by Chant, Zoe
As people began to offer polite compliments, Doris leaned over and said out of the side of her mouth, “I’m good at cookbooks, not symbolism, but I’d say you’re the hummingbird.”
Godiva snorted.
“And the monster represents the fact that he knows he was a jerk when he ditched you.”
“Took sixty-odd years to realize it,” Godiva muttered back. “Not what I call batting a thousand.”
Bird, on Godiva’s other side, was silent, her brow contracted.
“Why is he even here?” Godiva muttered.
“Because he’s read your books?” Bird suggested loyally, then frowned, perplexed. “Maybe he’s figured out you’re doing well, and if he’s anything like my horrible ex, he might try to shake you down for cash.”
Godiva turned to Doris. “What do you think?” she whispered.
“I . . . reserve judgment,” Doris murmured. “He doesn’t look like he intends evil. He’s not afraid of your gaze. Not the way he keeps looking your way. But it’s not creepy staring, it’s more like, well, like appeal.”
Godiva snorted. Of course Doris would look for the bright side, even if there wasn’t one.
The writers’ group began to quiet down for the next reader, and the conversation perforce ended.
Just as well. Godiva knew that Doris and Bird didn’t know anything more than she did. But she liked having them there. They’d listened to her story, and their sympathy for her and anger at him had been real. Not that that fixed anything.
She sank into a funk, letting the latest chapter of Steven’s sports novel flow overhead, then clapped hard at the end, feeling guilty that she hadn’t heard a word of it.
“What if he has no idea where Alejo is,” she whispered as the group clapped. “Never mind. No chickening out. I have to know.”
Doris whispered, “Better to confront him in a public place, with friends nearby.”
“There’s that,” Godiva admitted.
Three more people took their turns reading, then it was Doris’s turn. She handed out fresh samosas as she talked about recipes. Time seemed both to drag and to rush by, a weird sensation that just made Godiva’s insides churn. She spent the entire time arguing with herself.
Finally she resorted to a mental list:
Reasons to talk to Rigo:
Find out if he knows where Alejo is.
Hear whatever excuse he’s going to offer for being a total jerk, and use it in her next book.
How good it will feel to tell him to get lost.
Reasons to ignore his ass:
He’s a betraying jerk.
I won’t believe a word he says.
How great it will feel to give him the silent treatment, paybacks for him stiffing me all those years ago, without so much as a word.
She forced herself out of her reverie in order to listen to Bird, whose ending of her doll novel was as sweet and well-written as Godiva knew it would be. And she smiled at the enthusiastic applause from most of the writers, pride on Bird’s behalf suppressing the butterflies in her stomach.
But Bird was the last. Now everyone was free to comment, rise and stretch, renew their coffee, or snag another pastry.
Bird rose, making a motion toward the restroom. Doris collected their various paper plates and coffee cups, and headed toward the back table, leaving Godiva alone. She sat there, arms crossed tightly. It was time to face him down, but not with all these listening ears. She sensed Rigo waiting on the other side of the room. He hadn’t headed her way, but she knew he was waiting for her to make the first move.
She sidled a quick look, and again it was like a blow behind her ribs, how damned handsome he still was. If there was any justice, he’d be a doddering geezer—
“Want backup?”
Godiva nearly jumped out of her skin. She turned to find Jen looming over her, looking like a Viking goddess about to smite a few dozen Phoenician pirates with fire and sword.
Jen said, “I saw you glaring at Rigo. I know Joey means well . . . what I mean to say is, Doris clued me in on what happened between you and this guy, since you didn’t tell her not to. If you want some backup, I’m here. And I still do an hour of kung fu a day,” she added, flexing her right arm as her left hand absently rubbed at her baby bump.
“It’s okay,” Godiva said. “He’s probably looking for handouts, Bird thinks.”
“Driving that car?”
“Well. There’s that.”
“Bird would think along those lines, as she was gaslighted by her horrible ex for years.”
Godiva nodded. “Anyway, if he tries to, it won’t take me ten seconds to laugh him back to wherever he came from. There’s something I need to ask him, because I have to know.”
Jen frowned, bit her lip, seemed about to say something, frowned again, then said, “Okay. If you’re sure. Any of us would . . .”
And here came Doris and Bird, closing in on either side. The three women exchanged looks—the kind of glances that Godiva had seen more and more of as the three got paired off. She knew they didn’t mean to close her out, but she sensed some wall, or door, or level that she didn’t know how to cross.
Then Jen started chatting about how excellent Bird’s new book was, and Godiva told herself she was imagining things. She should be grateful for the loyal backup. Here they were, three awesome women ready to run a defensive tackle, or whatever they called it in football when a bunch of husky guys mowed down the opposing team’s quarterback.
When Jen paused, Godiva eyed the three and lowered her voice. “I appreciate all of you more than I can say. But I’ve been looking out for myself for more years than any of you have been alive. Tonight’s no different. Go home. Enjoy the rest of your evening.” And to Doris, “You and Joey don’t have to take me home. I’ll call for a Lyft.”
Being the terrific women they were, they took the hint and dispersed, though not without a few backward looks, as if to check and see if Godiva really meant it.
Godiva meant it.
She headed for the restroom. When she came out, the bakery was nearly deserted, except for Linette, Doris, and Joey, the latter stacking chairs as Doris helped carry the remains of the pastries to the kitchen.
“Good night,” Doris called, with a glance that Godiva couldn’t interpret. Worried . . . and something else.
“Good night,” Godiva said, shrugging it off.
Linette gave a distracted wave, clearly too busy with making sure the bakery was shipshape before she locked up for the night.
Godiva headed toward the door, knowing Rigo was out there. She could feel him there. Which was weird, considering the fact that she firmly believed that psychic powers and all the rest of it was so much hooey. If any of it had been real, why hadn’t Alejo contacted her when she thought about him so hard, all these years?
Remembering that sent a flood of irritation through her, which gave her the courage to march out the front door.
Sure enough, Rigo stood a few yards from the entrance to the bakery. The rest of the street was empty. Everyone else had left, and Linette’s car was parked in back.
“Shirl,” Rigo said softly, the same voice she’d heard in dream after dream. “Godiva. Ah, sorry, I’m still trying to get used to—”
Strategy, she had learned, was the essence of attack. Or was that attack was the essence of strategy? Anyway she cut him off. “I’ve been Godiva a whole lot longer than I was ever Shirley. Five names between. You would have known, if you hadn’t walked out on me.” Her voice quivered. She stopped, drawing in a hissing breath. She would not be weak. “Where’s my son?”
“At home—”
Relief flooded through her. Alejo was alive! He was safe! “Which is where?”
“Kentucky, at—”
“Kentucky? How did he end up there?”
“That’s where my ranch is—”
“So he lives with you? Still?” The relief vanished too quickly as all the pain beneath welled up despite her determination to hold her emo
tions in check. “He’s all right, and lives with you, but he somehow hasn’t had the time to . . .”
She’d meant to be calm. Rational. Factual. But the truth was too harsh. Rigo lived with Alejo, her son, whom she bore and raised on her own until he hit seventeen and vanished. Who hadn’t seen fit to come to see her, after all these years. “You know what,” she said fiercely, “I don’t care what excuse you’re going to yap. I won’t believe a damn word you say, so you can just—”
He interrupted her for the first time. “I know it was wrong, walking out on you all those years ago. But. This,” Rigo said tersely, “is why I ran.”
And before her astonished eyes, his outline blurred.
At first she thought it was the damn sting in her eyes—she refused to think of it as tears. But when she blinked, Rigo’s outline began to elongate, his dark hair rippling in texture until it somehow became overlapping scales that glinted like armor in the reflected light from the street lamp. His body continued to change shape, arms reaching out and out until between one moment and the next they snapped into great raptor wings, the taloned tips reaching from one side of the street to the other.
His head transformed, the scales smaller, sweeping in a lethally elegant pattern up and over his head, rising into a steely crest down his arched neck. The crest continued down his back into a long serpent’s tail that snapped back and forth with enough power to crush one of the cars parked along the street.
His nose had transformed into a razor-edged beak that reminded her of an eagle. He balanced on two armored legs that ended in great claws. But dominating all were his eyes, a fiery golden red that briefly flickered a virulent green.
Her jaw dropped. Her breath caught in her throat as she tipped her head back—he had to be at least twenty feet tall, towering over her.
His eyes glowed with greenish light. He turned his head, and looked down at a crumpled chip bag someone had thrown on the sidewalk. A laser-thin greenish beam lanced from his eyes to the bag, which glowed briefly as red as a coal. When the glow died down, there was nothing left but a tiny pebble, a thin wisp of smoke rising from it.
Then the great head swung back, and the eyes gazed down at her in what she would swear at any other time was appeal.
Her brain had absolutely frozen.
This cannot be happening, a little voice gibbered inside her—and yet as she gazed up at those eyes, whole pupils had become vertical slits, she somehow recognized Rigo in them . . .
Chapter 6
RIGO
He hadn’t meant to shift.
But he hadn’t counted on the powerful effect of her standing there almost within arm’s reach, the sight of her making his senses swim. And through those heightened senses seared a terrible sense of betrayal beneath her fiery temper, a blast of emotion that threatened to smoke his heart right out of his chest.
And so, for the second time in his life, the basilisk forced his way out.
Godiva staggered back a step, eyes huge, her mouth rounded in a voiceless What?
He gazed anxiously down at her, strictly leashing the power of his eyes, even though he knew—now—that even if he let his power slip he could never hurt his mate. But he didn’t want her to feel the slightest vestige of that paralyzing power.
She was already still enough, poised for flight.
He stilled, too. Didn’t dare so much as move, lest he make things even worse than he had already.
She backed up another step. Then, with the bravery he had loved in her from the first day they met, she recovered that step, planted her feet wide, crossed her arms over her chest and stood her ground—all five foot zero inches of her—as she said, “I don’t understand.”
He shifted back. Godiva let out a soft sigh, rubbed a hand across her eyes and muttered, “I must be hallucinating.”
“No,” he said. And shifted again, this time deliberately.
A car drove by, headlights stabbing into the darkness. Godiva glanced from the car to him and back. “I have to be hallucinating,” she muttered. “They’re acting like they don’t see you. Unless someone in that car is frantically dialing 911 and reporting a giant . . . thing.”
He shifted back to his human self once more. “They can’t see me. Only you can, right now.”
“What even is that? I mean . . . you. What are you? In that . . . that shape,” she asked, her shoulders tight.
He ached to take her in his arms, but kept himself rigidly under control.
It was for her to make the first move.
“I’m a basilisk,” he said. “As well as human. We call ourselves shifters, as we can shift from one form to the other.”
She stared, her face in the street light blank, her eyes wide.
So he continued. “It—the shift—was new to me, too, that last night you and I saw one another. I’d just come from a fight, where it . . . happened. And I zapped three men into stone. Without even realizing I could do it.”
Another pause. She hadn’t moved. She didn’t even seem to breathe.
So he forced himself to go on. “I ran to you. It was my first instinct. But when you told me—about the child—all I could see in my mind were those smoking stone statues, something I’d done without even trying, and I was so afraid it would happen to you. To our baby. And so I ran.”
He sighed, but it didn’t loosen the stress clamping his shoulders. All the thousands of conversations he’d imagined with her, none had begun with him shifting first. Afraid he’d destroyed any chance he had with her, he went on more quickly, “It was stupid. Cowardly. Wrong, to run off without a word. I know that. I knew that. But I was terrified that I’d inadvertently zap you.”
Silence, during which he counted the thrumming beats of his heart against his ribs. Somewhere in the distance a sea bird cawed.
Then she said, low, almost a whisper, “Can you . . . do it again?”
He shifted.
This time she took a step forward, and her small hand reached up very slowly, very tentatively. He forced himself not to lean into her touch—the first touch in over fifty years—lest she misinterpret it.
She stood on her tiptoes and ran her fingers lightly over the metallic feather-scales running along the top of his wing. “It’s real,” she breathed. “You’re real.”
He shifted back.
Her brow puckered. “Alejo? Has he ever . . . seen that?”
“Yes. He’s a shifter, too. A chimera.”
“What even is that?”
“It’s . . . how about if I let him tell you about himself””
“Fair enough. But, is that why I never heard from him?” she asked, still in that tentative voice, not quite of fear, but definitely uncertain. At least anger was gone.
Only the hurt remained.
It tore at his heart all over again—or would have, except his confusion at her words was stronger. “What do you mean, you never heard from him? But he wrote to you. He writes to you. Always has. Beginning with our first trip. I remember putting the first post card in the mail box myself. He’s never stopped.”
“I got six weeks’ worth of post cards,” she said tightly, her night-black eyes glittering in the light from the street lamp. “I still have them. Then nothing. After I moved out west to look for him, I started writing on his birthday every year. Christmas.”
“He did write. He . . . no, I realize I sound like I’m making excuses. Better for you to talk to him. He’s waiting by the phone, if I know him. Right now. Late as it is on East Coast time. But I promise this, he’s written to you. Addressed to Maria Cordova, which was the name you used when he was small.”
“Maria Cordova was my mother’s name.” Godiva pressed a trembling hand to her forehead. “I put that on the birth certificate for us both, because I made up a fake husband . . . never mind that. I never got any letters after those cards. I used to travel out every chance I could, always at his birthday, until my agent took over for me. She’s checked the box for me the past fifteen years or so, and I’d swe
ar she hasn’t lied to me.”
Rigo shook his head. “I don’t get it. Did you change the box number without leaving a forwarding address?”
“Never. Kept the same one. And I never put in for forwarding, because I moved so often, I was afraid letters would be lost. I figured, only one person had that box number, so it wouldn’t get overstuffed between the times I checked it—and anyway, if there were too many letters, the post office would hold the extras. But there were never any. Ever.”
“By rights that box ought to be stuffed with his letters. And yours.” Rigo sighed. “The important thing right now is, he did write.”
Doubt creased her brow. He knew she didn’t believe him, that she was beginning to doubt everything. So once again he shifted again, and then back.
Her growing doubt vanished to an expression he couldn’t quite read. “Real,” she breathed. Then a little of her heat returned. “Why the hell didn’t you at least tell me about this monster thing, back when we were dating? I can’t promise I would have taken it well, but I sure as shootin’ would rather have had the truth than total silence.”
“Because I didn’t know,” he repeated, then paused. “Shirl. Godiva, you’re shivering. Let’s get you home.”
“No,” she said quickly. Then shook her head. “Right now, I just want to talk. Just the two of us. I can’t deal with anyone else yet.”
“How about we sit in the car? You can have the keys, if it makes you feel safer.”
She shook her head slowly, her white hair gleaming in the starlight. Her fingers trembled as she tucked a loose strand of moon-pale hair behind her ear, then tucked her fingers into her armpits. “Right now I don’t know what to think. But I have to believe that . . . critter. What did you call it, a basilisk? I thought those were strictly mythology?”
“Well, we’re called mythic shifters. There are very few of us in the world. I can tell you as much or as little as you like, but right now you seem to be chilled.”
