I nodded, then looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I’m actually working with the police to help solve her murder.” I doubted anyone down here would be too friendly toward me if they knew I had police connections. “Can you tell me anything about her? I’m not sure what I’m looking for exactly, but anything might help.”
Mrs. Rankle watched the tunnel for a bit, gaze far away. “It was a long time ago.” She glanced over at me and closed one eye. “The old thinker’s not what it used to be.”
“I doubt that. You’ve always been sharp.” I snorted. “Too sharp, in fact. We couldn’t get away with anything under your watch.”
She grinned. “I’ve got eyes in the back of my head.”
I paled and lowered the drink’s straw from my lips.
She chuckled and patted my arm. “Just kidding.” Her throat bobbed as her smile faded. “Letty was a sweet girl. Shy.”
I nodded. “A lot of people we’ve spoken to recently say she stayed that way—that she was pretty private and reserved.” I licked my lips. “Do you think she’d have killed herself?”
“Letty?” Mrs. Rankle jerked her head in my direction. “No way.”
I frowned. “You’re that confident? If she wasn’t a big talker, no one might have known if she were going through private struggles.”
She snorted. “Fat chance.” She shook a finger at me. “That girl might have been quiet, but she was a hard worker who never gave up, never complained.” She gave me a hard look before taking a swig of her drink. “Letty was a fighter.”
I thought this over as I watched the parade of shifters go by. “Is it hard getting used to living underground?”
“Eh.” She pulled her wrinkled lips to the side. “It was at first, but I made new friends, got to know my neighbors. Same as living aboveground.”
I opened my mouth to ask her about Letty, but she continued.
“Never thought this place would still be around by the time I retired.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Eh. Just thought that once the Monster Wars were over, we’d all be able to live aboveground, out in the open again.”
I angled toward her. “I live aboveground.”
She snorted. “Yeah, but can you be open about who you are? What you are?” She sighed as an aardvark shuffled by. “That’s one good thing about being down here. Folks are free to shift at will.”
“Wait… are you saying shifters used to be able to shift in public?”
She gave me a hard look, her thin brows pinched together. “That jellyfish head, King Roch, did a lot more than just the war crimes he was tried for.” She shook a finger at me. “People didn’t mind shifters, what is it now? Fifty years ago, before he got into their heads. During the monster wars he filled the streets with propaganda—posters were everywhere, fliers, pamphlets—about the dangers of shifters.”
She made a spooky noise, then swiped her hand through the air. “Bunch of detritus! The spineless bottom feeder was just trying to distract people from all the horrors he was committing by turning folks against us. If the people had a common enemy in shifters, then they couldn’t all unite and rise up against him.”
Icy dread washed over me. “Why haven’t I heard any of this before?”
She lifted a brow. “Because he buried it, dear. Why do you think all his political rivals and dissidents got thrown in Carclaustra prison, hm? It’ll come out, it sure will.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know if it’ll be too late for people to change their minds about our kind.”
Hot anger flared inside me. “Why shifters?”
She shrugged. “Because it was easy to tell people that we were related to monsters when giant creatures were ravaging the land. He played on people’s fears. Never mind that he sicced those very monsters on us himself.”
She took another swig. “We could change into animals. That mouse in your baseboards? Could be a shifter spying on you. That stray cat? Could be a shifter ready to invade your home and murder your children in their sleep.” She raised her brows. “The lies he spread drove us underground. I thought it’d just be temporary, but—” She clicked her tongue. “Here we are.”
I took a deep breath and blew it out in a big gust. “That’s a lot to take in.”
23
UNDERTOW
Mrs. Rankle reached over and patted my arm. “We all got caught in the undertow of it. Poor kiddos like you and Letty and all the rest of the orphans got it worst of all.”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
She gave me a sad smile, the lines around her eyes deepening. “The orphanage, dear. People were giving up their babies left and right if they happened to be born shifters. Everyone was afraid—it was such a stigma to have a shifter child.”
My stomach tightened. My parents had given me up because I was a shifter. My thoughts drifted to Will—he’d mentioned that his ability to shift hadn’t manifested till he was a teenager. That was probably why he’d been raised in a wealthy family in a top tier. But if he’d been able to shift as a baby… I shook my head. We probably would have grown up in the orphanage together.
I looked down at my fruity drink and took a huge sip. I’d had no idea about any of this—I’d just figured that this prejudice against shifters was the way it had always been. I looked up as another idea occurred to me. “When did Ludolf come to be in charge?”
Mrs. Rankle nodded. “Well, right around that same time, dear. When we were all driven either underground or just into hiding our abilities.”
“Not before then?”
She shook her head.
I tapped my fingers against the glass. So Ludolf had emerged as mob boss of the shifters at the same time King Roch was spreading propaganda about us. This would give me a good starting point to look into him more. I gulped. I
