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“Well, if that’s all, I guess I’ll just go home,” Nell said, her voice still irritated. “Since Anyan’s finished clarifying for Jane, in one sentence, what I’ve failed to explain in three weeks, I’m obviously no good here. ”
Anyan laughed, then made soothing gestures toward Nell’s wounded pride. I also made some concessionary noises from my corner of the couch, but my heart wasn’t in it. Not least of all because, while a corner of my brain was still mulling over what I’d just thought about Anyan, the rest of my body was doing its best to fall asleep in the nest of warmth and comfort that was my corner of the sofa.
“Jane, are you coming?” Nell barked from the doorway. I started to struggle to my feet when I felt Anyan, from the other side of the room, push me gently back down onto the couch. I’d let my shields down when we walked inside, a luxury I allowed myself only around Nell or the barghest, so it took me a confused second to figure out how he’d gotten past my guard.
He didn’t, my brain worked out as I saw Anyan say something quietly to Nell, who looked at me, nodded, looked at the barghest, scolded, and then apparated both herself and her rocking chair with an audible pop.
“Anyan, I should…”
“Shush, Jane,” he said as he walked back to the couch. “You’re spending the night here. Remember what I said about being a soldier? Well, soldiers need sleep. So you’re here for the night. ”
“Um, but where will you…”
“No worries, I can take the couch. You can have all the upstairs to yourself. There’s clean towels for the shower up in the little cabinet outside the bathroom door. If you need any… girlie stuff, I can have Nell send it over. ”
“Um, as long as you have shampoo to get the salt out of my hair, I’m pretty low-maintenance. ”
“Yup, and I think it even has conditioner in it,” the barghest replied. “It was on sale,” he added hastily, as if the addition of conditioner to his shampoo might make me doubt his masculinity.
“Great,” I said as I yawned so hard my jaw popped. “But I don’t have anything to sleep in…”
“You can borrow something of mine. ”
Anyan’s response was immediate and forceful. For some reason, it made me smile.
“Unless you want me to call Nell?” he amended.
“No, that’s fine. I just need a T-shirt or something,” I said as I stood up from the couch.
Anyan smiled down at me, the skin at the corners of his iron-gray eyes crinkling. But before I could return his grin, he’d turned to walk toward the stairway to the loft. I followed, hustling to keep up with his long strides.
I took a deep breath as we walked upstairs. The idea of encroaching on the barghest’s man space was both terrifying and… my idea of heaven, really. So I was in full snoop when we finally got to his loft bedroom. The space was large, about half the size of the whole downstairs, with a small en suite bathroom. Big canvases hung about the room or were propped up against walls, with smaller works of art dotted around here and there. None of them were done by Anyan up here, and some looked suspiciously similar to very famous pieces I remembered from my art history classes.
Besides art, there were books everywhere. Piled up on tables, set into bookcases, towering precariously in stacks well over barghest-high. Many of them were jumbled around the huge, rumpled bed standing in the corner. The bed was the barghest’s sole concession to his own identity as an artist, as he’d very obviously done the ironwork; it looked like the bedstead version of the cartoon in the bathroom.
Only those little figures are engaged in an epic battle, while these little figures are diddling one another, I thought, blushing as I realized that this piece of art was decidedly more Kama Sutra than Bhagavad Gita.
Tearing my eyes from Anyan’s raunchy, raunchy bed (Delightful! my libido purred), I watched as the barghest pulled a T-shirt from a low chest of drawers in the corner.
“Let me guess, it says Purina,” I joked as he handed it over.
He paused, still holding the shirt, and actually blushed. “Beggin’ Strips, actually. I can get you another…”
I laughed. “No, that’s fine. Anything is fine. ”
There fell an awkward silence as we stood in his bedroom, me holding his shirt and looking down at Anyan’s big feet shuffling nervously in front of me.
“Well, everything in the bathroom should be self-explanatory. If you need anything, just holler. Otherwise, I’ll see you in the morning. Do try to sleep as much as you can,” he chided gently.
“Yes, sir,” I responded impudently. “And thanks,” I added, meaning it.
“You’re welcome. Sleep tight, Jane. ”
“You, too. ”
I watched as Anyan walked downstairs, then made short work of a very hot shower. Before I knew it, I’d thrown on the T-shirt—it fell to well below my knees—and was slipping in between Anyan’s soft, hunter-green flannel sheets.
I lay back, listening to Anyan putter around downstairs as my eyes took in the circus of metal flesh dancing before me, upside down, from Anyan’s headboard. Soon enough, however, I heard the creaking of the sofa. Then the light shut off downstairs and I was alone, in the dark, in Anyan’s room. His sheets smelled like cardamom, as well as another scent I realized, after a moment, must be his body. That thought brought me back to full wakefulness, and I lay in the dark, eyes wide, before turning on my stomach and burying my face in the pillow. Which also, of course, smelled like Anyan. I sighed, then began counting down from one hundred as I traced my finger over the intricate curlicues of iron in front of me.
Soon enough my fatigue won out and sleep stole over me, but that meant I began to dream. I dreamed of Iris being attacked and myself, standing like a statue, unable to help her and unable to look away. As the nightmare took hold, my brain screamed at me to wake up. Swimming to the surface, my consciousness struggled, wanting so desperately to rest but unable to face the nightmares that lurked—
The bed dipped as the heavy form of a giant dog leaped up next to me, made three tight circles, then lay down with its head cradled in the small of my back.
“Anyan,” I mumbled, my mouth curving in a smile. I knew I was safe then, and I let the darkness swallow me.
This time, when dreams came of Iris’s attack, at my side was a wolfhound made of white light, who snapped and bit at my friend’s tormenters till they fled and I held Iris safe and close and close and safe…
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I pressed the side of my face into the pillow, snuggling back into the heavy arms blanketing my midriff, but the humming wouldn’t stop…
The warm arms holding me withdrew and suddenly I was cold. At least the noise had quieted. Then I heard a door click shut, then a muffled voice, and then I realized I wasn’t in my own bed or on my own couch.
Arms? I thought, realizing I was at Anyan’s and remembering my dream. Arms? Doggies don’t have arms…
Before I could think through the fact I’d apparently just woken up with the barghest of my dreams wrapped around me like a big, hairy man-girdle, the big, hairy man in question emerged from the bathroom to stand in front of me, with a towel wrapped around his waist and his cell phone pressed against his ear.
Clothes don’t shift with the shape, I remembered, swallowing nervously.
“Jane, get up,” Anyan barked, not exactly using the tone of voice I expected from anyone with whom I had just noneuphemistically slept.
“Ummmm,” I said intelligently, suddenly needing coffee, and a cold shower, and, if I was entirely honest, a wank. Although I knew that was not at all appropriate given that I was in someone else’s bed.
Maybe you and the barghest can wank together, my irrepressible libido suggested, even as Anyan picked my clothes up from where I’d stacked them on his dresser and threw them at me.
“Trill tracked the kappa all over the place, till he finally returned to Rhode Island and what looked to be another
lab. So she contacted the local investigator. They did, indeed, find a dockyard lab nearby, and they’re getting ready to raid. We gotta hustle!” he yelled, already running down the stairs.
Iris, I thought, all thoughts quashed other than fear for my friend. Please don’t let them botch this raid.
We hit the road just twenty minutes later, and within the hour we met Orin and Morrigan’s private jet—it was good to be Alfar—at Eastport’s little municipal airport. They flew us directly to Providence, where we were met by two of the local supernatural investigator’s deputies.
The half-hour ride to the site nearly killed me as I kept wondering about Iris. Luckily, Anyan kept me distracted.
“This is going to be a raid, just like you’ve seen in the movies. I want you to participate. ”
I blinked across the backseat at the barghest sitting next to me.
“Sorry?”
“I want you to take part in this raid, Jane. You need offensive training, and we might as well start now. ”
My eyes went wide in surprise and I frowned, my thoughts swirling. On the one hand, I knew I’d asked for this. I wanted to be involved and the barghest was willing to involve me. That said, I hadn’t thought of “involvement” as including fighting. I guess I just thought I’d do research and try to make connections, like I’d done with Ryu at the Compound and then, later, in Boston.
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