by Zoe Chant
The warm humor in Linden's voice put Mandy at ease, though the question she'd raised threatened to undo it. What do I want?
Purpose, clarity, and inner peace all sounded nice, but Mandy didn't feel like yoga or meditation were even remotely what she was looking for. What do I want?
Nico, her mind supplied her.
She shook her head to rid herself of the thought. "I don't know," she said. "I haven't had that much time to think about what I want."
Well, that wasn't entirely true. She'd had plenty of time. But she hadn't had the chance to think about what she wanted in a world where she could actually go after it. She'd had plenty of time to wish for things in daydreams while she balanced work and raising a daughter and not going crazy with it all.
But what would she look for, when there was some possibility she might get it?
Her mind filled with thoughts of Nico exploring her body, cherishing every curve, cherishing her scar.
I don't even know him! she thought.
And some small part of her protested, But I want to.
The last time she'd let herself get carried away with passion, it had left her pregnant and alone. And Aimée was the best thing that had ever happened to her, but she definitely hadn't happened in the best possible way.
Mandy didn't want to repeat her previous mistake.
Maybe it won't be a mistake, this time, she thought. He's not a high school boy. He's a grown man, a business owner...
And impulsive enough to sleep with a stranger who walks in, for no reason at all.
I don't know him at all.
...but I want to.
Linden had leaned forward, studying Mandy's face. "Are you all right?"
Mandy shook her head, forcing a smile. "I was just thinking I was getting hungry," she said. "I passed a place a few blocks back – Nico's deli. Do you know if it's good?"
"Oh, Nico's!" Linden said. "Oh yeah, I stop there all the time after work. I love their sandwiches. And if you can get some of their peach-ginger pie, it is so good."
Mandy smiled and nodded. She'd been hoping to fish out a bit more information. Like maybe, But watch out for the owner, he's a total creep, or And it's run by this cute bachelor who would totally be a catch for anyone...
"Is it a chain?" Mandy asked. "Or is it local?"
"Oh, totally local," Linden said. "The guy who runs it moved here, like, fifteen years ago, or something. I think he's looking for something, too. He has that look to him."
Is he honest? Is he genuine? Is he safe? Mandy didn't know how to ask those questions without asking them outright. And she didn't want to put them in so many words, and draw attention to what she was feeling. She swallowed, and instead, she said "He's been searching for fifteen years? I thought Los Cazadores always gave people what they were looking for."
Linden shrugged. "Do you believe in magic?" she asked.
"No." That was an easy question to answer. And it offered an easy explanation: that little myth about Los Cazadores was nothing more than a marketing slogan, just like Nicolas's story about the people who turned into lions was just a folk tale. People here could believe it out of tradition or civic pride or whatever. But Mandy was an outsider here, not sure she should be here at all.
"Maybe you have to give it some time," Linden said.
Mandy's phone buzzed in her pocket. She reached in to silence it.
"Well," she said. "Thank you for talking with me." She smiled at the other woman. "I'll try that deli."
"You won't regret it," Linden said. "I hope you have a great visit!"
"I'll try," Mandy said, and walked out the door.
Nicolas
Nico liked the time just after the breakfast rush, while the morning pastries were still fresh enough that no more needed to be baked, and the slowing down of customers meant that his morning staff could handle them all. Nico could come out into the dining area and mingle during those couple hours, and he was beginning to collect a few regulars who liked to come and talk to him.
Or who liked to come in and brood. One of those was coming in the door now, and Nico smiled to himself. Ari was here for his black coffee and breakfast sandwich, it seemed.
Ari was a good man to know, but Nico had always found him a hard man to spend time with. He always seemed to have half his mind elsewhere, and acted like a sense of humor offended his honor. He had sharp features and piercing eyes – a skin-deep reflection of his much deeper shifter nature – and golden hair that was always just slightly disheveled.
All in all, it gave him an air of distant tragedy that he probably didn't intend. Nico had watched plenty of people fall for it, which had always seemed to discomfit Ari more than please him. It would have been funny, if he hadn't pitied the man.
But Nico was a good host, if nothing else, and he wanted to get to know his regulars. So when Ari came in and got his order, Nico slid into the chair opposite him as soon as he sat down.
Ari seemed to accept his presence the way another person might accept a dull headache. "Roja."
"Damaronde." Nico had snuck a look at Ari's actual legal name when he'd paid with a credit card, at some point. Aristotle Damaronde. Ari's family was nothing if not traditional.
Nico had been jealous of Ari for having a family with enough sense of place and history to be traditional. He'd stopped being jealous once he learned how estranged from them Ari was.
"How's your day?" Nico asked.
Ari sighed, closed-mouthed. "As ever. You're edgy."
Nico jumped. "I'm always surprised you can do that. You and Cheli." He thought he'd been keeping it under his hat rather well.
Ari tilted his head, studying Nico out of one eye. "You're not as subtle as you think you are," he said. "You're a jaguar in a china shop."
"No china in my shop," Nico said. "Only half the food's fancy enough."
Ari looked flatly at him, utterly unfazed by the joke.
Nico endured the look for as long as he could, then shook his head. He lowered his voice. "I found my mate."
All at once, he found himself the recipient of Ari's full attention. "You what?"
"I found," Nico began, but Ari waved off his repetition.
"Why aren't you with..."
Nico's mouth quirked up. Ari was very diplomatically not saying her or him. Nico wasn't particularly interested in men, but he was also fond of his privacy, and he could see why Ari might not want to assume. "I didn't want to crowd her," he said. "And also, she... she doesn't know."
Ari stared at him. His gaze was knife-sharp and unyielding, his focus never wavering. Some people had mastered the art of drawing words out of people with patient, listening silence. Ari had mastered the art of skewering the truth with his eyes and dragging it out by main force.
"She's human," Nico said. "She thinks shifters are folk tales."
"Easily solved," Ari said. "We are the proof."
Nico waved off his words. "Well, yes, but..."
"You're afraid."
Nico's jaguar snorted with affront. Cautious, Nico thought. I'm cautious. He was more comfortable moving with stealth and consideration, not blundering into things.
"Tell her," Ari said. "She's your mate. You'll be with her forever, or pine for her forever. You have to tell her sometime, and the longer you wait, the more it seems like you're lying."
Nico jerked back like he'd been slapped. "I'm not lying to her!"
"The difference between lying and concealing the truth is academic," Ari said. His voice was flat and distant, like he was reciting something. Some code of honor, maybe. Nico didn't know much about Ari's clan, but he could easily believe that Ari had been brought up with some kind of knightly code. Probably one involving self-flagellation. "What are you afraid of?"
"I'm not afraid of anything," Nico said.
A second later, he realized that he was.
He was afraid that, being human and unaware of the mate-bond, Mandy didn't need him half as much as he needed her. He was afraid that she would neve
r look at him in a way that made him feel like he belonged.
Ari nodded, as though Nico had agreed with him. "What is it you most want, Roja?"
It was easy to answer that question to himself: A home. A family. A place where I feel like I belong. A place where I feel like I know who I am. But he didn't want to say as much to Ari. "I want her to like me."
"Don't be so afraid you'll muck it up that you fuck it up," Ari said. "Fur and feathers, Roja, you sat down with me for advice?"
"I didn't come over for advice," Nico said. "I came over to say hello."
Ari waved his hand, like the difference between those things, as well, was academic. He took a sip of his coffee, and a bite of his breakfast sandwich.
Nico watched him, weighing his movements. When he wasn't taking apart Nico's secret, inner fears, he looked much more human and vulnerable. Nico wondered what it would take for someone to pry his secrets apart.
"The food here is excellent," Ari said. "As usual. Thank you."
There was real warmth in that compliment, Nico thought. Maybe just a little candle's worth of it, and maybe it was buried deep, but there it was.
"Thanks for your two cents," Nico said. Though coming from Ari, the two cents felt more like forty lashes.
But Nico could recognize an opportune time to extract himself, partly because someone else had just walked in the door. Another regular, and an old friend, to boot... and if Nico did need advice, he felt a lot more comfortable getting advice from them.
"I'll tell her," Nico promised, and left Ari to his breakfast.
Mandy
Mandy stopped by the studio first, and pulled out her phone. She was thinking about calling Aimée, but what could she say to her? Thank you so much for sending me on vacation. I'm more confused than I've ever been.
She flipped through some of the shiny new icons. The phone, like the vacation, had been a gift from Aimée, more successful at twenty than Mandy had been at any point in her life. Aimée seemed to have it all figured out: who she was, where she was going. Mandy wondered where she'd gotten it from. Had she really managed to teach Aimée those things, when she didn't understand them herself?
Her voicemail was filling up with messages. She stared at her phone, dreading the idea of listening to them all. She already knew there weren't likely to be anything good.
Just delete them, she thought. She knew she needed to pay these people back, she had a plan, she didn't need to listen to them calling to harangue her.
Sighing, and still dreading, she dialed her voice mail.
The first message was what she expected. "Hey, Mandy. Look, we've been patient, we've given you months–"
Delete. They could wait a little longer. Just a little longer.
Second message, same thing. "Hey, Mandy. Give us our goddamn money. You said–"
Delete. Third message. Delete. Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
She stopped counting, hitting the button as soon as she heard the man's familiar pissed-off tones.
And then the last message began differently. "Hello, Mandy. We know you're–"
Her finger hit the button to delete it before her mind caught up. We know you're what? Ignoring us? Not spending money on your kid any more?
She set her phone down, staring at the screen. Was there a way to un-delete a message?
Maybe, maybe not. Either way, she didn't really want to go back and listen. She actually was getting hungry, and despite any awkwardness with the owner, Nico's Deli did serve delicious food.
She went down and walked in the door hoping that Nico might be in the back, or taking a day off, or maybe vacationing on the other side of the country. But also halfway hoping that he'd be right there to embrace her, to kiss her, to...
She almost slipped into the fantasy before she saw that none of those options were right. Nicolas was sitting at a table with a much older couple, and he heard the little bell on the door as soon as she came in.
Before Mandy could duck back outside or pretend she hadn't seen him or start blushing uncontrollably, Nicolas's face lit up with a grin, and he beckoned her over to the table. She clutched her purse, and walked over.
"Mandy," Nicolas said, rising from his chair to meet her. "I'm so sorry I had to disappear this morning."
Now Mandy did start blushing. "It was fine," she said. "I know you had work to do."
"Still, I..." Nicolas shook his head. Then he seemed to remember that he'd been sitting with people. People who were now looking at the two of them curiously, and more than a little knowingly. Mandy blushed harder.
"Mandy, let me introduce you," Nicolas said, and drew her over to the side of the table. The man sitting there was old, his hair gone white and thready through and through, well-worn smile lines carved into his broad face. The woman sitting beside him looked small next to his solid frame, though her face spoke of similar long happiness. Nicolas beamed at both of them.
"Paulo, Suzanne, this is Mandy. She's just come to visit Los Cazadores." He turned to Mandy. "Mandy, this is Paulo, the man who taught me everything I know about baking."
Paulo laughed. His voice was big and rich and friendly. "Oh, no," he said. "I taught the boy everything I knew. I don't know where he got half of what he knows."
"I wouldn't know a single thing without you," Nicolas said. Before Paulo could demur, he said "and this is Paulo's wife, Suzanne."
"Charmed," Suzanne said, in a faintly Southern accent. She offered her hand, and Mandy took it.
Nicolas motioned Mandy into a seat, then took his own. "These two practically raised me."
"Well, we never thought we wanted a child, but fate had other ideas," Paulo laughed. "Though we didn't have to put him through college, at least!"
"Or change any diapers," Suzanne agreed.
Mandy felt a sudden pang for Aimée. "I have a daughter I just sent off to college," she said. "She's the one who bought me a ticket out here."
"Oh, you must be so proud!" Suzanne said. "What's her name? What's she studying?"
"Aimée," Mandy said. Just speaking the name made her feel warm inside. She remembered looking for names in a threadbare book in the local library, and settling on that one. She'd wanted something she could lean on: a way to say to her daughter, even in the hardest moments, I love you. Aimée. Beloved.
It had been one of the first decisions she'd made that she could look back on and recognize as a seed of adulthood. A seed of strength, when so many people were telling her that she wasn't strong enough or wise enough or adult enough to raise a kid. She straightened up in her chair.
"She's studying finance," she said. Aimée had told Mandy her major, or maybe it was the name of the specialist program she was in, but it kept slipping Mandy's mind. The whole world of college degrees and business schools and internships and certificates and whatnot was a foreign land to Mandy.
"Finance!" Paulo exclaimed. "I never had the head for it. Even when I ran my own business! But it sounds like she's got great things ahead of her."
Suzanne leaned in, conspiratorially. "Nico always wanted to raise a family," she said. "He's so good with people that age."
"Suzanne!" Nicolas exclaimed.
"That girl he's training as the night manager here. Cheli, her name is. He's like an older brother to her."
Nicolas was making frantic little gestures over the table, trying to get Suzanne to stop talking. Suzanne cheerfully ignored him, and ignored Mandy beginning to color at the cheeks.
"Now, he's been a bachelor entirely too long, and we've been hoping he'd find someone to settle down with," Suzanne continued, with a kindly, grandmotherly obliviousness which Mandy suspected was all pretend. "But of course he has to find the right person. Our Nico doesn't settle for just anyone."
Nicolas hopped up out of his chair. "Suzanne! Paulo! It's been so nice to see you both," he said. "Paulo, you have to try some of these pork pies I've been making. I promise you, it's no one you know."
Paulo guffawed at that, though Mandy had to wonder why. And she
had to wonder, too, when he said, "Cat humor. Oh, Nico, never change."
Of course, if they had known each other for so long, it was no wonder they had their own language of in-jokes. She pushed her chair away from the table, leaning forward to offer her hand. "It was so nice to meet you both."
Paulo leaned forward and took her hand in both of his, and then his hands were joined by both of Suzanne's, as well.