Bitter Thirst

by SM Reine

  May Takeuchi made and served us tea, which made me bump down my estimate of their wealth by a couple million. Fritz had servants. Yes, multiple. I seldom even wiped my own ass at his house.

  “You’ve gained weight,” Sentaro said, pointing at Suzy’s midsection. “Have you been hiding at a chocolate factory?” So they’d known that she was in hiding, not missing. For some reason that surprised me.

  Suzy would have verbally skewered anyone else who had the nerve to comment on her size. But in this situation, she just said, “I’m on a bulk. It’s where you eat extra to gain muscle.”

  “You don’t need muscle,” he said. “You should have been home with us all this time, where we could protect you.”

  May Takeuchi sat next to her husband. “What brings you back to us?”

  “I came to town with Cèsar,” Suzy said. “He still works for the OPA.”

  “Oh? Are you working with Secretary Zettel?” Sentaro asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Doing my best to stop PRAY.” I realized I’d said something wrong when Suzy slapped her palm over her face. It took a minute to get any reaction from her parents at all, and once I did, it was just a couple of mild frowns.

  Sentaro took a sip of tea. “So you’re in support of letting preternaturals run free, Cèsar?”

  “Witches are preternaturals,” Suzy said without lifting her head. “You are preternaturals.”

  “A different kind of preternatural,” May said.

  “There’s really only one kind. It’s a big catch-all term.”

  “Watch your tone with your mother,” Sentaro said.

  Suzy immediately looked down at her hands again, shoulders rounded. I knew exactly how she felt. It was what I felt every time Pops snapped at me.

  “I’ve fought a lot of preternaturals who need to be regulated,” I said. “It’s not that I’m against PRAY. I don’t know. I just do my job.”

  Suzy whispered under her breath. I was pretty sure she said, “Chickenshit.”

  “It’s a good thing that Senator Peterson wrote PRAY when he did,” Sentaro said. “Without the Treaty of Dis, we need something to protect Americans from the scourge of demons.”

  “You know that the way PRAY is written will hurt werewolves a lot more than demons, right?” Suzy asked. “And werewolves are humans, just like witches. If they’ll crush werewolves, they’ll crush us too.”

  May pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please, Suzume, not this again. You read Lucian Wilder’s book. You know that once they’re bitten, the human is gone. Werewolves are monsters completely unlike witches.”

  “So you’re grouping werewolves—transformed normal American citizens—in with demons?”

  “Stop this. You’ll upset your mother,” Sentaro said.

  “I’m not afraid of hurting Mama’s supposedly delicate sensibilities. She’s an adult.”

  A familiar storm slid over Sentaro’s face, and I started to suspect I knew where Suzy’s temper had come from. “Suzume…” he began warningly.

  Suzy interrupted him by getting to her feet. “I could get bitten by a werewolf and transform. Anyone could. Even you! How would you feel about PRAY once you’re on the bad side of the line?”

  “Men smarter than you have agreed that this is the best way to address the issues facing our nation,” he said, like she was a stupid child, like she needed to be corrected and chastised. “As a werewolf, I would accept that.”

  “Could you accept the idea you legally wouldn’t be allowed around your human grandchildren?” she asked.

  Both of her parents looked at me simultaneously. I actually leaned back without even thinking about it.

  “There are no grandkids coming yet,” Suzy added loudly.

  Their attention returned to her.

  “Your disloyalty is an issue,” Sentaro said. “You should think about how you want your superiors to regard you.”

  Disloyalty? Superiors? That was some really weird family talk.

  “I might care what my superiors thought of me if they’d helped me at all in the last year,” Suzy said.

  “This is a situation of chicken and egg, isn’t it?” May asked. Her long nails drummed along the curve of her teacup—four bright taps in a row, like an out of tune xylophone. “Our support is not a gift. It’s earned. You appear stubbornly averse to earning the privilege of our support, as you always have. Especially now this.” She waved at me. “After a nice boy like Aniruddha…”

  “You took Aniruddha home to meet the parents?” I asked. I bet that boring asshole had gotten along with these boring assholes splendidly.

  “They knew each other,” Suzy said from behind her hand. She’d slapped her face again.

  “To give up on him so soon after he vanished.” Sentaro tutted, shaking his head sadly.

  “We were splitting anyway! And it’s been a long time! Am I not allowed to love again?”

  “Love isn’t the point,” May said. “You know that.”

  I felt like this conversation had veered off into territory where Cèsar wasn’t allowed to follow. I twiddled my thumbs and admired the painting on the mantle.

  “This was a nice visit,” Suzy snapped. “I’m going to get some clothes out of my room and head out. Five minutes, Agent Hawke.” She didn’t wait for a response to storm upstairs.

  Which left me alone with May and Sentaro.

  I cleared my throat, kept twiddling my thumbs.

  “More tea?” May asked.

  Something crashed upstairs. Sounded like a lamp.

  “Sure, more tea,” I said. “Thanks.” I hadn’t even sipped the first cup, so when she topped me off, it nearly spilled over. It took a real steady hand to sip from that cup.

  There was another crash upstairs.

  “She’s been having a rough time,” I said.

  “If her temperament is an indication, then she has had a rough time from the day she came into this world,” May said.

  I drained my tea. Stood up.

  They stood as well.

  “I wish that we could have met under less tense circumstances,” Sentaro said, shaking my hand again. “Conversations aside, it’s been such a pleasure to meet Suzume’s boyfriend.”

  My hand went limp. I gave a nervous laugh. “Boyfriend? I’m not—”

  “We thought she was a lost cause after the Banerji boy vanished,” Sentaro said. “We’ve been worried about her.”

  “It’s not like she’s young anymore,” May said.

  That was as far as I could let that train of thought proceed. Brakes on, lights red, stop before the tunnel. “I’m not Suzy’s boyfriend. Are you kidding me?”

  Sentaro and May gave me a very familiar disapproving look. I saw that exact expression on Suzy every time I said something stupid, which meant constantly.

  I tried to backpedal. “It’s just that—I mean, we worked together, and I would never be with someone like her. A coworker! I don’t date coworkers!” Except my boss’s wife. “And you know how Suzy is, with the punching, because I’m stupid…and she’s so smart.”

  Their looks of disapproval were deepening.

  It would have been a good moment for me to stop talking. Actually, it would have been good to stop talking about five minutes earlier. Or to have never learned to talk at all. But now that I was going, I couldn’t seem to stop.

  “I couldn’t ever be her boyfriend, though,” I said. “I came here just to protect her. Not that she needs protection from someone like me, it’s just…you know, we’re such a bad match, she’s so strong and—”

  “You can stop now,” Sentaro said.

  I stopped.

  It was still too late. Suzy had carried a backpack down the stairs, and now she stood on the bottom step. No idea how long she’d been there. She didn’t look amused or even pissed off. She just looked…blank.

  She walked past me and out the door without speaking.

  Suzy seemed to be in a hurry to leave her parents’ house. Even with my long legs, I didn’t catch u
p until she was all the way out in the garden. “Where are you going?” I asked, panting as I hurried to catch up with her. “We didn’t say goodbye!”

  She stopped. She turned on me. “First: I don’t care if I say goodbye to my parents. I don’t care about them at all. Got it?”

  “You must have cared a little bit, since you—”

  “Second,” Suzy went on, “what the fuck was up with that in there? You’d never be with someone like me?”

  I laughed out my confusion. “But I’m not with you.”

  Her eyebrows lowered into a mean-looking vee. “You’re such a fucking jackass.”

  “I thought I was doing you a favor. I came here to protect you since you’re still technically in hiding, and that was my end of the bargain. Right? I did what I was supposed to. You got out alive.” If not exactly unharmed. I’d never seen Suzy looking this wretched, but parents had a way of doing that to us.

  “That’s the whole bargain, huh?” Suzy asked. “You came here to—to protect me? And you still want me to meet your family as your pretend-girlfriend. Pretend-only, because you’d never be with someone like me!”

  “Was I supposed to pretend to be your boyfriend? Jesus, Suze, I’m not a psychic. I can’t download information from your brain into my brain.”

  “I’m not sure you have a functional brain at all! I was going to tell you tonight, but now…fuck that. Fuck that and fuck you.” She vanished into the night, leaving me alone and confused at her parents’ mansion.

  Chapter 14

  At any other time, finding Fritz’s penthouse suite empty would have been a blessing. I didn’t have to deal with interns, coworkers, or dead bodies. There was a huge TV hidden behind the wall in the living room, and I’d have at least a few minutes to catch up with my shows on Hulu.

  Now I wanted someone to distract me from all the shit I couldn’t stop thinking about. Especially that furious, heartbroken glare Suzy had been throwing in my direction.

  Fritz had left a note for me on the counter. “Preparing for morning press conference. Talk to you tomorrow.” He signed it with his initials. He wrote with the same loops as the monograms on his towels back home.

  I tossed the card in the trash. There were several pairs of latex gloves in the bottom of the can. The body had been cleaned off of the counter, and most of the garbage removed, but some evidence remained.

  My appetite vanished at the idea of eating food in a kitchen-slash-autopsy room.

  Never mind. No Hulu, no dinner. Just back to my room to sleep.

  At this time of night, there were no sounds in the hotel except my shoes squeaking on the hard wood. I felt too loud patting down my pockets for a key card, too loud turning the doorknob.

  My hand touched the doorknob. The alarm spell I’d set up jolted through my hand—I had a visitor.

  There was no sign of a break-in. My visitor was likely from the OPA, since they’d have a key card.

  Or, heck, it could be a maid.

  It was probably fine. Just in case it wasn’t, I took a wind charm out of my pocket before stepping inside.

  Isobel Stonecrow was sitting on the edge of my bed. A slow smile dawned over her face, like I was the best thing she’d seen all day. I felt the same in her direction. It only had a little to do with the fact she had eschewed professional clothes for pajamas, which on Izzy meant a silky tank top and shorts. She was ready for bed.

  I released the wind charm, pushed the door shut behind me, and locked it.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, rising to her feet. She curled her arms around my neck.

  I let myself trace the path from her lifted elbows down to her shoulder blades, leading into the serpentine curve of her spine. “Bad fucking day, Izzy. Just a bad day.”

  She nuzzled under my chin. “It’s not going to get better, I’m afraid. I discovered that the shooter was hired to discredit the protesters.”

  I wasn’t supposed to know that yet. “Hired by whom?”

  “I’m guessing Zettel,” Izzy said.

  The words didn’t sit right with me. At this point, Zettel was looking like the good guy—not a comforting reality, but hey, reality didn’t design itself around my tastes. “Hiring protesters against his own agency seems…”

  “Evil?” she suggested. Her lips rested on my pulse point.

  “Zettel’s not like that.”

  She leaned against me with a sigh, and at this point I didn’t even consider pushing her away. I used to think about it sometimes. I’d remember how she looked in her wedding dress while marrying Fritz and think, This is wrong.

  Wrong was my whole life these days.

  But now there wasn’t any sign of that old reluctance in the hands that curved around Isobel’s ass, reminding myself that her hips really were as wide as they always looked, that her breasts really were as full and heavy. She wasn’t wearing underwear with the shorts.

  “It’s not just the shooter bothering me.” I swallowed hard when Isobel’s hand slid underneath the hem of my shirt. “The problem is…” Fuck it, I was going to tell her. I had to tell her. “Suzy’s back.”

  Isobel tensed. “Suzy Takeuchi?”

  “No, Suzy Sunshine,” I said. “Yes, Suzy Takeuchi.”

  “When? How? Where has she been?”

  “Hiding. And she’s still hiding, so don’t tell anyone. Even Fritz. All right?”

  That should have upset a sane woman, but Isobel just started giving me that special smile again. “You’re trusting me with something you wouldn’t even tell Fritz.”

  “Well, yeah. You know why that is.”

  “Because you love me,” Isobel said.

  I hadn’t told her those words specifically, but I wasn’t about to argue.

  Her fingernails traced up my temples and began stroking through my hair. “Go on,” she said.

  “Suzy came out of hiding to help me stop PRAY and investigate Zettel. Since she’s been around, I also asked her to help me by pretending to be my girlfriend while meeting my family for breakfast tomorrow. She wanted a favor in exchange, so I met her parents. And I offended Suzy.”

  Isobel stared at me for a long, quiet moment, trying to sort through what I’d said. “Pretend girlfriend?”

  I explained everything in more detail. We ended up sitting on the bed together, me slumped over, Isobel on her knees beside me, like the sexiest therapist ever.

  When I got to the part where Suzy stormed off, Isobel said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re very insensitive sometimes, Cèsar.”

  “Insensitive? I’m the guy who’s managed to not barf at murder scenes maybe twice in his career.”

  “Empathizing with victims of murder is a baseline for sensitivity,” Isobel said. “You asked Suzy to pretend to be your girlfriend, and then you said she isn’t girlfriend material. You know she’s always had a thing for you.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “For me? Like sexually, or homicidally?”

  “Romantically.”

  “Gross, Izzy,” I said.

  “See? Insensitive.” She snuggled against my shoulder. “If I knew nothing about Suzy except that she’s been on the run for months, I’d still tell you to cut her some slack. Hiding from an enemy is stressful. The isolation…” Isobel shook her head.

  She knew exactly how bad it was to hide from enemies. She’d been disconnected from her old life for a long time too.

  “But?” I asked. I knew there was a but.

  “I also know how Suzy has tried to stake a claim on you before.”

  “Since when? By dating Aniruddha and showing no interest in me for years?”

  “Obviously,” Isobel said.

  I stared at her, but she was totally serious.

  Maybe it was something that just made sense to women.

  Call me crazy, but I was nice to people I found appealing romantically, or whatever word Isobel wanted to use. I was nice to Isobel. I’d been nice ever since the time I tried to arrest her, anyway. I’d always been nice to Krist
a. And Suzy…well, I was real nice to her too. But she’d never shown any similar interest.

  Although she had said she’d planned to tell me something tonight.

  Suzy wasn’t the type for weird, gushy sentiment, though.

  “How about I take your word for it?” I asked.

  Isobel rolled her eyes. Her hair slid down her shoulder, feathers tickling the smoothness of her bicep. Could smell her perfume. Could smell grave dirt too. Not a bad mix of smells. “Why didn’t you ask me to meet your family as your girlfriend?” Isobel asked.

  I tried to think of an answer that wasn’t “you would disappoint Pops.” No matter what she said, I wasn’t that insensitive.

  As an alternative, I came up with, “You’re busy.”

  “It’s true.” She slid her leg over my lap so that she was straddling my thighs. Her warm weight settled against me. “Unfortunately I can’t come to breakfast in the morning. Zettel is holding a press conference about the OPA, and Fritz and I have to stand with him.”

  “So I’m screwed.”

  Isobel brushed her lips over mine, and her hips began circling gently. “Yes. Definitely.”

  That wasn’t how I’d meant it, but that was a hundred thousand times better than my intent. My hands found their way to her hips. I held her as she moved, feeling the flex of muscle under my fingers. “I’m also in trouble with my family.”

  “You’ll figure it out.” Her tongue darted into my mouth. “You’re smart.”

  Not that smart, because I didn’t let Isobel leave my bed all night.

  I fell asleep with Isobel wrapped around me. She had too much hair to be the little spoon, and I had a thing for all those long limbs knotted around my body.

  Once she fell asleep, some of her glamours disengaged automatically. I got to run my fingers over the patterning of burns she’d earned from her time as a slave in Hell. I got to memorize the feeling of the real Isobel—not the curated version she showed the world.