by Zoe Chant
Mikhail’s gaze blanked, and Joey knew he was remembering how he had discovered an Oracle Stone deep in the caves of Playa del Encanto, the little town on California’s coast that they both now lived in. Oracle Stones were as rare as they were powerful. But the discovery had nearly turned into a disaster when the Guardian of southwestern America, a red dragon named Fu Cang Long, went renegade and tried to kill Mikhail in order to steal the Oracle Stone.
Mikhail’s eyes narrowed. “What did the Empress say?”
“Nothing unexpected. She requested me to aid you by finding Cang, as your orders are still to remain here to guard the Oracle Stone site. Once I find him, one of you Knights can capture him and turn him over to Imperial justice.” Joey paused, finding it difficult to focus on these serious subjects while his fox was still leaping about inside him, tails waving madly as he yipped, Mate-mate-mate! “It took me so long to get back because I had duties. First to my family. I couldn’t go to China and not see them.”
Mikhail agreed. That would be perceived as an insult.
“Then I met a young shifter who needed a change of scene, so I arranged for him to come here as an exchange student. Speaking of whom, I ought to see that he’s settled in.”
Bird returned before Mikhail could reply. She smiled as she said, “There! I’d call that a successful day, wouldn’t you?”
“Very,” Joey said, under his breath.
Almost, his fox yipped. We should be sniffing out our mate. Then everything will be perfect. Let me out, so I can test the air for her wonderful scent—
Joey firmly squashed his fox down as Mikhail said, “I think we ought to have Joey over. For a meal. Lunch, or dinner. Maybe both. Since he’s back. And, ah, bring your friends, Bird.”
Bird looked a little surprised, but she was too sweet-natured to do anything but agree. Ruefully, Joey thought that Mikhail Tadeusz Kosciusko Tian-Long, Dragon Knight, Sentinel of the Imperial Peace, Defender of the Celestial Realm, was a most formidable mythic warrior, but outside of his area of expertise, he was as subtle as a blowtorch.
Joey said firmly, “I won’t trouble you. I’m certain you both could use a rest after the labor of making this wedding so successful. However, Mikhail, perhaps we can meet to discuss whatever you’ve learned about Cang since I left.”
At the mention of the traitor red dragon, whom he’d once regarded as a friend, Mikhail looked like the formidable dragon knight again.
Bird’s brow puckered. “Cang was very dangerous. I hope neither of you has to confront him.” She had been there when Cang had collapsed that cave with no concern for anyone who might be inside.
“My orders are merely to sniff him out.” Joey tapped his nose and smiled to reassure her. “The Empress will bring in the heavy hitters to actually deal with him.”
She looked relieved. “I’m going to walk up to the house and get this frosting out of my hair. Flies were buzzing around my head as I said goodbye to Jen and Godiva.”
Mikhail kissed her. Joey looked away, not because there was anything wrong with the kiss—the very opposite—but because his heart began to thrum, and Doris’s image appeared before his mind’s eye.
Mate! yipped his fox.
As Bird walked away, Mikhail looked at him with concern in his usually austere face. He was a formidable man who didn’t flinch when attacked by a two-hundred foot kraken with teeth as tall as he was. But now he was actually . . . shuffling.
Joey was tempted to make an excuse and leave, except he could see how troubled his old friend was. “Everything is good. That is, it’s good that at last I’ve found my mate. I’ve spent a lifetime helping others, and I always hoped there’d be one for me. And there she is.”
Mikhail’s gaze swung his way. “Is it possible that only you felt it?”
Clearly he had observed Doris shut down before her fast exit. Joey wondered if all of them had seen it, and he’d been fooling himself that they’d missed it. “No. It doesn’t work like that.”
Mikhail was the expert in knightly deeds, but Joey’s experience helping shifters find and court their mates made him the expert in the area of love.
He closed his eyes and let his fox rise just far enough for him to perceive the foxfire meridians glowing in the air around them. Mystic shifters sensed the world in different ways than humans. Many were aware of the mystic energy called qi connecting earth, air, water, and fire with living things. Joey saw that, too, but he also perceived each living being with thin glowing threads of foxfire pulsing along their meridians.
As he’d expected, an entirely new set had opened up, glimmering gold, belonging exclusively to his mate. He sent his mind outward and saw where she was and where she had been. But he only let himself see it long enough to recognize what it was, and then suppressed that glowing, beckoning trail in the mythic plane.
He opened his eyes. “She felt it. I saw it. I can sense her now, but I won’t go there again until she gives me permission. I can’t deny the bond. We can try, but it messes us up. Humans . . . can choose to deny it.”
Mikhail gave a soft sigh. “I don’t know Doris well. She’s very quiet. Practical. Trustworthy. Bird likes her quite a bit.”
Joey knew an encouraging tone when he heard it. He had to smile at Mikhail’s diffident attempt to be supportive. Joey had dated women before, and he’d genuinely liked every one. Many had stunning features, but none of them were beautiful in the way Doris was beautiful—much more than the sum of her lovely, entrancing parts.
He had instantly recognized that she had the kind of beauty that comes of being a genuinely good person. Foxes—so good at disguises—were very, very good at sniffing out falsity. The lines around Doris’s dark eyes were shaped by intelligence, caring, and laughter. There was secret sorrow there, too. Joey wondered if that was a part of why she had met his gaze with simmering heat to match his own—and then had shuttered it all away, masked herself completely, and turned her back.
“It’s going to be a challenge,” Joey said on an exhaled breath. “But the best things in life often are, eh?”
“True.” Mikhail still looked troubled. “You must let me know if there’s anything
I can do to help.
“Thank you, old friend. I’ll let you get back to your wife now. It’s been a very long day for us both.”
Joey walked to his car below Mikhail and Bird’s house, the stars twinkling peacefully overhead. How strange that the world was so quiet and peaceful, the air perfumed from the roses in the garden, the sea breeze carrying the tang of brine. How everything seemed exactly as it had before.
How was that even possible? He felt as if a hidden orchestra should burst into symphony, the sky should fill with fireworks, even shooting stars—something big and wonderful, befitting how his life had changed between one heartbeat and the next.
But the quiet remained.
He started his car, and drove away, his mind racing faster than the engine.
His habit had been to move every ten or twenty years, but he had resisted moving from Playa del Encanto. He liked working at the university—he liked California’s balmy weather—he liked his rambling adobe rancho-style house at the edge of the town. It was open to the hills and valleys inland from the great cityscape, where foxes could run free.
But he could get all those elements elsewhere. Now he understood why he had resisted change. The mate bond, unfelt until he and his mate came face to face at last, had kept him in place until their paths could cross.
The rest was up to him . . . and to Doris.
Thinking her name brought back that image of her expression closing to a frozen politeness as she excused herself and left him behind.
He drove faster than was prudent, but he could not outrun the questions—and the regrets, not just on his own behalf. Though he’d lived until now without finding her, at least he’d had hopes of a mate. She, a human, had made a life for herself without being aware that the mate bond even existed.
The old aunties over in Ch
ina would say it was fate.
Fate! Mate! his inner fox yipped, all nine tails waving like banners as he leaped around and around in a circle. Find her! Give ourself to her! Make her happy!
Joey squashed his irrepressible fox yet again. He wanted nothing more than that right now—to find Doris, speak to her. Hold her. Taste her kisses, feel her laughter.
Love her.
But all of that must wait. It was like encountering a lone fox in the wild. He must first earn enough trust for her to put a small door in that wall she had thrown up between them.
THREE
Doris
When Doris got to her car, she turned her phone back on with a sigh. Instantly, texts and call alerts booped and beeped and jangled. Nineteen calls, twelve texts—over half of those from her mother.
Business as usual.
Doris started up her car, hooked her phone up to the car’s audio system, and listened to the messages as she drove home.
The first was from her mother, three minutes after Doris had turned off her phone before the wedding. “Doris! Call home the minute you get this!”
Doris reflected for the 13,674th time that though she’d bought her own place as soon as she could afford to all those years ago, her mother still insisted that the house that Doris had grown up in was home—until of course, she was married.
Bleep!
“Doris, Lynne here, calling from the synagogue. I’m so sorry, but Judith miscounted and we’ll need two more pies—”
“Underestimated as usual,” Doris said to the windshield with mild triumph. “Two extra already baked.”
“Mrs. Leberwoots, this is a courtesy call to follow up on our call about our special offer—”
Bleep!
“Doris! This is your mother. Why aren’t you answering? I’ve called the synagogue, and nobody’s seen you today. Your sister Sylvia has terrible news about Nicola. She’s fallen prey to a man-gold-digger! Call me!”
Bleep!
“Doris, Sylvia here. Mother seems to think you’ve been abducted by terrorists, or ninjas, or maybe aliens. Nicola’s done it again. Call me.”
Bleep!
“Doris, this is Sandra Eccles. Listen, one of my kids has this soccer thing the same day as the Valentine’s Day Dance, which will put us one chaperone short. I know you did it last time, and the time before, but you don’t have kids, or in-laws breathing down your neck. I’d love a schedule just about me, ha ha! Anyway, if you can—”
Bleep!
“Doris! I’m about to call the hospitals to make sure you aren’t in the emergency room.”
Bleep!
“Doris, Sylvia again. It’s about my daughter. Nicola’s hooked up with yet another loser. As if three failed marriages weren’t enough! You need to talk to her—she only seems to listen to you. If she listens to anybody. Call me first!”
Doris pulled up at her house. The rest of the missed calls were her mother’s, sister’s, and another familiar faculty member’s numbers—someone notorious for slipping out of extra duties due to last minute emergencies—along with two “unknown callers.”
With an immense sense of satisfaction, she deleted the lot.
Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!
She let herself into her quiet house, which wasn’t much to look at, but it was hers. And she was not lonely. No-siree-bob. She should hang a sign out front declaring this space Spinster Paradise. She only had to pick up after herself. She ate when she wanted, and on her days off she could sleep in as long as she liked, wear pajamas all day if she felt like it, then hog the bathroom for a two hour bath by candlelight if she wanted, and no one could complain.
Nothing stirred. She shut the front door with a sense of shutting out the world. The world, and . . .
And there he was, as vivid as if he’d followed her inside: Joey Hu, imprinted on her retinas. Once again a peculiar burst of warmth ignited behind her breastbone. It was . . . unsettling. Yes. That was the word.
“Sixty-two, about to retire. I’m too old for this,” she grumped. She evaded defining exactly what ‘this’ was as she headed to the kitchen to boil water.
She looked at her tea canisters. Tea was civilized. It didn’t take you by surprise and shake everything up. Bird had introduced Doris to good tea, and served as Doris’s main guinea pig for her recipes. That was as much adventure as was appropriate for a spinster on the verge of retirement.
She just wouldn’t think about Joey Hu—
And there she was, thinking.
“Ugh,” she said to the teakettle. “Oh, why am I talking to you?”
The kettle, as if in answer, began whistling.
Doris was reaching for it when her phone rang—not They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Ha, which was her mother’s ringtone, or I Feel Pretty, which was her sister Sylvia’s. Instead, The Ride of the Valkyrie thundered suddenly in her hand. Doris nearly dropped the phone.
“Why did I think that ringtone for Godiva was a good idea?” She picked up, but long experience kept her from putting the phone to her ear.
“Doris!” Godiva’s voice bellowed out, amid much crackling. She always used speakerphone at maximum volume. “What are you doing?”
“Making tea,” Doris said.
“Make enough for three,” Godiva ordered. “Jen and I are outside your house.”
Doris had to laugh. Of course she hadn’t gotten away with her rude retreat from that wedding. But unlike her family, whose drama was always about themselves, this third degree would be about her.
She wasn’t at all certain that was an improvement.
A minute later they were inside her kitchen. Jen was quiet in that distant, slightly sad way that Doris resisted accepting as the new Jen, so unlike the chatty, passionate Jen when Robert was alive. In contrast, Godiva filled the room with her energy. It always amazed Doris how so small a woman could make every space seem scarcely big enough to contain her.
“Pick your cups,” Doris said. “You’re getting Wuyi Oolong.”
Doris’s beautiful antique teacups lined a set of shelves. She had no complete set, just onesies and twosies inherited from sundry grandmothers and great-aunts. For years she’d kept those fragile old teacups carefully packed away. When she’d turned fifty, she thought, why? They were beautiful, and they deserved to be used.
They were hand-painted, probably by the ancestors who had brought them from Eastern Europe when they were chased out by governments in search of scapegoats for their bad economic decisions.
Jen picked the one with the pink roses, and Godiva arrowed straight for the cobalt blue and gold one, carrying it to the table with both hands. She had always valued beautiful things.
Usually Doris went for the dainty Victorian cup with graceful star-shaped flax flowers in cheery yellow. She’d had her kitchen painted to match the cup. But today she found herself reaching to the top shelf for the oldest of the cups.
If her grandmother’s grandmother was right, this cup dated back to the days when Polish cavalry riders affixed wings to their armor to look like they could fly, in order to intimidate their fierce enemies from Russia and Austria. She’d always thought the faded figures chasing around the rim of the bone-white teacup were flying horses. But one day she’d held the cup up to strong morning light and discovered that the gilt figures were dancing foxes with several tails fanned out like wings.
The cup was unlike any other, with a gorgeous porcelain top that kept the heat in. The foxes leaped in and out of acanthus and lotus blossoms. The lid had a figure at the top for lifting. Use over the centuries had smoothed away the features of a fox head with ears up and ruff standing out.
Doris had been fascinated with the cup when she was small. The fox head had seemed even more precious and interesting because of its wear. It helped Doris understand that generations before her had handled the cup, from childhood to old age. She loved drinking from something they had drunk from.
Her great-grandmother had given it to Doris when she turned eighteen, the year before
she died. “It’s magic,” she’d whispered. “Carried from wonderful and magical lands far away to the East. The magic was good to me. Maybe it will be good to you.”
Doris didn’t believe in magic, of course, but she loved the cup. She’d first kept it packed away, then had taken it down every birthday after her fiftieth. It wasn’t her birthday now, but it felt right to drink from it tonight. She needed the boost to her morale.
The kettle whistled. Doris served the tea.
Godiva took a sip. “Ahhhh! Great. I gotta say, I’m a coffee gal, but you and Bird almost convert me.” She set the cup down, then those black eyes pinned Doris. “You busted outta that wedding like your ass was on fire.”
Doris was trying to find some excuse when Godiva shifted, her lined brow puckering. “You didn’t twist your back doing Oona for me, did you?”
It would be so easy to say yes, but Doris knew how upset Godiva would be if she thought one of her scenarios had actually hurt Doris.
“No,” Doris began.
“Then it was that buddy of Mikhail Long’s, what’s his name?”
Doris got that shimmery feeling inside as she said, “Joey Hu.” Joey. Was his real name Joseph? She would have thought a man over the age of eighteen (if not twelve) would grow out of ‘Joey’ but somehow it fit that incandescent smile of his. Joey was like joy . . .
Doris snapped herself out of it, and found both Jen and Godiva staring at her.
“You know something about him?” Godiva said slowly.
“No.” Doris busied herself sipping tea that she didn’t even taste. “Just what Bird told us all. Super friendly, popular with everyone, especially the ladies.”
“You mean a player.” Godiva plunked her elbows on the table.
It was exactly what Doris had been thinking—yet she knew it was a leap into unfairness. She shrugged, trying to be casual. “Nothing Bird said made him sound like that. Flirty but friendly, maybe.”
Jen murmured, “That’s right. Sounded to me like women chase him more than he chases them. Anyway, the other thing mentioned was that he counsels students.”
