The Scent of Shadows Free with Bonus Material by Vicki Pettersson Page B

believed,” she said, and threw some sort of belt—I didn’t want to know what it looped around—into a pile that was growing at an alarming rate.
    “Don’t worry,” I said, picking up a tube of lipstick with a penis-shaped wand. “If he gets overly amorous, I’ve got your back.”
    “Not necessary,” she said, yanking the tube from my hands. I picked up Luna instead. “He looks like a Hell’s Angel, but he’s relatively harmless.”
    I saw what she meant when she opened her door to a six and a half foot ape dressed entirely in leather a minute later. I actually thought he looked rather like a large bulldog, complete with sunken eyes and hanging jowls, and she was right—he was hairy. I could see where Oliviamight balk at banging chromosomes with a physiological mutant.
    “Jo, this is Butch.”
    “Yes, it is,” I muttered, giving the giant a hesitant nod.
    Luna apparently experienced a similar reaction. She took one look at Butch and sprung from my arms like an Olympic platform diver. “Ouch, shit!”
    The bundle of fur wheeled across the marble floor, scrambling for purchase with a click-clack of sharpened nails, and disappeared into the bedroom. As I watched, the stinging marks on my arm became angry pink ribbons, then filled with bright red blood, promising scarring.
    “Shit,” I said again.
    “Are you all right?” Olivia rushed over, leaving Butch in the foyer.
    “He never did like me,” Butch mumbled, shutting the door behind him.
    “She,” Olivia corrected as Butch joined us in the living room. “She never liked you. And maybe she would have if you hadn’t stepped on her tail. Twice.”
    Butch just shrugged. Big bad bulldog.
    “You two stay here,” she said, catching my eye. That meant she didn’t want him following her into the bedroom. “I’ll just get your things and find Jo something to wash off with.”
    She disappeared, leaving me with Leather Man. He was practically wearing the whole cow—when he started moving toward me I almost expected him to moo.
    “Want me to take a look?” He held out his hand. I hesitated, without reason, though I generally didn’t need one. I didn’t know Butch, but there was some sort of unease or smothered energy that I didn’t like. The drop-point knife was still sitting on the coffee table, close enough to see, but far enough away to be as useful as a butter knife. Still, I had the folded blade in my boot, and was confident enough to hold out my arm for his inspection, testing us both. If there was something off aboutButch, I didn’t want him around Olivia, and better I find out about it than she.
    He took my wrist gently, gazing at the scratch almost clinically, a concerned enough expression on his fleshy face. I relaxed a fraction. Then he raised my arm and inhaled deeply of the wound, nostrils flaring. That’s when I saw.
    The pads of his fingertips were curiously smooth, almost shiny with luminescence, and unlined. Without prints. I forced my arm not to tense beneath his touch and quickly returned my eyes to his face.
    The lightning flashed outside, firing the room and slashing across his features to illuminate chiseled bone and hollow eyes; a skeleton’s bony sneer with teeth shaped like daggers. His hold tightened a fraction, just the fingertips, those too-smooth pads, but it was enough to make me still and wait for an opening to reclaim my arm.
    As thunder rolled across the sky, Butch smiled lopsidedly. “Do you know what time it is?”
    I didn’t look at my watch. “Yeah. It’s time for you to let go of my hand.”
    His fingers tightened over mine, and given one moment more I’d have broken them, but he dropped my arm suddenly and walked away. Tensed, braced for a fight, this unbalanced me. He just drifted away like he’d never sniffed at my skin in an intimate way or held a look of naked hunger in those hollow eyes. Retrieving my long blade from the coffee table, I tucked it in the waistband of my pants, then grabbed the kubotan