Storm in a Teacup (30 page)

"Is he going with you?"

"No."

"Be safe."

Mason doesn't answer, probably because he thinks the request is silly.

He might be going west, but tonight I'm going south, toward Franklin. There's a green area by the mall where hikers like to well, hike. Or run. Or walk little teacup pipsqueak dogs. Demons like nature. Maybe because they know the humans they'll find out there past sundown are stupid, and they're culling the dumb norms from the gene pool. Or maybe it's just that they like the easy pickings.

They always seem to find somebody. No one's ever accused norms of knowing what's best for themselves.

The parking area has a small gazebo and a short bridge that connects the path over a creek. The bridge is mostly superfluous. A quick jump would put you on the other side, especially with the drought we've been having this year.
 

I follow the path about a mile into the woods. This particular path is always darker than some others. Overgrown. Several creeks criss-cross around, and that much water encourages the local flora to flourish.
 

There aren't any lights on the trail. If there were, they'd be yellow, not the pink that filters through the closest rhododendron.
 

There's a jeeling in there.
 

Now I'm wishing I'd brought my flamethrower.

I edge around the thicket. No way something that size is fitting in a rhododendron bush, and I'm right. It's just behind it, gnawing on a branch.

No, it's not eating bark. It's probably just sharpening its teeth. That or picking out bits of bone. When you have two rows of teeth, it's that much easier for your meals to get stuck in them.
 

I leap at the jeeling's back, drawing both short swords midair. I plunge one into its kidney, and it screams. My second sword sinks into its ribcage before the jeeling can turn, and I wrench out the first, using it like a crampon to climb the monster's back.
 

The jeeling bucks and screeches, its pink glow turning angry magenta. One more up. My next stab goes into the base of its neck. The jeeling drops, and I can't help thinking how much easier this is than the shade Gryfflet helped me take down in the diner. I'm guessing the demons didn't choose jeeling DNA for their little hybrid project.

I clean my swords with a bit of moss and call for a cleanup crew. A rustle.
 

I spin, swords out toward the noise.

"Easy, Ayala. It's me."

Ben? Again?

"What are you doing here, Ben?"

"I live right over there. I patrol here when I don't feel like driving."

I forgot he lived in Franklin. There's a bunch of condos just over the street from where I parked. Nice area. I think there's a pool.

"You don't look like you're patrolling." He's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt. He looks more like he's going to a honkytonk than demon hunting.

"We don't all have an obsession with leather," he says. "You're probably done for the night. I already took out a slummoth down the path. Pretty quiet around here. I was on my way home." He makes a vague gesture to his right, down the path farther the way I'd been going.

"I might take another little sweep. You head on home."

Ben shrugs. "You're not going to find anything else."

I wait till he leaves, then head down the path to the left, in the direction he indicated. I walk for another fifteen minutes, venturing off the trail a few times before turning back, disconcerted.

There's no sign of disturbed dirt, no slummoth body anywhere. Not even a hint of mucous on a leaf.

Was he just trying to impress me?

Maybe if he got better fashion sense, he'd have a chance at that.

Mason's already back when I arrive home. He's in the kitchen, spitting blood down the garbage disposal.

I hurry to his side, putting a hand on his back. "Mason. Are you okay?"

He rinses his mouth with water, but doesn't answer. I don't like this. And I'm surprised about how much I don't like this. He's hurt, and that bothers me.
 

My hand stills on his back. His skin radiates heat, and I rub my palm against it. One of our early trainers used to do that for me when I was an MIT. All MITs get nightmares sometimes, and she'd soothe me back to sleep telling me about how I'd grow up to keep the balance, running her palm over my back until my eyes got heavy enough to pull me down into swirling slumber.
 

It seems to calm Mason, too. He fills his mouth with water once more and spits it into the sink. It's tinged pink.

He turns to look at me. He's still naked, which must mean he just got home.
 

His eyes are downcast, long lashes drooping.
 

"You didn't find any friends tonight, did you?"

"I was ambushed." His voice comes out with a slight lisp, a tiny whistle on the
sh
.

I flick on the light, and he winces. His body is covered in bruises, still the angry purple-red of new pain.

"Your mouth?" His face looks unmarked.

"I bit my tongue."

"Oh."
 

He doesn't seem to be bleeding, and the sword gash from last night has already healed to a red line, but his face looks like he's been gutted. "You didn't expect to find shades who disagreed with you, did you?"

Mason just looks at me.

I lead him into the bedroom and pull back the duvet. He climbs into his side, his face a mixture of pleasure and stings. I know the feeling, getting into bed when the cool sheets feel like salve but every movement hurts.

"How many were there?"

"Five."

"And you got away?"

"I killed three of them." He says it into his pillow.

He killed three. I can tell he's unhappy about it. "Mason, they wanted to hurt you. They did hurt you."

"I thought the others were just new, just didn't understand."

"These ones tonight?"

His dark hair waves on the pillow as he shakes his head. "No. The ones in the warehouse. I thought they were doing what they did out of ignorance. That they just didn't know. Now I think some of them understood. The ones I met tonight, they understood. They wanted me dead. They killed a boy. I saw him hanging from a tree."

"It's not your fault."

The other two. Suddenly my flimsy glass sliding door seems far too vulnerable. "Mason, they couldn't have followed you back here, could they?"

He pulls up his head at that. "No. I was careful. I swam back in the river. The two who were left, I left them unconscious."

"You're sure?"

The memory of finding Mason sitting naked on my couch the day after the warehouse is still too fresh.
 

He reaches out and takes my hand, placing it on his shoulder. "I'm sure. I won't ever lead someone here." He stops for a moment, then meets my eyes. "What you were doing in the kitchen. Will you do it again?"

My fingers move to his shoulder blade, careful only to skim the surface of his battered skin. I stroke his back until he falls asleep.
 

This time it's I who watch him as his breathing rises and falls. After a time, it lulls me.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

I wake Friday with my head on Mason's bare shoulder and a crick in my neck the size of Texas.

He's awake, of course. His face is turned toward me. The bruises on his skin have faded to blue-yellow, and when I move the hand that still rests on his middle back, goosebumps raise across his shoulder blades.

Until this point, I haven't thought of Mason having human reactions to things, but last night that's exactly what he had. Human reactions. Disappointment. Frustration. Pain.
 

And pleasure.

I ought to be afraid of that last. I ought to fear the fact that it was my hand on his body that showed him human touch can be something of joy.
 

But then I think of all the nights we've spent hand in hand. I ought to have known that already.

In spite of the kink that's trying to keep my neck at a right angle, there's nothing I regret about this moment.

I don't even know if I want to start puzzling that one out.

Mason doesn't bring it up. He gets out of bed and stretches, his back to me. It's a marvel to me how fast he's healing. Faster than I can, that's for sure. I'd still be a walking black-and-blue today.

He pulls on a pair of jeans before he turns. "You have your meeting today, is that right?"

"After work." I look at the clock. It's only nine. I could go back to sleep, but with Mason already up, I don't want to.

This time not out of fear of what he'll do.

I shake myself and get up, heading for the shower. Go to sleep next to a naked shade, wake up all sorts of confused.

Today's not a day I want to be confused. Not even a little bit.

I'm lucky that work is busy. Laura pulls me into a meeting the moment I walk through the door, and I don't leave for three hours. Apparently the crime spree is mucking up our business. I don't have time to think about Mason or the talk with Alamea. Laura keeps me up to my eyeballs in press releases and pitches until after seven, and it's only the phrase "Mediator thing" that allows me to shoehorn myself out the door with twenty minutes to spare.

My mind is so full of a restaurant launch scheduled for next week — Ethiopian-Chinese fusion — that I am halfway across the parking lot at the Summit before I realize there are only four cars in it. Including mine.

I don't know if I've ever seen the place so barren even on a Friday night. I feel the weight of the heavy brass-handled door as I pull it open.
 

The whole Summit is empty. No receptionist, even. My footsteps ring with a cavernous echo across the foyer.
 

Alamea's office door stands open, but she's not in it. I find her in a tiny conference room at the end of the hall, sipping a ginger ale. She doesn't offer me one, just nods at the seat across from her. The back of her head is reflected in the dark window behind her.

She's at the head of the table, and now the entire marble expanse makes a ten-foot rink between us.

This is one of the weirder meetings I've had here.

"You wanted a progress report?" I sit in the chair she's indicated and start talking. She cuts me off mid-sentence.

"You haven't been following my directive."

"I beg your pardon?" I might not have been following it to the ends she wanted, but I have been looking for shades. And finding them. Just not killing them.

"You killed four shades in a short period of time before we blew up the warehouse — at least you say you did. We have evidence of only one of them. Regardless, since then you have only killed demons."

Shit.

"Alamea," I begin, "The ones I've seen have fled. And they've been hard to find."
 

That's plain truth — I never would have been able to find them if I hadn't had one to follow their patterns on my side. Without Mason, I wouldn't have had the slightest idea of how to hunt down the shades. When they don't want to be found, they don't get found.

Well, there was Saturn. But I watched him born from the grotesque husk of Lena Saturn, and I was following a hunch. I don't have any other connections to them.

"We think you are working with a shade."

My hand freezes on the crease of my pant leg. "Why would you think that?"

"Even Ripper wouldn't go through forty pounds of flank steak in a week, Storme, and I've seen him eat five hot dogs on the fourth of July without breaking a sweat."

"You've been watching my purchases?" That makes me sound guilty, but I can't stuff the words back in my mouth. They hang there like a noose above my head.

Alamea laughs, a rich, don't-be-ridiculous sound that resonates through the room. "We're not CIA. A Mediator happened to be there when it was delivered."

Ben.

Ben's been talking to Alamea about me?
 

Ben's been around way more than usual lately. He turned up in my parking garage, at multiple patrols.
 

And he lied about having killed a demon.

Has he been spying on me?