Shadow & Soul (The Night Horde SoCal Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  He looked at Faith, who was smiling down at Tucker. He’d made her happy, too, but there was something else behind her smile, something that darkened her expression a shade or two. Demon figured that was his fault, and he wanted to make it up to her.

  ~oOo~

  “You want me to take him?”

  Faith shook her head and answered him quietly. “No. I like it.” Tucker was sound asleep on her shoulder. He’d made it about halfway through his Happy Meal before he’d gotten grumpy and whiny. Demon had been surprised that Faith had picked him up and held him in her arms, but Tucker had been perfectly content with that and had fallen quickly asleep.

  His little butt was still brown with dust. He had had a blast at the Jerrolds’ farm. He’d petted all the cows and the goats. He’d ‘milked’ one very patient old girl, and he’d fed the chickens. He’d helped gather eggs. And there had been a derelict old John Deere tractor rusting out behind the barn. Both Faith and Tucker had enjoyed climbing around on that.

  Demon had had a blast, too. More than ever before in his life, he felt like he was with his family. Not a family that had accepted him, like Hoosier and Bibi or the club, though that was wonderful. A family that he’d made. That was his.

  They were eating fast food on a plastic table outside a McDonalds, right in front of the truck, because on the back seat, behind the driver’s seat, was a box containing four kittens. One of Malachi’s mousers had dropped a litter. The kittens were weaned, and Malachi didn’t want so many cats overrunning his barn. So he’d said they could have the kittens if they wanted.

  Tucker wanted. Faith wanted. So Demon wanted.

  Hoosier was badly allergic to cats, but they weren’t taking the kittens to their house. On Faith’s word, they were taking the kittens to Margot’s house, for Sly to look after.

  Demon didn’t know if that was such a great idea. Margot wasn’t his favorite person on the planet, and he didn’t trust her to be kind to anyone or anything. But he wasn’t clear to what extent Margot would even know the kittens were around. Having not seen her himself in months, he couldn’t quite conjure up an image of what she was like now. Faith, however, said it was perfect, so the kittens were going to Sly.

  The discussion of what to do with their kitten windfall had brought up questions for Demon, questions he kept to himself. He might have brought them up before what happened with Kota, but now he was nervous. This second chance that he and Faith had was brand new. Only a couple of days into it, everything had slid sideways, and he felt like the floor under them still wasn’t secure yet.

  But if it was, how would they live? He wanted to be a family—her, Tucker, and him. Maybe, someday, a baby that was his and Faith’s, too. That was something he’d thought about since the time before. But she had to take care of her mother. And Demon didn’t have custody of Tucker. He was living with Hoosier and Bibi so he could be with his son. How did they make that work?

  Too big a question to contemplate at dusk outside a roadside McDonalds. He smiled at Faith, holding his son. “I love you, babe.”

  She smiled and cocked her head like he’d surprised her.

  “What?”

  “You haven’t called me that since…” her smile faded a little, and he knew she meant ‘before.’

  “Is it okay?”

  “I love it. And you.” She shifted Tucker’s sleeping weight in her arms.

  “Little as he is, he gets heavy. You want to go?”

  “I’m worried he’ll wake up when we put him in his seat.”

  “If he wakes up at all, he’ll go right back to sleep. We wore him out.”

  She grinned. “Yeah. He’s totally ‘tuckered.’”

  Demon groaned a laugh at her terrible pun, then stood up and helped Faith to her feet.

  Tucker didn’t wake up in his car seat. Demon fastened him in while Faith checked on the kittens. With their charges settled, he helped her into the front seat, then climbed in behind her and got the truck moving back to Madrone.

  They rode quietly for about fifteen minutes. The traffic grew heavier the farther west they drove. Demon was mildly agitated—just aggravated by stupid California drivers and frustrated to be stuck in traffic, trapped in a cage. On a bike, he’d have been leaving these idiots behind.

  Faith’s hand was on his thigh, and he must have been telegraphing his declining mood, because she started to rub his leg, sliding her hand up and down as if to soothe him. He liked it, it did soothe him, and he put his arm around her again and tucked her close.

  And then her hand moved far up his thigh and slid between his legs. He brought his arm back from her shoulders and grabbed her hand. Not only was his kid sleeping behind them, but just no. After the night before, he needed a minute or two to get his brain screwed back in right.

  She looked up at him, but she didn’t say anything. Not at first. For a few more minutes, they drove quietly, and Demon changed his hold on her hand to something affectionate rather than controlling.

  “Do you think you’ll ever tell me about what happened to you?” Her voice was soft and hesitant, but the question still skewered him.

  He looked in the rearview and saw that Tucker was still sound asleep, his mouth open and one arm dangling over the car seat. Then Demon swallowed and took a breath. Engaging the topic at all made his heart speed up and thud. “I don’t know if I can.”

  “But you could tell her.”

  Jesus Christ. She was jealous. Faith was jealous of Dakota. That was completely ridiculous.

  But was it? Dakota, who was a fucking corruption of everything good in his life—of Faith—had known his most deeply-held secret. He’d given her that trust, and she’d laughed in his face. He had to trust Faith more than he’d trusted the woman who was the negative image of her. But fuck, to talk about all that with her would really let it loose in his head. He was trying to stuff it all away where it belonged.

  He had to trust her with it. He owed that to her. After everything, he owed her at least that.

  He pulled off at the next ramp and parked in the lot of a Chevron station.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I can’t drive and think about this at the same time.” He checked to make sure Tucker was still sleeping. “And I can’t talk about it with Tucker here. But I will tell you. If you need to know, I’ll tell you. But it sets everything loose in my head when I talk about it or even think about it.” She dropped her head, and Demon kissed her crown. “You should know. I love you. We shouldn’t have secrets.”

  She made a sound like a sob. “I love you. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t need to know. But it’s driving me crazy that she knew. It’s petty and stupid of me to feel like this. But she knew you better than I do. And she gave you Tucker.” She sniffed raised her head. “You know what? It really is petty. Fuck it. I don’t need to know. I don’t want you to have to deal with it. So forget I asked.”

  “Faith…” He hated the thought that she felt at any disadvantage in a comparison with Kota. It was so absurd that he might have laughed if the ground for the comparison hadn’t been so treacherous.

  “No. It’s fine. I know enough. I know who you are, and I love you. It’s fine.”

  He didn’t believe her. He could tell it wasn’t ‘fine.’ “Kota was like me. Grew up like me. I thought she’d understand. And I guess she did, which is how she knew how much it would hurt me to twist it up and broadcast the lie she made. She got off on making me lose my shit.”

  “And you don’t think I’ll understand?”

  “I don’t think you can.” She tensed up, but he held her and went on, “I’m glad you can’t. I’m glad your life was so much better. I was in awe of you from the day I met you, and I’m still in awe of you. I think you can love me because it’s not in you to understand what it was like. You see something good because you can’t see what’s bad. I don’t want you to look at me like you did last night—when you were afraid, or later, when you felt sorry for me, just knowing the little that you do. I can’
t deal with that.”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide with hurt. He didn’t look away. He had to learn to hold.

  “I don’t know what to say to that. It feels like you don’t trust me enough. But okay. I don’t want to make you hurt.”

  “I do trust you. I will tell you. I just wanted you to know why it scares me.”

  “Okay,” she said and then turned again to face the windshield.

  Demon felt fairly sure he’d ruined their good day.

  ~oOo~

  But he hadn’t. Tucker and kittens saved their day.

  They stopped at a pet shop and then went by Margot’s house and got the kittens set up. Sly must have heard their mewing, because he was through the little pet door before they could even go out and call for him. Faith closed up the pet door to keep him inside and then made sure all the bedroom and bathroom doors were closed, too. She was going to come spend the night with Demon and leave Sly in charge until the morning.

  Sly was even nice to Tucker. He must have recognized him as a baby, because he let him squat at his side and pat his head in his not-quite-gentle toddler way, and he didn’t make a fuss when Tucker picked up a kitten.

  By the time they left, with Tucker protesting emphatically, Sly was lying in the soft bed Faith had bought, and the kittens were crawling all over him. His eyes were at half-mast and he was purring like crazy.

  Demon had never seen Sly with kittens. Faith told him that she had, in a way. Apparently, he’d carried two baby bunnies into the yard not long after Demon had left for the Nomads. Margot had let Faith help him take care of them.

  It seemed like Margot maybe had a soft spot for the big old tom.

  ~oOo~

  Tucker’s car nap had screwed up his routine, so he was up until nearly midnight. Everybody in the house watched television together for a while, and Demon started trying to put him down around ten o’clock. He’d read about a library’s worth of picture books before he could finally put Tucker in his crib and turn out the light.

  When he went into his room to change into sweats and a t-shirt, Faith was sitting in the middle of the bed. Figuring she wanted the privacy to talk, Demon counted heartbeats for a few seconds and then sat down next to her.

  But before he could think of something to say, she rose up on her knees and leaned into him.

  “We don’t have to talk.” She planted her lips firmly on his and shoved her tongue into his mouth. He flinched back at first; the talk he’d thought they were going to have had him in no way prepared to head in the direction her kiss was taking them. But she grabbed his head in her hands and held him.

  It was Faith. He loved her. He loved kissing her. He loved loving her. And his body and mind recollected these facts within a few seconds. He pulled her onto his lap. She was wearing only his t-shirt and her panties. With his hands on her bare legs, he deepened their kiss.

  As soon as he did, she smiled and pulled back, kissing his cheek and jaw, moving around to his ear. Demon closed his eyes and felt her, the soft press of her full lips on his skin, the gentle sting of her teeth nipping at him. She got to his ear and sucked on his lobe, making him shiver.

  “You don’t have your earring anymore,” she murmured.

  “You’re just noticing?” he teased, feeling much calmer than he’d expected to feel when he’d come in to see her waiting.

  “No. Just mentioning.” She nipped at him. “The scar looks like it got torn out.”

  “It did.”

  She kissed it. “That must have hurt.”

  “It did. Bled like a fucker. S’why I didn’t pierce it again. Besides, it was lame.”

  “I liked it.”

  He leaned back and looked at her. “Yeah? You want me to do it again?”

  “No. But I love that you would.” Her grin lit up the dimly-lit room.

  He caught her face in his hands and looked hard into her eyes. “I’d do anything for you.”

  For a second or two, she simply looked back into his eyes, just as deeply. Then she whispered, “There is something I’d like.”

  Feeling a hint of trepidation, he combed her hair back from her face. “What?”

  “I’d like to give you head.”

  Demon didn’t know what he’d thought she might say, but it hadn’t been that. “Faith…” He moved, planning to set her on the bed next to him, but she grabbed his hands.

  “Wait. I think I understand a little more why you wouldn’t let me…before. But I know you had to have been with a lot of girls since. I know you’ve gotten head. That has to be true.”

  It was true, but it was irrelevant, and he didn’t like the look in her eyes. This was about jealousy again, and she was ruining a nice ending to a complicated day. “Faith, come on.”

  “Did you let her give you head?”

  Fuck. Suddenly Dakota Nelson was everywhere he turned, like she was haunting him. “Don’t bring her in here. You’re putting her between us, and that sucks.”

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  The answer was yes, so he kept it to himself. She didn’t understand at all. “Faith, please.”

  “You did. Why not me, then?”

  “It’s different with you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you!” He pushed her off his lap and stood up. He wanted to get away, but he had to learn to hold. So he walked to the window and stared at his reflection in the dark glass. Counting beats. “I love you. I don’t want to make you do that.”

  After a minute or two, she came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “I think somebody made you do that.”

  The shudder ran through him despite his efforts to suppress it. “I will tell you all of it, but I can’t talk about us at the same time. What we have can’t get wound up in all that. I will lose my shit.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry.” She kissed his back and then leaned her head on him.

  “Don’t be jealous of her, Faith. You’re everything. She was nothing.” Demon knew then that his past—Kota, his childhood, all of it—would be between them until he answered the questions in Faith’s head. Whether she demanded the answers or not, the questions were in the way. Even if it changed everything between them, even if she couldn’t love him once she knew, he had to tell her. And hope for the best.

  He sighed and picked up her arm from his waist, pulling her around so he could hold her. “I need to tell you everything. No secrets. I need you to know so you’ll stop wondering.” He looked down at her bare legs. “But put some pants on first.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Bibi pushed Margot into the house, and Faith followed, carrying the bag she and Bibi had packed, as well as a couple of plastic bags of crap the hospital had sent them home with.

  It wasn’t her mother who was coming back to this house. The days in the hospital seemed to have dulled the edges of the woman she’d been. Not that Faith really had any idea who her mother had been in the past ten years.

  But for the past few days, Margot had been quiet and vaguely confused. She asked for Blue all the time and cried when no one could bring him to her. She knew Bibi—almost forty years of friendship had etched her best friend into many layers of her memory—but she only fleetingly understood who Faith was, and when she did, she thought she was still a girl. Since Faith and Margot had been in crisis during those years, it was easier, and just better, when she couldn’t remember her at all.

  Waiting in the house for them was Leonora Prater, who would be Margot’s primary nurse. Sera was paying for one and a half daily shifts of home nursing. She’d offered to pay for three shifts, freeing Faith up entirely, but Faith wanted to try it this way first. She had no idea why, but she wanted to take care of her mother. Or at least try.

  Leonora—Leo, she’d said to call her—had started working a couple of days earlier, and she had made a list of changes that needed to be made in the house. In almost no time, several members of the Horde had widened doors, built ramps, and hauled furniture and rugs to sto
rage. They’d also installed child guards on cabinets and doors. Faith had trouble accepting that one. Her mother was becoming a child.

  Because there was a notation in her file that she was prone to violent outbursts, the nurses assigned to her—Leo and a male nurse, Jose—had particular training. And they were both large people. Margot was about an inch taller than Faith and maybe ten pounds heavier. Leo probably weighed two times as much. And Jose was built like a defensive lineman. The image of either of them taking Margot down, no matter how psycho she got, was almost laughable. If anything at all could have been laughable.