by Carina Cook
“You’ve been bitchier. But I thought you had a problem with her. Or maybe I’d been rude to you on accident because I was worried about her. But now I’m thinking that’s not it, is it?”
“Nah.” She waved a hand. “I’m used to your knight in shining armor shtick. And I still think she’d be a good fit for you. I’m just…tired.”
“Bad dreams?” he asked.
It was a simple question with a lot of weight behind it. Rebecca’s mother had been a shifter, and she’d died when Rebecca was twelve. Some…thing with too many legs had crawled out of the desert and was eating people who stopped to take a leak or change a tire out on the highway. The thing hadn’t left anything—not even the bones—and it didn’t feed very often, so no one had realized the disappearances were anything out of the ordinary. Rebecca’s family had been driving back from a vacation at Yellowstone when her little brother needed a desperate potty break. They’d stopped to let him pee in the bushes. When the thing came out of the darkness and tried to take Rebecca, her mom had fought it off. She’d been torn to pieces right in front of Rebecca as her father piled the kids into the car and took off.
Darius couldn’t blame her dad for running. He was only kin, not a full shifter, and it had taken an entire pack and a couple of friendly mages to bring the creature down. He’d done the right thing by saving the children and bringing word to the rest of the shifter community. Rebecca didn’t blame him either. But still, she had frequent dreams of her mother’s death, and she often woke up screaming, even years later. Sometimes when she slept in his guest bedroom, her shrieks woke him up. He’d go and wake her up and hold her until she stopped shaking, but she never wanted to talk about her nightmares except to say that they were about the night her mom died.
Whatever she’d seen, it must have been terrible.
“Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t sleep much last night. They were particularly bad. I’m sorry about Audra. If I scared off your only chance to get laid for the next five years, I will feel very guilty.”
He put a hand to his chest. “Am I that unattractive?”
She made a big show of sniffing. “You smell funny.”
“I’ll bet the guy in the car next to us doesn’t think I smell funny.”
He started to roll down his window and was rewarded with a scandalized look from Rebecca. The real key to breaking her out of this kind of funk, he’d found, was to distract her with ridiculous, out of character behavior. Once, he’d even done the worm in public. If that didn’t prove how much he valued her friendship, he thought nothing would.
But she was worth it. She’d stuck by him, even when he was overly shy and introverted. She’d made him ask girls to the prom in high school—or even asked them for him. (It hadn’t gone well, but he appreciated the effort.) She forced him to come out of his shell when he would have stayed at home and watched cooking shows until he turned old and grey. She worked her butt off for his business, and never once tried to use their friendship as leverage in their business relationship. In fact, she’d turned him down the few times he’d offered to give her an extra break.
Cheering her up would be worth a little public humiliation. Although he might have to draw the line at doing the worm in the middle of the street.
He caught the eye of the scrawny fellow in the car and gestured for him to roll down the window. The scrawny fellow seemed alarmed, so Darius gave him his widest smile and tried to look as harmless as possible. It must have worked, because the window slowly rolled down, and the guy said, “Yeah?”
“My friend and I are having an argument, and we need someone to settle it for us,” said Darius. “Could you help us out?”
“Maybe…” said the guy, stretching it out into a cautious drawl.
“She says that I smell, and I say that I don’t. If I gave you five dollars, would you sniff me?”
He managed to say it without even cracking a smile. Behind him, he could hear Rebecca snorting with barely restrained laughter, and that made every ounce of embarrassment worthwhile.
“You’re kidding, right?” said the guy.
“Nope. It’s not like we’re going anywhere. And if I really do smell, I’d like to know it. I can’t decide if I can trust her or not. We grew up together, and sometimes she likes to pull my leg.”
The guy considered this and then nodded. “Yeah, I got sisters. I know what you mean. So I’ll help you, but I’m not getting out of the car, and I’m not rolling my window all the way down. Carjackers. You know?”
Darius shot a significant look down at himself. “I don’t think you need to worry about carjackers right now, friend. And I’m in a marked truck. Carson Contracting?” He jerked his thumb toward the back panel of the truck, where his business information was displayed. ‘That’s me. I’m Darius Carson. It would be stupid to get into funny business with my name on the side of the truck.”
“Yeah?” The guy didn’t seem to relax very much, but he gestured. “Well, if we’re going to do this, come on. It looks like the traffic’s starting to move.”
“Wishful thinking,” murmured Rebecca.
Darius got out of the truck and walked over to the guy’s hatchback. It was a little car for a little man, and it felt very comical to lean over near the cracked open window while the guy inside stuck his nose up to the crack. He sniffed loudly.
“Get closer. I can’t smell anything.”
Feeling more than a little ridiculous, Darius stuck his neck right up to the window. Heads craned as the people in nearby cars tried to figure out what was going on. Rebecca was laughing outright now, which made all the embarrassment worth it.
“He smells like body wash!” called the guy to Rebecca. “I think it’s Old Spice.”
Darius found himself unexpectedly impressed. “You know, I do use Old Spice. Are you a professional sniffer?”
The guy laughed tentatively, as if he was still a little unsure about this whole situation. “Nah. I’m an accountant.”
“Well, good luck with that.”
“I hope she pays up. You don’t smell bad at all.”
The guy went red then, as if he’d said something scandalous. Darius wanted to reassure him, but the light turned green again, and miraculously, the cars in front of them started to move. He had to hurry back to the truck, calling out apologies, throw it in gear, and then speed off through the intersection as the light turned red again. He could only imagine how pissed off the rest of the drivers were.
But Rebecca no longer had that withdrawn, angry look on her face. She kept breaking out into random chuckles. That made it all worthwhile.
CHAPTER 9
Business was booming for a Tuesday, which should have pleased Audra. And it did, but she couldn’t keep from wishing that the boom had come any other day. They were short-staffed because she’d fired Chad, which made for high tensions and short breaks, and Beef had been avoiding her all day. She wanted to corner him and explain everything, but there just hadn’t been time. Oh, and there was also the little matter of the missing lamp containing a sadistic djinn just waiting to fall into the wrong hands. She’d covered that problem, but it still nagged at her. But no matter how badly she wanted to shake Chad until he talked, it wasn’t a good idea. And she couldn’t just leave. If the business fell apart, there would be no storage to put the djinn back into.
The combined weight of all her worries made her distracted, which resulted in her accidentally overcharging one woman by $100 for a signed Elvis poster. The woman made it as far as the parking lot before storming back in, her face purple with rage, to shout in Audra’s face and demand to speak to the manager. Wordlessly, she gestured for Beef to come over, since he was in fact the manager, and she couldn’t take it anymore. As he began to try and make her latest mistake right, she fled to the back room and cried.
After a few minutes, the door opened, and Beef entered the room. He closed the door behind him and leaned against the wall as if he was unsure of his welcome. His long face was drawn and serious
.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
“Not really. But I deserve it. I’m such an idiot.”
“Yes, you are.” His voice remained steady and calm, but the words hurt all the same. “For someone who’s so smart, sometimes I wonder how you manage to make so many poor decisions.”
She sighed. “I have poor taste in men, I know.”
He shook his head, meeting her eyes intently. “But it’s not just that. You do make some stupid decisions when it comes to dating for sure. But Audra, you know I love you. And you know I’ve got your back. But I’ve got to love you enough to be honest with you. You’re careless. You don’t think before you act, and you make promises you don’t keep, and you don’t realize how much it affects other people.”
“Is this about not showing up last night? I said I was sorry! But how could I leave when the fire department was here? I sent you a message.”
“Yes, you did. After it was all done. After I’d spent hours worrying about you, and wondering what the heck you were up to. Think about it from my point of view. You make up some lame excuse about why I can’t stay after work with you, and then the place catches on fire, and you don’t think to cancel our plans until hours later. It just doesn’t add up.”
“I…” But what could she say? She’d planned to tell him the truth, but now didn’t seem like the right time. It wasn’t like she could confess to having magical abilities after he’d pretty much said she was untrustworthy and made bad decisions. Sure, some of her weird behavior could be explained by the need to keep her magic secret, but that didn’t change the fact that she’d been stupid. She hadn’t told the truth to him about her abilities. She hadn’t told herself the truth about Chad, or the guy before that, or the guy before that. And now she was hiding the truth about the lamp from Darius, because she wanted him to like her.
There. She’d said it. He was an attractive guy, and for all of her claims to be done with dating, she sure hadn’t acted like it. She’d bent over backwards to try and make him like her, and look where it had gotten her. If she’d been honest about the missing lamp, they might have had it back already.
“You’re right,” she said, wiping her still-leaking eyes. “And I’m sorry.”
His mouth fell open in a display of shock that might have been insulting if she hadn’t agreed with him.
“I am?” he asked.
“Yeah. About all of it. I’ve made a mess of things, and I’m going to fix it. I know I don’t have the right to ask for anything, but I’m going to ask you for just a little more patience with me. Once I’ve put things right, I promise I’ll come clean. I should have told you this stuff a long time ago.”
He looked at her for a long moment and then swallowed nervously. “I’m worried about you, Aud.”
“I’ve got this.”
She spoke with more assurance than she felt, but it must have been convincing because he nodded.
“Okay. Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.
“Can you find someone to replace Chad? We’ll have a revolt on our hands if we don’t get some extra help around here.”
He nodded. “And what are you going to do?”
She shrugged hopelessly, not really knowing how to answer. This whole situation had gotten out of hand so fast that she didn’t know what to do. Or rather, she knew what she should do but didn’t want to do it.
“I’m going to quit hiding from my mistakes, I guess,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll help. Whatever you’ve got going, you promise you’ll tell me?”
“I promise,” she said gravely.
“But not now.”
“It would take a long time to explain, and I need to fix it first,” she said. “I’ve been hiding my head already, and I’ve wasted too much time. But I really will tell you when it’s all over. Pinky swear.”
The juvenile phrase brought back memories of earnest high school promises and years of friendship. They both knew it was the kind of thing neither of them would dream of breaking. After a moment, he nodded.
“Okay. You got this,” he said. “I believe in you.”
Then he gave her a thin smile, the kind of smile people force out when they’re trying to be reassuring but don’t quite feel reassured themselves. Still, she appreciated the effort. She sat there for a long time after he left the room, trying to work up the courage to do the right thing.
By the time Darius arrived shortly after 6, she knew what she had to do. She was waiting impatiently for him when he arrived. He pushed open the door and nearly bowled over an old man who’d decided that the doorway was the best place to stand to admire his new vintage hat. After a murmured apology, he made his way across the crowded and cluttered floor to the jewelry counter where Audra stood.
“Just wanted to check in before I got some dinner,” he said with a hint of apology in his voice. “I hope you don’t mind. I’m obsessive, I know.”
“Actually, I’m glad you came. Do you have a minute to talk?” she said squaring her shoulders resolutely. “There are some things I should tell you.”
His brow went up, but he didn’t ask. Not in the middle of a crowded room where anyone might hear.
“Sure thing. Where?”
“How about we take a short walk?” she suggested.
He nodded, and she detoured past Beef, who stood at the register, looking through all of the receipts with a puzzled expression. Something wasn’t adding up. She knew the feeling all too well.
“I know this is bad timing, but I need a few minutes,” she said.
He looked from her to Darius, and a knowing expression came over his face. It was almost funny, because that expression couldn’t have been more wrong. There was no way he could know what she was about to tell Darius, and if he had known, he might have tried to have her committed.
“Is this regarding our earlier conversation?” he asked, and she nodded. “I’ll cover it.”
“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He flashed her a quick thumbs up and went back to what he was doing. That task taken care of, she gestured to Darius and led him behind the counter and down the hall to the new back door.
As they exited, he said, “New door working out for you?”
“Absolutely. It opens and closes. And no one’s tried to pull it off the hinges yet today.”
He grinned. “It’s still early.”
“True.” She led him in a slow stroll away from the building. The weather wasn’t yet into the slap-you-in-the-face level temperatures, and a nice breeze lifted the hair from the back of her neck. She took a moment to enjoy the fresh air after spending the day in the shop. Or she tried to, but she was too wound up to really relax. “So I have something to confess.”
“I’m listening.”
She snuck a look at him, and he seemed cool and collected. Ready to hear what she had to say. He probably wasn’t going to be so calm in a few minutes, but there was no avoiding that now.
“I made a mistake,” she said. “I’m going to fix it, because it’s my mess, but I thought you deserved to know.”
“Whatever happened, I’m sure you’ll make it right.”
She let out a little laugh. He seemed so sure of her, while she felt very much the opposite. It hurt to think that she might lose that status in his eyes, because she found that she really did care what he thought. He was such an upstanding guy. But she’d promised honesty, and she was going to deliver. No more hiding or running.
“I lost the lamp,” she said. “I’ve never lost anything before, and so I thought I’d get it back before anyone knew it was gone. I’m still going to find it, but I figure you should know since you’re the one who entrusted me with it in the first place.”
“Do you know where it is?” he asked. “Did somebody take it, or did you misplace it, or what?”
She tilted her head and looked at him as she stepped over a concrete stanchion that separated her parking lot from the gas station ne
xt door. He was taking all of this so calmly. Maybe this honesty thing really did pay off.
“Someone took it. The night of the fire, I think. I remember opening the portal, and I remember starting to build the tether. But then I was falling, and I knocked my head on something hard. One of the shelves, maybe. That doesn’t make any sense. I don’t walk around while I’m doing void magic, because it’s really distracting. The memories don’t fit together the way they should.”
“Magic, maybe? Somebody messed with your memories?”
“Yeah, but I think I know who it was, and they’re not supernatural in any way. They left a signature behind, you see. And it doesn’t make any sense.”
“That is odd.” He fell into a thoughtful silence. “Although if the person got their hands on the lamp, they could have used a wish right then and there. Had the djinn scramble your brain.”
“Of course they did!” she said excitedly. “Here I was thinking I’d gone nuts.”
“I don’t think so. And while I wish you’d said something about this earlier, when you realized the lamp was gone. Why didn’t you?”
She sighed. “I didn’t want you to think I was incompetent.”
He put a warm hand on her shoulder, and she almost relaxed into it. The urge to lean against him, to take comfort from his warmth and see where that led them was so great that it felt like an almost physical pull toward him. But she couldn’t give into it. She’d made too many impulse decisions already, and she had work to do. Finding the lamp would be so much more difficult if she was distracted by whatever was growing between them.
“I don’t think you’re incompetent. Headstrong. Maybe a bit overly independent. But you could say the same things about me, so I don’t think I’m in a place to throw stones,” he said.
“You’re very kind,” she said.
“Nah. Just honest. So what can I do to help?”
“Nothing, thanks.” She patted her pockets. “Actually, could you loan me a couple of bucks to get a Coke? I left my purse in the shop.”