by Amelia Jade
“No, I’m good,” she lied. The truth was, she was starving. Just not for what he was offering. She wanted a pint of ice cream, or a large slice of chocolate cake. Junk food. Even chips, though they wouldn’t be her first choice at the moment. Maybe some fresh baked brownies. So many choices.
The nice thing about being in Corbin Bay at least, was that there were quite a few places that would be open and serving all sorts of dessert options. Karri wouldn’t want to live their permanently; five years of various schools had been long enough. But she didn’t object to the variety of food shops that existed within a short walking range of anywhere in the downtown core.
“Ah, too bad,” Jacques said, giving her yet another smile.
I need to find a way to get out of here. Something that Jacques won’t be offended by, but also isn’t an outright suggestion.
The time-old adage of “It’s that time of the month” as it had to be phrased when speaking to men came to mind. She’d used it as an excuse before, but the flip side of that was that Jacques would just hear “I would totally fuck you tonight if I wasn’t on my period.” Which was absolutely not the case. She’d have to find something else, because the idea of having sex with him made her sick.
The lightbulb went off in her head with that last thought. Of course!
“Pardon me,” she said, allowing a panicked look to show on her face. “I’ll be right back.”
She stood up just a little too fast, and departed a little too quickly, one hand half-crossed over her stomach. It was cheap and outright deceiving, but truth be told, she didn’t care at all. The only thing that mattered to her was that it worked. After spending an appropriate amount of time in the bathroom browsing her phone and “fixing” her hair, she returned to the table.
“Is everything okay?” Jacques asked in a concerned voice.
“I don’t think so. I must have eaten something,” she told him, letting her voice grow slower and willing the blood from her face.
“You do look a little pale,” he said.
Joke’s on you bud. I’m always pale. But she didn’t say anything, just nodded.
“Are you okay to drive home?”
“Yeah, I’ll be good,” she said, waving off his unspoken assistance. “But I think I should cut things short.”
Mercifully Jacques didn’t put up a fight, and she departed the restaurant shortly thereafter, barely managing to hold in her sigh of relief as she hugged him gently goodnight and fled to her car.
“Thank God that’s over,” she said to her reflection in the rear-view mirror before sagging back into the black leather seat.
Why couldn’t I have been going to dinner with Andrew instead?
The tall, striking shifter formed in her mind. His meticulously sculpted jaw and facial features tilted downward even as his imaginary lips curved upward in a big grin. The eyes of brilliant azure that matched her own laughed with delight as she reconstructed him in her head while sitting in her car in the parking lot.
Was he laughing at her instead, perhaps? It’s entirely possible. I would be if I were him. With a shake of her head the imaginary Andrew dissolved, leaving her free to concentrate on driving back to her hotel.
Although she may have stop picturing him. The image returned to her later that night as she lay awake in her bed all alone…
Chapter Eleven
Andrew
“Anything yet?”
He shook his head at Gray as he climbed the six extra-wide steps up to the front doors of the Mineshaft Motel-turned-Cadian Embassy. The guard pulled open the left-hand door and the pair disappeared inside. Andrew had just returned from one of his daily patrols. It had gone without incident, like most did. The twenty-four hours surrounding his meeting Karri had been a rather large anomaly. Incidents in Cloud Lake between shifters and humans were exceedingly rare, mainly because of how ruthless he’d been in cracking down on them when first assigned to his post. It hadn’t always been that way, but the more bodies he sent back as mangled wrecks of broken yet still living bones, the fewer problems he began to have.
Nowadays everything was mostly peaceful, and the human residents often enjoyed the newest batch of visitors to their city. That was the way Andrew liked it, and the way he wanted to keep it.
“All right, come here and listen up,” he said without preamble to the four shifters lounging around the lobby. They had just arrived from Cadia and were ready for some fun. It was obvious by their body language that they didn’t want to hear his little pep-speech, but as all of them were first-timers, Andrew was going to ensure that they understood the rules.
“You,” he said, picking out the shifter who barely responded. “Let’s go.” He pointed to an imaginary line in front of him.
“What is this, drill school?” the young shifter complained.
Andrew tested the air, identifying the others. Two bears, a tiger and…oh great.
“Listen, puppy,” he snarled, swiftly closing the distance between him and the wolf shifter. “When you’re in Cloud Lake, you are under my jurisdiction. My rule. You do as I say, when I say, or I send you back to Cadia. I don’t care if you go back in a body bag,” he threatened. “You listen when I speak. You follow the rules I lay down, and you respect those around you. Got it?”
The other three nodded smartly and said that they did. Andrew believed them. The wolf shifter was still acting like he didn’t care.
“Send him home,” he said to Gray, stepping back from the youth.
“What? No! You can’t do that!” he protested.
“I can and I am,” Andrew replied evenly. “Boy, in Cloud Lake I am a god, and you just broke one of my commandments. Get your shit, you’re out of here.”
He turned to Gray. “Make sure he’s given an escort home.”
Andrew saw the warning look in Gray’s eyes, and knew what that meant. Assigning one of the three guards to make sure the pup went back to Cadia would deplete the amount that could guard the embassy, and therefore Andrew. He was flattered by Gray’s devotion to his duty, but the truth was, he didn’t really need a guard. Unless Al managed to send in a dragon—which was so hilariously unlikely it didn’t bear thinking about—then Andrew could handle anything sent his way. Besides, he didn’t want Gray getting in the way. This was a personal thing, something he didn’t wish his friend to have any part in. There was no sense in Gray becoming ostracized just like he had.
“You three,” he said, turning to the other three shifters. “Have fun. I patrol the city on the daily, and we have an excellent relationship with the humans here. They’ll treat you properly, get you nice and drunk, and some of the women may even sleep with you.”
He waited until the three were sharing smiles. “But you harm one hair on their body, break any of their property, or otherwise do something you shouldn’t, and the scolding I gave that mongrel will look like nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.” His eyes grew cold as he looked at each of them in turn. “I have killed shifters before for fucking up here. I’m going to have to do it again. Don’t be the next one. Got it?”
Soberly the three of them indicated they understood.
“Okay, then go have some fun,” he said, making a shooing motion.
Gray motioned to Hector, one of the other guards, and told him to escort the unknown wolf shifter home. Then he came over to his friend as he headed toward his office.
“You certainly have a way with the wolves,” he remarked.
Andrew paused in his walk for a moment. “You know, I’m fairly positive I recall you telling me a story once, about you and some of your friends, against an entire pack?”
Gray shook his head. “Different place, different time. I also didn’t have one of their most powerful clans clamoring for my resignation at best, and death at worst.”
“They’ll never kill me,” he scoffed. “I’d down enough of their wolves in a real fight to make it far too bloody for them to come after me that way.”
“If they send wolves next time,” Gray mutter
ed unhappily.
Andrew ignored the comment and continued on to his office. They were both expecting the next move any time now. There was just no way that Al and his benefactors would sit still after he’d sent all four of his “messengers” home in shambles. But they hadn’t made a move yet, and while he wouldn’t say it was worrying him, the gryphon was getting impatient for them to do something already. He didn’t like waiting around, not knowing when they would try something ham-handed like that again.
“What is that?” Gray asked, pointing to the large device on his desk.
“It’s a timer,” he responded. “Have you never seen anything like it before?”
“No, never. How does it work?”
Andrew gestured for him to more closely inspect the item. The center was glass, looking like two funnels that had been joined together, one right-side up, the other upside down. A wooden frame surrounded it to keep it from breaking if it tipped over. The top portion was full of sand that was slowly trickling into the bottom.
“So when the sand runs out, the time is up,” he explained. “Then you tip it over to start all over again.”
“And how long does this timer count?”
“Twenty-four hours,” he replied.
“And why do you have it?”
Andrew smiled. “Because I’m counting down to something.”
Gray waited, but when it became apparent that no elaboration was forthcoming he just shook his head and shrugged. “Okay, fine. Have it your way.”
“I will, thanks.” There was no need for Gray to know that he had a countdown ongoing until his jogging date with Karri two days hence. He eyed the sand. Make that a day and a half from then. He couldn’t wait.
“So what’s the end-plan for Al?” Gray asked, pulling up a chair and sitting down carefully. Andrew’s chair may be built to hold them, but the chairs for his visitors were still made of cheap plastic. They weren’t exactly given a big budget, but on top of that, he didn’t want people sticking around in his office for very long if he could avoid it. Gray was an exception of course.
“I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment’s hesitation. “I’m pretty limited in what I can do. For now, I have to just react to what he does, and hope he makes a mistake so big even his clan can’t save him.” He frowned at the helplessness he felt.
“You could ask—”
“No,” he replied immediately, cutting Gray off before he could speak. “I will not call in favors like that. Not when I have so few.” He waved off what appeared to be a renewed effort from Gray. “You know what happened during the war. You know why I’m here and what fighting in it did to me. I lost just about everything because of it. I’d do it again, but I’m not going to call anyone. This isn’t their problem. It’s mine.”
Gray sat back, crossing his arms unhappily at his friend’s stubbornness. Andrew knew he was being pigheaded to a degree, but his argument made sense. He had so few friends anymore, he didn’t want to risk any of them falling on hard times by speaking up on his behalf back home.
“The commandant would do it in a heartbeat,” Gray said at last, referring to the head of the Green Bearets.
“I’m sure he would,” Andrew agreed. “But Commandant Garrin has enough on his plate getting settled in to his new position. Just because I helped him and his Green Bearets during the war doesn’t mean he needs to fight my personal battles for me now. That was different.”
Gray gave him a look that suggested it really wasn’t, but Andrew didn’t care. He would settle this himself.
“You can’t let them win though, no matter what it requires of your pride,” Gray said at last. His voice was quiet but sincere. “You have to think of what will happen if you lose.”
“I’m not going to lose,” he scoffed.
“Boss,” Gray said with more vehemence than normal. “Listen to me. If you lose. If. That means Al will take your spot as the envoy here. Think of all the good you’ve accomplished. Then think of what he’ll do in your place. We’ll be turfed from Cloud Lake within months, if not weeks, mark my words.”
The gryphon cursed. His friend was right, of course. Al was a horrible excuse for a shifter, and if he was made the envoy, he would let all his buddies come to Cloud Lake. All the low-life scumbags of Cadia that Andrew had fought so hard to prevent from coming there would pour over the border. They would do untold amounts of damage. The people of Cloud Lake had already experienced that once before, during the war, and Andrew wanted no part in being responsible for them going through that again.
“I promise,” he said softly. “If it gets beyond anything I can control, I will ask for help. You have my word that I won’t put any of the citizens of Cloud Lake in jeopardy because of my pride and mild arrogance.”
Gray coughed at the word “mild,” but he didn’t protest. “Thank you.”
He reached out and patted the desk in Gray’s direction. “No, thank you for reminding that this is about more than just me and my confidence that I can deal with whatever they send my way. I need to remember that the town is on the line here.” His eyes hardened. “I can’t screw up, or else they’re going to pay for my mistakes. That’s unacceptable.”
“Good. You’ve worked hard to build up a good relationship with these people. I’d hate to see that all come crashing down.”
“Me too, Gray, me too.” Then he tapped his desk, this time with a single finger. “Though I wish some of the humans here could see that.”
“Got anyone in mind?”
“Mr. Kirttle has struck again,” he said, using a nearby pen to poke and prod at a stack of papers.
“Another petition to evict us?” Gray complained.
He nodded. “And this one is over twice as long too.”
“How hard is it to say ‘Please get out of our town?’” Gray wondered.
“Umm, apparently it now requires forty-eight pages,” Andrew told him, shoving the stack at his friend.
“Who is this guy?”
“Some blowhard. I’ve encountered him several times at various town-hall events. I’m not sure how much support he actually has for these petitions of his, but they’re seriously starting to wear on me.”
Gray just gave him a sort of hopeless shrug. “Do we have any idea why he hates us so much?”
“None at all. He’s never once elaborated as to what exactly we did that we should therefore be forced to leave. All he does is send in petitions, email me and things like that, demanding that we all pack up and go back to where we came from. The usual rhetoric of anti-shifter platforms,” he said, plucking an unruly hair from the side of his head as he talked. “I try to leave to avoid setting him off, but it doesn’t matter. Just seeing me now is enough for him to absolutely lose it. The human security had to stop him from going for his gun last time.”
Gray whistled. “The guy has some serious anger issues then.”
“Serious.” Andrew reached into a drawer, withdrawing an envelope and a piece of paper. He signed and dated it with a flourish and then stuffed in into the envelope and sealed it. “Drop that off on your way out, would you?”
Gray took it. “What is it?”
“My standard response to Kirttle. He sends these things once a week, so I decided to just write up a response and use the same one over and over again.” Andrew began to chuckle. “He probably thinks that I have a secretary reading these things and that the petitions aren’t even reaching me.”
Gray joined him in a nasty laugh about the xenophobic human.
“You know,” he said aloud as his friend rose and prepared to leave. “If I did do as Al wanted and resigned, I wouldn’t have to deal with this bullshit anymore. That’s a pretty tempting offer.”
The bear shifter just shook his head and left the room. Once he was gone, Andrew picked the stack of papers up and dropped them in the recycling bin without another look. He was done with pompous businessmen and shady shifters. Was Karri back yet?
In front of him, granules of sand continued t
o trickle slowly through the glass timer.
Chapter Twelve
Karri
She was just slipping on her running shoes when her phone buzzed twice with a pause between them.
Email.
Wondering who was emailing her at this time of day, she grabbed it and thumbed open the app to read it without noticing the sender.
Karri,
Just had a phone call with Jacques. You were supposed to go to Corbin Bay to secure further business from his company. Not only did we not get that, but he mentioned that you left your dinner early claiming sickness. Next time, perhaps you’ll consider letting him take care of you. I know you’re strong-willed, but if you open to him a bit more, don’t make him work so hard, then maybe we’ll benefit from it.
Also, budget meeting in the morning.
The email wasn’t signed. It never was. Her father was too self-important for that. It was just expected that everyone would know who he was. It wasn’t the lack of manners that infuriated her this time. Before she was halfway through the email her blood had begun to boil. By the last sentence, it took all the self-restraint she had not to hurl the phone across the room so that it would shatter on the wall. The only thing that prevented the device’s destruction was the bitter knowledge that she’d have to pay to replace it.
“I’m not going to spread my legs just so you can pad your bottom line a bit more, Father,” she spat at the phone.
Karri couldn’t believe his gall in suggesting that she play the helpless woman just to secure some more money from Jacques’s company. That was so…so…she didn’t even have a word for it as her anger drowned out all normal thought processes. She was so much more than a fucking vagina. Did he not understand that saying such things was no longer acceptable?
Probably not. He’s stuck in the 60s, though I’m not sure this idea would have flown then either. Face it, you also knew he would get this way once you said you and Jacques had “connected.” He’s not telling you to go sleep with some random; he thinks you’re already sleeping with him, and he’s just encouraging you to use that to your—and therefore his—advantage.
