by Beth Dranoff
Maybe.
If I just could figure out how.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“We need to talk.”
“Have you ever noticed how no good conversation has ever started with those four words?” Gus had a point. Didn’t change my need for him to share and care.
“Fine, let me be more specific. We need to figure out a plan.”
“Oh?” Gus leaned back, clasping his hands behind his head and letting me in on all kinds of armpit stench. “I’m feeling Thai. Count me in for a large Chicken Tom Yam Kha from the place down the street, would you?”
“Yeah, they do a good one...wait, no. This isn’t about lunch.” Even though my stomach was growling and some veggie spring rolls would totally hit the spot. “Did you know you have two contracts out on you now? And those are just the ones I know about.”
Gus stared at me and did a long blink. All three eyes went blank, chilling me despite the heat warring with the air-conditioning, and I remembered my temporary roommate was a merciless killer for hire.
“Are there now,” he replied. “Do tell.”
I reminded myself he’d promised Sandor not to kill me. Or hurt me. I was pretty sure about the not hurting me part.
“There’s the cephalopod crew. You know about those guys.”
Gus nodded.
I took a deep breath. “They’re not the only ones. I just landed a second freelance contract to bring you in.”
“Did you now,” Gus said, bringing his arms down slowly to rest at his sides. It lowered the stench factor in the room again, so yay there, but also meant he could get to any weapons that much faster if he chose to break his promise to Sandor.
I watched his index finger twitch, and I leaned back myself, moving my own hand into range of my nearest weapon.
“And what do you plan to do about it?”
“Honestly?” I pasted on a cocky grin I wasn’t feeling. “I think we need to figure out who keeps placing bounties on your head and get them to stop.”
Gus relaxed a bit, his shoulders lowering to somewhere not quite so close to his cheekbones.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “You gonna bring me in if we can’t?”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You gonna let me?”
“Nope.”
“Then,” I said, “we’d better figure out a plan B.”
* * *
We agreed that Gus wouldn’t kill me as long as I didn’t double-cross him and turn him in to either of the ones who wanted his ass in a sling. So I figured it was safe to take a nap before another shift at the Swan.
* * *
“Hey good-looking. What time do you get off?”
I tensed, then forced myself to unclench before turning around, ready to do a verbal smack-down on the cliché hitting on me. Because come on.
The glint of white teeth, set in a mouth so familiar I could taste it even now, flashed me a smile.
“Hey, Owain, what can I get you?”
“Jamieson neat. And thanks.”
I poured while I waited for him to tell me why he was really sitting at my bar. Let’s be serious—there’s no way the Swan Song was going to become his regular watering hole.
“I want to go out with you again.” He was abrupt, downing half his drink in a single gulp after spitting out the words.
“What?” Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.
“Let’s do something. It’s still early.” It wasn’t that late yet, maybe ten o’clock, but the more Owain drank the deeper his Irish brogue would get. At least, that was old Owain. This new guy—I couldn’t tell if he was faking it for my benefit, whether this was part of the welcome-back-to-your-old-life plan, or whether there was a small part of him that still had the conscience to feel bad about what he’d done to me.
He reached over and put his hand on top of the back of mine.
I had no idea what to do.
“This guy bothering you?” Sam dropped into the seat one over from Owain, enough room for weapons to be drawn if necessary. Then he reached over into my space to snag himself a bottle of whatever domestic beer I had in the ice bucket for easy access, twisting open the cap and tossing it back onto the counter. Making it clear that he had capital P privileges in this establishment, and with this particular bartender.
Ah, testosterone. So ready to rise to any possible occasion.
“Sam, this is Owain. The guy I told you about.” I turned to Owain. “Owain, this is Sam.”
Sam raised his beer to his lips, eyeing the competition, and nodded a greeting. Owain lifted his near-empty glass in a mock cheers before echoing the nod. Because words were just too much effort sometimes. Uh huh, that’s it.
Wait, let me tell you about this amazing piece of Florida swampland I have for sale...
“I was just asking my old friend Dana here,” said Owain, laying on the Irish for effect, “if she felt like going out again later. It was great craic the other night.”
“Again?” Sam looked at me, not Owain. What could I say? I shrugged.
Sam’s lips pressed together, remembering how I’d smelled when he’d dropped by the next morning. Before I’d had a chance to shower. His eyes cooled as they flicked down to the bowl of pretzels then back up again to me as he realized Owain must have laid hands on me. Sam hadn’t asked before because he hadn’t known to ask, because under our current arrangement it wasn’t Sam’s place to ask.
I could tell he wanted to ask.
“Dana, can I see you a moment?”
I nodded, catching Janey’s eye and waiting until she’d set up behind the bar for me before leading Sam towards the quieter hallway leading to the storage room.
“What’s up?”
Sam leaned one shoulder against the wall and took my hand in his, looking down at me. Literally, not figuratively (I hoped)—he was almost six feet tall to my five-foot-four. Home. Sam’s touch always felt like home to me. Scared the crap out of me, that. I tried to smooth any emotions from my face before I looked back up at him.
“That’s your ex, Owain?”
“Yeah.” I gave him a teasing smile. “Jealous?” Hoping that making jokes could take the sting out of the green-eyed beast I knew was lurking behind his words.
“I get that you have to work with him,” Sam said, not answering my question. “But do you need to spend time with the guy outside of that?”
“Uh...” I didn’t know what to say. I knew what I was supposed to say—that Sam had nothing to worry about, or that it was none of his business—but I couldn’t force out the words. Admit the truth; I cared about how Sam felt, and there was a reason for that. Emotions stuck in my throat no matter how much I wished in that moment I was normal and could say what should be said.
Sam couldn’t hear any of my internal monologue though; I didn’t say the words out loud.
“Have you slept with him since he’s been back?”
“No,” I said.
“Are you planning to?”
“Uh...” It was no use. Whatever I was thinking, whatever I was feeling—there was nothing I could say to make this conversation stop.
Sam slammed the wall with the heel of his hand. Whoa. And still I couldn’t force the words he needed to hear past lips too scared to make the right sounds.
“That’s it,” Sam said, spinning on his heel and heading for the door. “I’m done.”
I wanted to call him back, but couldn’t. It was all I could do to watch him leave.
* * *
“So that guy is one of your new friends.” Owain eased back in his chair and took another sip of Jamieson. Pretending to ignore the way I kept blinking the shiny from my eyes. “Isn’t he part of that shifter clan, the Moon with Seven Faces?”
I nodded.
“You’
ve been keeping some interesting company since we parted ways.”
What could I say? By Agency standards, I was sleeping with the sub-human enemy—whether Owain knew it or not. By Pack measurements, I was playing with the kind of fire that flame retardants can’t touch.
“Supes aren’t the enemy,” I said.
Owain turned to watch the couple at the far end of the bar who were draped around each other in an undulating mass of legs and beaks and fingers and eyeballs. There was moaning, the picking of nits out of each other’s sparsely spiked hairs, and a purplish puddle of gelatinous slime under their chairs. We’d be using bleach on the floors tonight for sure. Owain raised his eyebrows at me, smirked, then took another sip of his drink.
“Right,” he commented, looking away again. “Perfectly normal.” Let’s humor the crazy woman holding her shaking-loose marbles in one hand.
“It’s Pride month.” I shrugged. “Shit happens.”
Owain shook his head. Not the Dana he thought he knew. But maybe he’d only seen who he wanted, expected, to see. Maybe he was One Who’d Gotten Away for good reason.
Even now, here, I was shielding my new reality from him because it was safer.
Which pretty much said it all.
* * *
Faced Sam a few hours later at the Pack meet. From a distance. I ran with Annika, stayed where I could be seen, and shifted back the moment it was OK to do so.
Grateful that this was the last night for a few weeks I’d need to do this.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Three knocks.
The camera angled towards the door swiveled, flickering red then green. Locks, automatic, slid and clicked from closed to open—one, two, three and then the final deadbolt turn to four. On that four count, the light overhead blinked out with the ticking hum of a plastic kitchen-timer dial reverberating against a metal oven surface. Counting down, but to what?
The locks clicked back into place behind me.
I wanted to call out. And yet it felt wrong, somehow, to make noise here where the dark was thick and tasted of sweet chocolate orange.
Instead I followed my breath towards the light. Air cool on the back of my neck with the welcome relief of an air conditioner’s blown kiss.
“Close your eyes.” Jon’s voice, husky, pitched low and close to my ear.
I whipped my head around, left and right. Nothing; only the flicker of a candle on the other side of the room tricking my pupils into seeing what wasn’t as it appeared.
“No,” I said. My stomach quivered. Why did I do this to myself?
“You say that as though you have a choice.” Dark pressing in around me as headlights from the sporadic traffic, passing by beyond the glass, flickered against the closed blinds and kept going.
“I always have a choice,” I said. Because between us it was true. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not in the mood tonight.”
“Are you certain?” Jon drifted into the space in front of me. Tempting me with proximity.
I bit my lower lip and shook my head.
“OK,” he said, dropping the I’m-a-sexy-vampire-come-to-seduce-you routine. “Wine?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat, because I wasn’t completely unaffected. “Yes please.”
* * *
“Tell me what happened with Sam.” We were sitting together on orange-and-purple-and-turquoise-threaded bolsters scattered on the polished wood floor, our backs against the rough wall of century-old brick. Jon rolled over on one side to look at me, his head propped against his palm.
I thought about changing the subject. But what was the point? Jon and I were friends who happened to get naked together, and he could read me—no program guide or translation app needed.
“I think Sam is dumping me,” I said. Tears in my eyes all over again. Damn it! I blinked them back, turning my head away so Jon wouldn’t see. “I couldn’t tell Sam I was completely over my ex, and I couldn’t promise him I wouldn’t sleep with Owain either—even though I haven’t since he’s been back. And I’m not even really sure I’d want to, even if I could.”
Jon rolled onto his back and laced his fingers together under his head. Not looking at me.
“What did you expect?” Jon’s bluntness was unusual.
I sat up; all the better to see his face. All of it. Nuances, tells, words spoken through body language rather than anything I could hear.
“What are you talking about?” Blunt is as blunt does. Theoretically. “Do you know something I don’t?” Damn it. I sounded like an insecure emo teenager. Do you think I’m pretty? Am I loveable?
“Sam never wanted to share you,” Jon said. “I was already here, so he dealt with it because he wanted you.” His voice was mild, but there was a bit of kick to the aftertaste. Wait, Jon was feeling possessive too? All of a sudden?
Maybe it wasn’t so sudden. I had to be honest, if not out loud then at least to myself. But in Jon’s case the moral high ground was a lot more crumbly.
Why did it always have to be about people, emotions, as possessions?
“Claude,” I said. His asshole sort-of-ex boyfriend, who’d scratched me. A single-word reminder of why Jon and I were on a care-and-share-with-limitations basis.
“I know. So, about your new old friend,” Jon said, changing the subject abruptly. We’d slaughtered the topic of him and Claude, burning and burying the bones already. “He’s with the Agency.”
Not even a question. I nodded anyway.
“And you’re still planning on working with them?”
I nodded again. “It’s not the wisest idea,” I said, acknowledging the potential for danger, torture and possible death-by-skinning scenarios. “Owain says things are different now. Maybe this time I can avoid some of the crap that happened before.”
“Things that wake you up sweating and screaming?”
Shit. Jon had noticed.
I guess it’d be hard to miss.
“They don’t know about me,” I said. “My blood work from seven or eight years ago would still be on file somewhere, but they don’t know what Claude did to me.” And there it was again. That chasm of past. I pressed my index fingernail into the pad of my thumb, right hand and left, palms upturned; a yogic pranayama Gyana Mudra to bring me back to the now. “They don’t know I can shift into a cat.”
“Good,” Jon said, not bothering to pretend. “And if you’re told to bring in someone you know? A member of your pack? Or a friend?”
“Or friend with benefits?” I kept my voice light, fingertips brushing along his shoulder, the benefits of this friendship—or some of them—catching in my throat.
Jon caught my hand, arm across his chest, and kissed the palm heart I’d offered him without realizing it. The inside of my wrist. His lips, so cool; iced relief from the heat that penetrated even the air-conditioned chill of the room.
“You’re safe,” I said. Brushing my lips against him as my hair tickled the space where Jon’s shirt opened to his bare chest. “I would never,” I said. “No matter what they offered. No matter what was between us. You’re safe.” My teeth, crescent ridges of indentation, pressed against the undead flesh of his neck made pink again from the blood of the living. He moaned. “From the Agency at least.”
But I was in control, and this was as much as I could handle.
Left with that emptiness inside I still couldn’t touch. A heat, a brush of fur on fur. Craving someone that was missing, someone who was else.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Life was weird, Owain was back, Sam didn’t want to deal with me, and it was possible I’d be shifting into something new and far less cat-like very soon. But at least Jon and I were still friends. Even if the benefits part was in question now.
If you can’t be with the one you want, enjoy the one yo
u’re with.
Danyankeleh.
I jumped, swerved the truck; almost hopped the curb and hit a fire hydrant, veering at the last second to a screeching brake-slammed pause before continuing. Good thing it was 5 AM early. Not too many people on this particular road just yet.
The whisper came from right beside me.
The truck swerved to the right as I stared. At the last moment I braked, hard, then pulled over into the strip mall parking lot in front of a twenty-four-hour coffee place. This time the fluorescent-orange-pop-and-maraschino-cherry-red cab I cut off blared its angry horn at me in punctuated bursts of surprised frustration. He screamed something unintelligible at me as he sped past my open window.
I glanced over to the passenger seat and almost lost the long-since-digested contents of my stomach before refocusing on what was in front of me. Swallowed thickly.
“What do you want, Ezra?” Because that’s who I saw.
“Not. Ezra.” The form of my mentor went staticky, then translucent, the lines blurring between the man who had molded me and the man who should have been there to help. Another flicker of blue/grey/yellow and then it was Ezra again, even though the expression on his face was one I remembered seeing on my father. I think. Whoever he was reached out without making full contact; even so, all the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck spiked up. Like dragging a magnet through sand, targeting the black bits and leaving the rest behind. I had no idea what my father or Ezra or whoever this was wanted. The goose bumps prickling my skin were not forthcoming with answers.
“Dad?”
He nodded at my question mark, the edges of what made him recognizably him firming and fuzzing at his attempt to make tangible contact.
“Not Ezra?”
He shook his head.
“Can you prove it?” Torture me once, shame on me; torture me twice, well, I must be a fucking idiot.
“I can’t,” he said. Then: “Wait. You found my room in the house. I saw you there?” Not quite sure, even though it had been less than a day since it had happened. Upstairs, in the space that shouldn’t exist. “And Hannah? Your mother was there with you?” My confirmatory nod eliciting a tender smile and several rapid blinks. “She looks good. Older.”
