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I was suspended from duty, but downtown wasn’t our jurisdiction anyway.

Furthermore, Rita had specifically asked for me, so I figured on some level that worked out, and tagged along with Billy.

I was still self-conscious walking into the Pioneer Square crime scene, though: I knew I didn’t belong, and plenty of people there were entirely capable of handling a murder investigation.

It was, however, just slightly possible that my self-consciousness was less centered on whether I belonged there, and more concerned with the unusual detail that I was wearing a miniskirt.

It was not a miniskirt on Melinda Holliday.

On her, it was a cute fitted black knit skirt that hugged curvaceous hips and followed the slim line of her thighs down to just above her knees.

It looked equally terrific with either knee-high boots or heels, and made a potent reminder that Billy’s wife was a bombshell.

But she was a bombshell who stood nine or ten inches shorter than me, and at least half of that difference was in the leg.

The knit fabric ensured the skirt fit me as snugly—and attractively, even if I said so myself—as it did Melinda, but its only acquaintance with my knees was passing over them on the hem’s way to its final resting place halfway up my thigh.

It wasn’t precisely the ideal outfit for a self-respecting police detective to show up to a crime scene in.

Especially since my bra had exploded during the course of my transformation, a detail which I fully intended to keep well under cover.

My jacket was zipped to my collarbones, hiding not only excess jiggle but the fact that my sweater didn’t match the skirt.

It could do nothing about my stompy boots not matching the skirt, either, but I was trying to convince myself the boots were some kind of awesome Goth statement about fashion in the modern era.

I didn’t buy it, and, at a glance, neither did the two detectives, the patrol officer, or the incoming forensics team.

For a moment I wished I’d borrowed some of Billy’s clothes instead, but they were as much too big on me as Mel’s skirt was too small, so it was either the Charlie Chaplin look or legs from here to Sunday.

In retrospect, though, clownishly large clothes might have been warmer.

I’d have to keep that in mind for next time I destroyed my outfit by shapeshifting while wearing it.

“Our witness is this way,” one of the detectives said grumpily.

He was middling height and slim, with brown hair worn in a classic cut that could have come from any era from Victorian to present-day.

It gave him a bit of age and gravitas, even if his bad mood hadn’t already.

“She doesn’t want to talk to anybody unless you’re here. What are you, her lawyer?”

Derailed from calculating the odds that I’d ruin half my wardrobe by slipping from one form to another, I followed him, mumbling an explanation: “I saved her life a few months ago. She’d been on the street, so she probably just wants a familiar face, somebody she has a little reason to trust. Believe me, Detective… ”

“Monroe.”

“Monroe, I don’t want to take over your case. It’s your jurisdiction, your territory. Only thing I’m here to do is facilitate the interview.” Damn. Miniskirt or not, I sounded like a professional.

And miniskirt or not, apparently Monroe thought so, too. He glanced back at me, expression thawing noticeably.

“That’s good to hear. So what’s with the outfit? Working undercover?”

God. I should’ve worn Billy’s clothes after all, if I looked like a pro in Mel’s skirt. “I tore the seams out of my pants this morning and this was the only thing I had to wear. If it doesn’t warm up soon I’m gonna make a break for the Market and buy some pants.”

Monroe gave me a very brief smile. “Don’t get pants. Get some of those leggings to wear under the skirt. It’ll warm my day up, anyway.”

There was probably a better response than “Aheh,” but I couldn’t think of it.

Fortunately Monroe led me into a café about twenty yards from the cordoned-off crime scene—I hadn’t even gotten a look at the body, though Billy was down by the yellow tape, presumably doing his ghost thing—and pointed me at Rita Wagner.

She was shrunk into a corner, sallow fingers wrapped around a cardboard coffee mug.

I sat down across from her, a spike of sympathy piercing me.

I’d had a long night, but I had healing magic to shore me up.

Rita, whose morning had apparently started with a murder, but who lacked my talent, looked small and fragile and hard-used again, like she had in the first moments we’d met. “Hey, Rita. You doing okay?”

She lifted her gaze, film of despondency clearing from her eyes as she recognized me. “Detective Walker. I didn’t think you’d come. I didn’t do it.”

I blinked, first at her, then at Monroe, who hadn’t yet sat down.

He shrugged his eyebrows and gestured to the third chair at the table, questioning.

I raised a finger to ask him to hold off and turned my attention back to Rita.

“This is Detective Monroe, who’s going to actually be handling this case.

It’s way out of my jurisdiction, so the best I can do is be here while you tell us what you saw. You mind if he sits down?”

She glanced up at him, shook her head and looked back at her coffee cup as Monroe pulled the chair out, turned it backward, and sat.

I downwardly revised my estimation of his age to something closer to my own, especially since upon inspection, there were no gray threads in his brown hair, then focused on Rita, who started talking like she’d been waiting on my cue.

What she said, though, had nothing to do with the case: “Was the show good?”

Her expression was so quietly hopeful I didn’t have the heart to tell her what had transpired the night before.

Not that it would be useful to do so during a witness interview, anyway, so I said, “It was unbelievable,” which I thought covered both the amazing performance and the dreadful aftermath in sufficiently enthusiastic yet noncommittal terms.

I got a hint of her youthening smile as a reward for my discretion, though her gaze went straight back to the coffee. “I helped close up the Solid Ground soup kitchen last night. It’s open late because there are so many homeless down here, so it was after midnight when I left. I stayed nearby?—”

“Where?” Monroe was taking notes, and his interruption—though I’d have asked the same thing—was unwelcome. Rita glanced at me nervously and I nodded, encouraging her. She didn’t look encouraged, which made it Monroe’s turn to eye me, in a get-her-talking manner.

“I’m guessing you stayed somewhere you’re not supposed to.” At Rita’s nod, I opened a palm, brushing away her concern. “We’re looking at a murder investigation here, Rita. Nobody’s interested in busting you for an illegal flop-spot. You or anybody else who’s using the place, for that matter. Okay?”

Her gaze shifted between us, guilty. “We—I—stay in the Underground a lot recently. Outside the tourist area, so they don’t have any reason to run us out.”

I nodded, having expected that. Seattle, like half the big cities in America, had burned down once upon a time.

When they rebuilt, they’d moved street level between ten and thirty feet higher to help cut down on flooding and backed-up toilets.

The old city disappeared under the new, until by the early twentieth century, the only people in the Underground were people like Rita today: homeless, criminals, or both.

Parts of it had been reclaimed and made into a tour—I’d gone on it—but there was a lot more Underground than there was safe territory to explore.

I personally had no clue how to access the less-safe areas from the outside, but then, I’d never had reason to search for a comparatively safe, warm place to hide from the elements or the law.

There were five or ten thousand homeless people in Seattle.

It was a safe bet that a fair chunk of them knew a lot about surviving beneath the city, even if I didn’t.

Rita watched Monroe and me both carefully, waiting to see if we were going to condemn her or her fellows.

When neither of us spoke, she exhaled quietly and went on.

“So we’re nearby, but not close enough to hear anything.

I just know he wasn’t there last night when I left the kitchen, and he was when I went out this morning.

I turned him over. I had to, to see if he was dead.

I shouldn’t have done that, should I? It means my fingerprints will be on him and I’d be easy to throw in jail.

But there was blood everywhere, so I had to see.

And then I saw I called you. I didn’t know what else to do. ”

Her aura was agitated, earthy colors rubbing against each other like static-furred cats, but there was no deception streaking through it. She was just afraid, as I would probably be in her position. “You did the right thing, Rita. Did you know him?”

“His name was Lynn. He was a Vietnam vet, and I don’t know how he ended up on the street.

He hardly ever drank, and he liked blues music.

He used to hang out at Holy Cow Records in the Market.

They might know more about him. I just know he was a nice man.

I always thought he could’ve made it, if somebody’d just given him a hand. ”

“Any enemies you knew about?”

Rita gave me a look purely the opposite of her youthening smile.

It turned her into a bitter old crone, so full of anger at the world that even her aura darkened with it, deep crimson spilling through otherwise gentle shades.

“Anybody can be your enemy when you’re living rough, Detective Walker.

Even your best friend, if you’ve got booze or smokes or food he wants.

People liked Lynn, but that doesn’t have to mean anything. ”