation.

“I think we have indulged enough,” Nonce said as she removed herself from the Demon’s lap. “We have actually come to see Chief HellForLeather.”

“What, you are dissatisfied with our service?” her Demon asked, sounding hurt. “We have hardly begun to experience the delights the park offers.”

“I’m sure they are phenomenal. But we are here on business. Please divert the boat.”

“This is highly irregu—” He broke off with a whimper of pain. Nonce had evidently squeezed him where it hurt. That region had, it seemed, been ready to hand, and not subject to dematerialization without defeating its purpose.

“Now,” she said.

The boat changed course in the darkness. I put myself back together as well as I could, and was sure Nonce was doing the same. Soon the craft emerged in an office suite. A formally garbed Demon stood there. His name tag said HellForLeather. “Nonce Witch! What are you doing in the LoveBoat without me?”

“Making a small demonstration,” Nonce said as she stepped out. “My companion hasn’t been here before. I wanted him to see your operation in action. Get the feel of it, as it were.”

Oh, the literalness!

“Then you should have let things be. The action was incipient.”

“Yes. I couldn’t delay longer.”

HellForLeather shrugged. “Well, come on into the office.”

I got out of the boat. The two guides floated the boat back into the tunnel, frowning. They realized that they had been foxed.

The inner office was lined with television monitors. Each showed a different scene. Some were folk on ordinary rides or exhibits. Some were different, with Demons earnestly talking with numbered visitors. Some were downright naughty, with women riding nude or kissing Demons. One showed the boat we had just vacated, with the two glum Demons in it. Had the Chief been watching us getting busily seduced?

“What is this?” I asked.

“There’s a reason for the free passes,” Nonce said. “The visitors are the entertainment. The Demons are limited to persuasion, not coercion, and score points depending on how far they manage to get their charges to indulge. One point for a kiss, two points for nudity, three for heavy petting, four for full sex. Something like that. The spectator Demons make bets on the outcome of each case. All are continually broadcast on the park closed circuit.”

So the seeming darkness of the tunnel was actually the brightness of the camera. If I had gotten bare with the Demoness, my body would have been on public display. Considering the state it would have been in, that would have been keenly embarrassing. As it was, she had been well on the way to scoring three points and driving for the fourth. If that was persuasion, coercion would have been downright dangerous! But Nonce had cut it short, after allowing it to proceed just enough so that I could appreciate it from a visitor viewpoint. I suspected the average visitor was literally screwed before he quite caught on, and then not in much position to protest. How could he prove he had not wanted it? If he didn’t want it. “And the visitors never know?” I asked.

“They never know,” Nonce agreed. “Because if word got out, the enterprise would collapse, and the Demons would lose their prime source of entertainment. Since they are inveterate voyeurs, that would be a fate worse than death.”

“And we are now committed not to tell?”

“Yes. We do not wish to violate Demon privacy.”

The Demons valued their own privacy, but not that of the marks. Par for that course. But there were rules of inter-Clan interaction, and betraying other Clans’ secrets was an absolute no-no. I would not tell. But neither would I bring a date here on a free day. Not unless we were both looking for wild partner-swapping. Maybe repeat visitors had exactly that in mind.

“You are here about the murder,” the Chief said.

“Yes. We just learned of it an hour ago.”

“It just occurred four hours ago. I relayed news the moment I learned of it.”

This was my domain. “Tell me exactly what happened.”

“Demon Damne was evidently at home, snoozing in his bottle, when—”

“Bottle?”

“We Demons can dematerialize at will, becoming puffs of smoke. In that form we can rest without disturbance. We do not need beds or bedrooms; a bottle on a shelf will do. This saves us expense; we can make do with smaller apartments among the mundanes.”

“I see.” I had been experiencing the Demoness’s smoky hands and body in the LoveBoat; it seemed that was just the beginning. “So Damne was sleeping, when—?”

“When someone evidently entered his apartment, corked his bottle so as to trap him inside, and put it in his freezer. We can tolerate practically any amount of heat, but cold is another matter; freezing quickly demolishes us. He would have been dead within the hour.”

“Is there any chance the bottle fell into the freezer by accident?”

“No. The bottle normally sits on its own shelf, and the freezer is normally closed. In any event the bottle was corked from outside; he would not and could not have done it from inside. It was a magic cork that fused it to the glass; only a spelled corkscrew wielded from outside could have freed it. It was definitely murder, done by a person knowledgeable about the liabilities of Demons.”

“Could it have been someone who was embarrassed about being caught in the free park display? Mad enough to kill in revenge?”

“We take pains to ensure that the marks never know of their roles in the park. They think they are getting free secret sex with extremely attractive guides, and very few complain. Some might even want video recordings, if they knew. In any event, Damne was not involved with that. He was a garden-variety statistician.”

How could a person complain, without admitting how far he had gone? He was far more likely to keep the secret, and wait for the next free day. This was quite a system. I was trying to keep my eyes off the multiple screens, some of which were highly distracting in the guiltiest sort of way. This was a festival of porn.

“What about girlfriends? Did he take anyone else’s girl?”

“He was not the type. He was a very sensible Demon, not given to excesses. He had just one girlfriend at a time, and never cheated on that one despite that being common practice among our kind.”

“All the same, I should interview his current girlfriend. I should also check out his residence for clues.”

“You can do both together. Demesne is a live-in girlfriend; she is at his apartment now.”

So she certainly had opportunity. “Thank you. Give us the address.”

Damne’s apartment was a modest cellar a floor below a large apartment building, probably the cheapest available. We knocked on the door.

A young pretty girl in a blouse and shorts opened the door. “You must be the Supe investigators. I’m Demesne.” She pronounced it di-meen, almost like demon, only with the second syllable accented.

“Phil Were, PI.” I agreed. “And Nonce Witch.”

“Yes. The Chief said you were investigating other murders.”

“We suspect there is a serial killer operating. We have found no common threat, except that all victims are Supes. Vamp, Warlock, Were, and now Demon. It could be coincidence.”

“Or somebody who just doesn’t like Supernaturals,” Nonce said.

“How could someone even know who they are?” Demesne asked.

“Another Supe could,” I said. “We can smell each other.”

“Yes, of course. How can I assist you? I’m rather broken up right now; it happened just today. But if there is anything I can do to help identify his killer, I want to do it.”

“First we must eliminate you as a suspect. I understand he was sleeping in his bottle when it was corked and frozen. You could have done it. I’m not saying you did, just that you need to be cleared.”

“Of course.”

“You need to do some magic in my presence, like changing form.”

“Readily accomplished.” Demesne darkened, literally, turning smoky, including her clothing. The smoke formed into a roiling ball floating at head height. Then it elongated, became a swirling column, and coalesced back into the woman, this time wearing a dress. It occurred to me that Demonesses, like Witches or Vamps, could be a lot of fun on dates; no awkwardness about clothing.

She was completely innocent of the murder. In fact she was a nice girl throughout. Her grief was genuine; she mainly wanted us to finish so she could weep in peace.

“You’re clear,” I said. “Where were you when it happened?”

“I was out shopping. I had been at it some time; there were crowds and lines, and I had to check several stores before I found what I wanted.” She smiled briefly. “I like to think I’m a savvy shopper; I shop the sales, but they have to be verified carefully, or you don’t get what you think. I had been out a couple hours before I felt the cold.”

“You felt cold?”

“There’s a rapport when you’re emotionally close, as we were. I think it’s a kind of extended telepathy with just the two people on the line. I knew it wasn’t me; I was jammed in a hot heaving throng. It had to be him. He was freezing, literally.” She wiped away a tear. “I headed home immediately, but the mass transit connections weren’t neat and it was over an hour before I got home. By then it was too late.”

“Too late,” I echoed.

“The feeling faded when he died. I didn’t know where he was. Distracted, I unloaded my groceries. I put the frozen pizza in the freezer. That was when I saw his bottle. I screamed.”

“You took it out of the freezer?”

“Of course I did, and I ripped out the cork. But there was nothing but stale air inside; he was gone.”

I looked in the freezer. It was ordinary, with assorted frozen foods. Several were jumbled in the bottom, where they had evidently fallen when she scrambled to take out the bottle. One was marked with the number 90; I wasn’t sure what that was.

“Where was his bottle ordinarily?”

“It’s there now, on the mantle. When I opened it his defunct essence dissipated. There was nothing to do but return it to its place.” She indicated a small blue glass bottle.

“Do you also sleep in a bottle?”

“Oh, yes! Mine is right next to it.” She pointed to a matching pink glass bottle. “Sometimes we even slept together in the same bottle.” She blushed at the naughty confession. “Only I think now I’ll be afraid to use it, at least until the murderer is caught. I’ll have to sleep in solid form.” She grimaced. “Usually I do that only when in the arms of a man. At other times it’s too complicated.”

“How could someone come in here unobserved?”

“Oh, that would be no problem. We never locked the door. Anybody from the street could have come in.” She shuddered. “I’ll lock it now, of course.”

I walked around the small apartment, trying to pick up on clues, but there really weren’t any. Indeed, anybody could have done it. Which led to motive. “Did Damne have any enemies?”

“No, none. He was a nice guy. Even the mundanes liked him, not that they knew his nature. He contributed to building charities, we danced in the parties, just being regular people. It was fun.”

I got an idea. “Did he have other girlfriends before you?”

“Oh, yes. But mostly they found him dull.” Demesne smiled fleetingly. “I happen to like dull. But other Demonesses soon got bored and left him.”

“He dated only Demonesses?”

“Well, he wasn’t turned on by mundane women, and of course he could never have slept in the bottle with one of them present. So he stayed with his own kind.” She paused. “Except for one. A—a Were, I believe. What was her name? Cue. No, that’s not it, quite. Kue. Something like that. ”

My jaw dropped emotionally. “Queue?”

“Yes! Queue Were. I understand she was nice, but there was something about her. He said every so often when she let her guard down, she was eerily cold.”

Could there be two Queue Weres? “Do you know what she looked like?”

“Yes. We met once, before they broke up. She was tall, attractive, buxom, with midnight black hair and black pupils. She seemed very self possessed. Frankly I was surprised when he broke it off; she was much more impressive than I am, and I never thought I had a chance.”

This sounded exactly like the Queue I knew. “Do you know her Were-form?”

“No. Damne mentioned once that it was an odd one and he didn’t like it, so she never Wered when she was with him.”

It had to be her. So the Demon had dumped her; could that be motive to kill him? “Did he say why he broke up with her?”

“Not specifically. Just that she was dangerously unstable and he wasn’t easy with it.” Demesne made a moue. “I think she was too smart for him. She was very intelligent. I have no problem that way. I guess he prefers his women average.”

“Some men do,” I said. “Smart women make them feel diminished.”

“A woman can never be too dumb,” Nonce said with part of a smile. “It’s plain that Phil is smarter than I am.”

“Of course,” Demesne agreed. They both knew better, of course.

I did not argue the case. “How long ago did they part company?”

“Three months. I know, because next day Damne invited me to move in with him, and I leaped at the opportunity. I kept track of the time because I was so thrilled to be with him.”

“Did Queue resent you?” Nonce asked.

“I don’t know. I never saw her again. But she had to know that I didn’t break up their connection. I just was there when my chance came.”

“Would she have been angry with him about the breakup?” I asked.

“Funny thing there,” Demesne said. “All I knew of it was what he told me, and he didn’t say much. But he did express surprise that she took it so well. He had thought she might throw a tantrum, throw things, and all, but all she said was ‘If that’s the way you feel, I will get out of your life.’ And she did. She cleared out her stuff that day and left. He never saw her again.”

I had one more thing to nail. “I need to know the exact timing of this murder. When someone entered this apartment and put the bottle in the freezer.”

“That’s easy. I started home the moment I felt the cold, and made it in just over an hour. So it had to have been then, an hour before I found his bottle.”

“Which was—”

“Noon. He was murdered at noon, even if he didn’t die immediately.” She made a little laugh that sounded more like a sob. “Hot part of the day, and he was freezing! Isn’t that funny?”

“Hilarious,” I agreed, putting my arms about her so she could be comforted as she cried.

“We will do our best to find the murderer and bring him to justice,” Nonce said.

“Oh, please do! It won’t bring him back, but at least it will be closure.”

“Closure,” Nonce agreed. “My cousin was similarly murdered. That’s why I’m interested in this case. I had to take an anti-grief potion.”

“Do you have another?”

“As a matter of fact I do.” Nonce fished in her purse and produced a small vial. “It won’t make you forget him or anything like that, but it will reduce your pain so you can function.”

“Thank you.” Demesne took the vial, opened it, and gulped down its contents. “Oh, yes, that’s better. Thank you.”

“Supes look out for Supes.”

We returned to the car. “Nice girl,” I said.

“She is. Another decent prospect for you in the future. She would be loyal and faithful and do anything you wanted. Demons can assume any form they wish; you could have her emulate me. Ideal.”

“I never know when you’re teasing me.”

“There’s always some truth in teasing.”

“Queue would seem to be a prime candidate,” I said. “She answers the description perfectly.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her. I thought you had eliminated her as a suspect.”

“I had. But that was before the Demon murder.”

“Demesne said she took the breakup well, so why would she murder him?”

“A woman can perfectly mask her real feelings,” I said. “You know that.”

She nodded. “Point taken. She could have been furious, but hid it so she would not be a suspect when she later killed him. You’ll have to check her again.”

“No point. She didn’t do it. At least, not directly.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she has a perfect alibi.”

“She does?”

“At noon today she was with me and Syd and my former girlfriend Molly. We were doing our Changes, together: man to woman, woman to man. It was an interesting and slightly repulsive sequence.”

Nonce considered that. “So she was. I arrived not long after she left. She couldn’t have been murdering anyone at noon.”

“We’ll check out her contacts, of course. But I suspect we’ll find them clean. She didn’t hire anyone to kill the Demon. Not that another Supe would have done it anyway. So we still have no viable suspects.”

“This is getting frustrating. We don’t have solutions to any of the murders, let alone the group of them.”

“That’s right. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing I have gained by tackling this case is you.”

“Why don’t you spend the night with me again?”

I could tell she was pleased.

Chapter 8:

Ghost

Our conjecture proved out: Queue was clean. She hadn’t hired anyone to kill anyone. She was a false lead, apart from the fact that my verification of her nature had indicated she was not capable of such a crime anyway. Possibly someone else had resented her association with Vulcan and set her up to take the blame, only to plan it just wrong, the one time when she couldn’t have done it. Coincidence? I distrusted it.

Syd and I kept going over the four cases, searching for common elements, for some rationale that would link them in a way that offered some indication of a common motive. We found nothing; they seemed to be random, except that they were all Supe males. Either there was a rash of coincidental killings, or someone didn’t like Supes and knew how to find vulnerable ones.

Nonce, frustrated, traveled to another city to visit mundane relatives. I was on my own, as it were. Was her absence a tacit comment on my failure to produce? She denied it as she left, but I couldn’t help wondering.

Then a man entered the office. He was tall, handsome, and manly in a brown-haired way, but curiously empty to my awareness, as if he were not quite there. Oh, he was a Supe, without doubt; just not fully registering. I had not encountered that phenomenon before.

“My friend Ghaster has been murdered,” he said without preamble. “We fear it is part of your pattern.”

“Oh, shingles!” I swore. “He’s a Supe?” Because why else would he have come here with the news?

“Yes. Ghost. As I am. Ghore Ghost.”

“I am Phil Were. This is my assistant Sydelle Were. This office is securely private, so we can speak freely. We do have a pattern, as you put it, of murders, but we are at a loss to figure out what that pattern is.” We shook hands. His handshake, too, was slightly odd.

Ghore sat on the chair I indicated. “I came directly to you. Ghaster’s death has not yet been announced.”

This time it was a Ghost. Was there a reason each murder was in a different Clan? Was that a hint, if I could just interpret it correctly? “Tell me about it.”

“It happened this morning. Ghaster and Gholdie, his girlfriend, were at work haunting a house in a routine business deal. The owner, a mundane, wants to enhance its market value. Mundanes profess not to believe in Ghosts, but they can pay prettily for spooky manifestations. You know how it is.”

“Whatever would we do without gullible mundanes?” I asked rhetorically.

“So they were rigging up some seemingly faked effects—weird noises, flashes of light, gusts of cold air, spectral images in the shadows—just enough to make folk wonder. Naturally they would not do real magic haunting for a mundane.”

“Naturally,” I agreed. “We have to remain fantasy, as far as mundanes are concerned.”

“Do you understand how we Ghosts operate?”

“Some,” I said. “You are here in spectral form, not physically; I can tell by your seeming emptiness. I don’t know how you do it; I assume there’s a magic aura.”

He smiled. “Good for you. It’s not an aura. We use ectoplasm.”

“I have heard of that, but never actually seen it.”

“Until now. What you see of me is ectoplasmic.”

“To me, ectoplasm is a gaseous substance that rises from the stomachs of mediums, emerges from their mouths, and floats in air in tenuous ribbons. Your presence here seems more solid than that, if less solid than your physical body would be.”

“It can rise from any organ, and emerge from any orifice. We discipline it to assume our likeness, and project our awareness into it. Our bodies meanwhile are pretty much unconscious; our whole animation is in the likeness. That makes us vulnerable.”

“It seems like the opposite to me,” I said. “I presume if I drew my gun and shot you, or stabbed you with my knife, it might annoy you but would hardly affect you physically.”

“Only to a point. Observe.” Ghore stood and turned around. Now I saw that from his backside there trailed what appeared to be a cord, as if he were plugged in. It dropped to the floor and extended under the door. “We are connected to our likenesses via the tail. If that tail is severed, as with the stroke of a silver-bladed knife, we lose our semblance. You might liken it to severing a finger.”

“Not something I’d care to do.”

“Exactly. I am connected to my car, parked outside. Ordinary disruptions like bicycle tires or shoes won’t affect my tail, and normally it goes unnoticed. But if someone with a silver blade and mischief in mind severed it, I would be most uncomfortable. My host body would be able to function, but it would be some time before I grew enough new ectoplasm to function in full Ghost mode.”

“Maybe you should rejoin your body and come in physically,” I said.

“I shall do so, now that I have demonstrated my Ghost semblance.” He walked to the door, put his hand on the knob, and with a visible effort turned it and opened the door. He stepped outside. I followed him to his car, where in a moment he emerged, looking just the same as before, only now fully solid. My sense of him no longer found emptiness. In fact, when he reverted his awareness fully to his physical body, I read his mind. He was innocent of this murder.

Back in the office we resumed our dialogue. “That is impressive,” I said. “I now have a much better notion of how Ghosts operate. But I doubt you made this demonstration merely to entertain me.”

“Hardly,” he agreed. “Now you should understand how my friend Ghaster died. He and Gholdie were fashioning a faintly visible spook to wow a house shopper, when he faded. She knew right away that his tail had been cut. She quickly withdrew her Ghost manifestation, dissolving it and following her tail back to the private shed where they had parked their bodies. Only to discover Ghaster dead. He had been stabbed through the heart before he could recover from the disorientation caused by the severing of his tail. It was definitely murder. Gholdie is in shock.”

“We relate,” I said. “My best friend Bear, died. Syd was his fiancée. If this was meant to fit a pattern, it is uncomfortably close.”

“I am of course appalled, but better able to function than Gholdie is at the moment. I understand what is required to tackle this case. You will need to use your magic to exonerate the two of us, the quicker the better, so we can focus on the murderer promptly. Before the trail grows cold, if it exists.”

“Yes. I have already cleared you. I should check Gholdie next.”

“I can take you to her now, if you are ready.”

“I am ready.” I glanced at Syd. “Make notes of our dialogue, for the record.”

“In process,” she said. She had recorded it via the phone, and would now transcribe it for the record.

I followed Ghore in my car as he drove to the suburb. We parked near an attractive but slightly rundown house. The haunted house, of course.

We walked around back. A young woman sat on a bench outside a shed, her face in her hands, weeping. “Gholdie,” Ghore murmured. “I have brought the PI, Phil Were.”

She looked up. “Thank you for coming, Phil. Tell me what I need to do.”

“Assume your Ghost form, briefly,” I said. “Or start the process; that’s all I need.”

“As you wish.” She closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and a ribbon of mist emerged. It formed into a crude face, like a mask made of vapor.

I read her nature as her magic operated. She was innocent.

“That’s enough,” I said. “You’re clear. Thank you.”

The vapor sucked back into her mouth. “Just like that?” she asked.

“It is my talent to read people’s inner nature at the time they do their magic,” I explained. “Had you been guilty I would have known it.”

“That’s a relief. Can you similarly identify the murderer?”

“Not from a distance. I would need to be close by when he actually committed the deed. Obviously he is long gone.”

“The body remains in the shed,” Ghore said.

“You really did come to me first!”

“Yes. Now we shall have to report it to the mundane police. We will say that he and Gholdie were inspecting the premises, that she stepped into the house, then emerged to find him dead. They will suspect her, but of course exonerate her soon enough.”

“That’s as close to the truth as they will be able to understand,” I agreed. “Let me see the body.”

He showed me into the shed. There, lying on the ground, lay the man in his own blood. His chest had been lethally stabbed. “There is no knife,” Ghore said. “The killer must have taken that with him.”

I sniffed the body, literally, but could not pick up a hint of the killer. “Nothing here for me,” I said regretfully.

“We feared as much,” Ghore said. He brought out his cell phone and called the police. This murder was now officially reported.

If only it could be as efficiently solved!

“I will need to interview other suspects,” I said. “Who had access? Who might want Ghaster dead?”

“Actually there are a number,” Ghore said. “It’s the time of our annual competition for Best Effects. Ghaster was talented in that respect, and a leading contender.”

“Best effects?”

“We make ectoplasmic replicas of other folk and creatures, as examples of our skill in shaping our semblances. Ghaster was to compete in the preliminaries this afternoon. It is normally good spirited, pun incidental, and not an occasion for mayhem. But considering his murder at this time, that has to be considered.”

“I had better interview the competitors.”

A police siren sounded in the distance. “That will be the mundanes,” Ghore said. “I’ll handle them. Gholdie, why don’t you show Phil to the competition site? Are you up to that?”

“Better than I’m up to messing with the police and being a suspect,” Gholdie said, giving her face a final mop. “Maybe it will distract me somewhat from the horror.” She glanced at me, and I realized that regardless of what forms she might assume ectoplasmically, she was a pretty girl naturally. “I don’t have a car and don’t want to touch Ghaster’s; may I ride with you, Phil Were?”

“Welcome, Gholdie,” I said. Was it coincidence that I kept encountering attractive Supe females? It was almost as if I were a psychic magnet that guided them in. My position as PI couldn’t be that much of a factor, could it?

“Get moving,” Ghore said. “They’re closing in.”

We hurried to my car and got in. I noticed Gholdie’s nice legs as she swung them across. I pulled out just before the police car turned the corner onto the street. “Where to?”

“The competition is in a vacant school gym. Turn left.”

“I am sorry to have to take your time on this day of your grief,” I said.

“Just find his killer,” she said almost fiercely. “I’ll knife him myself.” She produced a gleaming silver blade from somewhere. Women were able to conceal the darnedest things on their slender torsos.

“I have to ask,” I said apologetically. “Was there a disaffected former lover?”

“A woman scorned? Not for him. The disaffection is mainly for me.”

“You dumped a former lover to be with Ghaster? That would also be motive. A man might kill him to recover access to you.”

“He might,” she agreed thoughtfully. “I am said to be a desirable item.”

“You surely are.”

“Are you looking for a girlfriend?”

I forced a laugh. “I have one. A Witch.”

“You could also have a Ghost. Cross-Clan relationships don’t count.”

“I have heard that. But I have a prospective WereWoman.”

“Good for her.”

My curiosity got the better of me. “Why did you ask?”

“It’s pointless. I’m in grief, and you’re not looking. But there’s something about you that makes me comfortable, or at least less uncomfortable. I have this urge to get close to you though I doubt you are my type. If I’m desirable, so are you.”

“I asked because other girls do seem to have been attracted, beginning with the Witch I am dating. I was never much in school, so it’s a bit offsetting.”

“It’s your aura. Especially when you checked me as a suspect. Your mind reached out and embraced mine, and then I wanted to be near you even though I knew it was only business. That may have been the case with the others.”

“My secondary telepathy!” I said. “I thought it was just to get the measure of suspects. It must have some effect on them, too.”

“It does. It’s a magnet.”

And there I had my answer. It was not coincidence. There was a magnet, and I had been wielding it all along, inadvertently. It also seemed to feed back to me, arousing my return interest in those I read. “Thank you. You have alleviated a concern.”

“You’re welcome. That does not, however, change the reality of the appeal. If you should want a Ghost girl, I am here. I seem to be in one hell of a rebound; I’m not usually this forward.”

What could I say? “I will keep you in mind. I suppose I could justify it on the theory that it is expedient to maintain useful contacts in the several Clans. But actually it is, well, like a kind of weak love potion. The familiarity of knowing a person well enough to establish guilt or innocence may make for an emotional involvement.”

“When we stop driving, I will kiss you. I can’t help it; I’m in free fall. Please do not hit on me. We now know this is not a sensible thing.”

“No holding and hitting,” I agreed, bemused.

We came to the gym and parked. There were other cars there, scattered around the parking lot. Nothing appeared to be going on.

Gholdie unsnapped her seat belt, leaned across, and kissed me firmly on the mouth. It was surprisingly sweet. I wanted desperately to embrace her, but remained unmoving, per her preference. “Thank you,” she said as she broke. “It’s like a tickle for a cough; I just had to do it.”

“Anytime.” But I would have preferred some other analogy.

We got out and walked around to an inconspicuous side door. A janitor intercepted us just inside. “The gym is closed.”

Gholdie smiled. “I’m Ghaster’s girl. I’m here for the BE trials. Phil Were is with me. He’s legit.”

The janitor withdrew. We walked on into the main chamber, where a number of Ghosts had collected. Gholdie approached one. “Ghoony, Ghaster won’t make it. He was murdered this morning.”

“Murdered!”

“This is Phil Were, PI, here to investigate the murder. We need to cooperate with him. You know we don’t want to let the mundane police know anything about Ghaster’s background.”

“We certainly don’t! Sorry to meet you in such a circumstance, Phil,” Ghoony said. “How can I help you?”

“I need to check anyone who might have a motive for getting rid of Ghaster. Such as a rival, for either his success or his girl.”

“All of us admire his girl, but none of us would kill for her.” He smiled ruefully. “She would be hurt and angry, ruining any point. But competitors—we like to think we are all good sports, but that may not always be the case.”

I got an idea. “The competitors will be exerting their magic during the competition. All I need to do is watch. We don’t even need to say anything to them.”

Ghoony shrugged. “That makes it easy.”

I sat beside Gholdie to watch the eliminations. It was really quite a show. One by one the Ghosts strutted their stuff. The first ones manifested as assorted animals, sending their ectoplasm out to the demonstration ring and forming them into horses, cows, dogs, cats, deer, pigs, hens, foxes, and other ordinary creatures. In the second round it got more interesting as they emulated people. Not just any people; they mimicked other Clans. One competitor assumed the form of a man, who then shifted into a wolf: a WereWolf. Another man became a man-sized bat: a Vampire. A third went from man to woman: an Incubus becoming Succuba. A woman became a Witch complete with her broomstick. Then a scowling Goblin formed, fuzzed, and reformed as the same figure. There was laughter. The implication was that Goblins were ugly regardless. Another became a Zombie, who then dissolved into a pile of sludge.

Then came couple acts. The man formed a Demon while the woman formed an innocent mundane girl. They sat together as in a roller-coaster ride. He groped her; she tried to resist but could not stop his hands. He kissed her breasts, and her resistance diminished. Then he showed his stiff member, and she took hold of it and stuffed it into her cleft. There they both froze in place: it was a picture of the act circulated on the Demon closed-circuit network. There was more laughter. The Ghosts well knew what the Demons were up to, and I suspected some Ghosts participated with that knowledge, just for the naughty fun of it.

Gholdie squeezed my hand. I had not been aware we were holding hands.

We watched another playlet, of a man and woman transforming into male and female Vampires. They kissed, then spread their wings and flew upward together. The ectoplasm emulations were able to fly, of course. They mated on the wing, and it was beautiful.

I discovered that Gholdie was sitting on my lap and my hands were on her covered breasts. I did not remember getting into that position. Evidently her rebound was proceeding.

Another man and woman entered the ring. They embraced closely and had sex standing up. Then they shifted, and the man became a woman, and the woman became a man. They were Incubus and Succuba, and their Changes were accomplished without their ever disengaging. I doubted that real Incubi and Succubi could manage that. Ectoplasmic images were not much limited by laws of physics or convenience.

And I was in Gholdie, right there in public. Somehow our clothing had separated where it counted. Again I did not know how that had happened; my attention had been on the competitors. She squeezed internally and brought me off. “Sorry about that,” she murmured. “I just couldn’t hold back any longer.”

Ghosts could be considerably more physical than I had realized. That wasn’t the half of it.

Then she was off me and we were fully clothed, sitting side by side. The matches were finished, and the winners had been chosen. I had missed those details. If anyone had noticed our private activity, they pretended otherwise. Possibly Ghosts had their own version of seduce-the-visitor. At least now her passion seemed to have abated.

“What is your verdict?” Ghoony inquired.

That Ghost girls were the match of any others, regardless of Clan, and had intriguing notions of appropriate behavior. But that wasn’t the question. “All of them are innocent,” I said. “The murder does not appear to have been done by any Ghost.”

“That’s a relief,” Gholdie said. I wondered just how she meant that. She nudged my foot with her toe; that was perhaps a hint.

I dropped Gholdie off at her dormitory. “Thank you for your assistance,” I said.

“It has been a pleasure. Thank you for briefly diverting me from my grief. Now I will mourn my lost boyfriend and dream of the next.”

And whom might that next be? She had clearly pinned me down, and I was not loath to accept it.

I drove back to the office and made a full report to Syd, including Gholdie’s surprising intimacy, and our realization of the full nature of my telepathy. These were things she needed to know.

“That explains a lot,” she agreed. “I thought it was just that you were young and handsome. You like the ladies, and the ladies like you.”

“I didn’t start seriously using my telepathy until we opened this office,” I said. “So that’s when this other aspect manifested.”

“Starting with Nonce. I confess to being surprised that she got so interested in you. Women of her appearance and experience tend to be more cynical.”

“At least now I can put it in perspective. It’s not me that attracts them; it’s the intimacy of our mind connection when I read them. Meanwhile we’re back to square one again on the serial killer.”

“Is it possible he’s teasing you? Letting you struggle to solve each murder, and doing new ones to keep you occupied?”

“It almost seems like that. But why should he bother? I suspect that at best I’m just part of a larger game he’s playing. That my scrambling searches serve some purpose. That I really don’t matter as a person, just as a pawn being moved into place.”

“I have been pondering something like that,” she said. “That he wants some attention drawn to the killings, to serve as a warning to some other party. But I am baffled by the why of it.”

I had an ugly thought. “Is it possible that the Clans have set this up, to see if I can crack a set-up case? That the murders are all by different people?”

“That’s paranoid,” she said. “Ridiculous to suppose that murders would be committed just to—to play some weird game. But after what we’ve seen of the other Clans, it does seem like a possibility.”

But then I reconsidered. “I would not care to think that Supes could be that careless of Supe life. Also, all the Supes I have telepathically checked have been innocent, not just of the crime or murder, but of any intention to deceive anybody. Other than mundanes, of course.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “So we’re back to the lone serial killer thesis, unsatisfactory as it seems.”

“Back to that,” I agreed glumly.

Chapter 9:

Succuba

The old-fashioned office phone rang. Syd picked it up. “PI Office…Yes he is…Who may I say is calling?” She turned to me. “It’s Delle.” She did not say Witch, because landlines were not regarded as secure. Actually neither were cell phones.

“I’ll take that call,” I said. As if I were busy and had to make a choice.

She handed me the phone. “Hello, Delle. Are you all right? I know you and your brother are in grief because of the death of your boyfriend.” Because theoretically the Warlock Standish had been dating Delle, cover for his real relationship with her brother.

“We are tiding through,” she said. “I—I wonder if Mena could visit me? I think I need some advice on a personal matter.”

My mind whirred. That might relate to the Goblin Burket, that Nonce had artfully set up. Nonce was away, so Delle couldn’t ask her. That left me. Well, why not? We were stymied on the murders, figuratively twiddling our thumbs. I could spare the time. “I believe Mena’s calendar is clear,” I said. “I’ll send her over in half an hour.” Because I needed time to Change as well as to get there.

“Thank you.” Her gratitude suffused the words.

I Changed, and Syd touched me up to be properly feminine. “I think it’s sweet that Mena has a friend.”

“I do like her, as a friend. She’s a sweet girl.”

I drove to the cottage by the lake. Delle greeted me with a hug at the door. “I’m so glad you could come, Mena! I hate to impose, but I’m all aflutter and don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll help if I can. But you know, I’m not a really experienced woman.”

“Well, I think I need a male perspective. My brother’s not much on heterosexual nuance.”

“I’m not much on anything these days,” Donald said. “Standish’s death hit me hard, and I can’t discuss it with anyone because theoretically we barely knew each other.”

“I understand that gay relationships are much the same as hetero ones,” I said carefully. “Apart from the genders.”

“They are.” He shrugged. “But you are here to talk to my sister, and I will leave you to it.” He retreated to his bedroom.

“He is discreet,” I said. “I’m definitely not gay, but if I were, he might be the kind of man I would prefer.”

“Yes. I can’t help him, but I suffer with him. Standish was good to us. But the reason I called you is me. Nonce set me up with a date with Burket Goblin, and though I was doubtful, he turned out to be excellent company. He gave me a wrist corsage.” She fetched it and showed it to me.

I tried not to stare. Nonce had not been fooling. This was a small bouquet of flowers, only the flowers were artificial. In fact they were intricately supported diamonds formed to resemble flowers. It was about as beautiful an object as I had ever seen. I could not begin to estimate its value.

“Fabulous,” I breathed. As a man I might or might not have noticed its nature, but as a dawning woman I was awed. What a gift for a date!

“I told him I couldn’t accept it, but he insisted. So I put it on, and he took me to such a fancy restaurant where the personnel were so solicitous I was embarrassed. But I must confess I had a wonderful time pretending to be upper class for a while. Then we danced, and he wasn’t clumsy at all. My preconceptions about Goblins took a bad beating; he was a perfect gentleman throughout.” Her mouth quirked. “He’s not exactly handsome, but the way he treated me made him look very good.”

“I have learned more about Goblins recently than I ever knew,” I agreed. “It’s one thing for mundanes to have ignorant prejudices, but we Supes shouldn’t share them.”

“He brought me home, kissed me, and departed. And I liked it. Maybe it was that he had this aura of upper class. The few men I have known just wanted to—to—”

“To get into your pants,” I said.

“Yes. Their crudity turned me off. But Burket never uttered a crude word. I was floating. Now we have another date tonight, and I know he’ll want to—I mean, it’s expected, especially of Witches—”

“He will want sexual intimacy,” I said. “Men do. However polite they may be at times, that’s always their objective. I’m in a position to know.”

“Yes. So maybe you can tell me. I’ve never done it before, and I’m afraid I’ll be clumsy and make a mess of it.”

I laughed. “I had sex just once, as Mena. I’m sure I was clumsy and made a mess of it, but the man was so drunk he didn’t notice.”

“But in your other form?”

“Many times. But if I was clumsy and messy, and maybe I was, my dates didn’t tell me. I think—I think it’s up to the woman to make it seem good, even if it isn’t for her. To leave the man with the impression that he’s a great lover, regardless of the truth.”

“But I have no experience!”

“That may not matter. Delle, you’re a virgin. That’s a phenomenal positive in a situation like this. Just be honest. Tell him you have no idea what to do, and ask him to show you. I can’t think of any man who wouldn’t be flattered to obey. Your very inexperience is the biggest turn-on.”

“But my body isn’t—isn’t buxom like yours. He might not like it.”

I studied her with my internal male eye. “Your body is fine. It’s slender and delicately shapely, and you have a nice face. Believe me, you have no problem there.”

“Then you think it will be all right?”

“I know it will be all right. When he asks, express some doubt, but let him persuade you. You know it won’t be perfect for you, the first time, but the larger point is the relationship. This is how you repay him for his monetary generosity.”

“That seems so—so—”

“So tawdry. I know. But it is the unvoiced subtext of male and female relations. So don’t discuss it, but do go along with it.”

“I’ll do that,” she said, clearly relieved. “Even though the thought of money in this context does still bother me.”

“Your attitude is refreshing. I suspect your niceness is as appealing to the Goblin as your virginity.”

“Well, I’ll still be nice, after, I hope.”

“Yes you will. And—”

My cell phone rang. It was Syd at the office. “There’s been another murder,” she said. “An I.” I stood for Incubus; another word she could not say on the phone. “You need to get over there immediately.”

“But I’m in the other mode,” I protested.

“This can’t wait. I promised Ingraham your assistant Mena would be there in twenty minutes. Here is the address.” She spieled it off.

“Got it,” I agreed. “I’ll be there.” I broke the connection.

“An emergency?” Delle asked.

“Another murder. This time an Incubus. I have to go.”

“Of course. Thank you so much for your help.” She kissed me on the cheek. Damn, I liked that! She was treating me just like a female friend, though she knew my nature, and with her I felt comfortable in that role, as I did with Syd and Nonce. Mena was indeed becoming her own person.

I drove to the address. This was CIRCUMSPECT DATING SERVICE. I suppressed a smirk. The clients did not know they were dating sexual demons.

A handsome man met me as I entered. “I will be happy to be your date for the evening,” he said, eying my bosom. “I am Incomer.”

Such hope! “Forget it, Outgoer. I’m here on business. I need to see Ingraham.”

His lips quirked. “The Chief does not see walk-ins.”

“He’ll see me. Get your donkey in motion.”

He puffed up angrily. “I’ll have you know—”

“You idiot Incubus, can’t you smell me? I’m the Were he asked for.”

Now, startled, he sniffed, literally. “Oh. This way.”

He led me to a private office. “You asked for a Were?” he asked the occupant, a portly older Incubus. The desk plaque said INGRAHAM/SYMMETRIA. That would be the Incubus and Succuba names.

“Mena Were,” I said.

“Oh, good. Come in, Mena.”

I entered the office as Incomer departed, out of sorts. “One of yours has been killed?”

“Last night, as far as we can tell.”

“You don’t know whether he’s dead?”

“We don’t know exactly when he died. Or why he was murdered. We fear it is part of the series of Supe extinctions your boss is investigating.”

“That could be. I’ll need details.”

“I will turn you over to his friend Suzy/Innis. She discovered the body.”

“Do that.”

He conducted me to a chamber buried in the bowels of the building. A lovely young woman was primping before a mirror. “Suzy, this is Mena Were, the investigator I mentioned. Bring her up to snuff.”

“I can’t take time right now,” Suzy said. “I’ve got a double load of clients to service, until you get Increase/Succula’s ones reassigned.”

“I am working on it. We’re shorthanded this week. This is a matter of murder of one of our own. Make time, if you value your career.” Ingraham departed.

“Oh, piss,” she swore. “I’ve been all day without a connection. I can’t wait hours dickering with you. There’s a window of opportunity I have to catch.”

This was interesting, apart from the murder. “You have a desire to service clients? It’s not just a business?”

“Of course I do. We’re sexual creatures. Without regular sex we’d soon sicken and die. We need at least ten clients a night to maintain our health. But tonight I’ve got thirty. I’ll have to average four an hour. That would be fun if it weren’t for the logistics.”

“Logistics?”

“I have to assess the most efficient route to pick them all up rapidly, get there on schedule, and catch them in the right gender and orientation. Any mistake, and we lose a client. The sex is fine and necessary, but the organizing is a pain.”

Gender and orientation? I could see the first, because a Succuba had to service a man, and an Incubus a woman. But what was the other? “Why don’t I just tag along, and you can update me as you work.”

“Tag along! Weren’t you listening? I’m going to be busy.”

“I have some skill at organization. If you give me the list, I should be able to help you get a feasible route. It’s a variation of the traveling salesmen challenge, one of my favorites.”

Suzy looked appraisingly at me. “You can be silent when you need to be? I can’t afford to wake up clients; I’d lose them. We can’t risk losses; it’s already tricky to break in new ones.” Her mouth quirked. “Some idiots think sex is sinful, especially with our kind; it casts a pall.”

I was getting new insights. I had never thought of sleeping sex as a profession. “Yes. Just signal when it’s time.”

“Okay. Here’re the lists. We have to integrate them efficiently.” She handed me two plasticized notebooks. “Alternate genders.”

I perused them rapidly. Each name had salient facts: gender, age, address, plus some incidental notes of likely complications, such as a spouse sleeping in the same bed, or irregular sleeping hours. Some were close to our present location, others some distance away. They were already in geographic order; I just needed to integrate the two lists. That helped. I took a pencil and marked numbers, starting with the closest. “I’ve got the organization started.”

“Good enough. This way.” She led me out of the chamber and the building to the parking garage. “You’d better be able to ride double on my moped.”

A moped! That was a motorized bicycle with pedals for low-speed travel. Maybe that was what she could afford, since she didn’t have paying customers. It was bound to be awkward. “I’ll try.”

She tooled out the machine and got on it. I climbed onto the long seat behind her. It was precarious, but feasible. “How is it you’re heading out by day?” I asked. “Don’t your clients have to be asleep?”

“I have some early sleepers. Gives me a nice head start.”

Live and learn. Of course some folk did sleep by day.

She started the motor, put it in gear, and we started moving. “The two closest, male and female, are your regulars,” I said. “Then comes a male on Succula’s list.”

“Got it.” She guided the moped out of the garage and along the street. Mundanes were about, but they didn’t pay much attention. Apparently they were used to seeing girls of that dating service making house calls, and of course some men liked to tackle them in pairs. One man we passed took a good hard look at the pair of us, then changed course to walk toward the CIRCUMSPECT DATING entrance.

We came to an apartment complex, parked, and headed in and up to the third floor. There was a woman in the elevator, but Suzy made a gesture and the woman ignored us. I recognized the magic: a tune-out spell, probably bought from a Witch. The woman saw us but we didn’t register in her consciousness.

The apartment door was locked, with a DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the knob. Suzy touched the knob, focused, then turned it, and the door opened. More incidental magic: an unlocking spell. Why struggle with heavy magic, such as walking through walls, when mini spells sufficed?

We went to the bedroom. A middle-aged man slept on the bed. “Damn,” Suzy muttered.

Now I understood the “orientation” problem: how could she engage him in sex when the operative part was buried under his body? To try to turn him over physically would likely wake him, and waking sex was not the business of a Succuba; the client had to be asleep.

She tackled it. “Turn over, dear,” she whispered in his ear. “Turn over. Turn over, handsome.” About the eighth repetition it seemed to register: he turned over and lay on his back.

Now Suzy hoisted up her skirt. She wore no underclothing. She opened the man’s pajama fly, lifted out his limp penis, and gently kneaded it. It responded immediately; I realized that her touch was magic, causing instant arousal. Soon he had a formidable erection. Then she got on him, fitted him slowly into her, stretched out on him, and kissed his mouth.

The effect was dramatic. His body hunched, thrusting deeply into her and ejaculating immediately. I saw her buttocks flex, and realized that she was squeezing him internally, milking the last of his semen. “Good boy,” she whispered, kissing him again. Then she drew herself off him, closed his fly, and let her skirt drop back down as she stood on the floor. She hadn’t even taken off her shoes.

She walked to the bedside desk and picked up the two-dollar bill on it. Then we departed the apartment, leaving its occupant still sound asleep, but with a smile on his face.

“Two dollars?” I asked when we were clear.

“Traditional gratuity. It hasn’t changed in a century, at least not for us. The fact that it’s a two-dollar bill is a signal that he’s expecting me. Now let me Change.”

She invoked her magic and shifted to male form, becoming Innis. It happened much faster than my own Change; this form of Supe specialized in it. He reached down to zip up the skirt, which I now saw was more like culottes, convertible to a man’s shorts. The shirt needed no adjustment; it now covered wider shoulders instead of a full bosom. I made a mental note to get a similar outfit for myself; it was efficient.

“Now the next,” he said.

“Your Change,” I said as we rode down in the elevator, the two of us alone. “How soon do you have to do it, after sex?”

“There’s no time limit. It’s just that we can’t have sex twice in succession the same form; we have to Change. Since we have to have sex frequently, we generally Change immediately after a tryst, to be ready for the next. My last client last night was female, so I did her then Changed and spent the day female.”

The next client was just down the street, in another complex, on the second floor. She was married, but the two of them seemed married in name only. He was still up watching TV football, but she was not with him. We slid by him with another tune-out spell and entered the bedroom. There she was, spread out invitingly, sunny side up, naked. She was well formed; it seemed a shame that her husband was more interested in the game than in her.

“Hello you gorgeous creature,” Innis murmured appreciatively. He sat beside her and stroked her full breasts, then kissed them. She made a little moan of pleasure as her nipples swelled. Then he stroked her vulva, and I saw it too expand, stimulated.

He mounted her and touched his member to her vagina. Her breath quickened. He pushed in half an inch. She began panting. It was apparent that his touch turned her on, making her eager for the culmination. He advanced a little farther, and she practically rose up to meet him. Finally he thrust in fully, spread his body on hers, and kissed her.

She erupted like a volcano, her whole body shaking with the rapture of her orgasm. He thrust repeatedly, not because he needed to, but because that magnified her pleasure. I could almost see the ejaculate pumping into her, pulse after pulse.

Then he withdrew, slowly, leaving her shuddering with aftershocks of pleasure. “I wish I could stay the night with you, you phenomenal creature, but I must be on my way,” he said with regret as he picked up the two dollar bill. She just lay there, in fading bliss. Was she really asleep?

Innis Changed, becoming Suzy and adjusting her clothing. “She’s always fun,” she said. “She really appreciates our visits.”

We walked past the husband, still locked in the game. Did he have an idea what he was missing? It seemed like such a waste.

We rode on to the first client on the other list. “This will be a little different,” Suzy said. “Because I don’t know him. He may recognize the difference.”

As it turned out, there was no such problem. The man was dead drunk. Not only was that sloppy, his penis remained determinedly limp. “Crap! I can’t afford to take time. I’ll have to suck him.”

“Oral works?” I asked.

“No. It has to be traditional penis/vulva.” Suzy got on the man, fed his limp member to her vagina, and closed it around him. Then I heard a faint humming. “Vacuum,” she explained. She got him hard, then kneaded him peristaltically until she drew his ejaculate from him.

Succubi had powers I had not thought of.

Between clients we had a chance to talk. “How exactly did Increase/Succula die?”

“We spent much of the day figuring that out. Increase had been dead several hours before we located him. He had gone out on his route, but not returned. I had a duplicate of his client list, so I followed it, and discovered him dead on the floor in the client’s apartment, pale as a mask, no mark on him. We brought him home and had the doctor examine him. He had bled out internally. He had been dosed with enchanted red squill, normally used to kill rats. It thins the blood to the point where clotting can’t occur.”

“I didn’t realize you folk ate or drank when on your tour,” I said.

“We don’t. He didn’t eat it. As near as we can tell, it was in the ejaculate of the client. Succula took it in, Changed, and that activated it and took her out within an hour. Had she known, she would have come home before Changing and we could have cleaned it out of her with minimal damage. But the Change affected every part of the body, and the squill spread though the whole of him and took him out before he knew. He just lay down and died.”

“In the ejaculate! And it didn’t affect him?”

“It would have, had he done a Change or equivalent. It was inert until then. He must have injected it into his prostate, and let the ejaculation carry it on out. Then he departed while Increase died. It was a brutal, ugly scene.”

“I hate to say it, but that does seem to fit the pattern of our serial killer. He took out a Demon by putting his bottle in the freezer and leaving.”

“Well, catch him! Torture him. Kill him. He deserves it all.”

“But if each of you have a regular client list, wouldn’t this man have been vetted before?”

“Yes, of course. All Innis’s clients were safe. But we discovered that the regular client had had an accident and spent the night in the hospital unexpectedly. The killer came in to take his place, we think without his knowledge. So he was there, sleeping in the client’s bed, when Succula came. She must never have thought to verify his identity; it was routine, one of many. One horny sleeping man is much like another. She milked him and died.”

Another fiendishly clever murder plot. “If it was an intruder primed for murder, was he really asleep?”

“He could have been. But it might not have mattered. We do it with sleeping folk, but can do it with a wakeful one if he plays the part, making the motions. Most men aren’t good at that; they get near a hole, they want to jam into it. But if he let Succula stimulate him, mount him, and take him in, it would work. We do think it was a Supe, because no mundane would have the wit for such a sophisticated ploy, or the ability to accomplish it.”

“Wouldn’t Succula have recognized a Supe?”

“Certainly. But there are occasional Supes on our client lists; they sleep too, and hunger for more sex than they get by day. Some like to do it with us, especially females, because we always make them climax. Males tend not to care much whether the females get theirs, and some females may get tired of sex entirely so leave their males hungry. I’ve had sex with Supes, both ways. If they play the roles, they get the services.”

“Supes take care of Supes.”

“Exactly. If I’m male when we finish the night, and you are worked up, I could do you.”

“Thank you, no,” I said quickly, without explaining further. Had I been Phil, the chance of sex with a Succuba might well have turned me on. But perhaps fortunately, I wasn’t.

We continued the rounds, and did manage to complete them by dawn. One of them was the man who had been hospitalized; he was back home, a bandage around his broken arm, sedated, but clearly happy to enjoy his nocturnal dream. He was obviously not the killer.

All of which left me pretty much where the other murders had: with no viable suspects. I had verified that Suzy/Innis hadn’t done it, and really no one else could have, without that client list.

I thanked Suzy for her help, and she thanked me for mine; I had enabled her to make it through on schedule.

Next day I described it all to Syd. “So it’s a mystery how the killer knew where to do it,” I concluded.

“I wonder.” She did some spot research. “Hospital admissions are an open record. If someone knew that a particular patient was patronizing a Succuba…”

And that of course was it. Our killer had been alert for such an opportunity, and struck when it presented itself. “But that means that these killings are truly crimes of opportunity, not passion. No way to run them down by motive.”

“I wonder,” she said. “I am thinking that one could be passion, and the others opportunity, done to conceal the real one. What they have in common is their randomness. If we can run down one with genuine motive…”

“Queue!” I said. “Demon Damne dumped her.”

She nodded. “But there are problems.”

“She has an alibi,” I agreed. “And I know she’s innocent.”

“About that innocence: I have a notion you may not like.”

“Let’s have it regardless.”

“Your secondary power is to read inner minds when folk are doing their magic. That’s invaluable. She’s similar to you as a Were. Suppose she has a similar mental ability?”

“Similar?”

“Only different. The ability to be completely, telepathically persuasive. At least when a person’s mind is open because of Changing. Projecting rather than reading.”

“Oh my,” I breathed, seeing it. “While we were both Changing, and I was reading her, she was giving me the certainty of her innocence.”

“Can you accept that intellectually?”

“Intellectually, yes. Emotionally, no. But maybe I had better trust my intellect, this time. It does make sense. But there’s the matter of her alibi for the Demon murder.”

“I’m still working on that. It is suspiciously convenient, doubling your satisfaction that she is innocent. Almost as if planned.”

“Almost as if planned,” I echoed. “We need to study that situation and that alibi again, in case there’s a hole in it.”

“That’s what I’m working on. So far I’m balked. That timing is not just your belief; it’s real.”

“Still, it may give us a viable suspect, for a change.”

“That could be. But proving it is another matter.”

That, indeed, was the problem. We finally had a suspect, but without proof, we were still helpless. However, it was progress.

Chapter 10:

Zombie

We struggled with the details of the several murders for another day, figuring out how Queue could have done them all, but that Demon murder alibi balked us. That was the one that provided Motive; without it we had no real case. And that was the one with a physical obstruction: Queue could not have been in two places at the same time. So maybe she cunningly had set it up that way, knowing that we would eventually catch on to the persuasion projection; we still could not get around it. How had she worked it? We had to suspect her, because the alternative was to have nothing. I found my certainty of her innocence slipping; either it was wearing off, or my intellect was winning over my belief. Either made sense; an imposed belief was bound to yield eventually to reality. Maybe it would have been different if I had been deeply religious, accustomed to never questioning faith.

Nonce called, back from her excursion and eager for news and diversion. I joined her for a date, and her thighs were as friendly as ever, but it was also evident that her passion was receding. As she said, Witches tended not to be romantically permanent. There would not be a breakup, merely a compatible fading. “But you won’t be hurting,” she said brightly. “You’ve got Molly on tap. She’s your kind, another Were. She’s pretty, nice, innocent, and she thoroughly loves you. She even rooms with a suspect, facilitating your tracking. What more could you want?”

So I called her bluff. I phoned Molly in her presence and gave her my cell number. “Call me when our schedules align,” I suggested.

“Maybe after you catch the killer?”

“Sure.” As if that were incipient. I wished it were!

“But not quite yet,” Nonce said, and went back into seduction mode. If she was nettled, that was a positive way of showing it.

But now I wondered: if Queue were truly our serial killer, was it safe for Molly to be living with her?

Meanwhile Sensei Oto called Syd, and they set up a wilderness romp, jaguar and python. Syd was far from ready to replace Bear romantically, but was flattered by Oto’s evident interest, and this looked like her future. He was a good man, a bit like Bear in some ways.

And Delle Witch, she of the Penny Curse, called to let me know that her date with Burket Goblin had worked out nicely, thanks to my advice. They had had a most satisfactory culmination, and she wasn’t a virgin any more. She expected to do it again, soon. I suspect she gave me more credit than was due, considering that Nonce had set it up, but I was glad for her. Mena expected to remain her friend.

Everything seemed to be going well, except for the case I was on: the serial murderer. We needed one good break, but it eluded us.

Then another call came in: “A Zombie has been murdered,” Syd said. “They’re asking for you. Here’s the address.”

“On my way.” I just about left skid marks on the office floor as I got out to my car.

The site was an apple orchard. The Zombies were on ladders harvesting the apples. I knew why: they represented cheap migrant labor. It would have been illegal to use them, except that mundanes did not believe Zombies existed, so passed no law. There would have been a massive public protest if the eaters of those apples knew what had handled them, but again, only foolish children actually believed in Zombies or anything supernatural. So the big farmers got away with it, in the tacit conspiracy of silence. It was like allowing so many rat droppings per pound of grain, or the bloody horrors of the slaughterhouse: the eaters of breads, pasta, sausage, and such tuned it out in the choreographed denial that enabled business to function efficiently.

So where was the boss Zombie? I paused beneath the nearest tree. “Hey, I need to see Zoro.”

The Zombie on the ladder looked to be fresh out of the grave. He still had some hair and an eyeball, and no bones were poking out of his torso. He peered down at me with that eyeball. “Zzzooo!” he wheezed.

“Right: Zoro,” I agreed. “I need to see him.”

“Zzzooo!” the Zombie repeated, louder. The adjacent Zombies turned toward him. Then they dropped off their ladders, not caring how they landed or what damage was done; they heaved themselves up and converged on me, dripping gobbets of rotting flesh. Zombies had no feeling, so injuries didn’t matter.

I did not much like the look of this. I backed off, but they pursued. I realized that they must not have gotten the message that I was expected, and there was no point trying to reason with them; their brains were rotten. I did not want to fight them; I could surely rip them apart, but not only would that be disgustingly messy, I didn’t want to hurt the Zombies I had come to help.

I ran for my car, but there were already Zombies between me and it. I picked up two fallen apples and hurled them at the nearest Zombie, but it didn’t even dodge. It just kept coming at me. Zombies were not smart enough to scare.

I turned to go the other way, but now two more Zombies were there. These were female, with matted mops of hair, wearing only tattered smocks that showed more flesh than I cared to see, because it was gruesome. A young woman in flower is a gorgeous sight; a rotten woman is not.

I dodged a third direction, finding a large two-story storage shed. I charged up the steps to the second floor, then hauled myself to a rafter that I trusted they couldn’t reach. I would have to wait there until the Zombie management realized what was up, and called them off.

But the Zombies didn’t give up. Something had really worked them up, and I realized what it was: one of their number had been killed and they were on a dull edge. They clustered below me, trying to figure out how to reach me. Then they got halfway smart and started lying down. A second layer lay on the first, and a third on the second. They were building a pyramid of spoiled meat and bone that would, in its clumsy time, reach the rafter. I had to do something. But what? I had nowhere to go from here.

Then I got what was either a genius or a folly of a notion. I invoked my Name and started Changing. The Zombies didn’t notice; they were focused on their one task, which was all they could do once they got started.

By the time they built up to the rafter, I was Mena. My clothing didn’t fit well, so I took it off and clothed my body with an illusion bikini. Then I confronted the top Zombie as it stood knee-deep in guts and reached for me. “Hello, Zombie, you handsome creature! You are looking for a man. I am a woman. I will get out of your way.” And I swung from the rafter and dropped down to the floor. Actually I hit the edge of the Zombie pyramid with a sickly squish and rolled off; at least it had cushioned my fall.

Then I walked away. The Zombies had been chasing a man; a woman was irrelevant. So they continued searching for the man while I walked back to my car and got in.

A well-preserved Zombie woman stood before the car, blocking my way. I could have run over her, but three things stopped me: I didn’t want to hurt her; she was remarkably shapely, maybe only a couple days dead, with lovely hair; and she was speaking my name. “Phill! Phill Were!”

She had the wrong gender, but evidently knew the car. No point in arguing the case. I rolled down the window slightly. “I represent Phil, yes.”

“I will sshow you.”

I did not inquire exactly what she meant to show me. Her condition was such that if she doffed her clothing I would look, for all that as Mena I was not as turned on in quite the way Phil would have been. I wondered fleetingly whether any Zombies ever substituted for Succubi. Probably not, because a Zombie, however fresh, was bound to be cold. That would require a rather special type of client. “Okay.”

She walked to the side and opened the passenger door. She got in. “Go fforward.”

Here I was with a Zombie maiden in my car. I had not anticipated this event. At least she was coherent, which indicated that she had some mind and was worth heeding. I started moving the car forward.

“There,” she said, pointing right at the next intersection.

I turned right.

In due course we came to a low featureless building. I parked, we got out, and entered. The Zombie ushered me to a chamber where a heavyset middle-aged live woman sat in an easy chair, her eyes closed. She opened them as we entered. “Thank you, Zena. That will be all for the moment.”

Zena stepped back, leaned against the wall, and sagged, losing her animation.

The live woman looked at me. “Ah, you are Mena, Phil’s assistant. I am Zoona, Zoro’s assistant. There was a confusion among the Zombies and he had to go untangle it personally.”

“I may have been the source of the confusion,” I said. “I asked for Zoro, and the Zombies swarmed me.”

“So that was it! We expected you to come directly here to the command center, not mix in at the orchard.”

“The only address I had was for the orchard.”

Zoona sighed. “Sometimes we Zombie managers get a bit rotten brained ourselves. Of course you didn’t realize that the orchard had a building. I apologize.”

“Let’s get down to business. There was a murder?”

“Yes.” She paused, biting her lower lip. “Phil, how much do you know of Zombies? I don’t mean to imply that you are ignorant, but there are folk who are willfully unlearned about Zombies. Some even think they eat the brains of live folk, despite having no functional digestive systems. That the bite of a Zombie converts a living person to a Zombie, like rabies. That—”

“I am ignorant,” I said, not caring to confess that I had harbored similar misinformation. “I never associated with Zombies. They aren’t much for socializing. I don’t even understand how a Zombie can be killed, since I understand they are dead to begin with.”

“Then I will clarify that. An analogy may help: you are a Were, but you are fundamentally human, not a wolf or whatever. We Zombie energizers are human too. Our magic is to animate dead bodies telepathically. They have little or no volition of their own. Zena, here, still has a functioning brain; she could pass for a moronic live person. But that’s the top of the line; most have deteriorated to the point where all we can do is direct their bodies for a few hours or days. It is our living will that animates them, and our guidance that makes them useful.”

“Some don’t have eyes left,” I said. “How can they see?”

“They can’t. We have to direct them in detail, using our own eyes.”

“I don’t quite follow that.”

“Look at the wall,” she said, gesturing.

I looked. There was a large video screen there, showing a section of the orchard where the Zombies were returning to work. “You’re watching them electronically!”

“Closed circuit TV,” she agreed. “We don’t go on larger broadcast, obviously; that would alert the mundanes. It enables us to watch them closely enough to guide them in simple tasks. They wear out soon, and we animate others.”

“And because there’s no expense for food, clothing, shelter, or entertainment, you can work cheaply,” I said.

“Yes. It’s a living, and it enables us to indulge our inherent craving to animate. We could animate the living too, if they were brain dead.”

“You get the bodies from recent graves? Don’t the grieving families object?”

“We stick to unwatched graves. We also try to use bodies in areas away from where they lived, so that they are not recognized. The fact is that millions of people die, but only hundreds are ever Zombied; it’s not a common occurrence. Mainly, we try to avoid observers. I fear that is what you encountered; the Zombies took you for an observer and tried to discourage you. They’re not very smart, obviously. Each is normally controlled by a living animator, but the work is dull and surveillance is not always close. Also, the bodies do have some faint motivations of their own. This time it got out of hand. Again, I apologize.”

“Accepted,” I said. “So the murder was not of an animated body, but of an animator?”

“Exactly.”

“Just how did it happen?”

Zoona shuddered. “It was surprising and awful. He was stabbed to death by a Zombie. He died before we could hospitalize him.”

“You mean one of the animated bodies attacked its animator?”

“No. The body was animated by another controller. Apparently that one suffered a momentary aberration and sent the Zombie to attack. Such a thing has never happened before. We are in shock.”

“You questioned the animator, of course?”

“Yes. He said he didn’t even remember doing it. He conjectured that he suffered a siege of some sort, like an epileptic seizure. He is appalled, and will retire from active management forthwith. But in the hope that it was something else, we contacted your office.”

“That was smart. I think it is something else.”

“Part of the serial killings? That gives us macabre hope. But how could it be?”

“I believe the serial killer has a telepathic ability to send powerful persuasion. Such as an unquestioning belief in the killer’s innocence, or an immediate need to kill someone. Was there anyone with the controller?”

“With Zeb? Not that I know of. But it could have happened. We’re not locked in.”

“I need to talk with Zeb. But I’m already pretty sure that it wasn’t his fault. That he’s not a murder suspect.”

“By all means. I’ve known Zeb for years. He’s a decent guy. I’d hate to have something like this ruin his career.”

Zena showed me to Zeb’s chamber, then returned to the orchard to pick apples. There was a partly decayed body lying on the ground outside the chamber: an unanimated Zombie. Zeb was a thin young man with sandy hair, and he did not look at all like a Zombie. “Hello, Zeb. I am Mena, Phil Were’s assistant. We’re investigating a series of murders of Supes that may be connected. I hope you will be willing to answer a few questions.”

“Anything,” Zeb said. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m appalled.”

“Let’s start basic. You were animating a Zombie, and it got out of control?”

“Not at all! I’m the one who got out of control. It’s coming back now as I ponder it. I sent my Zombie to kill my friend.”

“Maybe not.” I held up a hand to forestall his protest. “We suspect that a serial killer can telepathically send a thought that overrides common sense. That the kill-directive was not yours, but a preemption of your will. A murder was committed, yes, but it wasn’t yours.”

He looked at me with the aspect of a criminal exonerated by a jury. “I wish I could believe that.”

“It fits the description. This is the seventh murder we’re investigating, all of Supes. We think a deranged Supe is doing it. You’re really a victim.”

“Somebody took over my mind, the way I control a Zombie? Made me do something I’d never do on my own?”

“That’s it. But it will help if I can study your motive directly. My power is to read a person’s true mind, when the person is doing his magic. Animate your Zombie, please.”

“But that’s the one that killed my friend!”

“Yes. I need to discover what motivated it at that moment.”

“Okay.” He focused, and the body outside the chamber came to its sort of life. And I got what I needed: Zeb was indeed innocent.

“That’s enough,” I said. “I now have confirmed that you never intended to kill your friend. That there was a strong mental signal that overrode your will and planted the imperative to kill. Someone was with you when it happened.”

“That’s right,” he agreed as the Zombie sank back to the ground. “I remember now. A young man. A Were. He asked me to look at him, and I did, and then it got all fuzzy. I was mind-controlled!”

“Something like that,” I agreed. “Chances are it won’t happen again. You should be able to resume your normal activity with a clear conscience.”

“Well, I’m off duty until Zoro clears me. But it’s an immense relief.” He got up and went to a freezer chest. “Care for a beer, Miss Mena?”

He had picked up on my badly constrained bosom as my spot illusion slipped. I was not about to become intimate with him, but I could afford to relax somewhat. I might pick up other clues, and it was evident that my presence was calming him after his horrific experience. I was still practicing how to be a woman. “Okay.”

Zeb fished in the freezer and brought out a plastic package with the number 90 printed on it. I did a minor double-take; I had seen a similar package recently. He fetched a can of room-temperature beer from a shelf, opened it, and popped a pellet from the package into it. “Here you are.”

I peered into the can as it rapidly cooled. “What is that?”

“Oh, the ninety? That’s a freezer pellet. Like an ice cube, only it doesn’t dissolve or foul the beer; it just cools it. Saves me from having to keep my beer cold.”

“This is new to me,” I said, intrigued.

“They’ve only been on the market the past six months or so. Real handy. You can’t swallow one by accident; it swells up as it cools the beer so you can’t mistake it.”

“You freeze the package of them, and it shrinks?” I asked.

“Sure does. Takes a while. Ninety minutes, actually. Then suddenly it contracts to maybe half or a third its size, so it doesn’t clutter up your freezer.”

I went and looked down into the freezer, seeing the package of pellets. “I’ll have to get some of that myself.”

“Grocery store’s got ‘em. Look for the Ninety logo.”

I sat down and we chatted. Zeb was much more at ease now. I didn’t pick up any more information, but it was good to relax, even if I was not entirely easy with his appreciative eyeballing. It was something I needed to get used to as a well-endowed woman. However, I couldn’t dawdle indefinitely. When I finished my beer I stood up. “I have to get back to the office, but it’s been nice talking with you.” I smiled engagingly.

“Sure thing, Miss Mena. If you’re ever in need of a Zombie…”

I laughed. “Unlikely. If you ever need a private eye…”

“Equally unlikely.”

We shook hands and I departed. I checked in with Zoona, and found that Zoro was now with her. “You got what you need?” he asked.

“I think so. Zeb is innocent; a stranger used telepathy to take over his mind to do the deed. That’s not Zeb’s imagination; it’s my reading of him. It shouldn’t happen again. But do be wary of strangers.”

“Not difficult. Strangers are generally wary of us.”

I returned to the car, accompanied by Zena Zombie, and this time the Zombies took no note of me. That was of course the point; her presence vouched for me. Zombies recognized Zombies somewhat the way Supes recognized Supes. “Thank you, Zena,” I said when we got there. I did not offer to hug her or even shake her hand; there were limits even among friendly women.

“Welcome, Phill,” she replied. Then she stepped forward, hugged me, and kissed me. I stood transfixed, not knowing how to react to this unwelcome surprise. Her body was indeed cold, or at least ambient air temperature, like a lizard. She wasn’t rotten, but I was well aware of the deadness of her body.

Then she stepped back and smiled. “Jusst teassing,” she said. “Zooona here, taking active control. You sshould ssee the look on your fface, Mena!”

I had to laugh. “You got me, Zoona. I thought for a moment she was coming to life.” Then I got hastily into the car to prevent any further humor. Zena turned away as if disappointed, and I actually felt guilty.

I shouldn’t drive after drinking that beer, technically, but I doubted it had much effect. I would try to be extra careful. It was probably a better risk than fraternizing with Zombies.

I drove slowly back toward the office, mulling things over. That Ninety brand package of artificial ice—where had I seen that before? Why did it bug me? It seemed irrelevant to my investigation. Sure I would get some and try using it; I was forever running out of freezer room, and this would help. Just put it in, wait ninety minutes, and presto, I could cool my drinks the way Zeb did.

Then it came to me. Demesne Demoness—that was where I saw it. When I interviewed her, and she showed me where Damne had perished. When checking the freezer where Damne Demon died, frozen in the bottle. There had been a Ninety package there. I hadn’t thought anything of it, consciously, not knowing its nature, but maybe subconsciously it had registered. Why? What could artificial ice possibly have to do with murder?

That question brought the answer. That product took an hour and a half to freeze, and when it did freeze, it suddenly shrank in size. Suppose it had been sitting beneath the Demon’s bottle? Maybe a layer down, propping up one end of a box of frozen pie. The bottle could have been set on the pie, right up against the top cover, where the temperature was warmest, so that it was cool but not frozen. Then when the Ninety froze, in ninety minutes, that box would tilt down and the bottle would roll or slide off it and drop into the frigid depth. Then the real freezing would begin Ninety minutes later.

Just time enough for Queue to go to the dojo, and then to my office. So she was with me at the time the freezing occurred. Perfect alibi.

I pulled over to the side and dialed the office. Syd picked up immediately, recognizing my cell phone number. “Phil! How’d it go?”

“It’s Mena now. I had to Change. I’ll pause to Change back before I get there; my clothing doesn’t fit.” I took a breath. “Syd, I cracked the alibi! I know how she did it!”

“The alibi! That’s great, Mena. But—uh-oh.”

“What?” I didn’t like the sound of that interjection. Syd was never one to tease.

“I just got an awful premonition. Something momentous will happen very soon. Death is incipient. Mena, don’t wait to Change; get back here fast!”

I knew better than to question one of her premonitions. If Syd thought there was danger, there was danger. Deadly danger. “On my way!” I disconnected and started the car moving.

I had a sick revelation of my own. That premonition of Syd’s, coming right as I told her about the alibi—coincidence? I did not trust coincidence. Could Queue have been tapping our connection? Just to be sure she was not a viable suspect? She was smart enough to do it. Now she knew she had become viable. That would surely galvanize her into action.

This could get ugly in a hurry.

Chapter 11:

Trap

I screeched the car to a halt and piled out, hoping I was in time to handle the crisis, whatever it might be. I forged into the office, hardly looking around me.

Muscular arms caught me and heaved me off my feet. Oh, crap! I had been ambushed at the door. Why hadn’t I anticipated that?

“How did you crack the alibi?” Quent demanded as he held me struggling in the air. Then he applied a nerve grip that paralyzed my volition as well as my body. As Phil I could have fought him, maybe, but as Mena I simply lacked the strength.

So Queue/Quent had gotten to the office before me. Crap again. “Where’s Sydelle?” I demanded.

“Tied and gagged in the storage room. Don’t be concerned about her; she won’t survive you long. The question is, what are you going to try to do about it?”

He had me under control. Why was he asking me this? Then I caught on: “You want me to Change! So you can send me a deadly thought, like maybe offing myself.”

“So you’re not a total dimwit.”

“I’m not going to Change.”

“We’ll see.” He continued to suppress me with the pain hold. I couldn’t even think of breaking free. What did he have in mind? “Now tell me, or I’ll hurt you: how did you figure it out?”

And he could and would hurt me, as he put it. I now knew he was psychopathic, with little if any conscience. My best bet was to engage him in dialogue while I looked for a way to get out of this fix. I noted that Syd had left the office phone on Speaker Mode and MESSAGE RECORD, which meant it was absorbing what was said in the office. We had set it up to facilitate interviews, as personal memory was not to be trusted where there were possible legalities; we might need more tangible evidence. Maybe her premonition had told her this was needed. This was a detail Queue/Quent seemed to have missed. Not that it would do us much good at the moment. There was another, more important, detail he had missed about Syd, and that one could make all the difference. If there was time.

So I answered. “I saw some Ninety in action. Something clicked. There was a package of that in Demon Damne’s freezer. You shouldn’t have left that evidence behind.”

“I had to. I couldn’t go back there to fetch it.”

Duh. Of course she/he couldn’t. And it wasn’t as if it had been an obvious clue. “So when I made the connection, I called Syd. And you had my phone bugged. Smart move, that.”

“And I got your cell phone number when you gave it to my roommate Molly. It never occurred to her to conceal it from me. She’s such an innocent!”

And I was such a fool not to have thought of that. As a savvy private dick I was a pretty good washout. “Some men like innocence in a woman.”

Quent laughed cruelly. “Too bad you won’t be able to take advantage of her foolish love. She’d lock her legs permanently open for you.”

I was embarrassed to admit to myself how that turned me on, even in this form. My feeling for Molly was surging back, and not just for that reason. “You think men exist to take advantage of women,” I said, playing to the paranoia.

“I know they do.”

“So you got Damne back for what he did to you.”

“The bastard dumped me!” Quent said, speaking for Queue. “After I let him fuck me! He said I was unstable.”

What did I have to lose? “Well, you are unstable. You can kill for a broken romance. Stable folk accept reality and move on. Some romances aren’t fated to endure.”

“He dumped me!” Quent repeated. “He had no right to do that. I’m the one to do the dumping.”

“So you never cared about him, or anyone else, just about your convenience and pride.”

“That’s right. Why should I care about anybody else? They don’t matter to me. Except when they get in my way. Then they have to be eliminated.”

“Which meant that you had to conceal your motive, because other Supes don’t necessarily see it that way, and they do have powers to be respected. I must admit it was one hell of a clever program. You set up an alibi, projected a conviction of innocence into the mind of the main investigator, and framed Damne’s murder as the middle of seven randomly chosen killings so it looked random too. Triple genius.”

“Of course. I am a genius. Why should I have to mess with morons?”

“The first was Vulcan Vampire,” I said, keeping it going. “You must know how to program a timer, to make the sunlight come at the wrong time.”

“A timer!” Quent said indignantly. “That was a full computer program. I had to hack it online and make a change that wouldn’t be noticed. That was fine art.”

“We were looking for a motive, and couldn’t find it,” I said. “Because it was a deliberately random killing to put us off the trail. Even before the motivated execution occurred.”

“Exactly. At least you appreciate the artistry of it.”

“Oh, I do. I knew I was up against someone a lot smarter than me. But I figured there might be some little error somewhere that would provide the key clue.”

“Like the Ninety in the freezer,” Quent agreed. “You lucked out on that one.”

“Then there was the gay Warlock, a seeming suicide, shot with his own gun. That’s the case that got me involved.”

“Yes. I gave him the overpowering thought that his homosexuality would ruin any chance he had for real success in life, and the best thing he could do was take himself out before the scandal erupted. That really wasn’t far from the truth. He was a sick fairy.”

“Being gay is no crime,” I protested. “Five percent of the human population is gay.”

“Men fucking men? Come off it, fool. That will never be normal.”

I toyed with the idea of calling him/her a bigot, but that seemed too chancy at the moment. I needed to stay alive long enough for a certain thing to happen. “Maybe you’re right. It’s not the normal course.” But I was thinking of Delle Witch’s gay mundane brother Donald, who struck me as a good man. For that matter the Warlock Standish seemed to have been a good man. As I saw it, good men could have any sexual orientation they chose, if choice were even a part of it. It was like hair color or height: it came with the territory of being a person.

“Then there was Bear,” I said grimly. “My best friend and Syd’s fiancé. Why the hell did you have to kill him?”

“He was available. We knew each other casually. I talked with him, asked for a ride, and when we were in the car I gave him an imperative to drop me off, then plow into the next oncoming car. It worked beautifully; he ricocheted off the car and smacked into a tree. Plainly an accident, but I knew his friends wouldn’t accept it as such. That was the point. So he became a murder victim suspect, one of the chain.”

“So you had nothing against Bear.”

“Nothing at all,” Quent agreed. “He was simply convenient.”

“You ruined Syd’s life and mine for convenience.”

“True. What is your point?” He literally did not care.

I glanced around the office as if looking for help. I did have something in mind, but so far there was no sign of it. So I continued stalling, gamely. “Then Demon Damne, supposedly part of the random string. With your alibi, just in case. The only one where you had a viable alibi. That was a hint.”

“Since when is an alibi an indication of guilt?”

“When it’s too convenient.”

“Bullshit.”

“Then Ghaster Ghost. Another convenience.”

“Naturally. No point in getting fancier than I need.”

“And Succula Succuba. How did you get that red squill into her?” I knew but wanted to confirm it for the recording.

“I injected it into my system, then pumped it out when she came to me. It was safe for me because it was spelled not to become active until in the close presence of a Change.”

“And you know that the Succuba had to Change to the Incubus to complete her route.”

“That’s the nature of that Clan.”

“And the Zombie,” I concluded. “You simply went to the orchard and sent a thought to a controller who was anticipating nothing of the kind. Fish in a barrel.”

“You have a marvelous grasp of the situation. Now I think you have stalled enough. When are you going to Change, so you can have a hope of opposing me man to man? You know you have no hope otherwise. The end is inevitable.”

Damn! My time was running out. But I had to keep trying. “I’m not going to Change,” I said grimly. “Because then you will send me a suicide thought that will take me out without reference to you.”

“You are repeating yourself. No matter; I’ll just have to do it by hand.”

“Make me suicide by hand? I don’t think so.”

“Take your gun.”

“Now why should I do that?”

Quent applied another pain hold. He certainly knew what he was doing in that respect. I could not stand up to it. I reached down and drew my gun. But my stalling had finally paid off. I saw behind Quent where the round snake door was pushing open. Syd had had time to Change, and of course the gag and cords could not constrain her serpent form.

“Now put it to your head.”

I put the gun to my head. “Isn’t there some other way we can work this out?” I asked desperately.

“You know too much. You have to go.”

“Is there no mercy in your heart?”

“None whatsoever. Now I am going to apply pain until you find it easier to end it.”

The serpent was slithering up behind Quent. A few more seconds!

“That’s too bad. I’m a WereWoman; you’re a WereMan. We could have been a perfect match.”

“Hardly. I’m a leading figure. You’re a sniveling worm. Now do it.” The pain increased.

The python slithered around Quent’s feet. Now at last he noticed. “What’s this?”

“That is Sydelle in serpent form. Whose fiancée you murdered.” Then: “Uh, now don’t let go of me! If you do I’ll plug you in the head. Remember, I have the gun.”

Quent paused, stuck between alternatives. He knew I would indeed shoot him if he let me go. But if he didn’t, the python was already wrapping around him.

He decided. He let go and grabbed for the gun so he could shoot the serpent. But I was ready; the moment he did, I grabbed him, flung my arms about him in a, well, bear hug. Thanks, Bear! He struggled, and we fell to the floor together.

Meanwhile the python continued to coil around him.

I still held the gun, and he still held my hand on it. I struggled to aim it toward him, not with any hope of success, but to distract him just a little longer so that the python could complete her hold.

He wrestled the gun from my hand. I knew the moment he had control of it he would shoot me and the serpent through our heads. But I couldn’t cling to it longer. What could I do?

I shot my face forward and bit him in the forearm. It was no love bite; I took hold and chewed as if my life depended on it. Which it did.

He screamed in pain and wrenched his arm away from my teeth. Whereupon I jerked back and pounced on the gun, getting a grip on the barrel. Meanwhile the python’s head reached Quent’s face, jaws gaping.

Quent forgot about the gun and focused on the snake, wrapping both hands around her muscular neck. I wrenched the gun away, still holding it by the barrel. I scrambled to my feet, then swung the butt of the gun down to knock him on the head, he let go of the serpent and grabbed for it again, but I hung on with both hands as I shoved my body away.

And Syd bit down on his shoulder and used the leverage to anchor her coils. She constricted, wrapping him tightly. He struggled, but could not dislodge her. This was after all her natural business.

I backed off and put the gun away. There was no need for it now. The python had him.

Quent continued to struggle, but every movement allowed the coils to tighten marginally further. A python did not crush a victim to death, it wrapped it until breathing was impossible, and the victim suffocated. Quent’s breathing was becoming labored.

He realized that he had lost the physical battle. “Tell her to stop!” he gasped.

I did not move. “Why?”

“We—we can make a deal. I’ll go away. I’ll get out of your life. Just make her stop. She will if you ask her.”

“I believe she would,” I agreed.

“Do it!”

I remained silent.

“What—what do you want?” It was a hoarse whisper; he could hardly talk any more.

“I’m so glad you asked,” I said. “And I will answer you. I want you dead. This is my vengeance for your murder of my best friend. This is in honor of Bear, and the other innocent people you killed. I believe I speak for Sydelle, too. She was going to marry Bear.”

Quent stared at me, realizing that hope was gone. There was no mercy here. Then he gasped his Name and started to Change. But it was too late; he’d be dead long before he completed the Change, and it wouldn’t dislodge the serpent anyway. Already his face was turning blue with suffocation.

This was the time for some polite expression of parting, honoring the about-to-die. At least a word of regret about the necessity. But Bear had been the best friend I ever had, and I simply could not forgive his murder. Neither could Sydelle. “Good riddance, turd,” I said.

It took him a while to die; suffocation is not instant. That was fine with me. Syd held on for another ten minutes, making sure.

Meanwhile I got on the phone. First I called Zombie HQ. “This is Phil Were. We have a very fresh body for you to pick up; it should be good for several days’ hard use. Yes, it is that body. We prefer that it disappear without explanation.”

“I’ll be there pronto,” Zoro said. He understood perfectly why I did not go into detail or name names on an open line. Quent was about to begin his brief afterlife as an anonymous Zombie.

Because, of course, we were not going to notify the mundane police or leave them a body to find, for multiple reasons. Queue had been killing Supes, and any investigation into her death was bound to turn up awkward connections. This was purely Supe business. Anyone questioned would simply say that yes, they had known her, but no, they did not know where she went.

Then I called Nonce. “Your cousin has been avenged. Spread the word.”

She didn’t question it. “That’s a relief.”

By the time I reached the others with terse obscure notices, Syd had made sure of the body and Changed back to human form. She dressed and shaped up the office.

Then Zoro arrived. “Now that’s interesting. This body is neither male nor female.”

He was correct. Quent had been in the process of changing back to Queue when he died, and had been caught halfway between, with neither penis nor breasts. It was a kind of gender limbo, perhaps fitting. “He was in the process of Changing,” I explained. “When something happened.”

He did not inquire further. He focused on the body, and it animated. It climbed awkwardly to its feet, its clothing hanging uncomfortably. Then it turned and looked at me.

I met that blank gaze and quailed. It was as though it were reproving me for what I had done. How much of Queue’s mind remained? “Sorry,” I mumbled.

Zoro and the new Zombie walked out the door. I knew I would not see that Zombie again.

Then I called Molly, relieved that she had not been targeted. “I’m sorry to say that your roommate won’t be returning. The apartment is yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Honey, it may be best if you don’t. Let’s just say there was an incident.”

“Queue wouldn’t just go! Not without telling me. Did something happen to her?”

I saw that more would be required. Molly was innocent, and it was important that she remain that way, so that she couldn’t give away anything to the police. They were bound to question Queue’s roommate at some point, after they caught on that Queue had turned up missing. But I had to tell her something.

“New evidence turned up,” I said. “It seriously implicated her in the murders.”

“But you know she was innocent!” Molly protested.

“I did,” I agreed. “But this was persuasive, extremely awkward to explain without getting into special things.” Special was code for Supernatural. “I confronted her, and she appreciated how bad it was. She simply had to go immediately. The last I saw of her was when she walked out my office door.” True, though hardly the whole story.

“But I can’t take over her apartment. I don’t even have a job yet; I can’t cover the rent.”

I glanced at Syd. “I know she wanted you to be able to get by. She left some money. You can pick it up here at the office at any time.” That would come from the extra gold that Nonce had paid us. Weres took care of Weres.

“All right,” Molly agreed uncertainly. She had to be aware that there was much I wasn’t saying, but she trusted me, bless her.

At last I relaxed somewhat, and so did Syd. It had been an ugly business, but we had done it.

We had finally proven ourselves in our first PI mission.

The case was closed.

Author’s Note

I am known for my light fantasy, such as the long (39 novels and counting) Xanth series, but I have also done sexy fantasy adventure (the ChroMagic series), science fiction (the Cluster series), martial arts (the collaborative Jason Striker series with Roberto Fuentes), historical (Tatham Mound and the GEODYSSEY series), erotic (such as my dirty novels Pornucopia and The Magic Fart), horror (The Sopaths), and biography (Alfred, the life of my father). I don’t like to be limited, and I try different things, with varying success.

I collaborated with best-selling J.R. Rain on several private eye fantasies (the Aladdin series and Dragon Assassin), and he suggested that I try a private eye novel of my own. I pondered; it’s out of my normal genres, but that never stopped me before. I have no private eye experience in my mundane life, but of course I don’t have any space-faring or magic experience either. They say a writer should write what he knows, but that’s laughable when he’s writing about the wildly speculative alien planet adventures or dragons, ogres, and sorcery. So forget that; I could do it if I had a sufficient character and situation. A decent mystery to solve.

And there was the rub: I didn’t. So I let the notion jell while I worked on other projects, notably Aliena, my short novel of alien contact (she looks human, and she’s a nice girl, but her brain has been replaced with that of a sapient alien starfish. Can she find love on Earth?) Then one day it came to me: suppose there was a WereWolf, only instead of changing into a wolf, or other man-sized animal, he became the most alien type of man of all, a woman? And I thought that could be a real advantage if he had to get information from a balky witness; the female side could charm it out of him. He could make a good private eye, as long as the interrogatee didn’t know he was talking to the same person. So I made notes on it, shaping it up, and in June 2013 I wrote it. I don’t usually write first person singular, but this seems to be the vogue for this genre, so okay. Not everything turned out the way I anticipated; in fact the woman aspect became less important than his ability to fathom key motives. I didn’t expect it to be sexy, but let’s face it: how do you show a Succuba (that’s the original spelling, later corrupted to Succubus despite the masculine ending; don’t look to the language for common sense) in action without sex? And everybody knows that Witches are seductive as hell, as are Demonesses. They are, to a fair extent, men’s dream fantasies. I’m not sure what women dream about; their fantasies must be relatively dull. So it is sexy. But that’s the kind of thing that happens when writing. It’s like approaching a range of mountains from a distance: they may look impassible, but when you get close you discover passes between them, and maybe a bridge or tunnel, and you get through in ways you maybe didn’t expect. I got through, with what success I can’t yet be sure. So if you just read this novel, and you think it reeks, don’t blame me; blame J.R. Rain for putting the notion in my noggin.

Will there be more about Phil Were and his PI business? I set this up as potentially the first novel of a series, but whether I write another depends on two things: the success of the first novel, and a genius idea. If WereWoman catches on, someone makes a movie of it, and millions (well, okay, thousands) of fans are clamoring for more, then yes, I will consider obliging them. A novelist is the Incubus/Succuba of his readers, ready to cater shamelessly to their naughty secret desires. But I would still need a notion. What would be worthy of Phil Were’s effort? Maybe in real life he would be eking out a living with penny-ante chores, snapping provocative pictures for a divorce settlement, getting the dirt on a politician’s competition, and similar dullness. But I’d want something bigger than that, more dramatic, world shaking, something to refurbish my fame as a writer and make the novel a household word. What would that be? I have no idea.

I normally have some passing comment on my life at the time I write a particular novel. This won’t take long this time, because it’s dull. About the only unusual thing was that as I was making notes for the novel, I had serious dental surgery, and I wrote the whole of it during my recovery from that. I take good care of my teeth, but they disintegrate anyway. So this time I got two tooth implants (I have an imaginary trio of full-bosomed young women who find my reference to implants hilarious, just as they find my long hair and ponytail amusing) and a bone graft setting up for a third implant. I have had four implants before, and they have served me well; they don’t decay or crack or shatter the way my natural teeth do. They’re hideously expensive, and I wince at the cost as well as the infernal Soft Diet I’m on while my mouth slowly heals. I have to fight to avoid losing weight, because I try to keep my weight at my college level, neither more nor less, and I exercise seriously to stay healthy (apart from my teeth). Once I have my new teeth I know I’ll have to fight to avoid gaining weight because of more efficient chewing. In addition, I’ll be most annoyed if I don’t get at least a decade’s use out of them; what’s the point in spending all that money if I’m just going to croak soon anyway? So it’s a nuisance. And, as I warned, dull. I don’t live any celebrity existence; my wife and I live on our small tree farm with the deer and the gopher tortoises and the mosquitoes. During this novel we celebrated our 57th wedding anniversary by having some cheesecake. That’s our idea of excitement. Maybe when you’re 78 years old, pushing 79, as I am, you’ll understand. Assuming you can even chew cheesecake when you’re senescent.

This novel was proofread by Scott M. Ryan, who caught about 23 errors I had missed. My standard comment is that typos grow on the pages after the editing.

Anyone interested in tracking me in more detail can do so by checking my web site, www.hipiers.com, where I have a monthly blog-type column to vent my opinionations, news of my publications, and an ongoing survey of electronic publishers and related services, complete with candid feedback from anonymous writers, there to help aspiring writers find publishers for their works of genius. Publishing is no longer a closed shop that excludes newcomers.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2014 by Piers Anthony

ISBN: 978-1-4976-6282-7

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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