by Jackie May
“Uh, it’s kind of on me, yeah.”
“No.”
“Because.”
“No.”
“Because I love you,” he says.
I’m caught off guard, to say the least. It’s strange how you can feel something and know something and even show it so many times by your actions and still be completely floored to hear it put into direct words. Feeling my face overheat, the only natural response that comes to mind is to continue the stupid argument. “So what? I love you, too.”
“Good,” is his witty retort.
Which I follow with an even wittier “Okay, good.” And then, as we both try not to smile, I say, “Because tomorrow night we’re going to a secret necromancer’s masquerade where we’ll probably both be killed by demons, so…”
“So…you thought we’d have one last donut before that?”
We’re parked in front of a donut shop in a strip mall that opens any minute. “Yes,” I lie. “But not just any donut. It has to be your favorite donut.”
“My favorite? I don’t have a—”
“No, Jay. Unacceptable.”
He makes an offended look. “What, I can’t not have a favorite donut?”
“No, you can’t. You have to pick one. Is that so damn hard? Are you telling me you like all donuts the same?”
“What if I did? Is this a cop joke?”
I make my own offended look. “Um, only if you think it’s a joke that if you don’t have a favorite donut, then I have to assume you don’t have a favorite anything, including a favorite person.”
His face scrunches with the strain of trying to keep up with my logic. “That’s just…such a girl thing to say.”
I gasp, this time for real.
Jay laughs, because he knows he’s busted. “Fine, fine. A favorite donut…” He thinks hard. Too hard. Geez, maybe he’s worse off than I thought. “Oh. What about a maple bar?”
“Are you seriously asking me?”
“Not everybody has just one favorite of everything. It depends on how you feel at the moment. Like, do you always order the same exact thing at restaurants?”
“Yes! Haven’t you noticed?”
“Wait, you do?”
“Why would I go there if I didn’t know exactly what I wanted? You know what, forget it.”
“No. You started this. Obviously, it’s important for you to know which donuts I like.”
“Oh my—” I massage my temples. “This has nothing to do with donuts! I’m trying to…look, when I saw my family back there. When I saw Bunica…I know her. I know every single person there. Everything about them. Likes, dislikes, quirks, wants, dreams. I want to know you that way.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. But it’s impossible.”
“Not fair. That’s your family. You’ve known them your whole life. It takes time.”
“I really hate that answer.”
“Of course! Because you’re impatient. You want everything right now, this instant.”
“See? You already know everything about me. That’s what I’m talking about.”
“Congratulations. You’re easy.”
“Watch it, mister.”
“I don’t know what else to tell you, Shayne, except…maple bar.”
“I’ll tell you where to stick your maple bar.”
“I don’t have a lot of set-in-stone ways; I guess you’re right. Maybe I don’t know what I want until I see it. But when I see it, and when I know it, I know it. And nothing and no one can stop me after that.”
“Now that is something I do know about you.”
“It’s true. You never stood a chance.”
“Oh, really.”
“Honestly, Shayne. It’s pathetic how easy you were.”
“I will slap that grin off your face.”
He pulls me toward him. “Do it,” he challenges, inching closer. The morning light catches his green eyes, and I melt into him, kissing his lips with desperate intensity. The stress and anxiety of the worst night of my life fades away. This is a new day, and Jay’s still here.
By the time we come up for air, a woman is unlocking the door to the donut shop. The neon OPEN sign flickers on. Time for me to make the decision. I can take him in there, buy him a maple bar, and call it good. He would never know that I actually brought us here for something else.
Before I can change my mind, I say, “You know, there is one other thing I know about you. C’mon.” I open the door and step out of the car. He follows, joining me on the sidewalk in front of the donut shop. Fighting back the urge to shudder, I point to the shop next door—a dog shelter. Its owner is just now flipping the door sign from closed to open. I can hear several of the beasts yapping inside.
Jay’s jaw drops. “No, Shayne.”
“Don’t try to tell me you’re not a dog person, because when we first met, you were ready to let a junkyard mutt tear my throat out before you’d even consider shooting it, and Russo said you always wanted a dog, but couldn’t because you lived in a tiny apartment. He told me how you would always complain about having to watch Haley’s dog, but that secretly you loved it and one time he caught you brushing its hair.”
“I did not!”
“Fine, I made that last part up, but still. Am I wrong?”
“Babe, I don’t know what to say. This is incredible. Really. But you and dogs…it’s too much.”
“That’s exactly why I want to do this.” I step in front of him, and we lock eyes. I need him to see that this is no joke. “Jay, I’m tired of being the me that’s all me. I want to start being the me that’s part you.”
He kisses me again. “Okay, but I would have been just fine with a maple donut.”
“And you said I was easy.”
I follow him inside, and the demon spawn waste no time in validating my grudge by showing that the feeling is mutual. For Jay’s smiles and outstretched hand, the dogs have nothing but playful paws and wagging tails, but the first sight of me sends them all into tantrums of rage. And not just the big dogs, either. Tiny rat dogs no bigger than a football are leaping at their cages with bared teeth. I would laugh in their tiny faces if Jay didn’t look so concerned.
“I see what you mean,” he mutters.
I have to shout just to be heard over all the yapping and cage rattling. “What, you thought I was just being a diva? It’s genetics, Jay. Dogs instinctively hate”—I’m about to say foxes, but the kennel lady is standing there, befuddled—“something about me,” I finish.
“I don’t understand,” the lady says. “I’ve never seen them like this. Do you have a steak in your pocket?” She laughs, moving from cage to cage, soothing her “pretties” with soft words and caresses.
I am the steak, I say to myself. “Maybe I should go.”
“You’re just new to them, is all,” Jay says. “After a day or so, they’ll warm up to you.”
“Funny, that’s what everybody keeps telling me about Nick Gorgeous.”
“Look, you made your point, babe. After this, it’s obvious you’d do anything for me. I’m telling you, it’s enough. Let’s go.”
I’m this close to gratefully accepting his lifeline when a great booming bark silences all the other dogs. It came from another aisle, where the big cages are kept.
The lady is delighted. “Well, look who wants some attention! Couldn’t wait your turn, huh? It’s just killing you to wait another second, isn’t it? Here we are, then.”
I take a step back, because that thing’s not a dog, it’s a horse. A black curly-haired poodle horse mix. A hordle. Or a poorse.
“A labradoodle,” Jay guesses correctly. He puts his palms against the cage, and the massive beast matches him, putting paws on the cage and standing on its hind legs. They’re practically the same height. “Eighty pounds or so?”
“Not quite,” the lady answers. “He looks more, because he’s so puffy. Needs a haircut, don’t you, boy?”
In response, the horse leaps away, runs around in
four tight circles, then jumps back at the cage. His black mop of curls is so full I can only tell it’s his face by the long pink tongue wagging. Jay tries to contain his smile, but it’s no use. Anybody can see that he’s already done for.
“Oh, I knew he wouldn’t be here long,” the lady says. “Part Labrador, part poodle. Smart, loyal, and, most of all, playful. Like a big kid. What’s not to like?”
“Does he come with a saddle?” I ask. At the sound of my voice, the black bear looks at me. It drops to all fours, and with a yelp backs into a corner, whimpering. It’s so absurd—this massive beast frightened by me—that we all just stare at him for a second.
Jay laughs. “Really, boy? Big guy like you, a scaredy-cat? C’mere.” He crouches, holding a hand out through the cage. The black muppet’s tail wags like crazy. He goes eagerly to Jay, but with a wary eye kept on me.
The lady is flustered. “Maybe not frightened so much as…well, Labradoodles can be very sensitive.” She glances at me. “Perhaps he can sense that you’re…”
“That I’m what?”
“Well…not the biggest dog lover.”
“What, you’re saying I hurt his feelings?”
“Labradoodles thrive on pleasing their owners. Perhaps he senses too great a challenge in pleasing you.”
“Geez! Are you sure you’re not the one whose feelings are hurt?”
She gives me a patient smile. “Just try a gentler tone with him, that’s all. Think of him as a child. It is with Labradoodles as it is with most children: a little goes a long way.”
“So does a good smack upside the head, if we’re talking about my nephew.”
She looks appalled. Jay smiles at me, knowing that now I’m just being a brat. For his sake, I grit my teeth and attempt a thin smile at the curly black muppet. Immediately he brightens, wagging his tail and raising his bushy brows. As a test, I turn my smile into a frown, and he hides behind Jay, moping.
Jay laughs, not at the dog, but at me. “Shayne, you’re such a huge faker.”
“Wait, what?”
“Two days.” He holds up two fingers. “I give it two days before he wins you over. And I should know.”
“Oh, because I’m easy?”
“So easy.”
“Seeing as how he’s the only one here who doesn’t want to take a bite out of my face, I’d say he’s already done a pretty good job of winning me over.”
Jay cocks a brow at the lady. “That’s her way of saying, We’ll take him.”
So yeah, that’s how I first met Muppet.
He runs circles in the parking lot before Jay finally wrangles him into the truck. At home, he runs circles in the front yard until Russo wrestles with him. He runs circles all through the house, smashing into walls and knocking over lamps with his tail, until I come in, and then he scampers over to Jay like a worried toddler who wants Mommy to pick him up.
“He’s enormous,” Russo says as they start to wrestle again. “He’s beautiful. Aren’t you, boy? Huh? Yes, you are. Yes, you are.” And on and on with that baby talk that grown-ass men reserve especially for their dogs.
When I head for the kitchen, Russo suddenly jumps to his feet, grabs Jay by the shoulder, and pushes him out the back door. “C’mon, partner, let’s take him out back. Watch him run.” It’s an obvious and clumsy escape, which I don’t understand until I notice that Special Agent Hillerman is sitting at the table in the kitchen, staring down at her hands.
Aaaaaand…now we’re alone.
I’ve never been so intensely focused on making coffee. I rinse a mug in the sink. The faucet handle is squeaky and the water is loud. The cupboards are loud. Everything’s loud. I can hear the gurgling bubbles from the coffee maker as I stare at it impatiently. Two long minutes crawl by. I’m just starting to feel sure that this moment will pass uneventfully, when I hear her shift in her seat. My back is to her, but somehow I can just feel that she is now looking at me.
The brewing cycle should be up any second. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, I urge it silently.
“Why haven’t they tried to kill us again?” she asks. “It’s been twenty-four hours of quiet. Nobody following us. No El Camino. We know they haven’t given up—demons don’t quit, literally forever. Which means we’ve only been put on hold. If we’re not the priority anymore, there must be some bigger target out there.”
“Maybe we’ll find out tonight.”
“Shayne, I think we need to be prepared for the possibility that this whole thing will lead to people you’d rather not look at.”
“What do you mean? What people?”
“There’s a black hole at the center of all this. You know about black holes?”
“Like, in outer space?”
“They’re invisible. Black holes can’t be seen, not directly. The only reason we know where they are is because we can see their influence on everything else, all the stuff swirling around them. This necromancer, we can’t see her, but her influence is everywhere. She’s got her finger on the pulse of the Detroit underworld. She’s got to be respected, especially by sorcerers. We know she must be powerful, and she must be well connected. Powerful enough and well-connected enough to win the loyalties of men like Arael Moaz and Henry Stadther.”
“If you’re talking about Madison West, then this conversation is over.”
“Who goes way back with Henry Stadther? Who kept the truth from Nora Jacobs about the vamps who killed her mom? Who warned you to stay away from King Paul? Who took you off the necromancy case and insisted on handling it herself?”
“Maybe so.”
“Not saying her name doesn’t make it any less true than not seeing a black hole. Madison West is at the center of too many things.”
“Maybe so, but you know what else? You’ve won too many times in a row, so this time I have to play the odds. The simple truth is that you can’t be right all the time.”
“That’s just stupid.”
She’s right about that. It’s very stupid, but what she’s saying about Madison West scares the shit out of me, and I’m sure as hell not going to let her see that.
After a long silence, she sighs. “But I hope you’re right.”
I squeeze the mug tightly. This conversation was exhausting before it even began. I swear coffee has never in the history of the world taken this long to brew.
“I don’t know why I brought that up. That’s not even…it’s not what we need to talk about.”
By the quaver in her voice, I can guess exactly what she thinks we need to talk about. Thankfully, she seems to lose her nerve and changes the subject. “What’s the most money you’ve ever gotten at once?”
“I don’t know. Couldn’t be much.”
“Poker winnings? A tournament?”
“Five thousand.”
“First place?”
“Third.” The coffee’s ready. I fill my mug.
“Five thousand doesn’t go very far. Buy a used car, maybe. But fifty thousand is something else.”
“Psh. In my dreams.” I turn to face her, sipping carefully from the mug. Too hot.
“Let’s say you enter that tournament—the one for 50K. And you want it badly, so you bust your ass. And guess what?”
“I win.”
“50K. How’s that feel?”
“Dancing in the street.”
After a pause, she sighs and says, “Matt’s telling me to say ‘Great song.’”
A laugh surges up my throat, but I cut it off just before it can escape. I didn’t want the ice to break between us, but dammit if Matt hasn’t accomplished it. I lean back against the counter, resigned to hear her out. Hear them out, rather.
“But here’s the thing. When you go home to check your bank account, you discover that the prize money they deposited wasn’t fifty thousand. It was ten million.”
The mug stops just short of my lips. My brows fly up.
“You’re screwed,” she says.
“How do you figure?”
“Fifty thou
sand, that’s all you wanted, and more than you needed. Fifty thousand advances your life, lets you move forward. And if you screw up and lose it all? That’s a bummer, but not the end of the world.”
“If you say so.”
“It was a luxury, after all. And not so much that you couldn’t save up to that number again. It’s not unreachable.”
“I guess.”
“But ten million?” She shakes her head. “Ten million doesn’t change your life, it changes you. It doesn’t just let you move forward in life, it makes it so you can never go back. Ten million, you don’t just appreciate, you worship. You lie awake at night, terrified by the question…”
She looks at me, and I’m surprised to know exactly what that terrifying question is, because we’re not talking about money at all. “What if I lose him?”
“Sometimes maybe you wonder if you’d have been better off not winning that tournament.”
“Is that what you wish?”
“No.”
“Me neither. Coffee?”
“Sure.”
I pour her a mug and sit at the table. As she sips, I build up the nerve to say, “He can feel it, Charlotte. Matt feels everything you feel when you look at Russo.”
She turns her face away, embarrassed to hear it said out loud. “It’s nothing. And I’ll do nothing. It will pass.”
“I don’t doubt it. But that’s…”
She glances at me with tears in her eyes. “What?”
“That’s…” I can’t spit it out. Honestly, I’m worried she’ll throw scalding coffee in my face. I brace myself for the worst. “That’s not what Matt wants.”
She takes her mug, but only to move it further away. Also steeling herself for the worst, I guess. “What does he want?”
“He says that sometimes he can’t get through to you. That it’s getting harder for you to hear him.”
“I hear him just fine.”
“Then I don’t have to say it. You already know what he wants.”
“He hasn’t said a word.”
“He has. You just won’t hear it. I don’t blame you. I wouldn’t, either.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants you to be happy.”
“Meaning what? How, exactly?”