by Nalini Singh
I had the whole thing planned. I bought the wine. I cooked a big meal. I even made him a steak. I cooked it last in a separate pan to make sure no meat juices got onto my gnocchi. I may have gagged a few times from the smell and I had to use two forks to move it around because I didn’t want to touch it, but I was pretty sure it was cooked correctly. I chose this outfit, because the model wearing it in the ad looked exactly the way I wanted to be: she was tall, with double-D breasts, plump butt, tiny waist, and she had the kind of face that would make men turn to look at her. The lingerie was great on her.
I glanced back at my reflection. I wanted to knock him off his feet, not make him fall down laughing. If I hadn’t already put mascara on, I would have cried.
None of it might matter anyway. It was twenty minutes past eight o’clock. Jim was late. Maybe he got held up. Maybe he changed his mind on this whole dating thing.
The doorbell rang.
Ah! I spun around the bathroom, grabbed my blue silk kimono, slipped into it, and ran down the stairs.
The doorbell chimed again. I checked the peephole. My heart skipped a beat. Jim!
I swung the door open. He stood on my doorstep, tall, dark, and so hot, it made me weak in the knees. I’d been crushing on him for years and every time I saw him, my breath still caught. His scent washed over me, the sandalwood, light musk, and creamy vanilla of his deodorant; the hint of citrus and spearmint in his shampoo; and the fragrance of his skin, a complicated mix of tangy sweat and slightly harsh male smell, blending into a multi-layered chorus that sang, “Jim” to me. All of my smart words disappeared and I turned into a half-wit.
“Hey!” Oh, great. Hay is for horses.
“Hi.” He shouldered his way into the house. He wore dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and a leather jacket over it. Jim usually wore black. His skin was a dark, rich brown, his black hair cut short, leaving his masculine face open.
He leaned forward. I stood on my toes and brushed a kiss on his lips. He didn’t kiss me back. Something was wrong.
“I’ve got a bottle of Cabernet Franc,” I said. Jim cooked like a chef and liked wine. The man at the wine store told me this was an award-winning wine. “From Tiger Mountain Winery.”
He nodded. I didn’t even get a smirk.
What if he were breaking up with me?
“I’ll go get it.” My voice turned squeaky. “Go ahead and sit down.”
I went into the kitchen, got the two wineglasses, and poured the deep red wine into the glasses. He couldn’t possibly be breaking up with me.
I grabbed the glasses and went into the living room.
Jim was asleep on my couch.
Oh no. Last time I found him asleep in my house, a spider creature had been feeding on his soul. Not again.
I shoved the glasses onto the side table, grabbed his shoulders, and shook. “Jim! Jim, talk to me.”
He blinked and opened his beautiful dark eyes. They were glazed over as if he weren’t fully there.
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
He peered at me. “I was challenged.”
In the Pack, personal challenges decided leadership. They meant a fight to the death. There was no mercy. “Who?”
“Roger Mountain,” he said.
Roger Mountain was a panther, vicious and ruthless. Jim was alive, so he had to have killed Roger, but I had seen Roger fight before. He tore his opponents into pieces.
“How bad?” I asked.
“Not that bad.”
“Jim?”
He raised the side of his T-shirt. His entire torso was dark. It took me a second to realize that it was one continuous bruise. Oh you silly idiot man. “Have medmages seen this?” The Pack had its own hospital and our medmages were some of the best.
“Sure.”
“What did they say?”
“They said it was fine.”
“I’m going to hit you with a wine bottle,” I growled. “What did they really say?”
“I spoke to Nasrin. She said bed rest for twenty-four hours.”
Of course, she recommended bed rest. The fight had to have drained Jim down to nothing, and changing shape took a lot of energy, especially now. Magic flooded our world in waves. When magic was up, spells worked and transforming was easier and still, if a normal shapeshifter changed form twice in twenty-four hours, Lyc-V, the shapeshifter virus, would shut your body down for a nap. I was exempt from this rule, because while I carried the virus, my magic was mystical in origin, but Jim’s wasn’t. With technology in control, a fight behind him, and two shape-changings, Jim should’ve been in bed, not here.
“So, instead of resting you shifted out of warrior form and drove here?” He couldn’t have been that reckless. He could’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.
Jim yawned. “I didn’t want to miss it.” He smiled at me. “You look really pretty.”
Oh you stupid dummy.
“I’m just going to sit here for a second,” he said and closed his eyes.
Jim was six feet tall. My couch was tiny. If he fell asleep here, he wouldn’t be able to walk in the morning. “Nasrin said bed rest, not couch rest.” I wedged my shoulder under his armpit. “Come on. We’re going upstairs to the bedroom.”
His eyes lit up for half a second. “Well, if you insist . . .”
“I insist.” I pulled him upright. I was a vegetarian weretiger, but I was still a shapeshifter. I could’ve carried him up the stairs except I didn’t think he would let me. “Come on.”
We walked up the stairs and I deposited him on the bed. I loved huge soft beds, and this one was a queen with a mattress topper so thick I had to hop to get onto it. Jim landed on it and sank in. I reached for his boots, but he sat up. “I’ve got it.”
His boots hit the floor. He lay back and closed his eyes. I slipped into the closet and pulled off my lingerie. I didn’t want him to see me in it. If he did, he might think that I had a plan for the evening and was upset because it collapsed. I didn’t care about the plan. I just wanted him to be okay. I threw on a pair of plain cotton panties and a white tank top, came out, and slipped into the bed next to him.
Magic rolled over us in an invisible wave. All of the electric lights went out and the feylantern in the bathroom stirred into life, glowing with gentle blue. My magic flowed through me. Excellent. He would heal faster during a magic wave.
“Sorry I ruined the date,” Jim murmured.
I snuggled up to him, my hand on his chest, careful not to press too hard. “You didn’t. This is perfect.”
KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK.
I opened my eyes. I was lying in my bed. I inhaled deep and smelled Jim. His scent was all around me, the clean, citrus-spiced smell that drove me crazy. His arm was across my waist, his body hot against my side.
Jim was in my bed and he was holding me. I smiled.
Knock-knock-knock.
Someone was knocking on my front door. That was fine. They could keep knocking. I would just keep lying here, in my soft bed, wrapped in Jim. Mmmm . . .
“Dali! Open the door.”
Mom.
I jerked upright in my bed. Jim leaped straight up and landed on his feet, his arms raised, his body tense, ready to pounce. “What?”
“My mother is here!” I jumped to the floor, jerked a pair of shorts from under my bed, and hopped on one foot trying to put them on.
He exhaled. “I thought it was an emergency.”
“It is an emergency,” I hissed in a theatrical whisper. “Stay here! Don’t make any noise.”
“Dali,” he started.
I grabbed a pillow and threw it at him. “Shush!”
He blinked. I grabbed my kimono, tossed it over me, shut the door to my bedroom, and ran down the stairs, holding on to the rail for dear life so I wouldn’t trip. The last thing I needed was my mother finding out I had Jim in my bedroom. There would be no end of shock and questions and then she would want to know if we had set the date for the wedding yet and when are the grandchildren coming. I didn
’t even know if Jim was serious.
I jumped the last seven steps, tied my kimono, and reached for the door.
The wineglasses. Oh shoot. I raced into the kitchen, grabbed the two wineglasses, dumped the wine down the sink, stuck them into the nearest cabinet, emptied the vegetarian curry soup into the sink, threw the butternut squash gnocchi into the trash, tossed the steak I made for Jim after it and shoved it deep into the garbage can in case my mother decided to throw something away. I washed my hands, ran for the door, and opened it.
My mother raised her hands. She was holding her bag in one and a box of donuts in the other. She was about an exact copy of me except thirty years older. We were both short and tiny and when we spoke, we waved our hands around too much. A woman about my age stood next to her. She had dark hair, big eyes, and a cute heart-shaped face. Iluh Indrayani. Like me, she was born in the U.S., but both of her parents had come from Indonesia, from the island of Bali. Her mother knew my mother and we met a few times, but never really talked.
Something bad had happened. The only time my mother brought visitors to my house who weren’t family was when some sort of magical emergency had taken place.
“You left me on the doorstep for half an hour,” my mother huffed.
“I was asleep.” I held the door open. “Come in.”
They walked inside, my mother in the lead. Iluh gave me an apologetic look. “So sorry to bother you on a Saturday.”
“That’s okay,” I told her.
We sat in the kitchen.
“Would you like something to drink?” I asked.
My mother waved her hands. “You talk. I’ll make coffee.”
Above us something thudded. I froze.
My mother stared at the ceiling. “Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?” I asked, my eyes wide. I would kill Jim. He could sit completely motionless for hours when on stakeouts. I’d seen him do it. He had to be dropping things on purpose.
Thud!
“That!” My mother turned predatory like a raptor. “What was that?”
Lie, think of something quick, lie, lie . . . “I’ve got a cat.”
“What kind of a cat?” My mother’s eyes narrowed.
“A big one.”
“I want to see,” Mom said. “Bring him down.”
“He’s a stray and a little wild. He’s probably hiding. I probably won’t even be able to find him now.”
“How long have you had him?”
“A few days.” The more I lied, the deeper I sank. My mother had a brain like a supercomputer. She missed nothing.
Mom pointed a teaspoon at me. “Is he neutered?”
Oh my gods. “Not yet.”
“You need to neuter him. Otherwise he’ll spray all over the house. The stench is awful. And when he isn’t out catting around, little female cats in heat will show up and wail under the windows.”
Kill me, please. “He is a nice cat. He’s not like that.”
“It’s instinct, Dali. Before you know it, you’ll be running a feline whorehouse.”
“Mother!”
My mom waved the spoon and went back to making coffee.
I turned to Iluh. She gave me a sympathetic glance that said, “Been there, endured that, got the good daughter T-shirt for it.”
“What can I do for you?” I asked.
Iluh folded her hands on her lap. “My grandmother is missing.”
“Eyang Ida?”
Iluh nodded.
I remembered Ida Indrayani. She was nice lady in her late sixties with a friendly warm smile. She still worked as a hairdresser. The family didn’t really need the money but Eyang Ida, Grandmother Ida, as she was usually called, liked to be social.
“How long has she been missing?”
“Since last night,” Iluh said. “She was supposed to come to my birthday party in the evening but didn’t show up. Sutan, he’s my husband, and I stopped by her house on the way back from the restaurant. The lights were off. We knocked on the door, but she didn’t answer. We thought maybe she’d fallen asleep again. Her hearing isn’t the best now, and once she falls asleep, it’s hard to wake her up. My parents keep wanting her to move in with them, but she won’t do it. We went back to her house first thing in the morning, but she wasn’t there. She hadn’t opened her shop either, and that’s when we knew something was really wrong. My mother has a spare key so she unlocked the door. My grandmother was gone and there was blood on the back porch.”
Not good. “How much blood?”
Iluh swallowed. “Just a smudge.”
“Show her,” my mom said.
Iluh reached into her canvas bag. “We found this next to the blood.”
She pulled a Ziploc bag out of her purse. Inside it were three coarse black hairs. About nine inches long, they looked like something you would pull out of a horse’s mane.
“We tried going to the police, but they said we had to wait forty-eight hours before she can be declared missing.”
I opened the bag and took a sniff. Ugh. An acrid, bitter, dry kind of stench, mixed with a sickening trace of rotting blood. I shook the hairs out on the table and carefully touched one. Magic nipped my finger. The hair turned white and broke apart, as if burned from the inside out. Bad magic. Familiar bad magic.
Iluh gasped.
“I told you,” my mother said with pride in her voice. “My daughter is the White Tiger. She can banish evil.”
“Not all evil,” I said, and pushed a sticky-note pad toward Iluh. “Could you write your grandmother’s address down for me? I’ll go visit the house.”
Iluh scribbled it down and got a key out of her purse. “Here is the spare key.” She wrote down another address. “This is my parents’ house. I’ll be over there today. Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come with you?”
“No.” She would just get in the way.
“Do I need to pay you?”
My mother froze in the kitchen, mortally offended.
People often confused ethnicity and cultural upbringing. Just because someone looks Japanese or Indian, doesn’t mean they have strong cultural ties to their country of origin. Cultural identity was more than skin deep. Because of the nature of my magic, I was known to many Indonesians in Atlanta, and learning about the culture and myths of my parents wasn’t only a part of my heritage, it was part of what made me better at what I did. Iluh chose to have less ties to Indonesian families. Culturally she was more mainstream. You can’t be offended by someone who simply didn’t know how things worked.
“You don’t have to pay me,” I explained gently. “I do this because it’s my obligation to the community. Generations ago my family was given the gift of this magic so we could help others. It’s my duty and I’m happy to do it.”
Iluh swallowed. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, no, I’m sorry you felt uncomfortable. Please don’t worry about it.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Please find her. She is my only grandmother.”
“I’ll do what I can,” I told her.
I walked Iluh out to the door. When I returned, my mother crossed her arms. “Pay? What, like you’re some kind of maid?”
“Let it go, Mom. She just didn’t know.”
“She should know. That’s my point. Are you going over there?”
“Yes. Let me just get dressed.”
“Good,” my mother said. “I’ll make you dinner while you’re gone. That way when you come back, there will be something to eat.”
No! “Thank you so much, but I’m okay.”
“Dali!” My mother opened the refrigerator. “There is nothing in here, except rice. You might have to purify a house today. You don’t even have cakes for the offering.”
There was nothing in there because I was planning to store leftovers from Jim’s and my dinner. Jim, who was currently hiding upstairs and whom I had to sneak out of here. “I was going to go grocery shopping today. And I’ll steal some of your donuts for the offering.” I had
apples in the fridge and my garden was in bloom. That would be plenty for the offering.
“I’ll make you something to eat. Look at you, you’re skin and bones.”
“Mother, I’m perfectly fine. I’m twenty-seven years old.”
“Yes, you are. Your sink smells funny, your refrigerator is empty, and your trash is overflowing. And!” My mother pulled two dirty wineglasses out of the cabinet.
How did she even know? It was like she had radar.
“What is this? Have you been drinking?”
Help me.
“Drinking alone? That is not healthy for you. Look, you couldn’t even bother to wash the glass. You just got another one and then stuck the dirty one in there. That’s what alcoholics do.”
“I’m a shapeshifter, Mom. I can’t get drunk even if I tried.” Technically I could. If I drank an entire bottle of whiskey, I would be buzzed for about twenty minutes or so, and then my body would metabolize the last of the alcohol and I would be sober as a baby.
“Drinking, not eating, messing with stray cats.” My mother shook her head. “You know what you need? You need to meet a nice man. You need to get married and have lots of healthy children . . .”
I put my hands over my face.
Something thudded above us again.
“That’s it.” My mother marched to the stairs. “I’m going to see this cat.”
“You’ll scare him!” I chased her up the stairs. “Mother!”
My mother opened the door to my bedroom. It stood empty.
“Puss, puss . . .” My mother bent down and glanced under the bed. “Puss, puss . . . Does your cat speak Indonesian?”
Actually he does. He learned it just for me.
“I told you, he’s hiding.” Maybe he went out the window.
The door to the closet stood open. The tomato red lingerie I had left on the carpet was missing.
“Kitty, kitty, puss, puss . . .”