"Good for you, but you are a nasty piece of work."
"I don't care what you think of me as long as you do what I want."
I pushed back from my desk. "No." I stood up.
She finally realized I was serious, and she looked afraid. Of all the emotions she could have felt I hadn't expected fear. "If not money, then what? What do you want, Anita? Name it and if money can buy it, it's yours. What do you want?"
"From you, absolutely nothing."
"If not for you, then your boyfriends. I had you researched and surely someone in your life must need things that money can buy."
"Get out," I said.
"I won't take no for an answer. You're the only animator who can give me Chase alive enough for him to suffer. I want him to suffer, Anita."
"Yeah, I heard that part." I started around my desk. I was going to open the door and get her the fuck out of my office. She stood up, and in her heels she was almost a foot taller than me. She moved between me and the door. I could have manhandled her, but the business manager, Bert, frowned on us bruising people while on office property.
"I heard that some of your vampire kills aren't exactly on the books all legal and nice. Everyone knows you've murdered people, Anita." She was actually right, but they had all been people trying to kill me, or people who had threatened me, or monsters who were trying to kill me, then eat me, or who were threatening to hurt people I was trying to protect. I didn't lose sleep over any of my kills.
"First, it's Ms. Blake to you. Second, people say a lot of shit about me. I wouldn't believe it all." Once upon a time I'd been a bad liar, but that had been a long time ago.
"I'll take proof to the police about some of your crimes. You'll lose that badge of yours, if not more."
"And I'll tell the police what you wanted me to do, because anyone who would really do what you're describing would do something to a live person." I studied her face. "How's his illegitimate son's health lately?"
Her face flickered uncertainly.
"If anything happens to him I will make sure the police come to your door."
"You don't know his name."
"Oh, please, like I couldn't find that out. He's probably got a page on the Internet somewhere where he's talked all about his father being Chase Zell."
She frowned at me, as though she was wondering if I was right.
"Nothing happens to the kid, or you will not have enough money to keep yourself out of jail, or at least the nut house."
"I am not crazy, Ms. Blake. I'm a woman scorned."
"He was married to you for twenty-five years. I think the poor bastard suffered enough."
That was it. She turned on the stiletto points of her expensive shoes and stalked out. If I'd known that that would make her leave I'd have said it sooner. Seemed this was my week for people wanting my very "alive" zombies for very bad purposes.
Two weeks passed before I went back to the restaurant where Micah, Nathaniel, and Jason had flirted with the waiter and, all right, so had I. This time I was at a table not a booth, and all by my lonesome. Though honestly I'd eaten more lunches alone in my adult life than with anyone else. The workers at Animators Inc. had staggered schedules so no one had lunch at the same time. Sometimes I brought a book; sometimes it was just good to get out of the office. Today I had actually brought the latest copy of The Animator, our trade publication. There were a couple of articles I'd been wanting to read, so I'd order food, read, and hopefully learn something.
My waitress was petite, blond, and female when I ordered drinks, but when the drinks came my waiter was tall, black-haired, and male. It was the waiter from the time before. He put down my Coke, smiled, and said, "I traded tables with Cathy; I hope you don't mind."
I shook my head, smiled back. "I don't mind."
His gave me that even brighter smile that I remembered from last time. I did what I'd learned last time; I smiled back. It would take two more trips back and forth from the table for me to realize that he thought I was flirting with intent. It was when he stayed at my table talking after my food had arrived that I realized I'd made some kind of tactical error. It was one thing to flirt in the safety of my group, with Nathaniel and Jason to take some of the heat and Micah to look on, but a totally different experience with just me and the waiter. Crap.
His name was Ahsan. He was a college student. He was a theater major with a minor in literature. He was graduating this year and going on to start his master's program. His goal was to teach at a college, unless his own acting career took off. I learned all this because I couldn't figure out how to stop the conversation. I had flirted first, so it was my fault, and if something is my fault, I try to fix it. But Ahsan was like that scene in Fantasia with Mickey Mouse and the brooms carrying water buckets. I'd flirted and gotten the game started, but I had no idea how to stop it. I mean, I could have been blunt-my usual-but I had started it, and so was there a way to gracefully retreat? By now I was pretty certain that he thought I'd come back by myself so I could flirt more freely with him. Eek. I was remembering why I didn't flirt for fun-because I didn't know how. I could flirt with intent of dating or sex, but I sucked at casual flirting. Shit.
I would have tried to play the age difference card, but he was Nathaniel's age exactly, so I couldn't claim that an eight-year age difference weirded me out. I was debating on exactly what I could do to let him down gently, or whether I was irritated enough to let him down hard, when I felt energy. Not just regular human psychic energy, but shapeshifter energy. It was someone powerful enough that it raised the hair on my arms and crawled down my back, to see if it could find my own beasts. Those shadows inside me moved almost like a hand caressing deep within my body. God, he was powerful. Either he was a bad guy letting me know he was here, or he'd picked up my own beasts and thought I was a real shapeshifter. Some of their societies encouraged them to mark territory. One of the ways to do that without a fight was simply let the power out. It was a safe way of saying, Don't fuck with me. Or, it was a bad guy, and a threat. I wouldn't know until too late, so I treated it as bad guy: better paranoid than dead.
I smiled sweetly up at Ahsan and said, "I'm sorry, Ahsan, it's been great talking to you, but I've got to get back to work. I need the check."
"Can I have your number?"
"How about you give me your number, when you give me the check?"
He wasted more smiles on me, but hurried back through the busy restaurant to get the check and scribble his number on something. But at least the nice waiter wouldn't be standing at my table when the bad guy walked up. There was the remote possibility that it was a sort of preliminary flirting attempt. Some of the really powerful lycanthropes were always searching for a mate to match their power. It helped you control your animal group and keep other shapeshifters from trying to mess with you. But this felt like too much for flirting. The only reason to do the power that was making the air thick and hot and hard to breathe was to mark his metaphysical territory and tell me that he was bigger and badder than I was. Fine with me. I took my gun out from under my arm, as discreetly as I could, and put my hand under the table, gun and all.
I didn't try to draw my own version of shapeshifter power. One, I wasn't as powerful as what was coming toward me. I knew that just from that roil of power. Two, sometimes when I drew my power out it got out of hand; just because I didn't change shape didn't mean the beasts inside me didn't want out. They did. They'd damn near torn me apart from inside before I got a handle on the control. But it wasn't just the pain; there was always the chance that one day I'd shift for real, and a crowded restaurant wasn't the place for it. Also, if it was some misguided macho flirting attempt, then I would let him know he'd misread what I was, and maybe he'd go away.
There was so much power that I couldn't tell what direction he was moving in from. It was like being in the middle of some kind of heat storm. Fuck this; I had a power colder than this, and I'd used it before to keep my own beasts from rising, because lycanthropy is a thing of life, so hot-blooded it's almost more alive than the rest of us. I drew my necromancy, which was always with me. It was like opening a fist that I always had to keep so tightly closed. It was a colder power, closer to vampire than wereanimal. It swept outward through the tables; a few sensitives shivered, but it wouldn't hurt them. It wouldn't do anything to them, because nothing dead walked during the day aboveground, at least not in this town. I used my power like cold water on the heat of his power, because sex I knew; he tasted male. It worked even better than I'd hoped, like water on fire, so that the "blaze" he'd thrown out around him like a distraction went out, and only the core burn was still bright. I saw him walking through the tables toward me, and his body was edged with a wavering shine of power like some kind of ghostly heat. It was an interesting effect, as if my necromancy pushed his power back. I hadn't visualized it working quite like that, but I filed it away as useful.
I looked at him, and he looked back. We looked at each other across the few yards of space. The moment our eyes met, I knew this wasn't about romance, even shapeshifter romance. He was tall, a shade over six feet, unless he was wearing boots with heels, then he was just under. His hair was pale and shaved close to his head. It was oddly military, but he didn't seem like a soldier, or not one that the government trained. He stood there in his black suit jacket, black button-up shirt, and black jeans. Even his belt buckle was black, probably because silver things attract bullets in a firefight. He started walking toward me again, his big hands out to his sides showing him unarmed, but I wasn't fooled; the suit jacket didn't fit quite right on his left hip, which made him right-handed, and the gun big enough to ruin the line of the jacket.
He moved carefully toward my table, hands still out at his sides, palms forward so I could see he held nothing. But I knew better; he was a shapeshifter, which meant that bare-handed he was stronger, faster, and more deadly than any human in here. They didn't need claws and teeth to break your neck, just speed and strength, and that he would have.
"That's close enough," I said, before he got quite to the table; if I could have figured out a way to keep him farther back without yelling and drawing attention to us, I would have done it.
He stopped obediently, but his power slapped out at mine, and my nostrils flared with the scent of him. He'd had to call more of his beast to chase back my colder power. I smelled the thick, heavy, heat-washed scent of lion. The lion inside me raised her head and looked up at me, if something that lived inside your body could look up at you. It was the way my mind visualized it so I could "see" the beasts and not lose what was left of my sanity.
"Good kitty," I said, and I wasn't talking to the pale gold image in my head. That image sniffed the air and gave a low purr. She liked what she smelled, which meant he was as powerful as I feared. The lions, especially the lions, demand a partner that's strong. It probably had something to do with the fact that real lion males will kill all the cubs when they take over a new pride; when your babies are at stake, you want a male that can defend them.
The man's thin lips gave an even thinner smile, but he nodded, as if somehow knowing he was a cat had won me a point. He sniffed the air and gave me a more serious look. He smelled my lioness, and it seemed to surprise him. He hadn't known that I held lion inside me: good. It meant he didn't know everything about me: even better.
His eyes actually slid to the side, and I fought not to look where he was looking. I gave only the edge of my vision in that direction. He was too close to me for me to risk taking my gaze off of him completely. He probably wasn't going to jump me here, but I wasn't sure, so I only saw Ahsan working his way toward me out of the corner of my eye. The shapeshifter turned and watched him completely, not looking at me at all. Was it an insult, or a show of trust?
Ahsan paused before he got to the table, shivering a little. He felt some of the psychic energy wafting around us. He got a point for that. Psychic nulls don't survive well around me. I didn't want to date him, but I didn't want to get him killed, either. He glanced at the man still standing near my table, but not "at" my table. It was suddenly not just a dangerous situation, but socially awkward. Perfect.
Ahsan looked from one to the other of us, his smile faltering. "Is this another... friend?" He hesitated way too long before settling on that last word.
"He's not a friend," I said.
"Coworker," the shapeshifter said, voice absolutely ordinary, even pleasant. "I just saw Anita getting ready to leave and thought I might get her table. There isn't another empty one."
Ahsan relaxed. I didn't, because the stranger had managed to calm the waiter and subtly threaten everyone in the restaurant. I fought to let my breath out slow and even, and kept the gun aimed on the main body mass of the stranger. Though with his height, and the table height, he'd better hope I didn't have to pull the trigger, because the main mass I would hit was low, as in below the waist. To hit higher I'd have to be willing to show the gun to the restaurant, and I was hoping not to have to do that. He was right; the restaurant was packed full of innocent bystanders. Packed full of human bodies that the silver-plated bullets would kill just as surely as the shapeshifter; fuck. Not to mention that the amount of power he'd displayed meant he could probably put out just claws on his human hands without having to shift completely, which would have given me time to shoot him. But claws are like switchblades-fast. He could slice up the humans faster than I could kill him. The situation was just chock-full of bad choices.
The lioness inside me began to pace slowly upward, as if she really could. I knew it was a comforting illusion my mind created, but she walked up a path, and that meant she was coming closer to the surface of me. I did not need to try to shift in the restaurant. It would make me unable to concentrate on the bad guy. I worked at calming my pulse, slowing my breathing. I could control this.
Ahsan wasted another brilliant smile on me, and I fought to smile back as he handed me the faux-leather holder that contained the check. I had one of those moments that no one ever seems to have in movies. How did I pay the check with one hand while keeping the gun aimed in the right direction with the other hand, and actually keep my attention on someone only a few feet away who could probably move in a blur so fast it couldn't be followed with the human eye?
I opened the holder with my left hand, keeping my right and the gun under the table. If I hadn't thought it would make Ahsan call the cops, or talk to a manager who would call the cops, I might have flashed the gun to see if that cooled the flirting, but I wasn't ready to escalate-yet. There was an extra piece of paper folded in with the check. Normally, I'd have unfolded it and looked, but I was trying to keep my attention on the shapeshifter. I took the paper and asked Ahsan, "Your number?"
He nodded, and smiled more happily.
I knew my smile wasn't up to his, and I thought, What would Nathaniel do? I did my best to put that look into my eyes, but the smile that went with it was not Nathaniel's, it was all mine, a little bit of come-hither and a little bit of threat, as if to say, When you take a bite I might bite back. It had been Jason who first explained my smile to me, but it was an honest smile, my life being the way it is. It didn't dissuade Ahsan one little bit. His smile went from bright to serious, and his eyes got that look that a man gets sometimes when he sees something he really likes. Great, now I'd been too intriguing. I should not have to flirt with someone while I'm trying to threaten someone else with a gun; it was too hard to do both.
I glanced at the shapeshifter, and he was smiling wider, as if he understood my discomfort, or maybe I just amused him. But there was wariness in his eyes that hadn't been there before. I wasn't sure what it meant, but I'd done something that made him more nervous. If I could only figure out what, maybe I could do it again. Once I'd been able to use my petite, female packaging to fool the bad guys, but my reputation among the preternatural set had forced most bad guys to ignore the package and treat me like what I was: a predator that specialized in other predators.
I did the only thing I could think of: I slipped Ahsan's number into my jacket pocket, and fished out the credit card I'd tucked in the same pocket. I put it in the little faux-leather holder and handed it back to him. I smiled one more time, turned back to my "coworker," and said, "I didn't think you worked today."
Ahsan took the hint and left us alone.
He started walking slowly closer, hands still out. I didn't tell him to stop, because I realized that the only way to make certain where my bullets landed was to have him so close I couldn't miss. I was gambling that my own faux-shapeshifter speed would let me shoot him before he killed me. Maybe he wasn't here to kill me, but whatever he was here for it was nothing good. I would have bet serious money on that.
He got to the edge of the table, hands spread a little more, and said, "May I sit down, because I'd rather not have you shoot me where you're pointing right now." He smiled happily as he said it, but the smile never touched his eyes. I knew that smile, those cold eyes. I'd worked with too many men who had it, and seen it in the mirror too often.
"Sure," I said, "sit there." I nodded toward the chair that would put him beside me, rather than across.
He started to tuck the chair closer to the table, and I said, "No, keep far enough away from the table so I can see that your gun stays in its holster."
He gave a little nod, and angled his chair more toward me, one ankle on his knee, so that it was that very guy stance that some did, as if they wanted to frame their groin for inspection. I wasn't interested, but the lioness was, because she was one of the few beasts inside me that didn't have an equivalent on the outside. It meant she was way more interested in other lions than was comfortable for me. There was one werelion who was applying pretty hard for the job, but I kept avoiding him. I had enough men in my life.
I had slowed the lioness with my breathing and my pulse, but the image that she put in my head was not very human. She wanted me to drop to my knees and rub across him. She wanted more of his scent on us, more of his skin on us. With a gun in my hand, it was easier to push the thoughts down. I let her know that we were in danger, and that did seem to calm all my beasts. They understood danger, and through me, they knew what a gun could do.
The man kept his hands on his knees, and I moved so that the gun was angled more solidly at his chest. There'd be no collateral damage at this distance, because fast as he might be, he wasn't faster than a speeding bullet from less than three feet.
"Just so we're clear," I said, "if you try to move fast, I will simply pull the trigger, because I know once you move for real it's my only hope at this range."
He nodded, still smiling, so that from a distance it would look like we were being friendly. "You moved me in close so you wouldn't accidentally hit the nice humans. I smell you, Anita; I know I'm not the only kitty-cat at the table. It's a weakness to care too much about your pets."
I frowned. "Do you mean humans?"
He nodded, still smiling.
"I carry a badge; it's sort of my job to care about them."
"First, let's be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die."
"What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?"
"No, but knowing you care does make it easier." He nodded a little behind me. "It's a visual."
"If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger." The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control. One problem at a time, Anita, one problem at a time. Talking to myself wasn't a good sign, either, but sometimes using my own name reminded me that I wasn't the beast, but the person.
"I believe you," he said, voice dropping lower. "I will sit very, very still, kitten."
I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our table. He smiled, thinking I was looking for him, and in a way I was, because there was a second bad guy behind him. He had a blond skater's cut, complete with a wedge of bangs that covered his right eye completely. He wore an oversized tank top and baggy shorts, which could hide a lot of weapons. How did I know he was a bad guy? Maybe it was the gun in his hand that he hid under the oversized shirt. The shirt was so big it hung off one shoulder and showed off that his upper body hit the gym a lot.
If I'd had concentration left for it, I'd have tried to taste whether he was shapeshifter or human. If he was shifter he was trying to hide his energy, or the energy coming off his friend drowned him out. Either way, he was following behind Ahsan, and he had his gun out. He was wearing exercise gloves like for biking or weight lifting, the ones that covered all the front of the hand. Leather gloves in this heat-seriously paranoid, or seriously had his prints in the crime-stopper databases. Either way, I got to watch him follow the waiter to "our" table. The threat was no longer subtle.
"Nick," the man at the table called out, in a happy voice, "thought I'd have to eat lunch alone."
The second man grinned at us both, and it reminded me of Jason's grin. It even filled his blue eyes with laughter. He was damn near six feet and not built like Jason at all, but there was something about him that reminded me; maybe it was a meaner edge of that urge Jason always had to fight off, to keep pushing a situation. That was not a good personality trait in someone with a gun.
Ahsan made room for Nick to take the seat nearest the waiter, so that he and the first guy were sitting across from each other, and so Nick's gun was still very close to Ahsan. I still hadn't figured out how to sign the check one-handed, I couldn't keep the gun pointed at both of them anyway. I'd gone from having some tactical advantage to none. Shit.
Ahsan had pity on me and held the pieces of paper while I signed, and I even managed to give him a generous tip. I mean, if I was going to get him shot it was the least I could do. His fingers brushed my hand, and I realized he thought I'd given him an excuse to touch me. Normally, it would have bugged me, but I had bigger problems than his fingers tracing over my hand. I even let him take my hand and give it a little squeeze. God knows what he might have said, but he glanced at my two "coworkers" and just wasted one more really good smile on me. I tried to return it, but wasn't sure I managed. His smile didn't fade, though; maybe he assumed that I didn't want to show too much around my "coworkers"?
"He's cute," Nick said, in a voice that matched the hair and the clothes, but his hand, under the table, was pointing at me. I didn't have to see the gun to know it was there, and that he'd hit me somewhere between stomach and chest.
"He's okay," I said.
"Oh, come on, don't play coy. He's hot."
"Enough, Nick, this is business."
"Just because it's business doesn't mean it can't be fun."
"Nick would enjoy killing your waiter, Anita."
"Yes, I would," Nick said, and smiled when he said it, all the way up to his baby blues.
"Sociopath much?" I asked, smiling sweetly, my gun still pointed at the other man, because I wasn't sure what Nick would do if he saw my arm move in his direction.
"All the damn time," he said, cheerfully.
"What do you want?" I said, trying to keep an eye on both of them for movement and knowing the moment they flanked me I was not going to win. I could take one of them, but not both, not like this. My pulse tried to speed up, and that made the lioness that had been behaving herself so nicely begin to walk up that metaphysical path. If I lost too much control of my body, she'd ride my pulse and breathing as near the surface of me as she could get. The beasts found my inability to shapeshift very frustrating, and that could lead to some very painful moments for me while they tried to claw their way out. I hadn't had any of them do that in a while, but the bad guy would have to be a werelion. Worst choice possible; I might have thought the bad guys did that on purpose, but the first one had been genuinely surprised to smell lion on the air. It was just a bad coincidence.
I heard Nick take in a deep breath. I didn't have to see the movement to know he was sniffing the air.
"Don't move toward her," the first man said; "we're all going to be very calm, and that way we walk out of here without hurting any of the nice people."
"She smells like lion," Nick said, "but it's different, somehow."
"Shut the fuck up, Nicky." The first guy was angry, and that made his power flare again, which made my lion trot faster. I tried to call my necromancy stronger, to calm all this hot-bloodedness, but Nick chose that moment to let me know that he was powerful, too.
Nick's power smashed into me like a blow. It stole my breath, so that the blood in my head was suddenly loud and roaring. The lioness snarled, because it wasn't just me it had hit.
"We're working, Nicky, not dating," the first man said, and there was an edge of growl to his voice that you might have mistaken for just a low bass voice, but I knew better. My lioness knew better.
My breath came back in a small gasp. "What the hell was that for?"
"You put your power all over her," Nicky said, and he sounded sullen. He had enough power to be in the running for top lion, but there were other things to consider besides brute power. Sullen is not my favorite thing.
"You know why I did that," first man said.
The lioness began to pace more slowly up that hidden path. I felt caution in her, and that wasn't her usual thought process. Something about the second lion's energy had made her think more deeply than normal. I would have loved to ask why, or what, but she was truly animal and they didn't think like that. Something had made her hesitant, almost afraid. But what?
"Yeah, it was part of the plan," Nicky said, "supposed to show her how powerful you are so she'd cooperate. Did you feel what she could do with her powers over the dead?" Nicky shivered, and I hoped his finger didn't spasm on the trigger. "It was like water on fire, but it was power. So much power, Jacob, so much power." Again, he did that shiver, but this time he did move his arm under the table so the gun was pointed at the floor. I appreciated the caution, and it made me think better of Nicky's wisdom score.
Jacob's power lashed out, not at me, but at his friend. I got the curl of it like a hot wave washing against my legs. It made me startle, and it was my turn to move the gun to the floor. "I don't mind shooting you, but I'd like it to be on purpose, not because you've made me twitch."
"Then keep it pointed at the floor," Nicky said. His power smashed out at his friend, and again I caught that glancing blow. They were both very powerful; it was just a matter of flavor, not strength.
