He was getting angry, it showed in his eyes and the tight line of his mouth. "That is out of bounds. I have never cheated anyone in this company."
"Maybe, but if a man will cheat in one way, he'll cheat in another."
"I cannot believe you would accuse me of that."
"I can't believe I haven't wondered about it before," I said.
His face was darkening with his effort not to explode. You could watch his blood pressure rise. "Audit and be damned."
"I'll make you a deal, Bert. I'll settle for you giving them back their check, instead of a personal check from you, but you have to stop this shit. We make enough money, Bert, you don't have to cheat people."
"They offered the money. I didn't ask for it."
"No, but I bet you made it so they'd think of it. Nothing said outright, like you said, but you put it out there, somehow, you made them think of it."
He opened his mouth, closed it, then leaned back against the door. "Maybe I did, but, Anita, they made it so easy."
"You just couldn't resist, could you?"
He let out his breath in a long shoulder moving sigh. "I lost my head, a little."
I shook my head and almost laughed. "No more losing your head, Bert, okay?"
"I'll try, but I can't promise. You wouldn't believe me."
I did laugh. "I can't argue that."
"Do you want me to tear up the check now?"
I watched his face for the signs of pain that parting with money usually cost him, but all I saw was a resignedness, as if he'd already given the money up for lost.
"Not yet."
He looked up, hope showing momentarily in his pale eyes.
"Don't get excited. It's a slender little hope, but if it helps lead to something that can help the police then we'll have earned some money. If it doesn't, then we can return the money."
"Do I want to know what your plan is?" What he was asking was, was it illegal, and did he not want to know so he'd be able to deny it later. Bert knew that I stepped over lines that wouldn't just get jail time, but an execution notice. I knew that he was just this side of a con-man, a swindler, but he knew, or suspected, that I was just this side of a cold-blooded killer. There were bosses that couldn't have handled that doubt, or that almost knowledge. We stood and met each other's eyes, and we had an understanding, Bert and I.
"I'm going to see if the cops will bring down some of the boy's clothes for Evans to look at."
"The touch clairvoyant that tried to cut his own hands off?" He made a face when he said it.
"He's out of the hospital," I said.
He frowned. "But didn't the paper say that he tried to cut off his hands so he wouldn't see murders and violence every time he touched something?"
I nodded.
"Anita, I never thought I'd say this, but leave the poor guy alone. I'll give back the money."
I narrowed my eyes at him. Was he being nice to fool me? Did he mean it? Out loud, I said, "Evans is feeling better than he has in years. He's taking active clients again."
Bert looked at me, and it wasn't an entirely friendly look. "This man has tried to kill himself to keep from seeing these things, and you want to take items from a serial killer case where he cut up a nice teenage couple. That's cold, Anita, that's truly cold."
"Evans put himself back on the market, Bert, I didn't. He's married now, and he's a lot more relaxed than he ever was before."
"Love may be grand, Anita, but it doesn't cure everything."
"Nope," I said, "it doesn't." What I didn't try to explain to Bert was that Evans's new wife was a projective psychic null. She negated most psychic abilities within yards of her. Evans was a lot calmer around her. She truly had saved him.
His small pale eyes narrowed at me. "That man out there, the boy, he's your boyfriend."
I nodded.
"Just your boyfriend?" he made it a question.
"What else could he be, Bert?" And it was my turn to have the innocent face.
He shook his head. "I don't know, but the noises from your office were a hell of a show, and that was without any visuals."
I didn't blush, because I was working too hard at keeping control of my face and eyes. "Do you really want to know, Bert, or do you want deniability later?"
He stood there for a moment, thinking, then shook his head. "I don't need to know."
"No," I said, "you don't."
"But you'd tell me the truth, if I wanted to know?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Why, why would you tell me?"
"To watch your face," I said, and my voice was soft, and not altogether pleasant.
He swallowed hard and looked just a little paler than his untanned face had a moment before. "It would be something bad, wouldn't it?"
I shrugged. "Ask and find out."
He shook his head again. "No," he said, "no."
"Then don't ask questions you don't want the answers to," I said.
"Don't ask, don't tell," he said.
I nodded, again. "Exactly."
He gave that roguish, I-know-something-you-don't smile. "But we get to keep the ten grand."
"For now. If Evans agrees to see the evidence, we'll need a bankroll."
"Is he that expensive?"
"He risks his sanity and his life every time he touches another clue. I'd make people pay for that, wouldn't you?"
A light came into Bert's eyes. "Does he have a business agent?"
"Bert," I said.
"Just asking, just asking."
I had to shake my head and give up. Bert had a real genius for making money from psychic gifts that other people thought of as curses. Would it be so bad if he could help Evans make more money? No. But I wondered if Bert understood that Evans was one of the most powerful touch clairvoyants in the world. That to brush against another person with his fingertip told him more about that person than most people would ever know. Bert would probably offer to shake hands, and the deal would be off. I only suspected what Bert was. One touch, and Evans would know for sure. In a way, if Evans didn't run screaming it would be reassuring for me. I would never offer to shake hands with Evans. One, you never offer your hand to a touch clairvoyant, just bad form. Two, Evans had brushed up against me before, by accident, and he hadn't liked what he saw. Who was I to throw stones at Bert, when he might pass Evans's radar unscathed, and I knew that I would go down in bloody flames?
32
The rest of the afternoon appointments were damned boring compared to the Browns. Thank God. Nathaniel sat, quietly, in a corner of my office through all of them, just in case. Bert didn't argue now. I'd had two appointments with lawyers to discuss wills and other privileged material. They'd objected to Nathaniel, but I'd told them that legally the conversation with me wasn't privileged, so why did they care. Legally, I was right, and lawyers hate for a non-lawyer to be right. Or at least the ones I meet get cranky about it. So then, they'd wanted to know who he was and why he got to sit in on their meetings.
I told the first one, do you want this meeting, or don't you, and he let it go. The second one didn't let it go. My fingers hurt where I'd torn off the nails. My face hurt even if it was healing. My pride was hurt from having sex in the office. I was not happy, so I told the truth.
"He's here in case I have to have sex." I smiled when I said it, and knew that it didn't reach my eyes, but I didn't care.
Nathaniel had laughed and done his best to turn it into a cough.
The lawyer, of course, didn't believe me. "It was a perfectly legitimate question, Ms. Blake. I have every right to protect my client and his interests. You don't have to insult us with ridiculous lies."
So I stopped insulting him with lies, and we got down to business.
Every client, or group of clients, had to ask about Nathaniel. I told them he was everything from domestic help, to lover, to office boy, to personal assistant. Nobody liked any of my answers. I stopped caring long before I stopped seeing clients. I actually started telling the t
ruth again, and the two new groups that I told it to got insulted. Insulting lies, they called it. Try to tell the truth, and no one believes you.
What I'd wanted to talk about all afternoon had been my beast. I had a lycanthrope right there, and we didn't get five minutes of peace to even begin the discussion. I had so many questions, and no time to ask them. Maybe that was why I was so grumpy to the clients. Maybe, or maybe I'm just grumpy. Even I wasn't sure sometimes.
It was seven o'clock by the time we climbed into the Jeep. Bert had passed my 7:30 cemetery appointment on to Manny without me having to ask. He even apologized for overbooking me. He always overbooked me, and he'd never apologized before. I think the realization that I could call a vote and get his ass kicked out had made him a better boy. Or maybe it was just the realization that I knew that any one of us could call a vote and kick him out. If Bert had any weakness in business it was assuming that those of us without a business degree didn't understand business. A little fear isn't always a bad thing. In fact, it can be downright therapeutic for some people. I didn't expect for the nicer version of Bert to last, but I'd enjoy it while I had it.
I'd actually turned off onto Olive in the direction of the city. I had just enough time to drop Nathaniel off at Guilty Pleasures and be only about fifteen minutes late for what was now my first outside appointment of the evening.
"Where are you going?" Nathaniel asked.
"Guilty Pleasures," I said.
"You need to eat first."
I glanced at him as I slowed for a stoplight. "I don't have time to eat."
"You know how when you don't feed one hunger the other hungers get worse?" His voice was so gentle when he asked, but I'd begun to mistrust that particular gentle tone. It usually meant he had a point to make, and he was right, and if I'd only accept it, I'd see that he was right, too. It usually meant that the argument was lost before it had begun. But I never considered defeat a reason not to put up a fight.
"Yeah, I know. If I deny the ardeur the beast wants meat more, or the vampire wants blood. I know all that."
"So what happens if you don't feed your human stomach, you get hungry, right?"
The light changed, and I eased forward. Saturday night traffic on Olive was always fun. "Yeah," I said. I was looking for the trick, and didn't see it.
"So if your body gets hungry for normal feeding, then doesn't that make all the other hungers worse?"
I almost hit the car in front of me, because I was staring at him. I had to slam on my brakes and endure much horn blowing, and, if it hadn't been so dark, I'm sure I'd have seen some hand gestures. "What did you say?"
"You heard me, Anita."
I sighed and started paying better attention to the traffic. But inside I was kicking myself, because it was so simple. So terribly simple. "I don't eat regularly when I'm working, and that usually means that I'm running home with the ardeur riding me every night."
"Sometimes twice a night," he said. "How much do you eat on those nights? Real food, I mean."
I tried to think, and finally had to say, "Sometimes nothing."
"It would be interesting if you kept a food diary to see if there was a correlation between starving your human body and the other hungers rising."
"You talk like you know this already," I said.
"Haven't you noticed that lycanthropes cook and eat?"
I shrugged. "I don't know." I thought about it. Richard cooked, and had always been either taking me out to dinner or wanting to cook for me. Micah cooked, though Nathaniel did more of it. We usually had a house full of wereleopards for at least one meal a day.
"You mean there's a reason that all the lycanthrope men I've dated have been domestically talented?"
He nodded. "We need to eat a nice balanced diet, heavy on protein. It helps keep the beast at bay."
I glanced at him, and in the near dark of the streetlights, he was mostly in shadow. His lavender shirt was the palest thing about him. "Why didn't someone mention this to me before?"
"We've been treating you like you're mostly human, Anita. But what I saw today..." He seemed to be searching for words. Finally he said, "If I didn't know that you were human and couldn't slip your skin and be a leopard for real, I'd think you were one of us. The way you felt, the way you fought, the way you smelled, everything was shapeshifter. You did not come off like a human. Turn into the parking lot here," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we need to talk."
I did not like the sound of that, but I turned in to the strip mall that had Culpeppers at one end. I parked in the first space I found, which was far away from any restaurant. Most of the stores were dark and closed. When I turned off the engine, the world was suddenly very quiet. The traffic on Olive was still snarling by, and in the distance was music from one of the restaurants, but inside the Jeep it was quiet. That silence that you get inside cars after dark. With one switch of a key, the space inside a car becomes private, intimate.
I turned to face him, having to work against the seat belt, but I wasn't comfortable taking i t off until I was ready to get out of a car. "So, talk," I said, and my voice sounded almost normal.
He turned in his seat as far as his seat belt would allow. He knew my thing about seat belts. He faced me, putting one knee up to prop himself against the center panel. "We've been treating you like you're human, and now I'm wondering if we were right."
"You mean I'm going to shift because I'm in a new triumvirate?"
He shook his head, and his long braid slid across his lap like a heavy pet. "Maybe what happened with that has made it worse, but I think one of the reasons you haven't been able to get a handle on the ardeur is because you've been taking almost all your advice from a vampire. He doesn't need to eat, Anita. There is only blood lust and the ardeur for Jean-Claude, that's it. A lycanthrope doesn't stop being human. You still have to eat like a person, you just add the hunger of the beast, but you don't lose a hunger, you just add on to it."
I thought about it. "So you mean that since I'm already fighting off normal hunger pangs, that it makes it harder to fight the ardeur ?"
He nodded, and his hair slid across his lap again, as if the braid were moving closer to me. "Yes."
I thought about it, and it seemed utterly logical. "Okay, say you're right, what do I do? I'm still running late tonight. I'm usually running late."
"Tonight we go through a drive-up. You get something easy to eat behind the wheel, and I get a salad."
I frowned at him. "A salad, why? Most drive-up salads suck."
"I have to eat before I go on tonight."
"So you'll be able to control your beast better," I said.
"Yes."
"But why a salad? I thought you needed protein."
"If you were going to take off all your clothes in front of strangers, you'd get a salad, too."
"One burger a few hours before you go on won't make you gain weight."
"No, but it might make me bloat."
"I thought only girls did that."
"Nope."
"So you're eating a salad so you'll look good tonight," I said.
He nodded, and his hair slithered over the edge of his leg and across the gear shift. I had this horrible urge to touch that heavy band of hair. A little voice in my head said, Why not? After what we'd done this afternoon, what's a little hair touching. Logical, but logic didn't have much to do with how I acted around Nathaniel.
I clasped my hands together in my lap to keep from touching him, then felt silly. What the hell was I doing anymore? I reached out to that heavy curl of hair and pet it, like it was more intimate to him than it was. The hair was soft and warm. I petted his hair while I talked. "The beast isn't conflicted about anything, is it?"
"No," he said, and his voice was both loud and soft in the quiet dark.
I began to pull his braid, gently up from around his body where the end had slid. "It's not just the hunger for flesh and blood that you fight, is it?"
; "No," he said.
I got to the end of his braid and spilled it into my hands. "I thought that the hunger was the beast. That desire to chase and feed; I thought that was all of it."
"And now?" he asked.
I stroked the tip of his braid across my palm, and just that made me shiver. My voice was shaky when I said, "Richard always talked about his beast like it was all his baser impulses, you know, lust, sloth, the traditional sins, but to sin implies a knowledge of good and evil. There was no good or evil, there was nothing like normal thought. I hadn't really understood how all my thoughts are based on things. I'm always thinking about how one thing affects another. The consequences of your actions." I lifted more of his braid in my arms, and it was like holding a snake, a soft, thick serpent. I gathered his hair into my arms and let myself cuddle it against my body. I was about at the limit for the seat belt, and I wanted to be closer to him. The seat belt stayed.
I hugged an armful of his braid to my chest as I said, "I stopped thinking about the Browns' grief, their dead son. It wasn't that I chose to ignore it. I wasn't being callous, it just never entered my mind. It was just that they hurt me, and I got mad, but mad translated directly to food. If I killed them and ate them, then they couldn't hurt me anymore, and I was hungry." I met his eyes on that last word.
Some trick of reflected light made his eyes shine for a moment, like the eyes of a cat in a flashlight's beam. He turned his head, and it was gone, his eyes lost in shadow again. The turn of his head tugged on his hair, and I had a second to decide whether I would let it go, or keep it. I kept it, and it put a strain down the line of his hair, a strain like pulling on a rope, and knowing it was tied tight.
His voice was a little breathy when he said, "You're always hungry when you first change shape, especially if you're new at it."
"How do you keep from tearing into the crowd at the club?" I asked, and my voice was a little shaky, too.
He leaned back away from me, and it made the pull on his hair tighter, harder. "By channeling the hunger into sex instead of food. You don't eat your mate. If you can fuck it, it's not food." His voice was lower, not deeper exactly, but lower.
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