Storm in a Teacup (23 page)

I close my eyes and start counting breaths. By ten, my heartbeat is back to normal, though the back of my hand is beginning to perspire.
 

"I won't hurt you," he says again. He doesn't move his hand away.

For the first time, I start to believe him.

I've taken out four of his kind. He should be afraid of me, but I know I managed that by pure dumb luck and my first instinct to always go for the head. Unarmed and concussed, I don't have a chance against him. I hate feeling helpless.
 

By sixty breaths, I feel almost peaceful. Not trustful, not completely, but the agitation that has plagued me for the past twenty hours fades with the warmth of his hand.

That sounded more romantic than it should have. I'm not feeling that trusting.

"Tell me about your life." Mason's gaze rises to my face. He's sincere — or at least if he were a human, I'd be sure about his sincerity. He's almost too human right now.
 

If he wants to know, I don't know what telling him would hurt. I can't get more vulnerable than I already am.

So I tell him about growing up. Being an MIT. I tell him about my first sword and the first blade I really loved. I even tell him how it broke, lodged in a slummoth's breastbone, which is about as soft as compressed carbon. I tell him about my first kill and my day job and even how I got blitzed on skittles once without knowing what I was drinking.
 

He just listens. I've never told my life story before, not to anyone.

I tell him about my flight north — and the results. That prompts his only interjection.

"You really can't leave this area? Not at all?"

I shake my head, remembering the physical memory of the body-wracking nausea, the cramping that felt like my body would crumple in on itself like a self-compacting car, the night-sweats and the week that followed where I thought I would die.

"It's just how things are for Mediators, Mason. I am what I am."

And that's the demi-glace at the bottom of the pan, isn't it? I am what I am, and he is what he is. I still don't understand quite what that is.

My eyelids are heavy, drooping. The warmth of his hand on mine has suffused my entire arm, and it's making me sleepier by the minute.

"You're exhausted. You need to sleep." He watches me, his hand tightening for a moment.

"Do you sleep?"

"Yes. Not as much as you. Four hours a day is good."

"Are you tired?"

"Yes."

"Are you afraid to sleep with me here?"
 

"Yes."
 

His answer surprises me. And it makes me feel a teensy smidgen better.
 

"I won't kill you in your sleep if you don't kill me."

A smile appears, showing a row of white teeth. His canines are sharper than a human's, but other than that, he looks normal. They're not longer. Just sharper.
 

"You have a deal."

I pull my hand from his. I almost feel safer with him not in the spare room where I can't see him. I don't know how much sleep I'm going to get tonight, but my eyeballs feel like they're about to fall out of my head, and my head feels like someone's taken a bicycle pump to the inside of my skull.

I need to sleep, and that's saying a lot for a Mediator.

I lead Mason to the spare room. The bed's always made up, and my housekeeper Clyde changes the linens once a week. "You can sleep there. Is that okay?"

"I've never slept in a bed. I'm sure it's fine."

That one slides by me, causing an image of the spattery warehouse to flash in front of my eyes.

"Your heart is beating faster again."

"I just thought of where you used to sleep."

Mason's hand freezes on the door frame. "Try not to think about that."

"You think I'd dwell on it if it wasn't seared into my memory? Do you have any idea how terrifying the last day of my life has been?" I'm shaking again now. I've never felt like such a fucking weakling. I'm not supposed to have PTSD like a human. I'm supposed to be built to withstand shit like this.
 

His hand moves from the door frame to my shoulder. "Ayala. I understand. I...get it. I think. I remember certain things from my mother's life. Times she felt terror. If I try, I can imagine how you might feel."

"I doubt it." Alone in the dark, surrounded by things that want to eat you, all the while with a bomb ticking down to zero. I can't think of many things scarier than that.

I feel a tiny bit better with his hand on my shoulder. Maybe it's the gentleness of his touch. It reassures me that he doesn't mean to do me harm. Mason's hand makes no demand, no question, just offers trust. If Ben were to touch so much as my pinky, I'd be sure he had thoughts of the two of us in bed flitting about his noggin. But Mason's touch feels exactly the way he means it to — a promise not to hurt, and only that.

I pull away. "I'll see you in the morning." The words come out haltingly, like they have to fight their ways out of my larynx. He gives me a concerned look, but he nods.

Right before he steps over the threshold into the spare room, something flickers in his eyes that just might be fear.

For that instant, I think he really might fear me as much as I fear him. It's ludicrous — without a sword or a machete or a rocket launcher I'm no closer a match for him than a chimpanzee armed with a banana.

Yet I know what I just saw.

I close the door to my bedroom and turn the measly lock on the knob. If he's going to be sleeping here, I might have to invest in a deadbolt for my bedroom. And Gryfflet thought I was reclusive and paranoid before.

The sheets feel cool against my skin, but they do nothing to calm the fluttering in my chest or the still-sloshy sense of motion in my head.

When twelve minutes go by and my eyelids still refuse to close further than halfway, I drum my fingers against my mattress. My breath comes faster, and my head feels heavy. There's no way I'm sleeping. He could be here to lull me into some false sense of security and then take me out, but I don't think that's the case. That would sort of negate the whole saving my life thing.

I think of the way Mason said
please
as he put out his hand and waited for me to give him the okay. His too-warm touch is foreign, yes, but it reassured me then. Maybe it will do it again. I have to sleep, and I can't do it with a big, dark question mark in the spare room.

I push back the sheets and stand, breathing deeply for thirty seconds until my heart slows and my dizziness fades. The lock pops open with a click as I turn the knob, and suddenly the four feet between my door and his feel like a city block.

My knuckles rap at the door. It opens. Mason stands right inside the threshold. The bed looks untouched. Has he just been standing here?

"You can't sleep either," he says.

Either? I look past him at the bed. "But –"

He points to the floor.

Oh.

I make myself look up, swallowing at the way my head spins. I hate the concussion for making me dizzy. I hate that I'm having to choose this. I hate that I'm terrified in my own home.

"No, I can't sleep," I tell him. "I think it would be better if we were in the same room. So we know where each of us is."

Relief passes over his face, surprising me. A thin sheen of perspiration on my upper lip catches the freezing cold air from the vent.
 

"I think that's a good idea."

Mason follows me into my bedroom.
 

I pull back the duvet and the sheets, and after a moment's thought, tug the duvet farther over on my side, leaving only a sheet covering what will be his side. He's so much warmer than me. I don't know if he sweats, but if he does, he'd drench my duvet. It's been ages since there was a male anything in my bed. Last time it was a witch who liked things way too kinky. When he tried to tie me up without permission, I knocked him out. I left him on the sidewalk outside the Triton with a twenty-dollar bill taped to his shirt for a taxi ride home. Fucker.

The memory is oddly soothing. I slide onto my bed and under the sheet and duvet. After a beat, Mason makes his way over to the other side of the bed and pulls back the sheet. He leaves his purple pants on. I find that soothing as well.

I click off the light and turn on my side toward the shade in my bed.
 

"I can hear your heart," he says.

So can I. I also hear the sound of his hand sliding toward the middle of the king-sized bed. I know what he means by it. I reach mine out and take his.

I fall asleep clutching his hand in mine.

CHAPTER THIRTY

In spite of all my fears to the contrary, I wake up Saturday morning.

My palm is slicked with sweat, but it's still firmly attached to Mason's.

He's awake, staring at the ceiling. He looks over at me when I stir.

"You slept a long time. Ten hours."

"And you only slept four? Have you been lying here awake for the last six?"

"No. Only the last three. I slept a long time too."

Huh. Maybe he was more worn down than I gave him credit for. The fact that I made it through the night without getting ripped down the middle makes me comfortable enough to shower. I find Mason in the kitchen with a large box when I come out.

"My clothes. The box was outside the front door."

My hundred dollars extra postage paid off. He goes into the spare room to change and comes out in a pair of dark rinse blue jeans that fit a little too loosely and a royal blue t-shirt that fits a little too close. His hair waves back from his face, and his eyes almost match the jeans.

"Does this make you more comfortable?"

Well, it's not purple pants. I nod, even though seeing a shade clothed makes him almost more unsettling. He could blend with humanity this way. He'd blend like a bodybuilder, but still blend.

Shades are a lot easier to spot in a crowd if they're nude.

But I don't say that. Instead, I offer him coffee.

"Can you eat people food?" The moment the words leave my mouth, I see the unintentional double entendre. "Fuck monkeys. I mean, like bagels. Or spaghetti."

My little episode of verbal diarrhea earns me a smile. "I don't know."

That's not reassuring. "What can you eat? And are you hungry? Thirsty?"

"I eat meat."

"Meat."

"Just meat."

Oh, good.

"The second you start thinking I look tasty, let me know so I can go buy you a steak or something."

"You don't look tasty."

For some reason, I find this mildly offensive. "I'm sure I'm delicious."

"I'm sure you are, but I promised I wouldn't eat you."

Now I've got goosebumps in all sorts of places. I don't want to leave him alone, but I also don't want to risk Mason getting peckish and forgetting I'm not a snack. I get my coffee and settle in front of my laptop, eying Mason over the screen. A quick search gives me the name of a butcher shop that delivers on Saturdays. It's run by a bunch of morphs, which makes sense. Morphs are carnivores. I don't think I've ever seen one eat a salad.

I send an order for forty pounds of flank steak, which makes me wonder how much a morph like Arnold would have to eat to be so ripped. A helpful little box bings when I'm done paying that says the order will arrive in four hours.

"You can avoid eating me for a while, right? Like four hours?"

"I ate a deer two days ago. Most of a deer. I should be fine for a couple days."

"Well, I got you some steak. Don't chance anything."

"I'm not going to eat you even if I get hungry."

"That's sweet, but I'd rather have something for you to eat. Do you like beef?"

"Never had it."

This is one of the weirder conversations I've had.

I feel better today. Not just my head, which has stopped feeling like a sponge sloshing around in a ball of water, but I feel better about having Mason here. Not hills-are-alive, prancing about better, but at least my heart isn't having palpitations twice a minute. Talk of eating me notwithstanding.

There are still bagels left from what Mira brought me yesterday, so I eat a couple of those with cream cheese and lox. When I offer the lox to Mason, he sniffs at it appraisingly, then makes a face.

"Fish don't count as meat?"

"It smells funny."

"It's smoked."

He shakes his head. "I don't want to eat that."

Good thing to know. If I'm afraid he's looking at me like lunch, I can always rub some lox all over me. It'd smell better than I did two nights ago.

There are a lot of novels out there about fictional creatures who drink blood. For some reason, teen girls and boys seem to swoon over the idea of something wanting to feed off them. Let me make something clear. Any creature that wants to eat you — any part of you — isn't sexy. Sorry.

I don't know what to do with a shade for the day when we're stuck inside my apartment, so I turn on the television, and he sits next to me on the sofa again. I show him how to change the channels. It's strange showing someone how to watch TV. It's like he's from the eighteenth century or something.