“—othes. Oh, dear. Too late.” The last words were muffled behind Melinda’s hands, which did nothing to hide the laughter in them.
Nor did I require any kind of translation, as I was lying constricted in my own clothing. Both my arms were inside my shirt, which wasn’t so bad. They were also both inside my bra, which was not meant to be stretched around another dozen inches of width. I wasn’t entirely certain the bra hadn’t come unfastened and that I wasn’t entangled in straps, but I couldn’t quite tell. Either way, the upper half of my body had nothing on my lower half’s troubles, as both my legs were stuffed into one leg of my jeans. The fabric should have, by all rights, exploded. Instead it had stretched to its three-percent-spandex-maximum, and the seams were strained to bursting. The other leg of the jeans flopped to one side like an empty sausage skin. I was afraid to wonder what had happened to my panties. My feet were bare and rapidly going numb from lack of circulation.
I said, “Help?” in a very small voice, and Melinda collapsed on the floor, weak with laughter. I wanted to be annoyed, but my predicament shot straight past irritation into the absurd, and I, too, began to giggle.
Giggling while bound up in denim and underwires had to be one of the least comfortable things I’d ever done, which only made it funnier. I struggled to free an arm so I could wipe my eyes, and succeeded mostly in rolling myself over. My pants leg gave up any hope of molecular cohesion and tore with a sound unfortunately similar to passing an enormous amount of gas.
Melinda’s shriek of laughter covered the denim’s last gasps. I kicked myself free of the shredded fabric, discovering in the process that the elastic on my panties hadn’t been nearly so stubborn as the jeans and had already given up the ghost. I crunched up to sitting and wormed a hand up to wipe my eyes. Melinda threw a pillow at me. “Cover yourself, woman! You’re indecent!”
I threw the pillow back, but it bounced off the keep-things-in circle. “What’m I going to do! I don’t have any extra clothes with me! And I loved this shirt, well, I guess the shirt’s okay…” I got myself free of it and shook off the remainders of my poor bra, which would never cup another breast in its life. “Apparently shapeshifting is to be done naked.”
“Did I hear somebody say naked?” Billy came down the stairs and I shrieked like a teenager, scrambling to yank my shirt back on.
“Stop! Stop! Don’t come down! Don’t come in here, anyway! I’m naked! My clothes are ruined!” I surged for the pillow, clutching it modestly as Billy appeared in the sanctuary door and peered at me.
“I’ve seen naked women before, Walker. What happened?”
“You haven’t seen me naked!” I dragged my ruined jeans toward me, not that there was any hope at all of resurrecting them, and repeated, “Shapeshifting is apparently a skyclad kind of activity.”
Billy said, “She said skyclad,” to Melinda in a voice of pure amazement. “I think that’s the official last nail in the coffin on her skepticism. Where’d you even hear that?”
“I read it in one of the magic books. Would you please get me some sweatpants or something? I can’t leave your house like this!”
“Oh, so you’re done and ready to go now?”
“Well, not right now, I’m naked!” At some point I was pretty certain I’d start to be embarrassed, but my sense of ridiculous was too well defined just yet. Then Billy’s expression, which had gotten more serious, sank in, and I frowned. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing to do with you, except it is. That woman from yesterday, Rita Wagner, just called in to report a murder downtown.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SATURDAY, MARCH 18, 8:48 A.M.
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.