Familiar Stranger

by Michele Hauf

  “You get right to the point.”

  “And you prefer to dodge around it. Unless you jump right in with a kiss.” Jack!

  Ignoring his conscience was getting easier and easier. He leaned into her. Lemons curled inside his senses. “Is that your plan? More snogging? Because I’ll have you know, I’m game.”

  The grin that tickled her lips cued him the bird was feeling frisky again. Oh, he could go there. In fact—

  “Jack, I’m a familiar.”

  “What?” Shooting upright, he reacted by slapping his hip and stepping back.

  Mersey stomped her foot. “Please tell me you did not just reach for your weapon.”

  “Huh?” Caught, red-handed. “No. I…no! I don’t have a weapon.” But he had reached for something to protect himself. It was how he’d been trained.

  “But you feel like you need one?”

  “No. I just…” Hell. He couldn’t have heard her right. Feeling the blood drain from his face, Jack swiped a palm over his jaw. “For real? You’re a…?”

  Mersey nodded. “I wanted you to know. I’m big on the truth.”

  “Ah, well, right then.” Bloody hell in a handbasket. This bird was a…? He couldn’t even think it!

  “I didn’t mean to shock you.”

  “You didn’t.” He gestured dismissively, and turned from her, pacing to the end of the capsule. Like hell she did.

  Just get him out of here and—no, he would not react defensively. There was no danger here. The woman was—not human? No, she was human, and gorgeous, and smelled the way a woman should smell, and kissed like a—He’d kissed her. He’d kissed a…?

  Why couldn’t he bring himself to even think the word? Drawing a palm over his jaw again, he brushed his fingers up over his scalp and performed a covert peek under his arm and toward her. She smiled sweetly and waved at him.

  “For real?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Now that we’ve got my identity out of the way…” He fought not to let her see him cringe as she spoke to him. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Jack?”

  “Me?” Unsure what to do with his hands—because forming them into fists wouldn’t help matters—Jack stuffed them under his arms and leaned forward against the row of plastic chairs queued down the middle of the capsule to face Mersey. “Like what?”

  “I think you’re a familiar.”

  His jaw didn’t drop open because instead he bit his tongue, which was still sore from the previous night and the fight with the demon in his flat.

  “But, for some reason—” oblivious to his shock, Mersey paced the length of the plastic chairs “—I don’t think you’re aware of it.”

  Jack turned and gripped the steel railing that curved the oval circumference of the capsule. The Houses of Parliament sat directly below him, but he didn’t give them a bother.

  A familiar? Previous assessment of Mersey Bane: completely off base. This bird didn’t tally. And now she was accusing him of being the same? And he was now stuck with her for—Jack checked his watch—twentyone more interminable minutes.

  “Do you do this on all your dates?” he asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Come out of the closet with a bombshell like that, and then accuse the guy you’re with of being a paranormal creature?”

  “Out of the—Jack, there’s nothing wrong with being a para.”

  “I think you’re playing for the wrong side, little girl. There’s plenty wrong with being a monster.”

  “We are not monsters.”

  He ignored her insistence because he knew better. If anyone knew a monster when he saw it, it was Jack Harris. And yet, he winced. She didn’t look like a monster. More so, he didn’t want her to be one. He couldn’t let her know he was having a hard time with this.

  “I’m fine with you being a…”

  “Familiar, Jack. It won’t kill you to say it.”

  “Right. You’re a…familiar. But I’m human. Got that? One hundred percent mortal, through and through.” He lifted his shirt and smacked his hard abs. “Want to touch and see for yourself?”

  Eyeing his exposed abs, she sucked in the corner of her lip. Vacillating? And what was he doing? Jack tugged down his shirt. The woman confused his sense of mission with seduction. It wasn’t right.

  “Paras are not monsters,” she said tightly.

  “Some are. You were there last night when I blasted that demon to bits.”

  She shoved both hands to her hips. The sudden fire in her eyes threatened to bring Jack around to his struggle between business and pleasure.

  “You saw that thing. Mersey—”

  “Miss Bane to you, Mr. Harris.”

  “Back to business, eh? Right then. At least one of us is thinking straight.” He leaned backward and gripped the railing behind him. “If I hadn’t blasted that thing it would have got out to maim or kill, or both!”

  “You don’t know that. You didn’t even take the time to identify it. You blasted. Blimey.” She shrugged a hand through her hair, and then punctuated her next statement with a fist. “You idiot hunters think you’re protecting the world from imagined dark evils—”

  “The evils are hardly imagined.”

  “In most cases they are! You could be destroying an intelligent, emotive being that is here for a purpose beyond destruction.”

  “Demons are intelligent, I will grant you that. At least, some of them are. But emotive? Not here to destroy? I haven’t met one yet that didn’t want to rip off my head and then chew it for a snack.”

  Jack tapped his watch. Fifteen minutes and counting. Why did she have to be familiar? “Is that how you know so much? Because you’re a…”

  “Familiar,” she said roughly. “And yes, I do know my demons.”

  “And I know mine.”

  “I’ve been involved with them since I was a kid.”

  Jack stood tall. “Me, too.”

  A dark brow lifted above one of her eyes. Mersey tapped those beringed fingers against her opposite arm. Releasing an impatient sigh, she paced to the opposite end of the capsule.

  “So you’re the one,” he said, figuring it out, and kicking himself for what he might now have to do in order to stop the influx of demons.

  “The one?”

  “The familiar who allowed the demons through to the warehouse.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  “Well, I didn’t.” The defensive tasted so wrong in his mouth—but it was true.

  “How do you know?”

  “I—I know!”

  He stomped away from her. Because to argue only put him to odds. Him, a familiar? The notion was ludicrous. He would certainly know if he’d been tapped by a demon.

  Jack gripped the steel railing. One hand he placed over his left pec. The scar beneath his shirt tingled.

  Not tapped. No.

  He didn’t feel different.

  Just as he should not be treating her differently. She wasn’t a monster. He knew.

  Jack shoved away from the railing and walked up behind Mersey, stopping but inches from the gorgeous scent of her. If he dipped his head forward and buried his nose in the luscious dark strands—

  Jack cleared his throat and admonished his straying thoughts. She was an OE. Something to be…stalked.

  “You don’t know me, Mers—er, Miss Bane. We shared, what, ten minutes together? Granted, half that time was some fierce and unforgettable snogging.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  She kept her arms firmly crossed. “It was tolerable.”

  “Tolerable?”

  Jack lifted a hand, prepared to grip her by the shoulder, turn her around and pull her in for a tolerably suitable kiss, when he reneged. He’d kissed an otherworldly being. What had he done?

  “It was a mischief demon I captured in the crystal last night, Jack. Nonviolent. It had slipped through a passage in the warehouse, left open by a familiar who—for reasons
unknown to me—decided to leave the passage wide open. I took it to base and we interrogated it. Standard procedure.”

  “Who is we? And where is base?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Of course not.” He snapped his head to the left, cracking out the tense muscle that tugged along his neck. Too much information to process right now. And none of it particularly comforting.

  “What is important,” she continued, “is that the demon gave up the name of its familiar.”

  He could see where she was going with this, and didn’t like it. “Demons do not know my name, little girl.”

  “Yeah?” She turned and had to lean back against the curved wall to avoid contact because he still stood close. “It spoke your name rather clearly during interrogation. Twice.”

  “And what sort of interrogation tactics does your we employ? Torture? Duress? Insinuation? You probably mentioned my name—”

  “Who are you, Jack Harris? And why would a demon give your name as its entrance to this realm?”

  Fingers fisting at his side, Jack spoke through a tight jaw. “I never saw that thing before in my life. Hell, I barely saw it before you sucked it into your little stone. You fed the information to it. You had to. Demons are very suggestible.”

  “I wasn’t doing the interrogating. And Interrogations had no clue to your name. I know you’re upset, but—”

  “Upset?”

  He moved in on her, placing his hands to the sides of hers on the railing. Why did she have to smell so appetizing when all he wanted to do was push away and be done with her? It was as if he could already imagine them together, naked, their bodies rubbing against one another. Would she come softly or match his raging release?

  Ah! Here he was again, thinking about shagging the woman when he should be getting her to lead him to her secret hideaway. Jack followed her darting eyes for a moment, and then shoved away from the railing. To look out now, he realized they’d reached the pinnacle of the iron wheel. The world was vast and open all about him. The moonless sky was black—likely blocked by the thick gray clouds—

  and below, the stars had fallen onto the glittering city. He felt disembodied from the world. Disemworlded?

  Steadying himself with his fingertips to the Plexiglas, he closed his eyes. His breaths came faster.

  It’s that she’s just announced she’s the enemy.

  Was he still attracted to her? Yes, sod the cat, he was. The cat? Jack dodged a look over his shoulder. “Was that you last night on the tube?”

  She gave a coy shift of stance and offered a “Meow.”

  Bloody hell. How to take this information? He had a mission. Track the subject and locate her base. Didn’t matter what she was. Right? Stroking a palm over his face, Jack turned his back to the midnight blackness. The soft interior lighting was suddenly too bright and cheery for his failing sanity.

  “I’ve seen an innocent murdered by a bloody demon. Until you’ve seen it, you’ll never understand my point of view.”

  “Don’t try to guess at the things I’ve experienced in my lifetime, Jack. I’m sure I’ve got you beat, hands down.”

  “Is that so?”

  He approached her again. She wouldn’t meet his eyes. Declaring her toughness and then shunning the challenge of his gaze? He’d been right about her. Mersey Bane, familiar—sodding hell—was a little girl lost in the big bad, playing at some comic-book adventure of saving the world. It was a world deserving of rescue. In his heart he could never stand back and allow the travesties he knew to occur without attempting to stop them. But any of Mersey’s attempts would surely be in vain.

  “So…all paras are offensive to you?” she wondered.

  “If para means a nasty paranormal creature from the dark realm, then you bet.”

  “So I offend you?”

  “I—” Yes, she did. And no, she did not. “Are you from the dark realm?”

  “Born and raised right here on mortal turf. Though for all purposes, I’m not considered human.”

  Jack didn’t trust himself to be able to explain it in terms that would not put her off. He had to maintain her trust so he could track her. And to be truthful with himself, he just didn’t know how he felt about her. But he did hope for one thing. “You’re not a monster.”

  They were heading down now, bless the bloody cross. He needed to be away from this uncomfortable conversation. To be doing something productive. Like stalking the real enemy.

  “Monsters are the things that live under your bed,” he added. “The nighttime creepies, the shadows that haunt the hallways.”

  “The dark shadows of a person’s soul.”

  She had him there. “Sort of. But tangible.”

  “So you consider a faery a monster?”

  “You bet.”

  “Yet, familiars are not?”

  “I…suppose not.”

  So much disapproval in her uttered sound. Could a man get a chance to at least think, to roll this information about for a tick?

  “Why do you hunt demons?” he asked. “Aren’t familiars supposed to be like their guides to this realm?”

  “If I allow it, which I rarely do. And I don’t hunt them in the sense that I would then destroy them. I capture them.”

  “What do you do after you’ve released them from the crystal?”

  “They’re not always released. Only the dangerous demons are kept in permanent storage. The nonviolent ones, we deport back to the dark realm. We’ve a list of the most dangerous.”

  “So you keep a hit list?” Her organization actually drew up a list of the good and the bad ones? Not that Jack believed there were good ones…

  Because P-Cell also kept a list, and it was a mile long. “Easy to trap and release, is it?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Your…partner do the releasing for you?”

  Now a blushing smile lit her face, but she recovered quickly. “You’re not going to get anything from me, Jack, so don’t even try. I’m sorry to have sounded as if I’m accusing you. I want to help. If you need it.”

  “Sure.” He rubbed a palm over his face. “Accusation forgotten. Help unneeded.”

  “I believe in you, Jack.”

  That statement struck him so utterly out from left field that Jack just stood there. What to say to that? Belladonna had said the same thing. Neither knew his dark thoughts. A mere glimpse of the terrors his stint in the army had soldiered, and now in P-Cell, would horrify them both. Shoulders dropping, Jack allowed his gaze to wander away from Mersey’s and down to the floor. He didn’t know what to say. An angry rebuttal didn’t feel right.

  “There’s nothing to believe in,” he muttered.

  Turning, he walked to the other side of the capsule and smashed a fist against the curve of the clear wall. The hit sent subtle vibrations through the capsule.

  The air inside the capsule had changed, becoming thin and clear, and that made Jack feel as though she could feel his every thought, see that soft core of him, and know his need for release. To confess. To shuck off the guilt and stomp it into the ground, once and for all. Could he ever do that? Open himself to a woman he barely knew, and…

  ask her to understand?

  She confessed to you.

  And how to accept that confession? Didn’t he have enough to deal with without knowing he might be attracted to a…

  “Sorry, if my confession freaked you,” Mersey offered. “Now you know my truth—oh! Dash, another ring broke.”

  Jack bent near her feet to pick up the pieces and felt a shocking tingle as he touched the black curves of hematite. Weird.

  “You can get replacements.” He offered her the bits, but her attention remained fixed on her bare finger. A quick count noticed there were six others on her fingers.

  “No, I can’t. You wouldn’t understand. Sorry.” Shaking her head and not meeting his eyes, she looked like a little girl lost. Because of a broken ring? “I’m probably wrong about you, Jack.” The door opened a
nd Mersey walked out onto the ramp.

  And Jack felt a piece of himself walk out with her. What the hell was his problem? He couldn’t let her leave like this. And what about his plans to follow her?

  He shoved the broken pieces of the ring into his pocket.

  “Back to work, Jack.”

  Chapter 9

  J ack revved the Range Rover and pulled away from the curb, deciding to go straight, following the Thames, instead of turning toward home. In less than five minutes he sighted her. Pulling over to the pavement, he leaned across to open the passenger door.

  Jack said, “Get in.”

  Mersey bent and inspected the interior, tapping the door with a slender finger. What was so difficult? Did she still consider him a stranger? After all they’d just been through on the Eye?

  Or was it that she considered him scary?

  So he’d shown her his angry side. It was who he was. Angry and pissed and not going to take it anymore.

  And confused. What to think of this bird, who was also a…cat?

  “You’re safe, Bane. You can trust me.”

  “I know I can.” Something in that smirk made Jack wince. I believe in you.

  Poor woman, she didn’t know him well enough.

  She slid onto the passenger seat, and the car peeled away.

  “Where you headed? Bus station?”

  “Underground,” she offered.

  “Right, the subway. I know that.”

  “I know you know that.” She flashed him a crooked grin.

  “I can give you a ride home,” he offered. “You carrying?”

  “Carrying?”

  “You know, crystals. In your pockets. Filled with the big bads.”

  She slanted a look his way. “Worried?”

  “Never. You ever accidentally release one of those things? I mean, how do they stay inside the thing?”

  “The crystal containment method is foolproof. It’s locked with a spell. Nothing inside will ever get out, until someone lets it out.”

  “And you do that because…?”

  “Interrogation.”

  “Right.”

  Jack downshifted and the car squealed as it turned a one-eighty, and the Range Rover fitted itself into a parking space before the subway entrance.