He leaned in to kiss me, and we were still kissing when the plane's wheels bumped onto the tarmac. I startled away from the kiss, staring into his face from inches away, but we were on the ground and my phobia was over until the next time. The plane jerked hard, as if the pilot was shoving his foot as hard as he could on the brakes. We were thrown forward, and the brakes were still being stamped on; the plane slid a little to one side, as if we were leaving the runway.
"It's okay, Anita," Micah said, "it's a short runway. The pilot has to use the brakes."
My mouth was dry as I said, "Short runway; are you saying we're going to run out of runway?"
"No," Micah said, gripping my hand, "we'll be fine."
The plane finally shuddered to a stop.
Bram said, "I'm betting the pilot is fresh out of the navy."
"Why?" Nicky asked.
"He lands like he's trying to put a fighter onto a carrier deck. Now, that's a short runway."
I had to swallow hard to get past the dryness in my throat and to say, "Remind me to never try to land on an aircraft carrier."
"We'd first have to get you into a fighter jet," Bram said and shook his head.
"You're right--you'd have to drug me like Mr. T from the old A-Team to get me on a fighter jet, let alone a landing more exciting than this."
The seat-belt sign went off and the clicks of seat belts being unbuckled filled the plane as people got to their feet and crammed themselves into the aisle. Nicky and Bram got to their feet and blocked everyone else on either side of us so that Nathaniel and Micah could get to their feet and get the carry-ons from the overhead. I got my brief bag out from under the seat and stood up, still trapped near the window. I had to bend over or I'd have bumped my head. There was more than one reason that Nicky and Bram had aisle seats, or Nathaniel for that matter.
Nicky's broad shoulders acted like a wall to the people filling the plane behind him. People ahead of Bram waited as near the outer door as the flight attendants would allow, while we all waited for the door to open.
Bram got his oversize backpack settled into place and then glanced at me. "If you thought it was essential for you to get on a fighter and land on a carrier, you'd do it. No Mr. T bullshit needed."
"Define essential," I said.
"Saving lives."
"Oh, that essential," I said. "Well, yeah, if you put it that way and there was absolutely no other way for me to get to where I needed to go."
"I hope you never have to do a carrier landing, because you would hate it, but I know you could do it if you had to."
"How do you know?" I asked.
"Because you can't let anything beat you."
"I was going to say because you're just that brave, but what Bram said works," Nathaniel said.
I wasn't sure what to say to all the compliments. I wanted to squirm with some vague embarrassment and wasn't sure why. "My grandmother would have said it was because I was just that stubborn."
"That, too," Micah said, and moved so I could wedge myself in beside him as the door opened and people finally got to deplane. He gave me a quick kiss before we started shuffling in line behind Bram. Nathaniel slid in behind us and Nicky brought up the rear like a movable wall. We were sandwiched between the bodyguards, safe as houses, but I was worried about Nathaniel. Micah and I could take care of ourselves, but our shared boy didn't train as hard as we did. He didn't need to for his job, so as we shuffled down the aisle with Bram and Nicky bookending us I felt safe enough, but for the first time my claustrophobia took a backseat to my worries about Nathaniel. The plane was a controlled environment, two guards were plenty for that, but once we were through the door into the wide world it would be anything but controlled. I was suddenly wishing we'd been able to put Rodina and Ru in the front of the plane near us, but that was silly, because we could only exit the plane one at a time. We'd wait on the tarmac for them to catch up with us, but it hit me again that I was unreasonably worried about Nathaniel's safety. I knew it wasn't logical, but some things aren't about logic; they're about feelings, and feelings are some of the most illogical things in the world.
Bram was in the doorway, the sun so bright it made a halo around his body. I realized belatedly that sunglasses would have been a good idea. I glanced back and found that the other three men had changed to dark glasses. It was just me fumbling at the top of the stairs trying to find my glasses in the big purse/briefcase combo that a friend had talked me into buying. It was supposed to be the perfect travel bag, but as always when it came to women's purses, it was a lie. Every purse comes with its own movable black hole that eats things and spits them back out later. Screw it. I could squint until we got inside the terminal.
16
WE WAITED ON the tarmac for Ru and Rodina to work their way free of the plane. It gave me time to fish my sunglasses out of my new purse/briefcase. R and R finally came down the stairs, laughing and looking relaxed, as if they'd enjoyed the flight. Glad someone had. They moved out to either side of us like they had at the Circus. Bram kept the front and Nicky brought up the rear. I felt like we suddenly had a sign above us that read Bodyguards! but it was probably less obvious than it felt. If it bothered Nathaniel or Micah, I couldn't tell.
The three of us walked hand in hand across the tarmac toward a long, low building that had large writing that read Welcome to the Conch Republic, as if we were entering a new country. As we got closer I could see there was much smaller writing saying Welcome to Key West underneath what looked to be statues above the doors leading into the airport. The statues, or whatever they were supposed to be, had what looked like parents with two kids on one side with the wife reaching out toward three people on the other side. The three were probably meant to be a family, too, but there was no mother figure, just an older man, a younger man, and a boy. The two older men were reaching out toward the woman. It was like they were trying to reach around a big thing in the middle that read 90 miles to Cuba, southernmost point. I guess everyone needs a selling point.
"What the heck is the Conch Republic?"
"Key West tried to secede from the Union once and even declared war on the rest of the country," Micah said.
"You're kidding," I said.
He smiled at me, his eyes hidden behind the prescription sunglasses. "You can even get a passport from the Conch Republic. It's not a real passport, but they still offer it."
"Did you learn all this on your business trips?" I asked.
"We went on the tram tour," Nathaniel said.
"Was it interesting enough to do it twice?"
"Totally," he said, and he swung my hand in his as Micah agreed.
"Anything the three of us can do together will be wonderful," he said. We were all smiles and happy, but I had a thought for the big man who was bringing up our rear guard. Nicky was my lover--we loved each other, not the same way I loved the two men holding my hands, but it still felt odd to leave him out of so much. We'd all discussed this ahead of time. Nicky would be working along with Bram, which meant while he was on the job he wasn't my lover, or Nathaniel's bro, or anything but a bodyguard. It had to be that way, or we would have needed more guards. But I still had a moment of feeling unfair to Nicky.
Rodina moved up so that she was behind Bram, and Ru dropped back to be with Nicky as we walked through the doors and into the airport. I glanced back at Nicky, but he was looking around the airport for danger. He was on the job; any longing looks I wanted to share needed to be aimed at Micah or Nathaniel until we were safe somewhere inside, and even then, it would depend on where we were and what was happening. He was a bodyguard first this trip, and everything else second. It had to be that way, but I still felt weird about it.
The four bodyguards were all searching the crowd for trouble, but since most of the crowd had just gotten off the plane with us from St. Louis, they'd already looked at each of them as they boarded the plane. Bram, Nicky, Ru, and Rodina stood around us like boulders of various sizes in the middle of a river, so that t
he crowd flowed around us, because there were suddenly more people than our medium-small plane could have held.
"Did another plane land ahead of us?" I asked.
"No," Nicky said.
"I told you, it's a small airport," Micah said.
I looked around and realized that the car-rental agencies, all three of them, were against the far wall. There was a small loop of conveyor belt that stuck out from the wall to the right, and a juice and drink bar in the middle of the room. The wall behind us, where we'd entered, was covered in advertisements and flyers for local attractions. I wondered what the Dry Tortugas were and why I would want to visit them.
"Where's the baggage-claim office?" I asked.
"Far left as we come in the door, past the other luggage belt," Bram said.
"The luggage isn't off-loaded yet," Micah said. "We have time."
"How do you know that? Maybe they're quick today," I said.
He smiled at me and shook his head. "I've flown in here three times in the last month and a half. It's a small airport with a small staff. They get it all done, but you might as well start adjusting to island time."
"What's island time?" I asked, instantly suspicious.
He smiled. Nathaniel laughed and said, "I loved the laid-back attitude here, but it irritated Micah after a while and you will probably hate it."
"How laid-back is it?" I asked.
"It's island time," Micah said.
"What does that mean?"
"That you better hope whoever you need didn't blow off their job to go diving or sailing or fishing," Bram said, and he sounded disgusted.
"That's not everybody," Micah said.
"It feels like it," Bram said.
"But we're on vacation," Nathaniel said, "so it doesn't matter as much."
"If we can come up with a way to help the people that live on Kirke, I am going to do some work, Nathaniel."
Nathaniel's face sobered. "I've seen the pictures now. If we could really help them, it would be worth sacrificing part of our first-ever vacation."
Micah pulled him in closer so he could give him a quick kiss. It was rare for Micah to be the one who elicited a public kiss from the other man. It brought the smile back to Nathaniel's face like sunshine after rain, as if there should have been rainbows in his eyes from the happiness.
"Thank you for understanding," Micah said.
"We'd understand better if we'd seen the pictures, too," Rodina said.
"It's a need-to-know basis," Micah said.
"And we don't need to know," she said.
"No."
"Nicky and Bram have seen them, Sis," Ru said.
"And we just have to trust them to share information with us if it's needed?" she said.
"Yes," he said, and he seemed at peace with the division of labor.
She sighed but let it go.
"Be happy you didn't have to see the pictures," Nathaniel said.
Micah and I both hugged him at the same time, and only long practice at group hugs kept us from getting in one another's way. "I'm sorry that I had to bring more horrors into your life," Micah said.
"It's for a good cause," Nathaniel said, and then leaned back enough so he could see Micah's face. "But that doesn't change the fact that I don't want you to get dragged into work if it won't help or it won't change anything." He looked serious now; not sad, but determined.
"I will do my best."
Nathaniel looked suspicious.
"I need this vacation, too," Micah said.
"All right, but I'm serious, Micah, and you, too," he said, looking at me.
"What did I do?" I asked.
"Nothing yet, but you're as bad as he is about work." Nathaniel gave me a look that I guess every spouse sees eventually. It's the I-know-you-too-well-so-don't-even-try-to-tell-me-I'm-wrong look. We weren't married yet, but we'd been living together for five years. Some things don't need a wedding ring, just time.
"I won't apologize for my work," I said.
"I don't want you to, but I do want this trip to be about the wedding and just enjoying ourselves."
"Micah's work will be harder to avoid, but I'll do my best unless bodies start dropping."
"Is this where someone says, 'It's quiet, too quiet'?" Nicky asked. I looked at him, but he was still scanning the crowd, as if he hadn't spoken.
"Or 'I have a bad feeling about this'?" Bram said, and he was still looking at the milling crowd, too.
"Don't you start, too," I said.
"Who's supposed to pick us up?" Micah asked.
"I'm not sure."
"Donna said that whoever was free would be here. It wouldn't be her or Ted," Nathaniel said.
"God, I hope it's not Dixie," I said.
"Would I do that to you?" a man's voice said, and then I could finally see Bernardo Spotted-Horse through the crowd.
17
HE WAS TALL, dark, and handsome, with those perfect cheekbones that only certain ethnicities would give you. His was Native American. A red tank top looked great against the perfect brown of his skin. The shirt was loose over a pair of blue jean shorts. The body that showed around the tank top and the shorts was muscular and spoke to a lot of gym work. He'd have looked even better if he had tucked the shirt into his shorts, but then the gun in the waistband of his shorts would show. How did I know he had a gun in his waistband? Because the tank top showed too much skin for a shoulder holster and the shorts showed clearly that he wasn't wearing an ankle holster. How did I know he had a gun on him? Because it was the only explanation for the shirt being loose instead of skintight, and it was Bernardo. Also, the only way Jean-Claude had agreed to us traveling with so few bodyguards was the fact that Bernardo, Edward, and other law enforcement officers were going to be nearby for the visit. Almost all the groomsmen were either cops or military, so if anything happened, we had backup, or something like that.
The moment I realized I wasn't the only one in our group with a gun, a tension I hadn't known I was carrying eased. Nicky and Bram were both great hand to hand, but one silver bullet from a distance and none of that mattered. I was really glad to see Bernardo and know that we had at least two guns.
I may have wasted more smile on him than normal because of it.
Nathaniel got to him first, shaking hands and then hugging at the same time, in that one-sided guy hug that seemed to scream We are not gay! as if any physical contact between friends was potentially questionable. I wasn't a guy, so I could have given him a normal hug, but that wasn't really the kind of friendship Bernardo and I had. We were more work friends, so I offered my hand. He shook it, wrapping his much larger hand around mine, and then he drew me into the same one-armed, awkward guy hug that he'd given Nathaniel. Except that I was five inches shorter, so my face was buried against the firmness of his chest, so it was even more awkward, but he moved me to the side like a dance move, so that awkward turned into graceful.
I drew back and said, "We're not on the clock; you could have just had a hug."
"Now you tell me," he said, and laughed. I noticed some of our fellow passengers eyeing him covertly, or not so covertly. He was Hunger to Edward's Death and my War. Why Hunger? Because he was so handsome that he made people hungry for him, but he couldn't satisfy them all, so he left them wanting. I thought it was stretching the metaphor for him to be Hunger, but he had the fourth-highest kill count among the preternatural marshals, so he got to be one of the horsemen. Bernardo acted like he didn't notice the people looking at him, but I knew he saw it; he always saw it, but he never got obnoxious about it. He was a good-looking man, he knew it, and there was nothing wrong with owning that and enjoying it. My own issues about beauty would never allow me to be that relaxed, but, hey, that was me.
Nicky and he just shook hands and then he introduced Bram to Bernardo. I'd forgotten that they'd never met. Sometimes I forget that all the people in my various friend groups don't know one another.
"Bernardo, this is Micah," I said, smiling, because again it
seemed like they should have met by now.
Bernardo shook his hand, saying, "I see you in my news feed so often, it feels like we've already met." He smiled as he said it.
Micah smiled back. "And I've heard so many stories about you, it feels like we should know each other."
Bernardo looked at Rodina and Ru, who were still watching the crowd. "But these two are new."
"Bernardo, this is Rosemary and Rue Erwin." Those were the names on the passports they'd used at the airport. All the Harlequin had legal identities, though after a few hundred years, legal and real weren't the same thing. It wasn't like they could produce birth certificates from when they were born. Nobody was doing birth certificates before the fall of Rome.
Rodina smiled and rolled her eyes as she held out a hand to him. "I know, terrible names, aren't they, but Mom was seriously into gardening." Her accent was perfect midwestern American. Her word choices were suddenly late teen, early twenty-something. She was going to play the younger side of her apparent age. I don't know why that bugged me, but it did.
"Hey, at least she didn't stick you with a boy's name the way she stuck me with a girl's," Rue said. The quiet, almost shy boy-man was gone, and he was a much more forceful teenage boy. I wondered if they'd pop in and out of character the way Edward did with Ted.
Bernardo looked at me. "Babysitting, or did you bring friends for Peter?"
I didn't know what to say, because I sucked at subterfuge. They hadn't done anything but use the other names until that moment, so it had caught me off guard.
"We've made you unhappy again," Rue said.
"What do you want us to be?" Rodina asked.
"Older," I said.
Nathaniel said, "You need to be old enough to get into a bar or a club."
"Fine," she said and put all the teenage angst into that one word. She turned and smiled at Bernardo, and she was just suddenly older. It was subtle, but it was like a different person inhabiting her skin. It was a little disturbing.
"Morgan Erwin, Dr. Erwin, but I say it second, so people won't think I'm a medical doctor."
Bernardo shook her hand, looking a little bemused, but he'd been friends with Edward long enough to go with it. "What are you a doctor of, if not medicine?"
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