Cutie and the Beast

by E. J. Russell

  “Allspice. Cardamom. With an apple cider base.”

  She closed her eyes. “Lovely.”

  “So?” David nodded at Benjamin. “Legal for your son?”

  She smiled at him with the full force and graciousness of a queen—which was exactly what she was. Queen of the entire dragon shifter race. “Absolutely.”

  David beckoned to Benjamin, who scooted out of his chair and bounded across the room with more animation than Alun had ever seen from him.

  “Mom says it’s okay, Benjy. Take your pick.”

  As the boy made his own careful selection, the feeling under Alun’s skin peaked, as if his blood had turned to nuclear champagne. What in the hells was this?

  The odd excitement coursed through him—a combination of awareness and promise, with a darker thread of threat. It had been years since he’d been in this close a proximity to any man he found sexually attractive. Perhaps the effect was only the result of his long abstinence, unrelated to David’s race.

  But if this was the seductive lure of a human? He controlled a shiver. Goddess, no wonder some fae became addicted, so much so that they’d stoop to kidnapping and rape. Not that it excused their behavior, but it might explain the compulsion.

  Whatever it was, though, it had to stop, and if getting rid of David Evans was what it took, he’d make bloody damned sure Sandra Fischer lived up to her agreement and replaced him with a nice safe werewolf. Immediately.

  Despite the late hour he arrived home from work, all six of the “girls”—David’s honorary aunts—were gathered in the living room, waiting to hear about his first day on the job. As he’d expected, when he told them the sorry state of the gray lobby, they were horrified. As a result, they all showed up the next morning toting their own offerings to the cause, like benevolent fairies at a christening.

  So he wasn’t allowed to open the blinds. Whatever. He now had three boxes of goodies that would brighten the place like indoor sunshine. He dared even kill-joy Dr. Kendrick to object.

  He set the last box on his desk and flexed his hand. His burn was virtually nonexistent today, thanks to Aunt Cassie’s miraculous salve. He’d begged, cajoled, and wheedled—and when the bills were looming especially high, he’d downright demanded—that she give him the formula so they could build their own cottage industry. She’d always refused, which sent his temper spiraling. He was sure that if she agreed to market that stuff, their financial woes would be over—she’d be rich.

  But she still wouldn’t be well. David swallowed against a lump in his throat the size of his heart. Don’t think about that. You’ve got a job to do.

  He lifted three of Brigid’s gorgeous vases out of the first box—one a swirl of dark green, indigo, and violet; the second a starburst of red, orange, and yellow; the last an ombre, fading from magenta at the base to pale peach at the lip, like a tequila sunrise.

  The wonderful thing about Brigid’s vases was that they were beautiful on their own; they didn’t need flowers to complete them. He dropped a handful of Aunt Cassie’s potpourri—the one she called Soothe the Savage Beast—into each vase, adding a little pat to his favorite, the green-indigo-violet one. In a way, it reminded him of Dr. Kendrick. Dark, but with depth. If you held it up to the light, you could see surprising nodes of gold hidden in the darker whorls.

  In this cave of an office, those would never show up, but David knew they were there, and that’s what counted.

  He hummed as he set out magazines the girls had donated—Elinor’s Rock & Gem, Peggy’s Fine Cooking, Nola’s Woodcarving Illustrated, and a half-dozen different quilting magazines from Lorraine. He topped off the collection with a couple of gossip rags and a tabloid or two he’d picked up from the check-out stand, just for fun. He kept the Star Wars graphic novels in his desk drawer. Those were for Benjy.

  As David was about to toss all the blow-in advertising cards into the recycling bin, he noticed that the cleaning service hadn’t emptied it, or the trash either. The procedures manual had been quite specific about office cleanliness standards. This was a clear infraction. Was it intentional? Could Dr. Kendrick have slipped the service something under the table to give him another excuse to fire David for dereliction of duty?

  As soon as the thought occurred to him, he dismissed it. Dr. Kendrick might be the surliest psychologist in the history of the world, but sneaky? Never. David would bet his bow ties on it.

  No, this was a simple case of sub-par service delivery, number one on the list of David’s unforgivable sins, and he refused to put up with it. He picked up the phone, ready to speed-dial the cleaning company. Hold on. Get the whole story first, Evans.

  Could they have skimped on the inner sanctum too? He shuddered when he imagined Dr. Kendrick’s reaction to that. He knocked cautiously, just in case the doctor had hibernated in his office overnight. When he got no answer, he entered.

  “Just wonderful,” he muttered, hands on his hips. Both wire-mesh trashcans were half-full. They’d vacuumed the gray carpet, but hadn’t bothered with any horizontal surface higher than that. Cup rings marred the coffee table, and Dr. Kendrick’s used mug was on his desk.

  Right, then. First thing on the docket after he fixed this? Call the clueless service and threaten them with the Wrath of Kendrick. That ought to scare them out of their Lemon Pledge withdrawal stupor.

  He grabbed a bin in each hand and stalked back to the lobby. When he shook the first load into his own can, something rattled against the metal. He peered into the nest of crumpled paper and used tissues. One corner of a CD case was poking out of the mess, shrink wrap still intact.

  David fished it out with careful fingers. One side of the case was blank, but two words on the other side shifted his heartbeat into high gear.

  “Holy cats. Gareth Kendrick?” How stupid could David be? Dr. Kendrick must be related to Gareth, whose band, Hunter’s Moon, had swept the Grammys last year. You couldn’t beg, borrow, or scalp a ticket for their upcoming concert at the Moda Center, as David knew all too well. He’d tried all three methods.

  He had every one of the band’s albums. He hadn’t heard a scrap of a rumor about solo work from any of them, so this was new, possibly underground. David had never been a dumpster-diver, but for an unreleased Gareth Kendrick CD, he’d make an exception.

  He wiped the CD case off and tucked it in his desk drawer. If the doctor had tossed it, it was totally fair game, right? If David couldn’t catch the concert, he’d at least have some new music to compensate.

  As he closed the drawer, he compared Gareth’s fallen angel beauty—soulful blue eyes, tousled brown-gold curls, a full mouth that broke your heart even when he smiled—against Mal’s biker bad-boy good looks. Jeez, poor Dr. Kendrick had grown up comparing himself to both of them? Even if the guy was a crabby unapologetic dictator, maybe David should cut him a little slack.

  Alun stomped down the stairs, damning the F1W2 with each step. He still hadn’t been able to reach Sandra Fischer for a replacement. Her assistant had been apologetic but firm. David was the only qualified temp on their roster who wasn’t either committed to a long-term assignment or down with the flu.

  Last night, he’d been desperate enough to contact Vanessa’s father-in-law and try to convince him that as a werewolf, she’d be in no danger if she returned to work.

  That went as well as he’d expected.

  He stood in the corridor outside the door to his offices, his palm damp on the handle of his briefcase. His previous reaction to the human was surely an anomaly. A combination of surprise and the dormant battle reflexes that had surfaced when Jackson had accosted David.

  He’d spent two hours last night in deep meditation, reinforcing the control he’d perfected in decades of denying his fae roots. Since he felt none of the unsettling prickle beneath his skin that had troubled him yesterday, he’d succeeded.

  So why was he standing in the corridor? This was his office, damn it, his practice, something he’d worked for years to accomplish, despite oppos
ition from the Queen and initial resistance from the supe communities. But they needed him. They needed his work. Supe genes came with a price, which often manifested in mental instability. He’d made it his mission to develop treatments to help them.

  It was the only way he knew to atone for his transgressions.

  He straightened his shoulders, steeling himself for a recurrence of his inexplicable response, and opened the door.

  David wasn’t at his desk, but by the clinks and gurgles issuing from the kitchenette, he must be brewing another pot of his extraordinary coffee.

  Alun sniffed experimentally. Instead of the David-scent that had driven him to distraction yesterday, another smell invaded his senses. Not disagreeable or unsettling. Almost . . . comforting. He closed his eyes and breathed in the subtle fragrance. Mint. Meadowsweet. Vervain. The aroma of coffee infused the air as well, mixing pleasantly with the herbal scents.

  He inhaled deeply, and his nerves settled in a way that made him realize exactly how on edge he’d been. Although keenly aware of how resistant to change his race was, he thought he’d learned to adapt by necessity. Perhaps he was just as set in his ways as any throwback Seelie courtier.

  He opened his eyes and scanned the room, his attention immediately caught by a scatter of periodicals on the table nearest the door. The damning inches-tall headline of one of those despicable tabloids screamed at him from the top of the pile.

  Bigfoot Sighted in Oregon Coast Range!

  The blurry photograph of a shambling, fur-covered figure that accompanied the story was all too familiar—Ted Farnsworth, one of his past clients, a bear shifter with an exhibitionist kink who’d gotten into trouble with his elders for exposing their existence to humans.

  Damn and blast. He’d thought Ted had his compulsions under control. Alun snatched the foul thing off the table. He’d make a discreet call to the bear council. Perhaps this was an old photo, recycled by the paper for lack of any new sensation.

  Another tabloid, this one with a picture of a fanged human face with vastly elongated ears, lay under the first one.

  Batboy Found in Cave Under Mount Hood!

  Shite. How had the photographer captured a vampire fledgling mid-shift? The flash must have blinded the poor thing for months.

  A growl rumbling in his chest, he seized the second paper and stalked down the hallway, rolled-up tabloids held in his hand like a newsprint cudgel. Tonight was his PTSD group—humans who’d had traumatic encounters with a supe. The last thing those people needed was something like this—they’d think they were being mocked, their experiences trivialized.

  He parked himself in the doorway of the kitchenette. “What is the meaning of this shite?”

  David glanced up from pouring coffee into the urn and grinned. “Just a little silliness. Something to help folks pass the time.”

  “I have clients who would be not just offended by this, but possibly traumatized.”

  “Seriously? By a bogus Bigfoot article and Batboy?” David looked contrite for about two seconds, and then his lips firmed in a stubborn line and he exhaled through his nose like a dragon shifter attempting to light up. “I’m sorry for that, Dr. Kendrick, but perhaps if I had access to at least some of the clients’ chart information, I’d have a better notion of appropriate reading material.”

  “No.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have a better notion?” David asked in an overly sweet tone, with a flutter of his ridiculously long eyelashes.

  “No, you can’t have access to the client charts.”

  “Then maybe you could share some of your secret rules with me so I don’t violate them by accident.”

  “There’s no reason. You won’t be here long enough for it to matter.”

  Hurt skittered across David’s face and for a moment, Alun regretted his words, but facts were facts. A human had no place in a psychology practice that catered to the supernatural. He pushed his inappropriate remorse away. “You’ve turned my waiting room into a circus.”

  “I wasn’t aware that a dozen magazines, a few knickknacks, and a handful of potpourri constituted a circus. Clearly I attended the wrong shows.”

  “I like my office uncluttered. Soothing.”

  “Fine. Keep it that way. But the lobby isn’t for you. It’s for your clients, and their ideas of soothing may not be the same as yours.” He dried his hands and binned the crumpled paper towel. “Have you ever waited in your own waiting room? It’s boring. Your clients need something to occupy themselves while they wait their turn to be glowered at by you.”

  “I don’t glower at my clients.”

  “Really?” David hoisted the coffee dispenser. “Lucky them.” He walked toward the door, but Alun refused to budge. “Excuse me.”

  “I don’t. Glower. At anybody.”

  David held up the shiny chrome urn so it reflected Alun’s face, a convex image even more distorted than reality. “Take a look, Doctor. That’s the definition of glower. Please move. You haven’t replaced me yet, and I have work to do.”

  Alun moved aside and watched David’s stiff-backed walk down the hall. Did he really do that? Glower? David didn’t understand. This was just the way his face looked now. It didn’t matter what kind of expression he wore, he always looked like a monster about to attack.

  Didn’t he?

  He ducked into the restroom at the end of the hall and switched on the light. David had set a handful of potpourri on the counter in a blown-glass vase. Alun breathed in the scent and forced himself to look at his face in the mirror above the sink.

  After two hundred years, his facial deformities still shocked him. What would he look like to someone who wasn’t accustomed to seeing it? He knew. Monster. Demon. Beast.

  He tried to unclench his heavy jaw, unbunch his overhanging brow ridges, unsquint his narrowed eyes. He pushed the corners of his mouth up with his index fingers, forcing a smile.

  Shite. That was scarier than the alleged glower. He flicked off the light before he gave himself nightmares and strode down the hallway and into his office, closing the door without another word to David.

  David kept his back toward Dr. Kendrick until the door to his office closed behind him. Why in the world had he said that? He might have once visited Planet Tact, but he was not a native. Probably one of the reasons he was so relentlessly boyfriendless.

  Should he apologize? Clear away the magazines, pack the vases up, stow everything in his car? As much as he hated to admit it, Dr. Kendrick was right—David had no authority to change anything. He was only a temp. A very temporary temp, if the doctor had his way, which he definitely would if David weren’t a tad more conciliatory.

  He sighed and started gathering magazines, but put them down again when the first clients arrived, a middle-aged couple holding hands like a pair of teenagers. By the time he’d checked them in and gotten them both coffee, the woman was settled in with one of Lorraine’s quilting magazines, the man with the latest Fine Cooking.

  Okaaay. Dr. Kendrick’s OCD commitment to bare surfaces would have to suffer. If the clients liked the magazines, they stayed, every last one of them. Well, not the tabloids, but those had been an impulse buy anyway, a kind of an in-joke because the blurry photo of Bigfoot had reminded him of the way Dr. Kendrick stalked around the office as if he were on a search-and-destroy mission.

  Stop it, David. Remember—cut the poor guy some slack and maybe, just maybe, you’ll keep this job for more than two days.

  Alun avoided speaking to David for the rest of the day. He knew he was being petty, but damn and blast, he hated to admit there was anything to David’s accusations. Each of his clients, though, had been reading one of those ridiculous magazines when he’d called them in from the lobby. Half of them had asked him if he was wearing a new tie, or had gotten a haircut, obviously noticing something different about him, but not able to identify what it was.

  The only difference was that he was intentionally trying to keep his expression benign—if such a thing wa
s possible given what he had to work with.

  He had one last client before his human PTSD group—Kristof Czardos, the oldest vampire on the planet. He held tremendous status within the vampire community and had been head of their council since he’d emigrated from Hungary in the late 1890s.

  Unfortunately, he was starving to death.

  Not because his abilities had faded—he could still heal a bite with ease and cloud the minds of those he fed from without breaking an undead sweat, and his control was so complete that he hadn’t killed a donor since before the fall of Constantinople. But he’d developed an aversion to the taste of blood.

  When you had only a single nutritional option, if you couldn’t consume it without gagging, you tended to lose weight quickly.

  Even the scent of human blood under the skin sickened Kristof these days, and Alun purposely scheduled his appointments before the PTSD group, so he’d have the chance to desensitize himself against the nausea. He’d made some progress—enough to walk through a reception room full of humans without retching now—but he was still unable to feed.

  Shite. David.

  Alun’s heart kicked into a gallop, and he thrust himself out of his chair. How would Kristof react when forced to interact with a human, not just hurry by him? Considering how resistant David was to minding his own business, he’d strain Kristof’s icy restraint to the breaking point.

  He crossed the office in four giant strides and tore open the door. Kristof was standing in front of David’s desk as the man offered him that thrice-damned blood-colored dish full of candy. David cut a glance at Alun, but didn’t take his attention away from Kristof.

  “What did I tell you?” David said. “They’re awesome for an upset stomach. Have another.”

  What in all the bloody hells?

  Kristof, to Alun’s stunned amazement, took one of the pastilles and popped it in his mouth with no hint of fang. He nodded. “You are right. I haven’t felt this well in eons.”