by Nara Malone
He turned away from the park and headed for Franny’s Diner. The one predictable thing about Allie was her schedule, an unvarying list of arrivals and departures at half a dozen destinations located within a few blocks of each other. It was as if she moved within the walls of an invisible cage.
An hour before noon and the diner was packed. Only two empty tables remained and those were near the back of the café. Marcus grabbed the one closest to the window, glad he’d come early. It gave him time to gather himself, use the chatter, both mental and verbal, of those around him as white noise to drown thoughts of Allie.
Franny looked his way, held up the coffee pot and he nodded. A moment later, she breezed by with a tray full of sandwiches and fries, pausing briefly to set a clean, white mug in front of him and fill it. A corkscrew lock of red hair, threaded with silver, had fallen from her ponytail and dangled just at the shoulder where her white shirt collar wilted against the edge of a black vest. A green order pad, rumpled and coffee-stained, dangled at the edge of her apron pocket.
“I’m waiting for a friend so there’s no rush on looking after me,” Marcus said. “She’ll be awhile yet. Take care of your other customers.”
“Okay, sugar. I’ll warm your coffee when I’m passing by. I swear, I’m going to have to buy me a robot to serve folks if I don’t find some help soon.”
“I know someone looking for a job, but she has zero experience.”
“Honey, I’ll take what I can get. You send her by and she’ll be experienced by the end of a day.” Someone called and Franny went.
The last empty table went to a group from the research lab, Hella’s former prison. Marcus had never met any of the men, but he recognized the company name, X.T.Gen R.U.S. Inc. on the photo IDs clipped to their suit jackets.
He turned toward the window, not that anyone could recognize him. He’d taken care to hide his human face. Jake had hacked in and erased the tapes as soon as Marcus had gathered the strength to contact him, so there was no incriminating evidence against human or leopard. From what Jake gleaned in internal memos and email, researchers assumed a caregiver had left the cage door unlatched and the cat had wandered out, eventually finding her way out of the building—cats being clever at getting out of tight spots, especially when their brains had been augmented with neurons from a human brain.
Allie came in at half past the hour. Marcus glanced at the clock and then back again, startled by her uncharacteristic change in routine. Had she thought to avoid him by arriving early?
He watched her looking around. When she made eye contact with someone she’d fix them with a half-smile, a sort of silent, you-react-first-and-then-I-will-acknowledge-you stance. She sent him the same half-smile and when he didn’t react, her eyes went to the next table.
Was she serious? She still didn’t know him? After everything they’d done? One of the researchers called to her. “Why so early today, Allie?”
He could see her agitation in the stiffening of her shoulders, see the faintest tightening at the corners of her mouth as her gaze slid to the man at the other table. Agitation gave way to a smile with all the warmth of a fluorescent bulb.
“I like to mix things up every now and then,” she said with a laugh.
Was the laugh a little hollow or did his personal annoyance insert emotional highlights that weren’t there? No one else acted as if they noticed the edge behind the smile. If he could just touch her, he could glean some clues to her true emotions.
“It’s full up in here today,” the lab guy said. “We’ll make room for you here with us.” There were six of them around the little table, but they were already shifting to open space. One turned to grab a chair from Marcus’ table.
Marcus’ stomach tightened around a cold awareness that there was a familiarity, possibly a friendship with this group. Had he missed something? Had she given Hella back to them? He stood.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but I believe the lady is here to meet me.”
It was a risk. She’d been firm on the phone about not wanting anything more to do with him. She could make a scene now and gather the men around her as a defense against any advances from him. Instinct cautioned that he didn’t want to give the researchers any reason to pay him notice. His need to keep Allie away from them was stronger.
Marcus pulled out a chair and Allie leapt for it like a drowning woman for a life preserver. The smile Marcus flashed at the men was genuine. He suspected she saw fending off one man a better option than fending off the attention of six. Still, it felt good to best the other guys in a small way. The guy who’d been most aggressively pursuing her, Bert—according to the name tag—didn’t smile back.
“You look different all dressed up and dried out,” she said as Marcus settled in the chair across her. “I didn’t recognize you.”
Humans had uncanny recognition skills considering their pathetic abilities in the scent and sound department. Again, he wondered if Allie had refined her ability to block unpleasant memories so well that her subconscious filtered out people in the present that she thought of as unpleasant company.
He’d just have to work harder at earning pleasant company status.
Franny interrupted them. She set a glass of iced tea in front of Allie. “You’re here early, baby. You have troubles at work?”
“No, it’s all good,” Allie said.
Marcus casually let his knee connect with Allie’s under the table. Tension rippled through her. Something was definitely wrong. Point of fact, she appeared oblivious of his knee.
A look passed between the women. If he didn’t know better Marcus would swear there was such a thing as human telepathy. If they’d just swap a thought or two he could eavesdrop. Normally he could dip into Franny’s mind, but it had gone silent with the look.
“I’ll call you later,” Allie said. Franny got back to business.
“I already put an order back for your usual, baby.” She turned to Marcus.
“I’ll have the same thing.” Both women frowned at him.
Franny put a hand on her hip. “You want a veggie burger?”
He tried to play it off as if he didn’t know what Allie’s usual was. He pursed his lips a moment, and then sent Franny a halfhearted smile. “Sure. Why not?”
Pantherians didn’t eat meat—aside from the fact their digestive systems didn’t tolerate it, it was too close to cannibalism. Still, carnivorous humans were suspicious of their vegetarian counterparts, especially vegetarian males. Marcus did his best not to draw attention to his nonconformist eating habits.
Franny looked from him to Allie and back to him. He could see the wheels turning, assessments being made, her smile dimming. She left without warming his coffee.
Allie picked up her straw and fiddled with the wrapper, not looking at him. Something like sadness weighed on her.
He tried to turn her attention outward. “So the geek crowd over there…friends of yours?”
She slid a glance their direction then back to him, lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I used to work here at the diner when I first moved to town, and now at the paper taking ads. A lot of people know me.”
Curious that she’d put it that way—not that she’d gotten to know a lot of people, but that they knew her. Maybe he was splitting hairs. Still, her description didn’t sound like a relationship that might have resulted in her turning Hella over to the researchers. At least he hoped she hadn’t. The possibility kept him focused on why he was there. Unfortunately, his concern about the researchers and their proximity ruined his plan to say he’d lost his cat in the park. What now? He decided to pick up the thread of conversation and see where it went.
“A lot of people know your schedule. Do they all set their watches by you?”
Her smile, like sun breaking through clouds, caught him off balance.
“What?”
“Watches? Look around. Who is wearing a watch?”
On the wrists he could see, not one watch was evident. He didn’t wear one himsel
f because his energies messed with the mechanisms and it was just one more thing to lose if you forgot to take it off before shifting. But humans lived by the clock. And the white-collar crowd who took over the diner at lunchtime planned every minute of their days out months and even years in advance. Working people without watches?
“What happened to watches?”
“They went out of fashion while you were incarcerated,” she said, tearing the wrapper off the straw and stabbing at an ice cube. “Apparently I’m being stalked by an ex-con and everyone else in town can tell him where I should be just by looking at their cell. Do you even have a cell phone?”
He didn’t need one. He didn’t think it would be wise to admit he didn’t. Instead he gave her his best wise-counselor look. “I’m not a criminal. Trust your instincts. You wouldn’t be here now if you felt I was a threat.”
“So, you’re just a stalker who hasn’t been locked up…yet? You normally keep to your cave?”
“You are so married to your routines that it turns anyone who lives along the path between your office and home into a stalker. Didn’t anyone teach you that a woman living alone should vary her routes and schedules?”
Now they were hissing and scratching at each other, trying to get below the surface to something authentic. But there were better ways to learn about each other. Scratching and hissing were best saved for when they were naked and ready for play.
He wanted her to look at him, meet his eyes, but she stared past him, gazing at a point over his left shoulder. Avoiding eye contact was another mysterious habit of hers, a feline habit. He recalled his first visit to the paper. She had never looked up into his face during their entire conversation.
She sipped tea. He leaned down, tipping his head sideways, forcing her to notice him, and was rewarded by her finally meeting his eyes. She held his gaze for a few seconds before she asked, “How do you know I live alone?”
He blinked. The conversation refused to head anywhere he wanted to take it. Reason wasn’t getting him anywhere. He’d have to go back to seduction. Seduction was good. He could use his eyes and hands rather than his mouth. If he employed the first two well, he might get to use his tongue for something other than words later.
“I have ESP,” he said.
“Of course.”
To reach her he needed to touch, connect. His hand covered hers on the glass, fingers tightening as he moved the glass back and forth. He kept his gaze on the table and her gaze followed his. He watched a comet trail of liquid form an arc across the Formica top.
“Let me show you. I’ll pull a picture from your mind. Give me your other hand, and hold your fingers like you are pointing at something,” Marcus said in the same tone he might use to request a pencil. Allie did as he asked. Her hand trembled under his. She let him use her finger as a pencil, watching as together they drew a cartoonlike image in the moisture—a circle with triangle ears, dots for eyes and nose.
“A cat?”
He nodded and let the drawing hand go.
“It needs whiskers.” She added them.
He watched. Intensity lit her face and she seemed unaware that her left hand was still captive under his on the glass. For a moment he thought he felt the mental barrier between them dissolving. He leaned in to sip tea from her straw as she drew in the last whisker. Sure enough, he saw the faint contraction of her throat muscles as the cold liquid slid down his throat. She looked over to catch him in the act. Marcus sucked and swallowed again, watching desire flicker in her eyes.
“This morning you trusted your instincts. I’m the same man I was then. If I meant you harm, I had my chance.”
She put her damp fingertips to her right temple, winced as if she felt his presence there, looked from him to the fading cat image. The memory was right there, a flash in his consciousness, a leopard in the snow. His memory or hers?
Franny slapped plates of steaming food on the table, jarring them both. The cat face was obliterated by a basket of fries. Marcus scooted his empty coffee cup closer to the edge of the table. Franny glared at him and flounced off. Allie gave her head a quick shake, like a dreamer coming awake. The spell was broken.
She leaned in to whisper, glancing nervously at the next table as she did. “We’re not having sex again. I don’t want to play this game you’re playing.”
Was it that she didn’t want the guys hearing, or didn’t want a particular one hearing? All his possessive instincts rose, would have lifted the fur on his back if he’d been in his true form. The need to snarl and back them in the corner had him take another long draw on the straw to quell the urge before he responded.
“I warned you this morning, gave you the chance to walk away. I said I wouldn’t let go until I was ready. I’m not ready.”
She reclaimed the glass and sat back, rolled it between her palms while she studied him. Pose defiant. Gaze liquid, drawing him to see deeper, past resistance and into longing.
It made him hungry for her, sent images of slippery breasts and plump lips through his brain. He wanted to tell her she was his, show her.
He didn’t. He put his right hand over hers, gently, his voice soft, reassuring. “We won’t do anything you don’t want to do.” He released her hand and leaned back. “You want to do more than you admit.”
She tucked both her hands under the table in her lap. “Look, I don’t know anything about you. Not even your name.”
“Marcus.”
“What do you do, Marcus?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Ex-con complicated?”
“No. I’m sort of a spiritual leader.”
She stared at him. He didn’t need to read her mind to know what she was thinking.
“Look, about this morning…”
“It won’t happen again,” she said. “I’m not going to tell anyone. So that’s settled.”
“That’s not… This morning got out of hand. I didn’t mean for things to go that far. My fault entirely—”
“You were waiting for me? You planned it?”
“No.” His gaze dropped to the table when he said it. He was not a convincing liar. “Yes.” He felt her tense, move her knee away from his. He made an attempt at damage control. “I was there for another reason, but I knew you might happen along.”
“So, what? You’re having some fun playing your little cat-and-mouse game with me? Spiritual leader my ass.” The last word ended on a hiss as she leaned close again, before adding, “You tell Eddie to go to hell.”
She was sexy when she hissed like that. It made him lose the thread of conversation.
She stood then, pushed the chair back so hard it fell over. That was not what he needed. The research lab Romeo was up on his feet and the guy closest to Allie’s chair followed. Franny came hustling their direction with a steaming pot of coffee in hand, no doubt destined for his lap.
He had nothing to lose at that point. “Who the fuck is Eddie?”
She saw it then, that everyone in the diner was staring at her, both of them. She picked up the chair. Waved off the guys ready to defend her. “I’m fine.” She sent them another fluorescent smile, brushed the hair from her eyes and said loudly, “I’m clumsy today. All thumbs.”
Franny didn’t look convinced, but the guys sat, eyes still on him. Allie turned back to Marcus. “Walk me back?”
She saved him with that simple request. He wondered why.
Marcus stood, dropped a fifty on the table and followed Allie, careful to give Franny and her coffee pot a wide berth. Allie kept a brisk pace and when they reached the corner, just out of view of the diner windows, she whirled. Her eyes drilled into his. “You don’t know Eddie?”
“No.”
She dissected him with her eyes for another few seconds, then turned away. “If you’re going to pretend you’re a spiritual leader, you should drop the word ‘fuck’ from your vocabulary. And learn to manage your baser urges—translate that as temper and sex—better.”
Manage his urges? He
was the high magus of the Pantherians. Pretend? He was a millennial being…almost. She probably hadn’t walked the earth a quarter of a century. She was human. And she was telling him to control himself? And since when was sex anything less than the true merging and sharing of two spirits? It was not a baser urge.
She was walking away and he hurried after her.
“Who is Eddie?”
“My father.”
“And a father would send someone after his daughter, someone who’d have sex with her in the park as some sort of torment to her?”
“Why were you in the park?”
“Answer my question first.”
She whirled to face him again. “I don’t know what fathers normally do. I only know about Eddie. If all he did was send you to the park to torment me, then I got off light.”
He reached for her then, both hands cupping her face. She slapped them down, her lips pulled back over her teeth in a snarl. “Don’t.”
He stepped back when everything in him screamed to grab her up and kiss her.
“What would Eddie normally do?”
“I answered your question. It’s your turn.”
“I was at the park looking for something I lost there.
“What?”
She’d started walking again, the light was green and she crossed, leaving him to trot after. She stopped on the other side and whirled to face him.
“Great, I didn’t have enough to deal with already. God, what is it with this day?”
“What?”
“Trouble headed this way.”
Marcus looked over her shoulder. “Those ladies with your boss? The garden club is trouble?”
“I swear they share the same bottle of hair dye and why are all of them dressed in shades of beige? It is spring after all.”
He tried hard to keep up with the sudden change in topics. Hair dye? And Allie wanted them to be more colorful. He thought of her closet, seven outfits in varying shades of black to gray. Her room, with its furnishings so old that they’d all taken on a gray patina, her rug a grayed green, her bedspread, grayed white.
