by Chant, Zoe
The gorgeous veteran gave a regretful glance at her dress, but didn’t dislodge the kitten. Instead, she petted it and said fondly, “Poor baby. You must’ve been hungry. I should’ve fed you first thing.”
“Um.” Merlin was rarely at a loss for words, but he wasn’t sure whether he should introduce himself or apologize or ask how she’d gotten the kitten or why she was in the office—
Everything, tell her everything, suggested his raptor. Quick, before she gets away!
What actually came out of his mouth was, “I love your kitten. What’s her name?”
“Cloud.” The beautiful woman eyed him suspiciously. “You don’t seem surprised that I have a kitten with wings.”
Now he felt on firmer footing. “I’m not. I’ve seen them before.”
“At a lab?”
He nodded. “But not an ordinary lab.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” she said dryly. “Considering that it genetically engineers flying kittens.”
“They’re not genetically engineered,” Merlin said. “They’re born that way—I mean, born naturally. They’re magical animals. Like pegasi.”
“Like what?”
“It’s the plural of pegasus. Technically pegasuses is also correct, like octopuses, but it’s hard to say and it sounds wrong, so people say octopi. And pegasi. Anyway, your kitten is like a pegasus. Only a cat instead of a horse.”
“Uh-huh.” Her lovely eyes narrowed with doubt. “If they’re magical, why were they in a lab?”
“I’m not exactly sure,” Merlin admitted. “I mean, they must’ve been captured and taken to it, but as for why the wizard-scientists wanted them—”
“The who?”
“The wizard-scientists. They’re a secret organization of wizards who are also scientists. They claim to date back to the days of King Arthur—” Merlin broke off when he saw her eyebrows rise high enough to nearly hit the ceiling. “Look, you’re the one with a winged kitten on your shoulder.”
“Fair enough,” she said, a little grudgingly.
Since that was the friendliest she’d been so far, he seized the opportunity to introduce himself. “Also, hi. I’m Merlin Merrick.”
He offered his hand. She didn’t take it, instead staring down at it with her eyebrows still raised. She had the most marvelously expressive eyebrows. Right now, they were very clearly conveying I cannot believe you actually thought I’d be willing to shake your hand.
For an instant, Merlin was hurt. Then he followed her gaze and saw that his hand, no doubt like the rest of him, was covered in sticky pink ooze that smelled strongly of artificial watermelon.
He yanked back his hand. “Okay, we’ll skip the handshake. Hi. I’m Merlin Merrick.”
As if against her will, a chuckle escaped her lips. Her dubious expression briefly changed to an even more enchanting one of amusement. “I’m Dalisay Batiste. You can call me Dali.”
She pronounced it “dally,” not “dolly.” As in “to dally among the primroses,” or “to dally at the fair.” She had been so serious before, it made him want to coax her to dally more. Or, to use the other meaning of the word, to dally with him.
“I love your name,” he said. “It has such a great meaning.”
And there went her eyebrows again. She was going to grow eyebrow muscles if she kept this up, she was giving them such a workout. “Uh-huh. Right. What’s Dalisay mean, then?”
“Pure.”
Surprised, she said, “How do you know that? Were you stationed in the Philippines?”
“No, I just had some Filipino friends growing up. I meant your nickname, though. In English.”
“To dilly-dally? What’s so great about wasting time?”
“To dally, no dillying involved,” he said. “To linger. To take your time, not waste it. To relax and enjoy yourself. To play.”
“To...” she began, then stopped. But he knew what she’d been about to say: there was only one meaning left.
To have a love affair.
Their eyes met. Her gaze was intent, not awkward or embarrassed. Her eyebrows were challenging: show me what you’ve got. The air between them felt hot and charged, like a tropical night before a lightning storm.
Oh, he thought. It’s not just me.
She looked him up and down, cool as a glass of lemonade on a summer day. He stood up straight and let her look. So he was dripping with watermelon slime; so what? The chemistry he’d felt with her apparently went both ways.
No. It definitely went both ways. Merlin could feel it, crackling between them like purple lightning in a fortuneteller’s plasma ball.
Kiss her, urged his raptor. Now, now, now!
For a dizzying moment, Merlin thought it might happen. They had drawn close together, and her head was tilted up with those sensual lips of hers slightly parted. All he had to do was ask. All she had to do was say yes.
And then he remembered his power. Not his ability to turn into a raptor, which was awesome, or his raptor’s ability to change size, which was great once he managed to get the size he wanted. His other power. The one he might be using now without even realizing it.
What had Dali expected when she walked into the office? If she was a prospective client, she’d come looking for help; had she expected a bodyguard straight out of central casting, a perfectly strong, perfectly brave, perfectly handsome hero? If she had, and if his power was affecting her, then she wasn’t seeing him at all.
He couldn’t let anything happen between them until he could be sure that she saw him as he was and wanted him anyway.
Merlin stepped back. It felt like a physically painful wrench, as if he’d been glued to the spot and torn himself loose. And what stung more than that was the brief flicker of hurt in Dali’s eyes before she put on a don’t-care expression.
No no no no no, yelped his raptor. What are you doing?! You’re rejecting her! You’re hurting her feelings! Apologize and give her a sofa!
A... what? Sometimes Merlin had no idea what his raptor was going on about.
A sofa. Exasperation at Merlin’s slowness tinged his raptor’s voice as he explained, Remember how mad the barista was that her ex stole hers? Women love sofas!
Merlin had no time to explain that logical error to his raptor. Instead, though it made him feel like a sofa had fallen fifty feet and landed right on his heart, he put on his best professional, utterly non-flirtatious smile. “I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my manners. Welcome to Defenders, the east coast branch of Protection, Inc. How can I help you?”
CHAPTER 3
Dali was not often baffled, but Merlin baffled her. She could have sworn he was attracted to her. For a wild moment she’d thought he was gearing up to ask her out. And for an even wilder moment, she’d thrown caution to the winds and decided to say yes.
And then he’d backed off, dropped the flirting, and acted like it had never happened. What was with him?
I must have imagined it, she decided. I’m lonely and he’s hot, and that’s all there is to it.
It took an impressive amount of hotness to overcome the fact that he’d apparently tripped and spilled an entire strawberry milkshake all over himself. And was wearing a T-shirt showing a caveman riding a dinosaur with the caption MY OTHER CAR IS A VELOCIRAPTOR. Not to mention the red mark on his cheek, which looked exactly like someone had slapped him. Maybe he’d tripped, spilled the milkshake, then fallen into a wall. Cheek first.
Which was also odd, because he moved with an astonishing grace. If he wasn’t trained in some traditional martial art like kung fu or aikido, she’d eat her hat. He looked very strong, but he was also light on his feet. In fact, light was the word for him all round: the shining gold of his tousled hair, the bright clear blue of his eyes, and his dazzling, warming smile.
Dali forced herself to stop thinking thirsty thoughts. He’d drawn a very clear line in the sand, and it said, Don’t even think about it. He probably had a girlfriend already. An employed girlfriend with two hands and no scars, physical
or mental.
“Right. I did come here for help.” But she couldn’t help asking one more question. “What’s with the traps?”
“Remember that lab I mentioned, where I saw the flying kittens? We found a bunch of magical animals held captive there, and we opened their cages. And then we got attacked and they disappeared. But after we got back home, some of them appeared and kind of adopted some of my friends. But none of them picked me. I wanted a magical pet, so I figured if I set some traps, maybe I’d catch one.”
A moment passed after Merlin had finished talking, leaving Dali feeling slightly dazed. It made sense, sort of, on its own bizarre terms. And yet...
On the positive side, she felt a lot more confident now that he would not find her story too weird to believe. All the same, she had no intention of telling him exactly why she’d gone strolling in the park with the necklace. Grandma knew why she’d left the Navy, but as far as Dali was concerned, everyone else could assume it was due to her disability. Which was, she reminded herself, more-or-less the truth.
Instead, she explained that she lived in Tirzah and Pete’s apartment building and that was how she’d heard of Defenders, then plunged straight into the necklace-snatching, the police who didn’t believe her, the unexpected appearance of Cloud, and the dart attack.
She watched Merlin carefully for signs of disbelief, but he showed none. He looked intrigued by the pigeons, angry over the police, delighted by Cloud, and both concerned and admiring at her escape from the alley.
“That sounds like the wizard-scientists, all right,” Merlin said. “That’s how I ended up in the lab. I was on patrol with Pete and Ransom and some sniper we never even saw knocked us all out with tranquilizer darts. Good for you for getting away! You must have incredible reflexes.”
She couldn’t help being pleased at his praise, but said, “It was only because I was expecting an attack. Whoever shot at me—or Cloud—probably thought they’d be taking us completely by surprise. I don’t think I could dodge a dart again.”
“You won’t have to,” Merlin said immediately. “I’ll protect you. Cloud too, of course. Don’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to either of you.”
His blue eyes were deep as the sky, and as steady. For all his sometimes-flighty manner, she believed that he not only could protect her and Cloud, but that she could absolutely trust him to do so. The relief of that realization was so intense, it nearly brought her to tears.
She blinked hard, forcing them back. “And the necklace?”
“Were the birds definitely pigeons?” Merlin asked. “Or could they have been some other birds that had their feathers dyed?”
What a weird question, Dali thought, but answered it. “They were pigeons. It wasn’t just the color of their feathers. They were shaped like pigeons and bobbed their heads like pigeons.”
“Excellent. Don’t worry about your grandma. I’ll have her necklace back before the end of the week.” But though his voice sounded confident, he didn’t meet her eyes.
“You know who stole it?”
“No, but I’ve come across this method of theft before. I know what doors to bang on. So to speak.”
He was hiding something. Dali didn’t know what, but she could feel it.
“What aren’t you telling me?” she asked.
He blinked innocently at her. “What makes you think there’s something I’m not telling you?”
The anger that had been simmering inside her for the last year, through five lost jobs, one harassing boss, and a bunch of jeering cops, abruptly overflowed. “Don’t give me that bullshit. If you don’t want to tell me, just say so. Don’t turn it back on me.”
A dead silence fell while they stared at each other, neither giving an inch. Dali waited for him to deny it and tell her she was crazy. She was suddenly glad he hadn’t been flirting with her after all. The last thing she needed was to get romantically entangled with a man who’d never admit he was in the wrong, and then blame any consequences on her.
“You’re right,” Merlin admitted. He didn’t sound angry or resentful, just honest. “Sorry. What I wasn’t telling you was that I don’t think your necklace was stolen by a person with trained pigeons. I think it was stolen by the pigeons themselves. That is, by pigeon shifters—people who can turn into pigeons.”
“People who can turn into pigeons,” Dali repeated disbelievingly.
Merlin pointed at Cloud. “Flying cat.”
“You can’t use that as the answer for everything,” she protested.
“You have to admit though, it’s a very good answer. ‘There is more on Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.’ And there’s the proof.” He again indicated at Cloud, who had finished her bacon and was now chewing Dali’s hair.
She hated to admit it, but it was indeed a convincing argument. “And you know these pigeon shifter thieves?”
“No, but I know some bird shifters who use the same trick. If they didn’t steal it themselves, they can probably tell me who did. By the way, why were you all dressed up to go to the park? Were you on your way to somewhere else?”
Dali had been hoping to avoid that why. But as she looked into the clear blue of his eyes, she realized that she didn’t mind if he knew. “I just got fired. My grandma said that instead of immediately looking for a new job, I should relax, dress up, and smell the roses. Literally.”
“Why’d you get fired?”
“Same reason I always get fired,” she admitted. “I tried to make some improvements at my workplace, and it turned out that everyone else liked things exactly the way they were. I was a yeoman in the Navy—that’s an administrator—”
“I know what yeomen do,” Merlin assured her. “I was a Marine. They take a million moving parts and busy people and different jobs, plus a billion pieces of paper, and they turn it into a machine that runs so smoothly that no one even notices until you get an incompetent yeoman, and then everything comes to a screeching halt.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what it was like.” The warmth of remembered pride filled her. Even in the Navy, lots of people didn’t appreciate yeomen. Like he said, the better they were at their jobs, the less you noticed them. But Merlin had noticed.
“You wanted your civilian jobs to be like that, right?” he asked. “I take it you got a bunch of incompetent idiots who didn’t like hearing that things could be done better?”
“Yes. Well, that and I caught one boss harassing a temp worker. She was young and too scared to stand up for herself, so I had to do something.”
“Oh?” Merlin’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Tell me he’ll never do that again.”
“Hopefully not. I reported him everywhere I could think of.”
He studied her with those bright, knowing eyes of his. “I bet that’s not all you did.”
“I dropped his new laptop on his foot,” she admitted. “Broke them both. I was lucky he didn’t press charges.”
“I expect he didn’t want to end up in court and have you explain why you did it. Good for you. Just imagine what it would have been like for that poor temp worker if you hadn’t been there!”
Dali had only told that story once before, to Grandma. She’d said Dali had her heart in the right place but needed to keep a better grip on her temper, then lectured her all the way through dessert on how terrible it would be if she’d ended up in jail. Dali had recognized several of the scenarios from Orange is the New Black and pointed out that the show was fiction, only to have Grandma counter that the reality was probably even worse.
But Merlin hadn’t lectured her or scolded her, or even said that she should leave justice to the professionals. Instead, he’d sympathized with the young temp, and had understood why Dali had to step in. More than understood: he’d approved.
It had been so long since she’d worked with men who respected her, or with anyone who saw the world the way she did. It made her wish she could work with him instead of just handing him a task and then returning to h
er own job search.
She couldn’t say that, but she did want to let him know some of what she’d been thinking. Dali believed in encouraging people who did the right thing. But though she’d intended to say something complimentary but impersonal, what actually came out of her mouth was, “I knew guys like you in the Navy.”
She shut her mouth fast, before she could say anything even more revealing. But his gaze wasn’t pitying, but sympathetic. “It was a home to you, wasn’t it?”
Dali nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“I had something like that too,” Merlin said.
She swallowed, forcing back any telltale tremble in her voice. “The Marines?”
“The circus.”
The military was full of acronyms and nicknames. The 101st Airborne was the Screaming Eagles, sailors were called squids, and the USS Kalamazoo was nicknamed the Zoo. But Dali couldn’t bring to mind any ship or unit or place that was nicknamed “the circus.” Then she remembered a unit whose name sounded sort of like “circus.”
“Is that what they call the Marine headquarters and service company?” she asked. When he looked blank, she said, “Headquarters and circus?”
Merlin let out a laugh so sudden that Cloud hissed in protest. “No, no. I meant an actual, literal circus. I was raised in one, you see.”
“Really?” Dali asked, fascinated. “What was that like?”
He tilted his head, examining her like she was some strange but appealing creature, like a kitten with dragonfly wings. “Did you know you’re the first person who’s ever asked me that question?”
“I’d think people would ask you all the time,” Dali replied, a little defensively. It was so unusual, of course she’d been curious.
“Mostly they think I’m making it all up.”
“Why would they think that?”
“Well...” Merlin’s voice trailed off.
