Page 20 of Bad Medicine

Which reminded me of something.“Max, Rick said there were pictures of me online. He seemed especially weirdabout it.”

“Oh,” he said, daintilynibbling an apple slice, “he must’ve seen the Kait Silver nudes.”

I nearly choked on my steak.“What?”

“It’s not a big deal. Peoplestick the heads of celebs on nude bodies they find online. Apparently someonethought it would be amusing to do that to you. The detective must have seen acouple of those. There’s one where “your” boobs are enormous. Hehadtoknow that wasn’t you.”

“What,” I said, “the actualfuck?”

“Who would have done that?”Lucy asked, offended for me. “That’s awful. No one did that to me, did they?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “You sounda little hopeful, Lucy.”

“Well, you know.”

“No. Not really.”

She shrugged. “Speaking ofwhich, I’ve decided to put you know who behind me and move on with my life. Ithought about inviting one of my old friends over soon.”

I squinted at her. “Lucy…”

“Come on, Kait,” she said.“I’ve had sex with him off and on since high school. He’s one of my originalfuck buddies. He’s completely harmless.”

I dropped my fork, sighing.

“Uh oh,” Joe said. “Only onereason you’d stop eating.”

I nodded. “Joe, you heard theguy tell me he didn’t kill and bury the woman in his grandma’s back yard.”

“Yeah. He’s telling the truth?”

“Yes. It wasn’t Robby Albertwho killed that woman.”

“Okay.” He put down his ownfork. “What’re we looking at?”

“Shapeshifter,” I said.

I gave them time to absorb theword. They stared at me with expressions ranging from disbelief to confusion.

“You mean,” Lucy said, “like awolf?”

“No,” I told her. “Wolves arewolves. They shift from their human form to their wolf form. Shapeshifters…” Itook a deep breath and blew it out slowly, trying to dispel the anxiety theword caused me. “Shapeshifters can shift into any person they’ve everseen—living or dead. They can commit crimes and if they’re seen, there will beno doubt at all that the person they look like was the one who committed thatcrime. He will have their fingerprints. He will even have absorbed some oftheir memories. All he needs is to have seen and been close enough to the humanto have absorbed their…aura. So it’s not a good idea for you to have peoplevisiting you, Lucy.”

She paled. “Do you think we’rein danger from him? That he might come here?”

That was all she needed—anotherkiller to worry about. “No,” I said. “I don’t think he will, but I don’t wantto take a chance. I don’t know why he’s in the city killing and burying women.Shapeshifters are rare, and they don’t come into cities to kill women becausethey’re “bad.” His victim told me that was why he’d killed her. Turns out, shewas abusing her son. Whether or not that was why he killed her is anyone’sguess. Maybe he killed her because he saw her doing something that he believedwas immoral. I don’t know.”

“Why wouldn’t he have taken hersomewhere and dumped her body?” Joe asked. “Why go through the trouble oftaking on Robby’s appearance and burying her in the back yard? Surely he sawthe cameras.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, rememberinghis smile, his face. “He wanted to be seen. I don’t know more than that.”Except it felt like he’d wantedmeto see him. Which meant he knew me.Which meant, unfortunately, that my friends might truly be in danger from him.

“How can we tell if a person isfor real or the shapeshifter?” Lucy asked. “Is there a way?”

“I saw a wavering on thevideo,” I told her. “I doubt you would notice. But animals supposedly dislikeshapeshifters—so if Ash is ever acting like he wants to eat someone’s face…” Ishrugged. “Then you should get the hell away from that person.”

She reached down to pet Ash,relieved. “Good, then. Ash will protect us against the evil shapeshifter.”

Ash rolled over and gave herhis belly to rub, his tongue lolling. Honestly, I wasn’t sure Ash would doanything but whine and hide under a bed if a shapeshifter appeared, but fromeverything I’d ever heard, it was true that dogs hated shapeshifters. Andusually, the feeling was mutual.