by Zoe Chant
She investigated the cupboards and fridge, but found that he was indeed out of sugar and the last of the milk had gone bad. Moving as often he did, it was easier to get everything to go. At least that meant he had some paper cups. Natalie frowned over his coffee.
“Black is fine,” he said.
“Ah!” She took a Crime Puff out of the pastry box, put the rest of the pastries in the fridge, scraped some of the whipped cream off the Crime Puff, and stirred it into the coffee.
“Excellent out of the box thinking,” he remarked.
“I’ve always been good at improvisation.” She held out the cup, not releasing it until she could see that he could hold it. Their fingers touched for a moment, and then she let go, turning away to busy herself with the coffee implements.
Ransom drank slowly, putting off the moment when he’d have to get up and put a door between them. Once she saw that he could stand on his own feet, she’d realize that he didn’t need to be monitored.
The caffeine eased his headache, but as his clarity of thought returned, so did the memory of his fight with Roland. He wished it had gone differently, but he didn’t see how it could be undone now. The team (and Carter) had been as close as he’d ever come to having friends, and now he’d never see any of them again.
“Coffee’s not working?” Natalie asked.
“No, it is. I only…” Ransom fished for an excuse, then wondered why he was even bothering. Without the Defenders, he felt completely adrift. He’d save Natalie, if he could, and send her back to her life. After that, he supposed it didn’t matter what happened to him. At least now he didn’t need to worry that saving her life would mean his teammates would learn his secret. They weren’t his teammates anymore.
She was watching him, her head cocked, her streaky gold-crimson-violet hair falling across her forehead. Waiting for an answer.
“I got fired,” he admitted. “It doesn’t affect what I’m doing with you, though. That was never something I was doing for work.”
“Fired? From Merlin’s team? Why?”
He hesitated, not wanting her to think less of him. In a sense, it didn’t matter. Nothing would ever happen between them other than this one job. But it had been hard to get her to agree to let him stay with her, and he didn’t want to say anything that might make him seem unstable or dangerous or otherwise not a man she ought to have around.
“He wanted me to get permission from him before I used my power,” Ransom said. It was true, at least, if incomplete.
He watched her eyes flicker—he could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind—as she put the pieces together. “Oh. Huh. I guess I can see why…”
“He was trying to protect me,” Ransom said. “But I have to make my own choices.”
“I get it. Believe me, I get it. It’s why I had to leave the circus. I couldn’t waste my last year in hospitals, getting treatments that even the doctors admitted wouldn’t really help. But Janet would have tried to make me, on the off chance they were wrong. What I’m doing now—she’d see it as giving up. I see it as living.”
Her admission made him understand her better, though it didn’t completely surprise him. He’d never quite believed that not wanting the people who loved her to be sad was the entire reason she’d run away from them.
“I understand,” Ransom said.
She smiled, a little wistfully. “You know, I really believe you do. We’re lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“To find another person who understands.”
Ransom had never in his life thought himself lucky. But now, sitting with an aching head on a bed too small for him, he knew that he was incredibly lucky to have found her. “You’re right. We are.”
She tilted her head, letting sky-blue and moss-green strands of hair fall across her forehead. “Not to change the subject, but who exactly is after me?”
He’d put off telling her, at first because he wasn’t sure he could explain it coherently, and then because it would mean he’d have to talk about things that he didn’t even like to think about. But she deserved to know.
“It’s kind of a long story,” he said. “Mind if I have some more coffee first?”
“Of course!” She took his cup, poured him more coffee, stirred in more whipped cream, and absently ate the rest of the Crime Puff. He liked watching her eat. There was so much enjoyment in it. She ate quickly, as if someone might snatch it away from her at any moment, but she savored every bite.
Swallowing, she said, “Want one? Or another pastry? There’s nothing else in your fridge.”
“No,” he began. His headaches always left him feeling sick to his stomach; he couldn’t eat anything till the last of the pain was gone. But even as he said it, he realized that while his head did still ache, though not as badly as before, he didn’t feel nauseated. In fact, he was hungry. “I mean, yes. Please.”
“Got a favorite?”
“You pick one for me.”
She brought him a Crime of Passion Fruit Tart. He slowly began to eat. The mousse was creamy and light, more tangy than sweet, and the crust was crisp and buttery. He glanced up and caught her watching him with an intent, pleased expression, like a cat watching a long-awaited mouse begin to emerge from a hole.
She gave him a somewhat embarrassed smile. “Caught me staring. Sorry. It’s just that you eat like you haven’t had anything good in ages.”
He stopped eating, surprised.
“No, go on. I don’t mean you were gobbling or anything. I meant…” She twirled a lock of buttercup yellow hair around a finger. Her eyes were dark blue in the fading light, and he felt like they could see straight into his heart. “Every time I’ve seen you enjoy yourself, you always look surprised, too. If I was trying to con you… Well, I wouldn’t, you’d see through it, but if… I wouldn’t pretend you’d inherited money or could get rich quick. I’d say you owed taxes or had broken some law. See, you seem you’ve been having such a hard time for so long that you’ve not only stopped expecting anything good, you wouldn’t believe it if someone told you.”
She did understand him. So much so that it was almost scary. She wasn’t a shifter and didn’t have powers, and yet she saw as much as he did with nothing to work with but her eyes and her quick, clever mind.
“You’re right. It has to do with what I need to tell you.” He took a deep breath. In order to inform her that she was in danger from the wizard-scientists, he had to tell her who they were. He’d never told that story to anyone, and there were parts that he intended no one, including Natalie—especially Natalie—to ever know. But he had to gear himself up to tell her even the censored version.
“I was a Marine.” That wasn’t the beginning of the story, but it was the only safe place to start. “I was on a fire team with Merlin and Pete Valdez—Pete’s in Defenders now too—and another guy, Ethan McNeil.”
“Merlin told me a bit about them. You too.”
“What’d he say about me?”
“That you were smart and you knew a lot and you were a lot of fun to talk to when you were willing to talk, which you mostly weren’t. That you were a crack shot. And that you were so good at spotting ambushes and booby traps that he wondered for a while if you were a shifter and were doing it with enhanced senses. He tried dropping some hints so you’d know he knew about shifters already and it was safe for you to tell him if you were, but you always looked at him like you thought he was talking nonsense.”
Ransom hadn’t had any idea that Merlin had paid that much attention to him, let alone that he’d suspected him of secretly being a shifter. He thought back to some of Merlin’s odder remarks, and saw them in a whole new light. “He went on and on once about people having secrets about themselves that weren’t bad, but could get them into trouble. I thought he was either working himself up to coming out to me or was trying to tell me it was safe for me to come out to him.”
“Oops,” said Natalie, grinning. “What did you say?”
“I told hi
m I wasn’t, but my uncle and my best friend in high school and a bunch of other people I knew were, and it made no difference to me. And also, that he’d be surprised how many Marines were too, now that they wouldn’t kick you out for it. He gave me the weirdest look, then he cracked up and said he wasn’t either. And that was the last of those sorts of conversations with him.”
Natalie burst out laughing. “Merlin must have been so confused for a second, wondering why you knew so many shifters when you weren’t one yourself.”
“Not to mention the Marines having official policies on whether they were allowed to serve,” Ransom said, smiling. Then he remembered something he needed to clear up before he told her his story. “Hey—Is there any chance you’ll talk to Merlin again? Because there’s some things I could tell you about him, but I think he’d much rather tell you himself.”
Natalie’s expression sobered, her eyes darkening as she cast her gaze downward in thought. When she looked up, her eyes were still dark. “I don’t know. Don’t tell me his secrets, though. Even if we never talk, I feel like I shouldn’t know things about him that he wouldn’t want me to hear from someone else. Just tell me one thing. Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. It’s nothing bad.” And then he couldn’t put it off any longer. “We were ambushed on patrol. Shot with knockout darts. Ethan got away, but Pete and Merlin and I were captured. I woke up alone, in an underground military base. It was…” He swallowed, his throat dry.
Natalie got up and brought him more coffee. “You sure you want to tell me about this?”
“Yes. You need to know.” He drank, then went on, his voice carefully controlled. “There was a black ops agency called Apex that experimented on people. It made them into shifters and gave them powers. Some of the bodyguards at Protection, Inc., the west coast branch of Defenders, were their experimental subjects. They thought they’d destroyed Apex, but they hadn’t, exactly. It had been taken over by a different group: the wizard-scientists. They’re shifters who blend magic and science. They claim to descend from the days of King Arthur.”
Natalie blinked at this, but didn’t seem disbelieving. “That sounds like something out of Janet’s stories.”
“That’s exactly what they are. Her stories are real.” He took another sip of coffee. It was bitter; Natalie had forgotten to put in the whipped cream. “The wizard-scientists were the ones who captured us. They changed me. Made me a hellhound. Gave me powers. In their lab, I was seeing so much, all at once… I knew so much, and I couldn’t filter any of it out…”
Ransom took a deep breath, then another. Keeping it under control. “I don’t remember that much of what happened. I was really out of it. I kept seeing danger and trying to warn my teammates, but I couldn’t tell what it was or when it would happen. I only know exactly what went down because they told me afterward. Ethan had met up with one of the Protection, Inc. bodyguards, and the entire team came to the rescue. Plus Carter.”
“Who’s Carter?”
“Another one of the Apex experimental subjects, back from before the wizard-scientists got involved. He didn’t join the Protection, Inc. team. He didn’t join our team either, exactly. He sort of… freelances with us. Anyway, they rescued us. Roland too—he was in the Army, but he got kidnapped at the same time as us. Now he’s our boss. While we were running around the base, we released a bunch of magical creatures the wizard-scientists had captured. I think that’s where Wally and Heidi come from.”
The puppies looked up, hearing their names, and Heidi began licking Ransom’s hand. It was amazing how much better that made him feel.
“We fought the wizard-scientists and blew up their base. But some of them escaped. They’ve been coming after my teammates ever since, one by one.”
Natalie’s eyebrows pulled together. They were golden brown, which he supposed must be her natural hair color. Like a beach in late afternoon. It was a pretty color, but the rainbow suited her better. “Were you all experimented on, then?”
“Yes.”
“Merlin too?” Natalie had the strangest tone, as if she couldn’t tell whether to be hopeful or afraid. “I know I said I don’t want to know, but… Maybe if you don’t tell me all the details…?”
Ransom carefully thought through the minefield of what to say about Merlin, given what Natalie wanted and what Merlin would want. It was so tiring, especially since he also had to conceal how he felt about it.
Or did he?
Lucky to have someone who understands, she’d said. Maybe this could be one secret he didn’t have to keep.
“They made him a shifter, and they gave him powers,” Ransom said. “I won’t tell you what they are or what he turns into—that’s what he’ll want to show you. And he really is fine. He loves his shift form, and he loves his power. I’m happy for him—I hate seeing him sad or upset—but I’m jealous, too. It was like he pulled a diamond out of a toxic waste dump. But for me…”
She brushed her fingers across his forehead, ruffling his hairline. Everywhere she touched stopped hurting, as if she had healing in her fingertips. If she could touch him everywhere, all at once, maybe then he’d feel all right.
“You drew the short straw,” Natalie said. “Hey, remember when I said we were lucky? I’ll tell you another way we understand each other. I love Merlin, but I’m jealous of him too sometimes.”
“You are? Why?”
She made a sound like a laugh, but there was no happiness in it. “Well, now I have a new reason. He’s a shifter, and I always wanted to be one. When we were kids in the circus, we both wanted to shift, but Janet warned us to never ask another shifter to bite us. She said it was too risky. It might make us a shifter or it might kill us, and there was no way to know which would happen.”
“Merlin never tried,” Ransom said. He didn’t know it, he just knew it. Merlin loved life too much to risk it on a chance like that.
“No. I asked him, and he said it would break his mother’s heart if he got himself killed trying to do something she’d specifically warned him against. I didn’t tell him I’d already tried—tricked one of the flying squirrel kits into nipping my finger while we were playing. She didn’t even notice.” Natalie sighed. “Turned out that sometimes you don’t die or shift. You just stay the same person you always were.”
“You wanted to be a flying squirrel that much?”
“Not a squirrel specifically. I wanted to fly, and we only had three types of flying shifters. Janet would never agree to do it, and I couldn’t think of any way to get one of the sparrows to peck me hard enough to draw blood without them noticing. So flying squirrel it was.”
Ransom noticed that she hadn’t answered his original question. “But you didn’t know Merlin was a shifter till a minute ago. Why were you jealous of him before that?”
“He was the circus golden boy, you know. He got adopted by its leader under dramatic circumstances. I was kind of a tagger-on—I only got in because he asked them to let me. They took me in, but I never had the kind of relationship with anyone that Merlin has with his mom. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the circus, but… not like he did. I know he did way more agonizing over leaving than I ever did.” She frowned, seeming to search for words. Finally, she said. “He belonged there. I’m not sure I’ve ever belonged anywhere.”
“Me neither. Especially not now. The way they changed me, in that lab… I feel like I’m not even living in the same world as everyone else. I see things… I know things… And it hurts. All of it.”
He stopped talking, surprised at himself for saying so much. Natalie’s hand stole into his, and she squeezed it.
Lucky, he thought again. And he knew that it was true.
“Today I knew that you were in danger from the wizard-scientists,” he said. “That’s why I had to get you away from the motel. They knew where you were.”
“The wizard-scientists?” She sounded baffled, not frightened. “What would they want with me?”
“I don’t know. I thought maybe
they’d hurt you while they were trying to get to me, just because you were nearby. That’s why I pushed my power so hard today. The question I asked was whether you were safer with me or without me. The answer is with me.”
Natalie, who had tensed up as soon as he’d mentioned the question, relaxed at the answer. He supposed even someone as brave as her wouldn’t want to face danger alone. “Are we safe here? Do they know where we are?”
Her question triggered a memory. He rocked back with a gasp as it flooded his mind, then rushed to reassure her. “I’m fine. I just remembered the vision I had this morning. It was of them trying to get to you. A blonde woman and a big man. I didn’t recognize them. They were breaking into your motel room. But it was empty. The blonde woman was the boss. She said they weren’t going to try an immediate pursuit because…” He closed his eyes, trying to recall more, then opened them. “That’s all I remember.”
“No immediate pursuit, that’s good,” said Natalie. “And now you know what they look like. If they do come back, maybe you can spot them before they spot you.”
“I can do better than that. I can…” He hesitated. This skirted too close to what he intended to never reveal. Finally, he said, “I usually know when I’m in immediate danger.”
Natalie nodded, as if that made perfect sense. But of course it would, to her. All she knew about his powers was what he told her.
“Or you could stay at our safehouse,” he said, though he felt sure she’d refuse. “It doesn’t matter that I got fired. The whole team could protect—”
“Nope.” She smiled. “You knew I’d say that.”
“Didn’t even need my powers.”
She took his hand in both of hers. Looking down, he saw that he’d crushed the paper coffee cup in his clenched fist. She opened his hand, taking it from him, and dropped it on the floor. Then she held his hand between her palms. When she spoke, her tone was even warmer than her skin. “You endured all that pain for me.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s better now.”
“And you told me a story that you obviously would have rather not, because you thought I needed to know.”