by Alyssa Day
A scraping noise, like a boot on the gravel, was my only warning before someone grabbed me from behind and shoved me up against my car, smashing my cheek into the metal roof.
“You need to stay out of things that aren’t any of your damn business,” the man whispered, putting his bandanna-covered face next to mine. For some reason, he smelled like boiled vinegar, and I flinched away from him, my eyes watering at the stench. My skull was pounding from the blow, and I only had time to think that I didn’t want to be killed by somebody who smelled this nasty.
The fear flooded in after that.
“Consider this your only warning, bitch,” he hissed, and then he punched me in the back of the head and everything went black.
Chapter Twelve
In a vastly disappointing development, nobody at all came to rescue me.
I woke up, head pounding, sick to my stomach, and really, really cold, right there on the gravel where I’d fallen. My purse was still on the ground next to me, so Evil Threat Guy must not have been after my money. Not that anybody was going to have a wild spree on the seventeen dollars I had in my wallet.
Slowly, slowly, I sat up, wondering if I had a concussion, or if Bonnie Jo had ambled by and kicked me in the head while I’d been out. As I sat there, wondering who to call and realizing that I hadn’t even thought to get Jack’s cell phone number, my phone, which also apparently hadn’t been stolen, rang. I dug around in my purse, trying not to move my head too much, until I found it.
Aunt Ruby.
“Hello,” I said, very quietly.
“Tess? Speak up! I can barely hear you,” she shouted into my sore ear.
I flinched and moved the phone to my other ear. “Aunt Ruby, will you please keep it down a little? I’ve…I’ve got a terrible headache.”
If I told her what had happened, she’d go into hysterics, and I just couldn’t deal with that right now.
“I’m sorry,” she said, in an exaggerated whisper. “Where are you? Jack said you’re not home for your date.”
Date? Oh, no. It must be eight o’clock already. I’d been lying on the ground for more than an hour and a half. And it wasn’t a date.
I grabbed my purse and pulled myself up to a standing position. Everything worked, but my head was still pounding, and the world spun around me in a sickening whirl of lights and colors.
“Tess?”
“It’s not a date,” I said automatically. “Hey, do you have Jack’s number? I got tied up at work.”
“I’ll send you his contact info. Wear something pretty. Have a nice time,” she said, all but singing. “Owen was never right for you.”
“Aunt Ruby!”
But she’d already hung up. Jack’s contact info flashed on my screen a couple of seconds later. I debated with myself over calling, but he was at my house, and this definitely concerned him too. Maybe the guy would be coming after Jack next. Not that Jack wouldn’t be massively better at defending himself than I’d been.
Hell, Fluffy would probably have been better at defending herself.
Jack picked up on the first ring. “Tess? Are you all right?”
“Yeah, mostly. Well, not exactly. Actually, I’ve been better.” I gingerly eased myself into the car, and my head didn’t fall off, so I counted it as a win.
His voice sharpened. “What happened? Where are you?”
“Some guy attacked me in my parking lot. He—”
“What? Stay put. I’ll be right there,” he commanded.
Sadly, I’ve never been very good at taking commands. “No, I’m fine to drive. I’m heading home. I’ll meet you there.”
“Is the sheriff done with you? What did the EMTs say?”
Huh. I wasn’t sure how to answer that, so I elected to say nothing. Instead I turned on the car and cranked the heat up to high, so I could quit shivering.
“Tess?” He was kind of growling now, and I bit my lip.
“I actually just woke up. I’ve been, ah, out cold on the ground next to my car since about six twenty,” I admitted.
It was his turn to say nothing.
“Jack?”
“Tess. Stay right there. I will be there in a few minutes, and we will decide what to do. If you’ve been unconscious, you probably have a concussion and shouldn’t drive.”
“I really don’t want to stay here alone,” I confessed. “He told me to stay out of things that weren’t my business and said it was my only warning. What if he comes back?”
The feral snarling sound that he made was enough to make me freeze in my seat.
“I’m on my way. Stay in your car, lock your doors, and call 9-1-1. If you see anything—even a shadow—lay on the horn and start driving, but be careful. Run the bastard over if he comes back.”
“I’m not calling 9-1-1. I’ll call Susan, because I can’t deal with the sheriff again. And if I let an EMT touch me and I get a vision? It might break me. I can’t take that right now.”
I heard the sound of the truck starting, and then Jack sighed. “Fine. On my way.”
“Okay, but Jack? Please hurry.”
He made it there in five minutes.
I turned off my car and climbed out, being very careful, but the brief nausea had disappeared, and other than the killer headache and the sore face and the aching neck, I was basically fine. Okay, I wasn’t fine at all, but I figured a case of deep denial never hurt anybody.
Jack slammed his truck door shut and raced over to me. “Are you all right?”
I tried a smile, but I could tell it didn’t work.
“Can you walk over to the truck? I can carry you,” he said, scanning the area the entire time.
“I can walk. Just let me lean on you, in case I’m shaky.”
He studied my face, his eyes gleaming with amber fire. “He hit you in the face?”
I started to shake my head but then thought better of it when pain flooded my skull. “No. He slammed my face down on the roof of my car, though, and he punched me in the back of the head after he gave me his nasty little warning.”
“Was that all?” Jack’s eyes might be burning, but his voice was pure ice. “I’m going to find the son of a bitch and kill him. Slowly.”
“I want to help. Not the killing part, that’s maybe overreacting, but I owe him a few knocks to the skull.” A small, vicious part of me didn’t mind the killing idea, though. Or at least causing him intense suffering.
Jack stopped and moved behind me, took a long, deep sniff, and then flinched back. “Why do you stink like vinegar?”
“The guy smelled like he’d jumped in a vat of it right before he came to threaten me.”
Jack opened the passenger door, and carefully helped me slide onto the seat. The interior of the truck still smelled faintly of Jeremiah’s pipe smoke.
“This isn’t good. The vinegar means that your attacker knows that it masks his scent from a shifter, which isn’t particularly rare knowledge, but—”
“But that means he knows that I’ve been snooping around with you,” I concluded. “Again, not particularly rare knowledge. We were at the diner, you were here at the shop, and anybody could have seen us driving to Pleasant Acres.”
A sheriff’s car drove up then, lights flashing and siren blaring, which dialed my headache up to about eleven on a one-to-ten scale, and a deputy I didn’t know personally stepped out. He was a slight, slender man, and I knew from seeing him around town that he had flaming red hair and a giant crop of freckles, and looked about twelve.
“Deputy Kelly.” I greeted him with a wave.
“Ms. Callahan. Susan said you called, but she’s off-duty and was in the middle of something with her family,” he said in a mellow, deep, radio-announcer voice that didn’t seem like it should have come out of his tiny body.
“Please, call me Tess. This is Jack Shepherd, my new business partner.”
“Deputy,” Jack said. I could tell he was trying not to loom over the poor deputy, but the kid was about a foot shorter than Jack, so
it was a losing proposition.
“Ms. Callahan—Tess, I understand you were attacked? Have the volunteer EMTs already been here and gone?”
I grimaced. “No. Did Susan remind you not to try to shake my hand?”
He nodded. “Yes. The…oh. Oh.”
For a moment, his face was impossibly young in the flashing red-and-blue lights. “How do you go to the doctor? I mean, sorry. Never mind.”
I didn’t have the energy to go into the details of my coping mechanisms, not that I would with him, anyway. “Maybe you could turn off the flashing lights? My head is killing me.”
After he’d done that, I made my report, but since I didn’t have anything useful that I could tell him—the guy was taller than me, wore a bandanna, came up from behind so I didn’t get a good look at him, stank like vinegar, and had bad breath—it felt futile. When I told the deputy how the man had punched me in the back of the head, Jack stalked off, and I heard a lurid stream of really creative cursing follow him around the parking lot.
The deputy’s eyes widened.
“He was a soldier,” I explained weakly. “They talk like that.”
“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”
“I’m sure. I just need to go home, get cleaned up, and get some rest.”
Jack strode back over to us. “I’ll take her home, Deputy.”
The deputy looked at me. “Is that okay with you?”
“Yes, it’s fine. Thank you for coming out.”
“That’s my job, ma’am. Tess. Is there anything else you can think of? Anything at all?”
I closed my eyes and tried to remember.
“No, there’s nothing…oh, wait. Is a black truck still parked out there on the road?” The men were standing between me and the parking lot entrance.
Jack looked and then shook his head. “There are no cars over there. You’re saying a black truck was there when you were attacked?”
I nodded but then winced at the pain in my neck. “Yeah, but it probably doesn’t mean anything. Kids park there all the time, especially on the weekend.”
“There’s nobody there now,” Kelly said. “Did you notice anything special about it?”
“No. Just another black Chevy. Open back, only one seat up front,” I said.
“Are you sure it was a Chevy?”
“If you knew my uncle Mike, you wouldn’t be asking me that.”
Jack shook his head. “That’s great, but seeing a black Chevy truck around here is like seeing a redneck at a monster truck rally. They’re everywhere.”
I shivered, and both men suddenly seemed to realize that they were keeping me in the cold parking lot when I had nothing else to add.
“I’m taking her home now, Deputy. You have her phone number; here’s mine if you have any further questions.”
On the way to my house, I sent Molly a quick text, just to let her know that I couldn’t make it, and then closed my eyes and rested my head against the back of the seat while Jack fired questions at me.
“Any nausea or vomiting?”
“No.”
“Dizziness?”
“No.”
“Does your balance feel off?”
I sighed. “Jack, of course my balance is off. I just spent an hour and a half lying on the cold ground. A hot shower and something to eat, and I’ll be fine.”
“When we get to your house, I’m going to check your pupils. Any sign of dilation, and I’m taking you to the hospital. They can wear gloves to check you, right? That shouldn’t set off your visions.”
He was correct, but that didn’t mean I was going to admit it, so I said nothing. He was going to have a fight on his hands if he tried to take me to the hospital, especially for just a knock on the head.
Luckily for both of us, my pupils were fine.
I took a long, hot shower, wincing when the spray hit my cheek and when I shampooed my hair. Then I put on my warmest sweatshirt and sweatpants, ate the bowl of soup Jack had heated up for me, took two Advil, brushed my teeth, and crawled into bed with my cat, all without saying much of anything.
I was pretty much all talked out for the day. Maybe for the week.
I heard Jack moving around and the sound of water running in the kitchen, and I smiled a little. He was finally getting his wish to do dishes. The ordinary sounds started to lull me to sleep, and then I heard his footsteps coming down the hall.
“I’m staying here to make sure you’re okay,” he said, standing in my doorway.
“Okay,” I mumbled. “Sheets and blankets are—”
“No. I’m staying here. You might need me during the night.” There was no compromise in his tone.
“Wait,” I said, sitting up. “You can’t—”
“I can.”
I closed my eyes and tried to think of an argument that would convince a stubborn shapeshifter to get out of my room, and Uncle Mike’s face flashed into my mind.
“Ha! Uncle Mike would kick your ass for you,” I said triumphantly to the empty space where his head had been.
The tiger standing in my bedroom yawned at me, displaying massive teeth, then curled up on the floor and closed his eyes.
Well, then. I had no arguments for that.
Surprisingly, neither did Lou. She aimed a half-hearted hiss at him, but then curled up next to me, like she always did. Maybe it was a cat thing. Feeling oddly comforted, I sank back down on my pillow and finally, blissfully, dropped off to sleep.
Chapter Thirteen
“I have a black eye!” I announced, catching sight of myself in the mirror over my dresser when I sat up in bed.
The tiger laughed at me. At least, if tigers could laugh, that’s what this one would be doing. I could just feel it. He padded up to the edge of my bed, rested his enormous head on my spare pillow, and stared at me, and I swear he was grinning. Lou stretched and then climbed over me, sat down in front of Jack, and nonchalantly started to wash her paw. Since his head was bigger than her entire body, this took admirable guts. Or a complete lack of self-preservation. I decided not to worry about it; Jack wasn’t going to eat my cat.
Instead, I looked in the mirror again and winced. He was probably laughing at my bedhead. It was just par for the freaking course that the first time I’d had a hot guy (tiger) in my bed (sort of) in years, I looked like a refugee from a zombie movie.
Except with worse hair.
I pointed to the doorway. “Get. Out.”
He got out. Nobody could say my tiger wasn’t a gentleman.
Standing up wasn’t fun. My head wasn’t pounding as much as it had been the night before, but it was definitely hurting. My face hurt, my neck hurt, even my knee hurt where I’d scraped it, probably when I fell down.
And then there was the black eye. My first-ever shiner. Aunt Ruby would have a cow if she saw me like this.
I took extra care with dressing, as if my black jeans, boots, and lacy white top might take people’s attention away from the sight of my face. Then I picked up my concealer and stood staring at myself for a while, fascinated and horrified in equal measure at the purple and black swelling all around my eye. There was no way my concealer stick was up for this challenge. I put it back down on the counter, unopened. A little hair shine serum and a vigorous brushing later, I gave up on beauty and wandered out to the kitchen to find my one true love—coffee.
Jack was human again, and he was making coffee. I stared at him blearily for a moment before realizing that he was wearing a different shirt than he’d had on the night before.
“Do you always keep fresh clothes with you, in case you have to go pick up injured pawnshop owners?”
He handed me a mug of liquid happiness. “I pull clothes into the shift. I’m not really sure where they come from.”
I put cream in my coffee, pondering that. “So there might be some guy your size running around naked?”
“I doubt it. The clothes always smell fresh. I’d have noticed if they carried the scent of another pers
on,” he said casually, like it was totally normal to sniff-test your magical clothes when they appeared on your body.
Although, I guess for him it was.
I sipped my coffee and looked out my window at the bright Saturday morning, thinking about it. “Hey, this has potential. Can you decide which clothes to conjure up? Like ‘wow, I really need an Armani suit,’ and POOF!”
When I glanced back at him, he was shaking his head, a pained expression on his face. “You are a very strange woman, aren’t you?”
I shrugged, which made my neck hurt, so I stopped. “Has nobody ever asked you this stuff before? How about the issue of the extra size? You must weigh at least twice as much as a tiger as you do as a person. Where does the extra Jack go?”
He started laughing. “Actually, Quinn asked me something similar. She was joking about figuring it out so we could develop a magical shapeshifter weight loss technique.”
Quinn again. I was curious, so I decided to ask. What the heck. He could always refuse to answer me. “Is she your girlfriend?”
His smile faded. “No. She was my partner and my friend, and we saved each other’s lives on more than a few occasions, but we were never more than that. Maybe once there was a… Well. Then that damn Atlantean showed up, and any chance of more was over forever.”
“She’s dating an Atlantean?” This Quinn sounded a little intimidating.
“Dating isn’t exactly the word. Bound for all eternity is more like it. The Atlanteans have an intense idea of love and marriage.”
He drained his coffee cup and poured himself another. “Her sister Riley is now the queen, so it kind of runs in the family.”
“Wow.” Sister-in-law to the king of Atlantis. That was a big difference from pawnshop owner. Part-owner.
Not that I was comparing myself to Quinn. Exactly.
“Breakfast?” Apparently Jack was done talking about his past.
“No, I’m not hungry. I just want to get to work and do normal things for a day,” I said, rinsing my cup and putting it in the sink.
“I have a few errands to run, myself. I’ll drive you to the shop first. What time should I check in on you?”