by Holley Trent
For as long as he’d been working in the US—on and off for the past thirty of his thirty-five years—he should have gleaned more of the tongue, but el negrero preferred to keep his performers uneducated. Jacques thought that if they couldn’t speak the tongue of the land where the circus traveled, they couldn’t speak on the atrocities they’d witnessed without a translator. They couldn’t signal they needed rescue from the audience, because the audience wouldn’t understand them.
Jacques would never let outsiders get too close. He was too paranoid, and rightfully so.
Felipe had escaped only because he and the circus master had had a major falling out. Felipe ran, and Jacques didn’t give chase because he had something to ransom.
Someone to ransom.
Fabian.
Fabian, however, refused to be a bargaining chip. He wouldn’t set his only kin up for a trap, even if doing so meant the two formerly inseparable brothers would be reunited. No. It had to happen like this. Felipe had to run. Fabian had to stay, and perhaps now they could bring down Jacques by attacking from two sides instead of one.
Astrid grunted, a most unfeminine sound, and threw up her free hand.
What could be enraging her so?
He set his turkey-and-cheese sandwich on the desktop and stood.
When she paced near him again, he wrapped his right hand around her thin wrist.
She cut her gaze to him and furrowed her brow, but kept talking. Her narrowed eyes were green at the moment, although hazel was what he’d seen when they’d finally stepped out of the dark and into the motel office. Mercurial, much like her mood. She fluctuated between kind and tough the way trees swayed in the breeze. It was practically dizzying.
“I think that would be introducing unnecessary risk. That’s why I went in alone and pulled him out. I know your feelings about solo work, and I know you ordered me to call in backup, but I think if it’d been you in my shoes, you would have done the same,” she said.
Ah. Now he understood her. He’d known lots of psychics and had worked with a few, but he’d never known one like her.
“Dana?” he thought at Astrid.
She nodded. She tried to nudge his hand off her wrist, but he kept it planted there.
She was talking about him, and if he’d been an English speaker, she probably wouldn’t be lowering her voice, so why should she bother shutting him out?
She sighed, but let his hand remain where it was.
“What’s Dana saying?” he asked aloud in Spanish, assuming Astrid would understand him in English.
She must have. After a couple of moments delay, she cleared her throat, said, “Hold on a moment. Mr. Castillo wants to conference,” into the phone, and then tapped the mute button.
He understood her perfectly, although he knew the words on her lips weren’t his native tongue. She seemed to have been like some sort of universal translator like in those dubbed Star Trek episodes he and Felipe used to watch, only flesh and blood instead of cold metal and circuits. Perhaps what they were exchanging weren’t words at all, but ideas. Those didn’t necessarily need translation.
“When she sent me here, I only had a couple of weeks to find you. Our agency is dealing with a Were-bear rift back in North Carolina, and I need to get back there to help do damage control. I was supposed to coordinate with a local federal agent so I’d have someone watching my back during your extraction, but I never got in touch with her. Didn’t have time.”
He pulled his lips into a grin. Sure, she didn’t have time.
She rolled her eyes. “I know that grin. It’s the same smug, sarcastic smirk your brother wears on the rare occasion he’s right about something.”
“Tell me I’m wrong, then. Tell me you couldn’t go by the book. You didn’t want to. You don’t like following rules, do you?”
She made an unholy growling noise that made him push up an eyebrow. “I live and die for rules!” she said. “I finished three years of law school, for crying out-fuckin’ loud. If I didn’t have a healthy regard for rules, I wouldn’t have made it that far. What’s law but rules?”
“Law student, you said. Not a lawyer. I’m not convinced.”
“That’s right, law student. Know why?”
He put his hands up in a be-my-guest fashion, and she grabbed his wrist.
“Ass. I didn’t finish because this”—she pointed to herself with her free hand—“happened to me. I’m sure Sarah told you about the mutations. Hard to graduate and take the Bar exam when you’ve got one foot in the hospital intensive care unit and the other firmly planted in Purgatory.”
Actually, Sarah hadn’t gone into specifics. When she visited him at the circus after Felipe had gone missing, she’d given Fabian just enough information for him to let down his guard. She showed him that she was a “freak,” too, and he’d trusted her to find his brother.
Now it was Fabian who’d needed to be found. If that wasn’t poetic, he didn’t know what was.
Astrid eked out a grunt of frustration and unhanded him. She resumed her phone conversation, and this time, he didn’t bother listening in. Although he was curious, in the scheme of things, it wouldn’t matter what the Shrews planned. If their goals didn’t mesh with his, he’d simply thank the pretty brunette for her efforts and bid her adieu. He wasn’t going to leave before dealing with Jacques, but having her assistance, including that gorgeous weaponry arsenal she’d hauled into the room in a large duffel bag, would be a safer endeavor than him stalking the campsites on his own.
And he was going to do it. There was no way he could rest until he did. Some things just couldn’t be forgiven. In the past he thought he’d let the justice system handle Jacques so he’d get his karmic payback through legal means, but during the past six—or was it seven?—months, he’d become less generous. Jail was too fine a luxury for a man like Jacques. A better punishment for him might be an ax to the skull. Fabian was almost convinced he could be the man to land the blow.
He should be the one, even if he didn’t want to be.
She ended the call, tucked the phone into her pants pocket, and reached into the sandwich shop bag for the sub she’d been ignoring for the past hour. It was plied with about a quarter-inch of salami and a thin layer of provolone on whole wheat bread. She’d had the clerk heap on raw onions, banana peppers, and a long squirt of mustard.
He’d thought she was bullshitting—ordering what he’d least expected a proper and tidy woman to eat. He wouldn’t even eat that. Sometime between thirty-two and thirty-four, onions had taken up permanent residence on his Causes Indigestion list.
She perched on the end of his bed with the sandwich on her lap, pressed one half a bit flat with her palms, and brought it up to her lush pink lips.
Jesucristo, she was going to really eat it.
She took a big bite off the corner, and her eyes rolled back into her head.
“Oh, fuck yeah, that hits the spot,” she muttered through a mouthful of food.
He didn’t know exactly what she’d said, but he caught the gist.
“Why are you making that face?” Her voice went up at the end of her words, and she seemed to be waiting for some response. She’d asked a question.
He shook his head and held out his palm.
Sighing, she pressed her fingertip to it. Her touch was so light his callused skin barely registered it.
“I asked why you made a face.”
Oh. “Was just thinking that it’s a good thing you’re sleeping alone, because that basura is going to keep you up all night blowing fire like the little beige dragon you are.”
“Hey! I know that word. I suspect that the way you’re using it is getting hung up in translation, though. Not coming across as English to me, but you should know I took two whole years of Spanish in high school. Don’t go calling my dinner garbage. Pretty sure that’s culturally insensitive. And don’t you worry about me sleeping alone. I’ve gotten so I prefer it.” She drew her prissy little finger back.
He g
runted and extended his palm again.
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Nuh-uh. No touchies.”
Frustrating woman. He rolled his head from side to side to loosen the kinks in his neck, and groaned.
She could sleep wherever she wanted, and it wouldn’t make much difference to him. He was used to living in small spaces. He and Felipe had been four when Jacques took them from their elderly great-aunt back in Spain. During their grueling training period with the circus, they’d shared a small flat with six other young boys and a chaperone. When he and Felipe had been old enough to perform, Jacques collected them and took them on the road. They traveled Europe and Asia in caravans, traversed oceans with all their tents and gear on cargo ships. Made a spiraling circuit through the Americas in trucks, RVs, and campers every two years. More often than not, Fabian and Felipe shared a bed.
So, even with her dragon breath in his face, he probably wouldn’t even be bothered if she were in his bed.
Astrid sang some jaunty little tune, bouncing her head from side to side as she tucked escaping cheese slices back into her sandwich.
No, fuck that. He’d be bothered plenty.
A good kind of bothered. He’d like it a hell of a lot more than sharing a bed with his snoring twin.
“Surprised all you’d wanted after being holed up for so long was a sandwich,” she said.
He shrugged, having no clue what she was going on about.
“If I were you, I’d want a big-ass steak. Bloody. Maybe with a bit of creamy Dijon sauce. My brother Eric makes the best sauce. It’ll make you want to smack yourself. You’ll see.”
Fabian sighed. She could have been cursing his dead mother for all he knew.
“After the steak, I’d have…hmm.” She closed her eyes and tapped her fingertip against her chin. “Oh, God, yes. Frozen chocolate pie.” She blew out a shuddering breath that sounded like a harbinger of orgasm.
Chocolate pie? Now, those words he understood. It was nice to know the woman had a weakness he could exploit if he ever needed a favor.
“Maybe after the pie, I’d go trawling for prostitutes. Girl’s got needs, and I tip like a motherfucking boss.” Her voice had taken on a husky quality at the end, and she’d dropped her chin to her chest and looked at him through her long, sable eyelashes.
What’d she say?
“You really have no idea what I’m saying, do you? You’re seriously not just trying to make this difficult for me?”
“I…” He searched his vocabulary for the words, but couldn’t find them. “I don’t know?”
She held out her hand, and he gratefully took it.
“What were you saying?” he asked.
“I was just pulling your chain. Said if I were you, I’d want more than a sandwich after being cooped up so long.”
“What else did you say?”
Her narrow shoulders bobbed once, and her lips pressed into a Mona Lisa smile. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me.”
“Was nothing. I told a bad joke about prostitutes.”
He scrunched his brow. “Implying that I am one or that I need one?”
“Implying that I need some.” She cringed. “I’ve got endurance issues.”
“Meaning?”
Her cheeks flooded a charming red and she tried to pull her hand back.
He’d predicted the move, and put extra tension on his grip—not enough to hurt her, but plenty enough to make his insistence that she continue speaking to him clear.
“I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t know why I told you that. God, my grandmother is probably spinning in her grave right now. She raised me better than that.”
He wanted to press and delve deep into her words, but suspected if he did, he’d be hard pressed to get her to share again when it really mattered.
It was okay, anyway. He didn’t really need words.
He let her hand fall, and gently, worked her sandwich from the other. He set the foul thing on the dresser, and pulled her to standing.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
He didn’t respond, other than lifting her right hand to his mouth and grazing his lips across her knuckles.
She drew in some air and tried to take back the hand he’d reclaimed, but he turned it over and kissed her fingers, kissed her palm. He whispered against it, “¿Habla a través de sus manos con frecuencia? A los hombres?”
Her breath shuddered. “Do I talk to men like this often? Never.”
He shouldn’t have felt so damned pleased he was the only man who’d been afforded the grace of her touch just to talk to her, but he did.
He was only a man, after all.
CHAPTER THREE
Dumbstruck.
Yes, that was a good word for what Astrid felt as Fabian laid whisper-light kisses up her forearm. He swirled his lips over the delicate crook at her elbow, and stopped there as he could roll her sleeve up no more.
She shouldn’t let him get so close, to touch her when a matter of necessity wasn’t in play, but she found herself curiously spellbound by his proximity.
It wasn’t magic. It was chemistry, which to Astrid was an equally unpredictable thing. She couldn’t predict what sort of reaction would develop as a result of their commingling—whether it’d yield a discovery worth the risk of experimentation, or if it’d be yet another profound social failure for her.
She was like some rare earth element that needed something equally uncommon and unstable to bind with. She always had been.
As a child, she’d been a girl with few close friends because she burned through them so quickly. Her grandmother had always tried to set her up with prim and proper girls from their church, but they’d all found Astrid to be unusual, and not in a good way.
“You’re weird,” they’d say when she suggested they go out behind her grandparents’ lodge and shoot cans.
“What’s wrong with shooting cans?” she’d ask.
“I’d rather play dolls,” they’d say, and they’d hold up the case of Barbie dolls they all seemed to travel with as a matter of course.
The play dates were usually cut short, and when Nan cornered her and asked, “What happened this time?” Astrid always had the same response: “They’re boring.”
It wasn’t that she had any particular aversion to playing dolls. She really didn’t. She even kept a few favorites on her dresser back then. She’d just learned early on to test her prospective peers—to vet them carefully. She didn’t want to be friends with people who did only what they thought they should do. She wanted to be friends with people open-minded enough to at least ask her questions. “Why do you like shooting?” they could ask, and she could answer, “I like a lot of things.”
The shooting was just one sliver of her whole personality, she put it out there up front because she’d rather people judge her superficially so she could clear them off her slate.
She liked show tunes and was a classically trained pianist. No one ever asked about that back then.
She liked watching documentaries about Austria and Germany, because she was an expert genealogist and all of her family hailed from there. No one ever asked her about her family tree when she was young, beyond wondering why she and Eric lived with their grandparents at the lodge.
She collected fun socks and scoured discount store bargain bins looking for knee socks with holiday motifs or quirky sayings.
She loved reading funny novels with happy endings, and hated women’s fiction that made her cry.
She still sent people paper cards for birthdays and holidays, even though e-mailing was easier.
She loved to eat more than she liked cooking.
She found needlepoint cathartic, and often embroidered wall hangings with such aphorisms as “You’re a bad bitch.”
No one ever asked about those things…not until she’d become a Shrew.
The very first thing Dana had said to her when she sprang Astrid from the rehab center after her mutations settled in was, �
��Girl, what’s up with those funky socks?”
They’d had cartoon muzzleloaders on them. Astrid’s brother Eric had bought them online to cheer his little sister up. They had.
Astrid had shrugged, and said, “I do silly socks the way some women do pretty underwear. They make me feel good.” She’d signed the forms Dana dropped on her lap.
“That’s good,” Dana said. She leaned on her cane and cocked her head to the side. “You have to find your own silver lining sometimes. You’re sort of wearing yours.”
She’d liked Dana from that moment, because she’d understood. She’d asked. The ones that stuck around always asked.
Astrid shook free of her reverie as Fabian wove his fingers through her hair and tipped her face toward his. His thumbs traced the hollows of her cheeks, and skimmed her jaw line.
When she met his silvery gaze, he seemed genuinely curious about her, not anticipatory, so when he brought his lips down to hers, she didn’t expect it.
Didn’t move a muscle, beyond her eyes.
They widened as his tongue searched the seam of her lips for an opening.
She parted her lips for him…or rather, her lips parted themselves, and her brain caught up to the activity a moment too late to refuse him.
He was careful, mindful of his facial hair that could abrade her skin, and kissed her like she was his treasure. Gentle, but probing, and she closed her eyes and reflexively drew up onto her tiptoes to deepen his kiss.
His lips tasted like the honey lip balm she’d loaned him in the SUV during the drive to the motel, and suddenly, she remembered what she must taste like.
She drew back, mortified, but he grabbed her forearms.
“What’s wrong?”
“Onions.”
His forehead furrowed, then smoothed. “Oh. Is that all?” He looped his arms around her waist and pulled her against his front, and she drew in a startled breath at his unabashed arousal against her belly.
