Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

some would strip in the middle of the Market Highway without a moment’s thought. Apparently Dali was of the second category.
    A deep, low rumble of a large cat rolled through my apartment, a cascade of sound bouncing off my skin. I looked up.
    A white tiger stood in my living room. Glowing as if sculpted of fresh snow, she looked at me with ice-blue eyes, enormous, otherworldly, like some eternal spirit of the North, taiga, and winter hunt. Long stripes outlined her fluid shape with coal black. More than a mere animal, more than a lycanthrope in the beast form, she was majestic. I couldn’t even breathe.
    And then she sneezed. And sneezed again, blinking, and when she raised her head again, I realized that only one glacial eye looked straight at me. The other stared off to the side. The tiger spirit went cross-eyed like a Siamese cat.
    The tigress raised one paw, looked quizzically at it, put it down, and rumbled low in the throat, a befuddled expression on her big face.
    “Yes, those are your paws,” Jim said patiently.
    At the sound of his voice, the tigress backpedaled, stumbled over the four-armed body, and sat on it in the most undignified manner.
    “You’re sitting on the evidence,” Jim said.
    The tigress leapt up and spun around, nearly taking me off my feet with her butt. A snarl ripped from her mouth.
    “Yes, there is a dead creature in the room. Lie down, Dali, and relax. It will come to you.”
    The tigress settled on the floor, peering at the bodies with open suspicion.
    “She has short-term memory loss after the shift,” Jim murmured. “It will wear off in a minute. The cross-eyed thing will go away, too. Some cats react that way to stress.”
    “Does she get aggressive?” The last thing I needed was to get raked over hot coals because I used excessive force to subdue a raging cross-eyed weretigress with temporary amnesia.
    Jim’s face took on an odd expression, so unusual on his hard mug that it took me a moment to diagnose it as embarrassment. “No. She gags on raw meat and blood.”
    “What?”
    “She won’t bite or scratch or she’ll vomit. She’s a vegetarian.”
    Oh boy. “But when she’s in beast form . . .”
    He shook his head. “She eats grass. Don’t ask.”
    Dali rose and sniffed the four-armed body. She began at his feet, her flat feline muzzle trailing a mere quarter inch above the skin. The dark nose scanned the long toes of the left foot, tipped with sharp claws, and slid up, along the shin to the knee. Dali paused there, licked the hard pane of the kneecap, and moved up along the thigh. She stopped at the crotch, shifted to the right, and repeated the same thorough scent search with the right leg.
    It took her a full five minutes to complete her survey.
    “Anything?” I asked.
    Dali shook her magnificent head. Damn it. We were back to dying Derek lying in a vat of liquid.
    “Alright.” Jim nodded. “Change back. I thought of something else to ask.”
    The tigress nodded. Her white pelt stretched, quivered, but remained on her body.
    “Dali?” Jim’s voice was calm and measured.
    The white fur crawled and snapped back into a tiger. Glacial-blue eyes stared at me, and in their crystal depth, I saw panic.
    The tigress ran.
    She dashed around the room, trampling the bodies. Her furry shoulder brushed the tall, tulip-shaped lamp. The lamp went flying and exploded against the floor in a shower of glass. Dali rampaged over the shards and collided with the LCD display on the wall. The large metal frame slid off its hook and thundered down, landing on Dali’s skull. I winced.
    Dali whipped about, her eyes completely wild, and met Jim. He stepped in her way and stared.
    Dali shivered. The fur rose on her haunches. She snarled.
    Jim simply stood. His eyes were pure emerald.
    With a heavy sigh, Dali hugged the ground and lay down.
    Alpha of the cats in action.
    Jim knelt by Dali. “Can you change shape?”
    The tigress whined low. I took it as a no.
    Small streaks of blood seeped from Dali’s huge paws, vivid against her white fur. Given her aversion to blood, she probably wouldn’t even lick her injuries. I fetched the med kit Doolittle had used to patch me up, fished out a pair of tweezers, and settled down by her feet. She offered me one enormous paw. I opened the bottle of antiseptic, poured some on a piece of gauze, and wiped the blood from the huge pads. Three glass shards sat embedded in the flesh, trophies of her glorious battle with the lamp.
    “I want