“Tobias is still pack. We still need Cody’s permission for him to go to Istanbul with me.”
“With us.”
Confusion turned my head. When I’d brought up the idea with Amy last night, she’d laughed at it. “You changed your mind?”
Amy took another sip of her second whiskey sour before smacking her palate. “I’m going to Istanbul with you. You said that these bad vampires...”
“SHHH!”
The bartender was busy talking to another customer at the opposite end of the bar, but still, I wasn’t unaware that our voices had been growing louder in the two hours we’d been sitting at the bar, getting more and more drunk.
“Those bad people, then,” Amy amended, whispering. “That they were the ones who attacked me, and that they’d try it again if they thought it would do any good. Well, I just helped you stand up to a pack of dogs, so I’m guessing any shot I had at claiming the title ‘innocent bystander’ is gone. So, yes. I’m coming with you, and you’re going to teach me how to fight, okay? That’s the deal. And in exchange, I’m going to teach you how to fall in love.”
I attempted not to choke on my drink. “You’re going to teach me how to fall in love?”
Amy blinked at me in rapid succession. “What, you think I don’t know how? Geri, I almost fall in love five times a year. You don’t think it’s on accident, do you? It’s a carefully controlled and deliberate process!”
“Granted, but what I need help with isn’t falling in love. I did that just fine. What I need help with, apparently, is falling out of love.”
“Silly Yooper, it’s the same thing. There’s no better way to get over the old guy than to get hung up on the next one.”
“So you’re telling me that you can teach me to fall in love with Caleb?”
Suddenly, the confident gambler decided to hedge her bets. “Caleb specifically? We can try. I mean, you just can’t fall in love with any guy. He’s got to have the right package. And no, I’m not just talking about genitals. Though, don’t get me wrong, those are important too.”
“I’m going to need another drink for this.” I leaned over the bar, trying to ignore the way the room went along for the ride. Prior to tonight, I’d consumed alcohol on three occasions, each more ceremonial than celebratory. In the past ninety minutes, I’d set a lifetime personal best. Or worst. “Randy? Another?”
As the orientation of the room took time to catch up with me as I sat back up, I decided worst, definitely worst.
“Oh, my god. You really do know everybody here, don’t you?” Amy asked. “I thought you were just joking, but you’ve been able to call everyone by their name since we got to the hotel.”
“I don’t know the tourists.” With a wide swing of my arms, indicating the roomful of Johnny Detroits and Jenny Chicagos, I disavowed any suggestion of omnipotence. “But Randy here, he was my PE teacher in high school.”
“And her driver’s ed teacher,” the balding, gray-haired man in his sixties said as he topped off my glass. “Speaking of which, I hope you’re not planning on getting behind the wheel to head home after this tonight, Gerwalta.”
“Nope! I’m staying here, pretending to be a tourist. Didn’t you hear that my parents disowned me?”
Randy tried to hide his laugh. “Sounds like your mom hasn’t changed. But your dad, too? He’s always seemed to me like an okay guy, not the kind to turn out his daughter. Anything I can help with?”
“Not unless you can convince the old battle-ax to let me have my hood without being her minion, not really.”
As Randy’s face screwed up in confusion, Amy put both her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t pay any attention to her. She’s been babbling stuff like that for an hour. I should probably take her up to the room now.”
She threw a stack of bills onto the counter, which Randy’s fat hand pawed and swished away. Amy tried to tug me to my feet, but both my mind and my body refused to budge.
“But he just got my drink!” I protested, two hands, both seemingly connected to my right arm, swinging out to grab the glass. “I mean, I just got my drink. When I get upstairs, I’m going to pass out. If you’re going to tell me how I’m supposed to fall in love, I need to know that now.”
Amy leaned in, whispering in my ear. “If I tell you, will you promise to go after? You’re getting kind of belligerent. People are starting to look at us.”
“Tourists always gawk at the locals. We’re like a zoo exhibit for them: ‘Come see the amazing Yooper, who lives seven months a year in the snow, survives on a steady diet of pasties, and knows sixteen ways to use lake ice as a natural resource.’” I pounded the bar with my fist, making my refilled glass spill over the edge. “Now teach me, oh wise one. How do I fall in love?”
Amy huffed, but relented. “You need to assess four things. First, do they think the same thing about food as you? I don’t care what so-called experts say: if you get to Thanksgiving, and one of you wants a turkey stuffed with pork sausage while the other wants a tofurkey, it’s never going to work. Second, do you both want to live in the same kind of place? I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve met whose bones I would have jumped posthaste, but it turned out they were country folks. I know it seems superficial, but so much about what we want out of life is wrapped up in where we want to live. Our pace, our shopping, our vacations, our expectations about family: all is geographically-oriented. If you’ve assessed those two factors, and the guy meets those conditions, you can move on to assessing quality three.”
Her convoluted logic had me drawn in, and I was an acolyte sitting at the feet of the priest.
“What’s number three? Job prospects?”
“No, silly, sex appeal.” Amy said it like it was the most natural thing in the world. “If looking at him doesn’t make you want to rip his clothes off three times an hour, then the relationship has no hope. Physical things only slow down with time. If you don’t have that spark right at the beginning, you’re never going to have it.”
I ran the mesh of Amy’s filters over the view of my current relationship. Food that we both liked? I guess we had that down. I mean, our dates often included going out to eat, and so far, we never ended up anywhere where there wasn’t something each of us could eat. Sex appeal we definitely had down, excepting for some weird thing on my side that had so far prevented any actual sex. But as for wanting to live in the same place? The discussion had never come up.
“Wait,” I said, realizing Amy’s lesson wasn’t done. “What about the fourth thing? You said there were four parts of the rubric.”
“No one says rubric, Geri,” she chided. “But yes, the fourth thing. This is crucial. You have to identify one thing about the guy you hate. And I’m talking really, really loathe here, like, makes you contemplate murder.”
“And that’s it? Three things you have in common, one thing you hate, and then boom: love?”
“Well, no, it’s not that simple. But it’s not much more than that. See, falling in love is the process of meeting someone, overlaying them into your life, and then, letting them sink into all your nooks and crannies. Don’t give me that face, Gerwalta Kline, and get your mind out of the gutter! I’m talking about emotional nooks and crannies. The first few times you’re meeting someone, you focus on just getting to know what those four factors are. Then, once you think you got them down, and he fits in on the first three factors, you sit down and talk to yourself. You say, ‘Self, here is a man with the same appetites and the same goals as me, and who I want and seems to want me. And here is the one worst thing about him that I can say. Given that worst thing, am I willing to accept him for all those other reasons?’ If the answer is yes, you let yourself fall in love. If the answer is no, dump him.”
It was brilliant. And stupid. And genius. And ridiculous.
“And this is how you find yourself in love with a different guy every other month?”
Amy threw a hand over her heart. “Have I ever said I’ve been in love?”
“No. I just assumed that—”
Her upheld hand cut me off. “I almost fall in love frequently, but I’ve never bottomed out there. That last part, the worst reason ever? That’s what gets me. So far, I haven’t found anyone to make it over that hurdle.”
“I did,” I mumbled, remembering what had driven me to be where I was right now. “But you forgot rule five: if he’s a werewolf mated to another, all bets are off.”
“And with that, I think we’re ready for bed, don’t you? Thanks, Randy! Couple of bills for you here on the counter.”
AT THREE IN THE MORNING, the moon summoned me.
Green numbers on the clock next to the bed flashed four-forty-five. Four hours since I’d plopped down, with Amy’s help, into my bed. It had been the only way to keep the room from spinning. I may have never been drunk before, but I’d heard enough stories to know recovery didn’t come this quickly. As I sat up, what greeted me wasn’t nausea; what greeted me was clarity. Crystal clear, clearer than I’d been in almost a year. Every sense reverberated: scent, taste, hearing, sight—even the ability to sense the wolves. I could feel them, out there, beyond the highway and the forest’s edge. Under a cooperative nighttime sky, the pack darted around trees and bushes, chasing squirrels, rabbits, even a few deer. In their wolves, they were at one with nature. Stripped of their humanity, they reached the zenith of their inherent natures.
It was a dream. A glorious, enrapturing, surreal dream.
Silver daggers in the form of moonlight sprayed down from the sky, pierced the land, fell over my bare arms like raindrops, wetting my skin with power. Shoes were needless in this nocturnal walk. The pavement of the road between the hotel and the trees gave way to gravel beneath my feet, then the soft, downy grass of late spring. The forest and the human world dueled in a gentle fault line.
I didn’t know how long I strolled in the woods, but at some measure, the sounds of the shore and Lake Superior’s surf dissipated. The nearness to the pack pushed down on me, but so did the alpha’s order to ignore me, not to approach me. Agreement, consensus, concurrence.
Dissension.
He hadn’t listened to the alpha. He refused to turn his maw on me.
Tobias’s wolf held a kind of grace even Cody had never had in my eyes. Was it because of the foreign climate in which he’d been raised that made his coat smoother, led his tuft to be slimmer? Other than perhaps Rick, he was certainly larger than the other members of the Paradise Pack, even in huey form. Tobias was just so... built. Broad shoulders, a firm chest, abs I could bounce a dime off. With his mix of red and brown fur, rings of white around his paws and his maw, he was the most beautiful wolf I’d ever seen.
And he was staring at me. Under the influence of a full moon. And me, here, in nothing more than a pair of boy shorts and a cami. Even in a dream, this seemed stupid. They were more beast than man under a full moon, and I’d never been more mortal.
But I’d been raised a hood, hadn’t I? Even if I’d never succeeded in taking my fire, there was nothing wrong with my brain.
Other than the fact it was floating in booze.
Dogs could smell fear; a werewolf could taste it. Deep breaths, and focus. I am a hood. Silver flows in my veins. No pest shall pester me. No beast or man shall conquer me. I am a red. I am the blood that flows through the veins of the earth. I am the warrior which keeps the wolf at bay. I am power. I am strength.
I was no longer a hood. Mosquitos, trying to tap my veins, found the deed insurmountable as the old teachings instilled in me all my life rang and became a mantra, though reality niggled at my confidence. Even if the bugs swarming around me thought otherwise, I was nothing more than a huey.
I held up my hands and flinched. “I’m not armed.”
Tobias’s head tilted to the side. If he’d been a man, he’d have been smirking at the idea a weapon would make any difference. That, or the animal within him was deciding how to best dispatch me.
Dream or not, I didn’t want the memory of being ripped to shreds by a werewolf under a full moon. “What I mean to say is, I’m not going to try to hurt you. I’m just... dreaming. Even still, you shouldn’t try to hurt me either. It might affect our friendship when I wake up.”
Two more steps toward me, and I knew I should be running already. Both our eyes turned to the forest canopy as a crow made its presence known, cawing has he leapt from the branches of a fir to the leafy extension of a budding oak. A symbol, I was sure of it. I’d have to remember to google it later. When my eyes dragged back down to the earth, however, no interpretation was needed. A man stood before me: one with broad shoulders, a firm chest, and abs I could bounce a quarter off of. (My memory suggesting a mere dime before had proven faulty.)
“What are you doing here, Geri?”
Despite taking on his human, Tobias spoke with a growl. It had taken the man to reveal the anger of the animal within.
“Dreaming, of course. You?”
“You think you’re dreaming?” He shook with silent laughter. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am." A mud-caked hand dragged through sweat-drenched hair. “This can’t be real.”
“That’s because it’s not. I’m a huey now, and there’s a full moon overhead. It should have no effect on me, and a more animalistic effect on you. Ipso facto: we’re dreaming.”
Three more steps, and he reached up to stroke my cheek. “If it’s a dream, right now doesn’t matter. It doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Nope. I suggest we try something crazy, then. I’ve always wanted to be a—”
But I was never able to admit to Tobias that I’d always wanted to feel what it was like to take on a wolf. Because the next moment, I couldn’t say anything at all.
Tobias was kissing me.
Lips sweet with nectar, a brow wet with dew. His hands cupped my face, turning my head, letting me feel the intoxicating pull and suckle of his mouth. I moaned, reaching for his shoulders, wrapping my hands around his neck. His arms encircled me, pulling me hard against his body, firing the hood’s soul within me. Old voices, long thought dead, spoke inside me.
Kiss him. Take him. Mate him.
As his mouth slid over my neck, all the feeling within me started to ebb. I closed my eyes, gasping, whimpering his name. My world turned upside down as Tobias swept my feet from under me. His chest felt so warm beneath my cheek. I leaned into his chest, letting his body heat reflect my own. The gentle left-right sway as he carried me through the forest lulled me. Soon, I couldn’t keep my eyes open.
TEN
Amy called it a hangover. I called it proof of why cultures that shunned alcohol had things right.
Tobias arrived to pick us up the next morning, though I drove all the way back to Chicago while he and Amy napped in the back of the crew cab. Too many times, I caught myself snatching peeks in the rearview mirror, wondering if the lips which looked chapped in the light of day could be soft in the night.
And then I reminded myself that I already had a boyfriend, and that one dream didn’t magically make Tobias any less of a widower wolf who would be forever bonded to his mate.
Back in Chicago, a message from Inga’s office informed us that she and Caleb had left already, traveling to Istanbul via Tel Aviv.
“Israel?” Amy asked, reading the note over my shoulder. “Why?”
“Old vampires don’t like email or phone calls or even fax machines. Inga’s been corresponding with old friends, trying to find one the Ravens have approached to offer their life serum thing to. She’s hoping one of them will lead us to their exact location. Right now, we don’t know for sure.”
“Okay, then why is Caleb with her?”
I shrugged, not wanting to admit aloud that that same thought passed through my head five times a day. “She’s very protective of him.”
“Yeah, well he’s your boyfriend, so she better not try anything sketchy or I’m going to let her have it.”
“You haven’t even met him yet. What if you think he’s scum or a player or someth
ing?”
“You, pick someone bad?” Amy’s face screwed up. “I don’t see that happening.”
“Remind me later to tell you why Jess and I broke up.”
A box on my bed with a note from Caleb passed along regrets for missing my graduation, but the present inside almost made up for it.
Just because you can no longer wield it, doesn’t mean you can’t make it shine. Very proud of you. Love you.
Amy snatched the card from my hand and held it at arm’s length, whereupon she examined the page with the intensity of a homicide detective. “Geri, if you’re serious about this guy, then get serious about this guy. You’re going to lose him if you don’t.”
“What?” I grabbed the note back. “How in the hell do you know something like that from twenty words?”
“Because I’m looking at the only ones that matter. ‘Love you.’” Her finger pointed out the key text. “There’s no ‘I’ there. He’s—what’s the phrase?—tipping his heart. He wants to show you what he feels, but he’s scared of rejection. Scared, because he has a lot more invested in the relationship than you do.”
Tobias cursed as he finally emerged out of the bedroom a few hours after sunset, the first words he’d said other than “I’ll pump” since leaving Paradise.
“What the bloody hell is she talking about?” he said to me, vaguely motioning to Amy.
“She’s pretending to be the love guru again,” I said, opening the box and holding up the contents for the werewolf’s inspection. A silver crossbow charm the size of a dime pivoted from a thick chain of the same material. “Inga and Caleb left early. This is Caleb’s graduation present to me.”
Tobias grimaced. “Perfect. Now if I try to strangle you, I’ll get third-degree burns in the process.”
“So your alpha has ordered my execution.”
“On the contrary, he’s officially instructed me to accompany you to Istanbul because, and I quote, ‘Geri’s too irrational right now, and if something happens to her you could have prevented, her bitch of a mother will take it out on the whole pack.’” The werewolf coughed a laugh into the orange juice container as he stood in front of the open fridge. “Might be willing to test that theory after what happened.”
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