But I know better. Nothing about Nain is innocent.
Why was this so weird? Why did this feel different, thrilling, new? I woke up to this man every day of my life, but I didn’t really know what to do with him now.
I took a deep breath when his hands dropped away after the last button was fastened. He picked up his wallet and the room key from the nightstand.
“I brought money from this time,” I said, reaching into my handbag and passing him some bills. “It would probably suck to get arrested for trying to pass off weird money.”
He nodded. “You came prepared,” he said as he looked at the bills.
“I tried,” I said with a shrug.
He nodded, then held out his arm. I took it, hooking my hand around his bicep as we walked out of the room and he locked the door behind us. We quickly returned the “good morning!” the desk clerk called to us, and then we were out on the snowy street, Model As trundling past, men bustling around us heading into the businesses downtown.
Nain took a deep breath. “I forgot what it smelled like,” he said.
I looked up at him as we started walking and took a deep breath. “It doesn’t smell that different to me.”
“Cleaner. Just a hint of exhaust. You can smell the water. Sometimes, you can smell sewage, but summer’s a lot worse for that,” he said. As we walked, I looked around. Many of these buildings were long gone in my own time, but a few landmarks stood proud, new, and I couldn’t stop looking around, seeing the city I loved so much the way it had been. The people who passed all looked so elegant, so together, and I had a moment of wishing people dressed like this in our time.
Nain laughed and I looked up at him.
“What?”
“This is like porn for someone who loves old shit the way you do.”
I laughed. “It kind of is. I was just thinking about how good everyone looks.”
“You want me to, I’ll wear a suit every damn day,” he said, and I knew he meant it.
“Mm. Well, you fill out a pair of jeans pretty nicely, too,” I answered.
He smiled down at me and we kept walking. We were in the downtown shopping district. White holiday lights were strung across the boulevard, from light post to light post. The windows of the department stores and small specialty shops were all decked out for the holidays. We kept stopping so I could look at the displays: toys, clothes, home goods. We stopped off at a news stand and Nain bought a Detroit News. As we walked on, I glanced up at him. I could already feel that he was more at peace than he’d been in quite a while, and the hint of a smile on his lips made me want to jump up and down in victory. This was what I’d been hoping for. And it was just beginning.
Nain nodded toward a small restaurant on our left and led me toward it. He opened the door for me and we waited for the waiter to seat us.
I tried not to act like an absolute tourist, but everything in the restaurant made me wish I could just sit there staring at it forever. It was like being in a movie set. Everything, down to the milk glass coffee mugs the waiter set in front of us, made me want to collect some of it when I got back to our time.
We sipped our coffee and I peeked up at Nain.
“How does it feel?” I asked him quietly.
He smiled and reached across the table for my hands. “I can’t believe you did this for me. I loved it when I lived here. Having you here with me?” he shook his head. “How do you do things like this?”
“Like what?”
“Exactly what I need. Every time,” he said, rubbing his thumb over mine.
“It’s almost like I’m in love with you or something,” I said, and he squeezed my hand.
He tore his eyes away from me when the waiter arrived to take our orders. When he left, I found myself under his intense gaze again. After a moment, he looked away with a tiny shake of his head. “So you want to see what I loved about this time?”
I nodded.
“1927. I was helping build the Fisher Building, working with the stonemasons, doing the menial labor while they made it look like the building you know. I didn’t have much of a team yet. I was working with a couple other guys on my side projects,” he said, taking a gulp of his coffee. I knew that by “side projects,” he meant those tasks he undertook as the Nain Rouge, as the watcher this city never knew it had. I got all of the credit in our own time, but he’d been there for as long as the city had existed, often maligned, misunderstood. He still was. He thought it was funny, even if I didn’t.
“And there was the Purple Gang.”
He nodded. “There were three demons in charge of it,” he said in a low voice, glancing around to make sure no one was listening. I did the same. I was becoming so accustomed to being around other immortals and supernaturals that I didn’t even consider worrying about Normals overhearing.
His comment about demons made me remember, with more than a little irritation, what Aion had warned me about. “Um. About demons… was Astaroth around back then?”
Nain’s gaze sharpened and he lost the relaxed posture. I immediately wanted to take it back.
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s around.”
“And did you deal with him much?”
He studied me for a moment, then looked down at his coffee. “He spent a lot of time striking from the shadows back then. He got a crew together around late ‘26. So they’re more active at this point in time.” He looked back up. “Why?”
“We can’t kill him,” I said quietly. I could feel the sharp stab of rage from him at the words and I bit my lip.
“We can stop him from—”
“From forcing me to see who and what I am,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t be who or what I am if not for his interference and what it did to me.” It was a nicer way of saying “if you hadn’t tricked me into killing you, by killing him” and I knew he knew that. His expression hardened, and I felt that all-too-familiar pang of guilt from him whenever it came up. I met his eyes. “No Astaroth, no us.”
He leaned forward. “I would have been yours no matter what, Molly Brooks.”
I closed my eyes. I haven’t heard that name in a very long time, despite the fact that it’s still how I think of myself. Nobody calls me that anymore.
“And yeah, I know what I just called you. You’re still Molly Brooks. You’ve always been you, and you and me were always going to end up together, Molly.”
“Maybe we would have found each other,” I said. “But we wouldn’t have Zoe or Hades. I wouldn’t know E. I wouldn’t know my mom or my aunt. We wouldn’t know Hephaestus, and he would never have met Meaghan… should I keep going?”
He took another drink of his coffee and our conversation ceased as the waiter set our plates in front of us. I noticed him giving me strange looks. It wasn’t uncommon. Even if the Normals don’t know what they’re feeling, they know it feels weird to be around me. The can feel my power. I’ve been told it makes them want to fight, want to cause damage. It’s the more demonic side of who I am. I mean, I am the daughter of the most demonic demon of all, so… yeah.
When he walked away, Nain rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward.
“Tell me we can at least put the hurt on if we run across him while we’re here.”
I smiled. “We absolutely can.”
He shook his head. “I hope we don’t see him. I can’t imagine knowing what he’s going to put you through someday and just letting him live to do it.”
I shrugged. “I said the same thing when Aion told me. But weighed against everything I wouldn’t have? I’ll take it. I’ll just try to remember that if we end up seeing him.”
Nain nodded.
“You might have to hold me back,” I told him, trying to lighten the mood again.
“Hm. I love watching you destroy bastards, though.”
I smiled, and he shook his head. “Where are we going after this?”
“My place,” he said.
My stomach did a little flip, and I immediately felt like an idiot. I’
m married to this man. The idea of going to “his place” shouldn’t have made me even remotely nervous or giddy or whatever the hell this was.
“Where is that?”
“Not too far. We can take a taxi there from here. Check out the Fisher Building after that.”
I nodded.
I opened my mouth, closed it again.
“What?”
I shook my head.
“You have that look again,” Nain said. “You were thinking something that stressed you out. What was it?”
“Is there some girlfriend I’m going to bump into at your place? Because I’d really rather not,” I said. “I know I got weird yesterday about that. Maybe it’s immature or whatever. I don’t want to meet anyone else who’s shared your bed. So if there’s someone—”
“There’s no one,” Nain said. “I stopped seeing a chick who got on my nerves sometime in the early twenties. Didn’t start up with anyone else until after the second World War.”
“Okay. Good,” I said.
He reached across the table and took my hand again. “Ready to get out of here?”
I nodded, we got up, and he paid the bill. We stepped outside and he hailed a taxi. After opening the door for me, Nain got in and gave the cabbie an address on St. Aubin, over in the Poletown neighborhood, and we pulled away from the curb. Nain kept my hand in his the entire time, and if I wasn’t already wondering what would happen when we got there, his emotions told me everything I needed to know.
He bent toward me, his lips near my ear. “Does it feel like a first date to you, or is it just me?”
I let out a small laugh. “It does. How dumb.”
His eyes met mine. “Maybe it’s just a sign that we haven’t been spending enough time together. It’s like figuring each other out all over again.”
“Maybe.”
He squeezed my hand. “You’re nervous.”
I didn’t answer.
“It reminds me of when we first started. Remember those first few nights you stayed at the loft? Fell into bed with me even though you hated me. You couldn’t stand me, but you still wanted to be near me.”
“And you felt the same way about me,” I said.
He shook his head. “Nah. No, the second I saw you, I knew I wanted you. I knew I shouldn’t want you, that I should have left you alone. I went through it all. ‘You’re too old for her. She hates you. You don’t want a relationship anyway.’ None of it mattered.”
“You kind of did leave me alone, at first,” I said.
“It was more you refusing to come to me than anything else,” he said. “You ignored my calls and texts for days before you finally even agreed to see me again.” He let out a short laugh. “You used to look at me like all you wanted to do was gouge my eyes out.”
“Mostly because you made me feel so messed up,” I said. “I hated you, and you scared the hell out of me. But…” I shrugged. I didn’t need to finish. He knew. Once we’d found one another, we’d been like moths attracted to a flame. We danced around one another, retreating, drawing close, running away, but never too far. Before I knew it, I’d found myself in his arms, in his bed.
Bonded to him.
We rode the rest of the way in silence, my hand in his, his thumb gently caressing the back of my hand. When the cabbie pulled up to the address Nain had given him, Nain got out and pulled me after him. I looked around as he paid the driver. It was a neighborhood of tenement housing and large multi-family homes. The house we were standing in front of was a plain brick house with a large front stoop, six addresses and mailboxes on the front of the house. I glanced up at Nain, watching him as he surveyed the place.
“I’m not gonna run into myself here, am I?” he asked.
“No. It doesn’t work that way. The ‘you’ from this time kind of disappeared when you got here.”
He nodded and took a breath. “Ready?”
I took his hand and he led me up the front steps. He picked up a flower pot near the door, and there was a key underneath it. He unlocked the door and put the key back. He led me down a short hallway, then up two flights of creaky wooden stairs to the third floor. The walls in the stairwell were covered in a striped green wallpaper, the floors bare wood. A thick oak railing ran up one side of the stairway, and I let my hand glide along that as we climbed.
At the top of the stairs, Nain turned to the door at the left, gave the knob a quick, hard turn, and the door swung open. He turned and waved me in.
When I stepped into his apartment, the first thing I thought was that Nain has always smelled the same. His scent hit me and my heart started pounding a little. I heard him close the door behind me, and I continued my inspection of the place. Nain and I are direct opposites; he’s very neat, and I’m chaos. His apartment was very much him: sparse, clean, empty except for furniture and a shelf of books and papers. No knickknacks, no photos or art. It was basically one large room, a twin bed pushed next to the windows at the front, which looked over the street, a living room area with a sofa, a small end table, and a lamp, and a small wooden table in a corner.
“I didn’t spend much time here, but the time I did spend was peaceful. I did a lot of hard sleeping here,” he said.
“Tell me more.”
He sat on the sofa. “There’s not a lot to tell. I worked during the day on the Fisher Building. I paid my rent, paid for food, and socked the rest of my money away, like I’d been doing for a long time already by then. I tracked down assholes. Messed with the Purple Gang. Used to piss them off when I’d disrupt one of their shipments,” he said with a grin, and I laughed. “They were determined bastards, I’ll give them that. It took me a long time to finally wear them down. In the end, they were all fighting with one another, and it just all started to fall apart. Once I’d taken out two of the demons who were running things behind the scenes, that was it. So I worked during the day and I did that at night, and every once in a while, I’d make my way back here and pass out for a while.” His eyes flicked over me, and I felt my body heat at the look in his eyes. “It was an exciting time to be here in the city. The music was good, and the city was in an insane period of growth. It was like it was coming into itself, you know?”
I nodded. I loved when he talked like this. He was such a nerd sometimes.
“It was before the Great Depression. Before the second World War. Everything felt possible. I don’t think we got back to that feeling again. There were times in the 50s and 60s that reminded me of this time, especially when Motown started taking off. I think I appreciated it even more after watching everything the city went through to get to this place.”
“Did you ever fight in any of the wars?” I asked him. I don’t know why it had never occurred to ask him before.
“Most of ‘em,” he said. “Revolutionary, Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. I stopped after that. Too much ID and paperwork.”
“Why did you do that?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
He was watching me in that hungry way I love. I knew I was kind of asking for it, just being on the bed. We’re not exactly subtle.
“I’m a demon,” he said, eyes still glued to me. “You should know by now that we live for fighting and fucking. A war is pretty much irresistible to a demon. All that pain, death, chaos.” He was still watching me. His breathing seemed shallow, like he was trying to control himself. It hit me then, that he was trying to be a gentleman. We’d agreed that this felt like a first date. Even Nain wouldn’t just jump on me on the first date.
For some reason, that made me even more nervous and fluttery-feeling. It was like getting to know him all over again, and it was more thrilling than I ever could have imagined.
If he was trying to do this right, I could at least meet him halfway.
I stood up and walked over to the sofa instead. I sat next to him and crossed my legs.
We sat there awkwardly for a while, and then I laughed.
“We are so bad at this,” I said, and he nodded.<
br />
“I just realized we never really did this when we started. This awkward phase,” he said.
“Not really. We were too busy fighting.” I pushed my hair behind my ear and looked over at him. “I worried, once upon a time, that we fell into it all too fast. That there wouldn’t be anything left if we didn’t have the fighting, the constant battles, someone needing their ass saved every five minutes.”
“You’re not worried about that anymore?”
I shook my head. “We manage to have entire conversations without either of us having to say a word. I feel everything you feel. You know where I am, no matter how far away I am. I think it’s safe to say we have the type of connection that goes beyond day-to-day bullshit.”
He leaned toward me, eyes on mine, and I licked my lips, more than ready to lose myself to his kisses again.
Just before our lips touched, there was a loud crash from downstairs, shouts. Nain jumped up, and I did the same. We listened.
Gunshots.
“Shit,” Nain muttered.
“Where is that French bastard?” a deep voice from downstairs said. I glanced at Nain.
“French bastard?” I asked.
“I held onto the accent for a long time,” he explained. He walked toward the door as another crash sounded from below. More gunshots, a few screams.
“You wanted to do some fighting on this trip, right?” he asked, turning to glance at me. The glint in his eyes made me smile.
“Obviously.”
“Purple Gang assholes. I probably recently fucked up one of their shipments or something. That always pisses them off.”
I nodded, and he turned, bent his head to mine, and kissed me, claiming my lips hungrily.
The man loves fighting by my side. We’re both nuts, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Ready?” he asked when he pulled away. I nodded again, and he shoved the door open and charged down the stairs as more crashes and gunshots rang out on the floor below ours.
“There he is,” one of the gangsters shouted as Nain walked down the stairs. I saw them raise their guns, and I gave a quick wave of my hand, knocking all four of them down, back against the walls. That gave Nain the chance he needed to take on the two closest to him. The other two had ignored me, and were moving to attack Nain from behind when I stalked over to where they were, putting myself in their path.
Demons of Christmas Past: A Hidden Novella Page 6
