ShiftingHeat

by Lynne Connolly

  He’d successfully lightened the atmosphere, but he’d avoided telling her how he felt about her age. But she’d know. She’d know for sure before the end of the evening. She refused to contact him telepathically and find out that way because she wanted him to tell her or show her for himself. Although it was tempting.

  The warren of streets around here made it easier for her to shake people off. But she was sure nobody had followed them tonight. She’d remained vigilant. She drove into the parking garage around the corner from her building and parked the car between a Ferrari and a shiny black Range Rover. That was par for the cars here. Not her little Subaru, a typical university car. But she didn’t need anything bigger.

  They exited the car and she took him up the street to the entrance. He gazed at the red-brick building with fire escapes lacing their way up. All painted matte black, like the wrought iron canopy over the main entrance. “Very nice.”

  “This used to be a warehouse for the goods loaded on and off at the docks. When industry moved out, the artists moved in. The bohemians and some wealthy arty people. These days we get a lot of hipsters. And here we are. Prime real estate.” The window frames were painted green now. She remembered when soot had daubed the buildings, when respectable women didn’t venture here. That was a long time ago, before she’d thought of buying property here. The cobbled streets had rung with workmen yelling to each other, turning the air blue with their colorful curses. Anyone who used “fuck” as a lazy adjective should have listened to the inventiveness of these guys. A few remained, but the middle class had bought the big, splashy buildings, the old warehouses and the stores, and turned them into desirable condos. Faye loved this place. She led the way inside. “This is my home.” She nodded to the concierge but the guy kept her gaze. He wanted a word with her. She strolled toward his desk.

  “Hi, Raymond. Did you want me?”

  “Sorry, Ms. Corrigan.” She cast a guilty look at Andros, who raised a brow at the new name, but his mouth quirked in a half-smile. He understood. She turned her attention back to the concierge. “Is there a problem?”

  “Mr. Smith on the third floor complained about the heating in his apartment.”

  She snorted. “Mr. Smith does nothing but complain. Still, tell him I’m looking into it. And send a maintenance man around in the morning, would you?”

  “Sure.” He grinned. “Thought you’d better know before he comes knocking on your door.”

  Light dawned. “Ah. Yes. Thanks for warning me.” Smith would call her day or night if he had a complaint.

  He touched his fingers to his cap in a mock salute. “You know me, Ms. Corrigan. Discreet to a fault.”

  “What would I do without you?”

  She led the way to the elevators and slipped her card into the slot. “I guess I owe you an explanation.”

  “Not if you don’t want to. I know Talents used to slip from life to life before they came out. I guess you bought this place when you were a Ms. Corrigan?”

  “Yes. Here, I’m her daughter, or rather, I inherited the place from myself. I didn’t want anyone to track me, so when I took the job at the university I gave them a new name. This place is mine, it’s special.”

  He touched her hand. “I appreciate you bringing me here. You don’t bring many people here, do you?”

  “No, I don’t. I take them to a hotel room, or the other apartment.” Belatedly, she remembered where they had gone after their first meeting. “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t see m to take offense and she breathed a sigh of relief.

  “You’re making up for it now.” He paused. “So why is what Smith does your business? Is he bothering you?”

  “He thinks I’m a billionaire and he wants to seduce me. Thinks his appeal will do it. It won’t. He won’t get the message but he doesn’t harass me or do anything that upsets me too much. Otherwise I’d get him out of the building.” She cast him another guilty glance. “Because I own it.”

  “Shit, Faye!”

  The doors slid silently open and she led the way to her apartment.

  Inside, she had polished wooden floors covered with Oriental rugs, soft, broad sofas, bookcases and original works of art. She’d lavished time and money on this apartment and it was her refuge, her place of safety. She hoped he liked it, because if he liked it, he liked her. She’d put herself into this place, her first real home.

  Andros wandered around the large room with its equally large windows. The living area gave way to a breakfast bar and a kitchen equipped with state-of-the-art appliances. The colors were restful, slate blues and ivories, with darker accents in the kitchen. There was a flight of stairs at the other end of the room.

  Instinctively he loved it here. “Where’s your office?” he asked.

  She laughed. “You mean where do I keep my computers? I have an office upstairs, but I only have a good base unit, screen and so on. Nothing fancy. I do have a widescreen TV, though.”

  “So we can snuggle and watch the latest romantic comedy?”

  “Or the newest space adventure.”

  He gave a rueful grin. She’d caught him out on an assumption he shouldn’t have made. “I deserved that. Look, I’m a bit overwhelmed. This makes me feel—” He glanced at the nearest sofa and then at her.

  “No, Andros. While you’re here, it’s your home. Please.”

  “All right.” He parked his crutches against a sofa and sat. “Come and tell me about your life. Let me hold you.”

  “Sure.” She looked as uncertain as he felt. “This won’t make any difference to us, will it?”

  He laughed. “Don’t be an idiot, of course it will. But what difference it makes is up to us. I still want to hold you, care for you. Make love to you. But talk to me now. No secrets, yes?”

  “It’s a long story.” She threw her jacket on to another sofa and went to do as he asked. “Wouldn’t you like some coffee? Something to eat? I have steak and salad.”

  It was then that his stomach decided to rumble. That went some way toward breaking the ice, since she heard it and grinned. He watched her shimmy her way to the kitchen. Well, she didn’t really shimmy, but the swing of her hips reminded him what he enjoyed most about her. “I guess. Thanks.”

  She could work in the kitchen and still talk to him. Which she did, while he enjoyed watching her deft, sure actions. He guessed she appreciated keeping an activity between them, a guess reinforced by her dispassionate tone as she talked to him. Not that any of it would put him off. Even in this exhausted, pain-racked state he wanted her with an urgency that verged on desperation.

  “I was born in 1923.” She glanced up from the chopping board, where a selection of salad vegetables awaited her attention. “But you guessed that, right?”

  “I’m generally considered quite good at math.” His understatement made her smile.

  “We weren’t poor but my parents didn’t make a point of displaying their wealth. Not a good idea in a small town. People resented us, nevertheless. Some of them. Some were good friends. Mom loved the quiet life, made friends, but Dad was more restless. He wanted to move on but he stayed because she loved the life. So I’m your archetypal small-town girl. Except for the dragon bit.” She surprised a laugh out of him, then started to chop. From then on she punctuated her narrative with regular, steady chopping and Andros knew why she didn’t buy her salad ready-made. A good way of getting rid of frustration. “You know what happened when I was ten years old. My parents disappeared. So did most of their money, as it turned out. They left it to me in trust, but someone got there first, forged their signatures on various documents and got away with the money. That was between them disappearing and their bodies turning up. They labeled me an abandoned child but I knew they were dead. My telepathy was pretty good and I couldn’t sense them anywhere. Blank, gone. But I was ten years old, what could I say to make anybody believe me?” Chop, chop, chop, sure and steady. “When my foster parents dumped me they made all kind of excuses—they couldn’t affor
d it, they thought I’d be better off with my own kind, all that kind of crap, but back in the system, suddenly they knew about me. Knew I was a freak. And it would have been only a matter of time before more people knew.”

  She stopped chopping, looked up. “Even in those days some people knew.” Andros nodded.

  She resumed her dissection of a green pepper. “I had no choice. I went on the lam. Then I discovered that other people like me existed. I kinda imagined I was the only one once my parents died. The relief!” She laughed. “I bought papers. I was fourteen by then and I could work. So I did. Moved on a lot. Then World War II happened. I didn’t see much of it, only its effects, and war is a great way of changing identity. So by the end of the war I was older, experienced, and I came to New York. I never left.” She grinned and the chopping slowed. “I worked as a secretary, clerk, switchboard operator; I was in a typing pool for over twenty years. I enjoyed it, liked fitting in and having friends, but I knew better than to tell people what I was. I came across the occasional shape-shifter of course, but I didn’t seek them out. Then came the seventies and liberation. I got liberated. Went to Woodstock, dropped out for a few years. My hippie friends thought my ability to breathe fire was a real gas, and they never really believed it, thought it was some Eastern mystical thing, or a magic trick.”

  She glanced up. He felt her mind touch his, anxiously checking. He sent her reassurance and she continued with her story. “A real twentieth-century babe, that’s me. Eventually I ended up working in downtown New York at exactly the right time, in the early eighties. I made a fortune. You should have seen me, all big hair and wide-shouldered power suits. Ann Reynolds had nothing on me.” She stopped.

  “And that’s when you bought this place,” he prompted gently.

  “Yeah.” She cleared her throat. “When I’d made enough, I bought the building. Went into property and bought a few more. But once I’d secured my future, I didn’t speculate, didn’t take part in the boom of the last ten years. It didn’t feel right to me. I’ve always believed that what you borrow you will have to pay back one day. Like I told you, small-town mentality. In the late nineties I had to change my identity again, so I decided to go back to my real name. It was starting to get much harder to do that. Records were so much better. In the old days, you could get by on your own if you were careful, but these days, when every life is recorded online, it’s harder. Still possible though.

  “I went back to college and did a degree in something I knew little about, English literature. I read a lot, but I never did it in a structured, ordered way. I loved it. So I carried on at college and got this job. When Talents came out I decided to wait and see. I was happy in my job and I knew what coming out meant, how it changed people and how they look at you.”

  Although she’d recounted her story dispassionately, the tale put a few things together in Andros’ head. Now he knew why she wanted to give Talents the right to remain anonymous, if they wanted. Coming out had cost her her parents, her way of life, forced her out into the world before she was ready. He could understand that, more than she thought, perhaps.

  “We lost our father early and our mother continued to live in the family home. She refused to move out but she got real sick. We used the money to pay for her treatment and her specialist home. So sometimes it happens anyway. Ania gave her business up for our mother, in effect. I knew that if I finished my degree I could get a better job and start paying her back, but it never worked out that way. Now I get a great salary, I have a good job. And I’m a dragon.”

  She looked up and her eyes lit with amusement. “Yeah, how about that.”

  They shared the joke, incomprehensible to most people, but theirs anyway. He loved that. He groped for his crutches and used one to help him get to his feet. “Can I do anything?”

  “Rest. I know you’re tired, I can feel it. Let me do this. We’ll eat, maybe watch a little TV and then go to bed. An early night.”

  “That sounds so good.”

  Andros knew it didn’t get much better than this. But there was always room for improvement. He planned to provide that later.

  Damn, the woman knew how to prepare a steak. After teasing him with the delicious scent of steak and onions, Faye didn’t disappoint. Blood oozed out of his juicy, fat slab of meat and his taste buds responded. He appreciated his ability to handle a steak knife. In his previous existence, even that had been beyond him sometimes. His friends or companions would cut up his meat for him, mostly with a matter-of-fact approach that he appreciated, but hated that they had to do it.

  He ate with relish and appetite, glad to see Faye doing the same. When she caught him looking, he grinned and finished his mouthful, pushing his plate away with a satisfied sigh. “You’ll need your strength for later,” she said. She gave him a cheeky smile and rose from the table by the window to take their plates away. “You don’t look disabled right now. You look strong and fit.” She carried the plates to the breakfast bar and put them down.

  “That’s because I’m sitting down. And because you can see past the fuzzing. It’s there all the time, but you just push straight through it.” He wanted to give her something, a chance to see him as he was. “Let it take you. When you feel the vibration, let it have its way. Then you’ll see me as others are seeing me right now. As I was until recently.”

  He felt her concentration and forced himself to relax. The Sorcerer who’d helped him had strengthened the fuzzing effect, so he couldn’t get rid of it until he shape-shifted, or he would have dropped it for her. She opened her mind so he could share the vision. Odd, seeing himself through someone else’s eyes, but he recognized the skinny figure she was seeing. Narrow wrists, bones pressing against a thin coating of flesh. Veins blue against the pale, almost translucent skin.

  That was the Andros he recognized. The new, healthy one startled him sometimes when he caught sight of himself in a mirror unexpectedly.

  “Andros—”

  Would she feel sorry for him, treat him with more delicacy? He saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes and hated them, but he’d asked for this, for her to see him as he often saw himself.

  “God, you’re so much stronger than I imagined.”

  “No I’m not. Like I told you before, I just accepted what was. You did it too, didn’t you?”

  She frowned, then nodded. “I believe I did. But that was different—”

  “Everyone’s experience is different. It’s what’s inside that sometimes connects.”

  “Connects. I like that.” Her frown melted away and she reached for him at the same time he reached for her.

  He stumbled when he got to his feet and the chair growled against the floor in response.

  She grabbed him and her strength held both of them upright. While they leaned together, he brought his mouth down to hers and they shared a long, sweet kiss. He let her support him and concentrated on kissing her to within an inch of her life.

  They left the rest of the debris from their meal to deal with later. She led the way upstairs, Andros coping with the broad, wooden steps with, if not ease, at least a great deal of eagerness. Her big bedroom was dominated by a large bed, gauzy white drapes caught up on brass hooks in the shape of dolphins that were suspended from the ceiling. Light, airy, but with a feminine touch that invited him in, as if he were entering a private, forbidden zone. The thought drove his arousal higher.

  A room made for seduction. How many men…? Before he could drown his wayward thought in the depths of his mind she caught it. “I’ve never brought anyone here before. I won’t lie to you. Pretty soon I won’t be able to.”

  “What do you mean, won’t be able to?” He gazed into the sharp, clever face that meant so much to him already.

  “If we open completely, we’ll bond. As far as I know it’s something you have to consent to, but I’ve heard of it happening by itself. Do you know about bonding?”

  “Some.” His sister hadn’t bonded with Johann yet, but she’d talked about it once. Said
Johann wanted her to think about it.

  “You should, now you’re a Talent.”

  He watched her, reached for her with one hand. His crutch clattered to the floor. He trusted her to hold him up until they decided to lie down. “Tell me.”

  “When Talents bond they become one. Their minds merge. They’re never without each other, always together. They can’t build barriers to keep the other out. Any privacy is given by consent. Their lives end at the same moment. It has to be a conscious decision and voluntary.”

  “Is it what Talents want?” It sounded scary to him.

  “Some. Many don’t, even married couples don’t always do it. Some people just need that space, and some are scared to take the step. Some leave total bonding until one of them is dying, then the other will join them.” She offered a light smile. “I just thought you ought to know. We can’t do it without agreeing to do so. Or so I understand.”

  “Have you ever been tempted?” He knew she must have had lovers before but he didn’t want to think about them. He wanted her to himself with a selfishness that appalled and enthralled him in equal measure.

  “Never.” She bit her lip.

  He watched her sharp teeth dent the delectable flesh and leaned forward, but before he kissed her she murmured something. He thought it was “Before now”. But he couldn’t be sure and he wouldn’t ask her to repeat it. Not yet.

  Her mouth tasted of steak, wine and Faye. The last part tempted him more than anything else could. He went back for more and nearly took himself off balance. She drew back with a light laugh. “I think we should move to the bed, don’t you?”

  “Probably.”

  Using his one remaining crutch, he followed her to the bed and unsuccessfully tried to suppress his sigh of relief when he lowered himself onto the soft white comforter. He lay back and opened his arms. “Come to me, my darlink,” he said in a deliberately bad German accent. “Fill my arms with your loveliness.”