Cain thought back to his times with her. When she’d been just human and now, and nothing had changed for him. She calmed him. But she’d always done that.
“Does the book say aught else?” she asked him a moment later.
“No. Just two pages, most of it on the Great War.” He closed the book and rubbed his brow as exhaustion laced through his bones.
The twins would be returning in a bit from their scouting mission into town. There’d be no sleep for Cain tonight. Soon as the sun came up, it would be his turn to head into town and run his own recon.
All he wanted to do was close his eyes and get at least an hour of sleep. Rhi could spell him, but she’d exhausted herself helping Janet earlier. She needed the sleep, and Flint couldn’t be left alone.
“All right then, Grace. I’ll let you go.”
“Okay. But call me if you discover anything more.”
“Yup.”
They hung up a moment later, and Cain was settling in for a long night when a shuffle of footsteps sounded. Turning, he scented the naga before he spotted him.
“Carlito?” He frowned as the dark-haired shifter stepped out from behind another parked trailer.
The short man nodded. “Hey. Wondered how things were going?”
Carlito wasn’t much of a talker. Though he’d been a part of the carnival for several years now, he’d been content to keep mostly to himself.
Cain frowned. “Fine. What are you doing up at this hour?”
“Can’t sleep, man. And I was worried about Flint. I put her through her paces today, just wanted to make sure she was good.”
Cain knew about Carlito and Eli. Knew they’d had a thing at a certain point in time. Whether it was still going on was anybody’s guess, but none of his business.
Taking a seat across from him, Carlito nodded and Cain tapped his fingers.
“You’re just coming around to check up on her?” Not that he was terribly suspicious of the naga—they were a naturally shy race and generally good people unless you got one of them angry.
But considering all that’d gone down lately, Carlito shouldn’t be surprised if Cain grilled him.
“Saw you out here. I’m wide-awake, and honestly, I’ve not been running scouting missions the way the rest of you guys have. Someone has to take care of the animals. I just wanted to do my part and kind of help out a little. Any way I can.” He glanced down at the bench.
There was no way Cain was leaving and letting Carlito stand guard. He liked the naga, but didn’t know him that well.
Shrugging as though he’d read Cain’s thoughts, Carlito said, “I figured you wouldn’t want to leave, but you can close your eyes, take a catnap at least. Not like you don’t have the freaking hearing of an owl.”
Cain snorted. “Not to mention I’m a very light sleeper and will wring the head off anything that tries to harm a hair on that pretty head.”
Carlito held up his hands. “Dude, yeah, you’ll get no argument from me there. But speaking of hair on her head, have you noticed how long that stuff is now?”
Lifting a brow, Cain would give the naga two seconds to spit out whatever he was implying before he kicked him to the curb.
Slitted green eyes widened. “What I mean is I wondered if you’d be cool with me offering to cut her hair for her. She looked really uncomfortable at practice today, and I thought maybe I could help with that. I was stylist for a couple of years before I got into animal training.”
Laughing, Cain shook his head. “If you really think you have to ask my permission first, you don’t know Flint at all. She’d probably shove a stake through your heart for even suggesting she didn’t know her own mind.”
The naga frowned delicately. “But I thought berserkers—”
“I’m not like that, naga. Ask her yourself when she wakes up.”
Though to be honest, Cain had noticed her much longer hair and thought it crazy sexy.
* * *
Carlito nodded swiftly and twiddled his thumbs. And Cain did manage to squeeze in an hour of sleep before the sun tinted the dark sky a gorgeous orange.
Flint
* * *
Flint was surprised by what she saw when she stepped out of her trailer the next morning. Cain nodded before turning on his heel and heading off to his own trailer, and Carlito stood looking at her with a set of thinned lips.
“Carlito?” She frowned, smoothing out the wrinkles of her robin’s-egg-blue Lycra top. The smells of breakfast had her stomach grinding almost painfully against itself.
The naga, who was fully human-looking right now, played with his fingers as he said, “I um…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “I was wondering if you’d like a haircut?”
Mind boggled by the offer, she could only stare at him, which obviously led him to believe she hated the idea because he was quickly stumbling over himself to apologize and backing up with swift shakes of his head.
“Wait, no.” She held out her hand. “Yes. Oh my gosh, yes. I hate this stuff!” She yanked on the thick ponytail that was already sliding out of its rubber band.
His smile grew large. “Let me go get my clippers and stuff. I’ll be right back.”
He bounded off like a happy little rabbit, which was so ridiculously adorable that Flint wondered just what she could do to get him and Eli back together, because she totally needed a Carlito in her life right now.
Returning not even five minutes later, he had her sitting and was spraying her hair down with a water bottle.
“I love your hair.” He sighed.
“And I love your hands.” She sighed back, eyes practically rolling into the back of her head as he continued to massage her scalp.
He snorted.
“I had no idea you cut hair. How long?”
“About twenty years, give or take.”
She swiveled on her butt, giving him an openmouthed once-over. “Do what? You don’t look much older than me.”
Swatting her on the shoulder to get her to turn back around, he said, “Flint, most of us aren’t what we seem. Adam’s over a thousand years old, and that man looks…”
“Hot?” she supplied when his fingers stilled. Glancing over her shoulder, she grinned when she spotted the blush in his cheeks.
Blowing out a raspberry, he gave her an arched-brow look. “Stop trying to get me in trouble. Anyway, yes, I cut hair, and let’s leave it at that.”
They didn’t talk again for a while, and Flint was very near to passing out from sheer bliss as he worked his magic on her, but realizing she had a tough day ahead of her again, she decided zombie-ing out was probably a bad idea right now.
“So, when are you and Eli gonna knock boots again?”
“Flint!” he chirped, actually more like hissed.
She giggled. “Fine. Fine. But seriously, how come you guys broke up?”
“None of your business, young lady. And how did you realize it was Eli?”
“Oh, he sang like a bird.” She shrugged. “I think he still likes you.”
His hands stopped again. But rather than say anything, he simply cleared his throat.
In seconds he moved around to the front of her hair and began cutting out bangs. Which she loved. She felt all fancy with her new haircut and already about a million times lighter without its weight loading her down.
He’d cut off a lot, but it still fell softly around her shoulders and was long enough that she could tie it back when working out.
It was a sad moment when he stepped back and said, “Voilà! You look perfect.”
He held up a mirror to her, and she inspected the final result and could only breathe out a soft wow at how prettily it fell in soft waves around her slender face.
“It’s not frizzy anymore.”
He beamed. “You just needed the right cut. You really do have beautiful hair.”
Carlito swiped up a thick hank that’d dropped onto the bench and fingered it softly. Flint had learned that nagas liked to collect things. Es
pecially things they considered treasures.
She kind of found the thought of keeping a jar of hair halfway creepy, but considering she had no money…
“You can keep some if you want.”
His eyes widened and the reptilian slits expanded for just a second. “Seriously? I mean, I wasn’t asking. But it’s just so… wow.”
Her hair color had always gotten compliments before because of its dark red hue, but the way it glinted from the early morning sunlight, there almost seemed to be threads of copper and gold laced through it.
She shrugged. “No worries. Thanks for doing my hair.”
Hopping up, she knew she’d missed breakfast, but the cut had been worth it.
Tucking a strand of her hair into his pocket, he nodded. “Thanks. And by the way, I thought I should warn you that you’re getting Helga first thing this morning. She’s a nasty beast—watch your back with that one.”
Yeah, that didn’t make her nervous at all.
She was just about at the tent when she spotted Katy and her dad. Smiling, broadly, she quickly headed in their direction, more happy to see her dad than she’d expected.
But she came up short the moment Katy’s smile dried up, replaced by a thin, hard line of lips and a furrowed brow full of consternation.
That, however, wasn’t nearly as bad as seeing her own father shake his head, turn on his heel, and practically run away in the opposite direction.
Flint
* * *
“For the millionth time,” Helga the Terrible—as Flint now thought of her—snarled, “grip it as I showed you. They told me you had knife skills. This is a joke.”
Flint whimpered. Her muscles were so achy from yesterday, a headache was moving through her skull like a pile driver, and sometime between predawn and full morning, the sword had vanished. Again.
Her movement was stiff and robotic, which should have made Helga even slightly sympathetic. She wasn’t.
And her name wasn’t actually Helga. It was Helvelita. Apparently she was a wrath Nephilim and deadly with knives.
She also looked like Wonder Woman. Literally—she could be the Justice League’s superheroine incarnate. Thick-as-tree-trunk thighs. A tiny waist. Ginormous breasts. Piercing blue eyes, and black hair caught up in a milkmaid braid.
Flipping the eight-inch bowie knife in her hand from one palm to the other, Helga eyed Flint like she’d just caught a maggot crawling over her lunch plate.
Leaning up on her elbow from her position in the sawdust, Flint brushed the dirt off her cheeks and tried to jump back to her feet without looking like a drunken clown while doing it.
“I can do it.” Flint grumbled at a drop of fresh blood that’d curled from out of the tip of her pinky finger and wiped it down on her thigh.
“Um. No.” Helga crossed her arms over her chest, cocking her hip to one side and making Flint suddenly think of a Valley Girl on ’roids.
Seriously, her arms were like pythons; she probably had bigger tris than Cain.
“You can’t. So I think”—Helga reached over Flint’s head, yanking a dagger out of the wooden post behind her—“we’ll call it a day before you kill yourself.”
And with those words, Helga the Terrible marched out of the tent.
“Argh!” Flint stomped, sat down on a chair, and grabbed an ice pack out of the cooler beside her feet.
She’d come prepared today.
Placing it on her right elbow, she hissed at the cold. Just then the flap was tossed aside and a familiar face peeked in. The noise of the early-morning crowd and clang of metal rides and bass-heavy music became twice as loud as before.
She cringed, her ears unusually sensitive thanks to Helga’s constant shrieking. The woman had a set of pipes on her that would have made a banshee jealous.
Carlito grinned at her. “So the bee lives.”
Rolling her eyes, she groused good-naturedly. “You’re lucky I like you, or I’d jab a twig through your snake eyes.”
“Har. Har. Har.” He chuckled. Coming to sit beside her, he glanced at the ice pack. “I knew the second I saw Helvelita leaving that you’d probably need this.”
He reached into his pocket and extracted a small glass vial full of an amber liquid. She eyed it hard.
“What the heck is that?”
Uncorking it, he passed it to her. “Willow-bark tea and a few other herbs. Nothing special.” He shrugged.
“Why can’t I just have an aspirin?”
“Because human medicine doesn’t work on nonhumans like us.” His smile was broad but sweet.
Wrapping her fingers around the glass tube caused her hand to graze his. His skin was soft. Felt human. It was so hard to see the scales lining his neck and cheekbones and not think one thing—snake!—but apart from her crew, Carlito was the first actual carnie she’d met that she kind of liked.
The tent flap was tossed open again, and she gave a short burst of laughter when she saw Eli. At first he was smiling, but then his smile vanished when he exchanged a gaze with Carlito. Something hard and magnetic zipped between them.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
“What?” Carlito snorted, but his eyes were still only for Eli, who was gripping the tarp with white-knuckled intensity as he stared back.
“Eli,” she said slowly, “did you need something?”
As if the sound of his name broke him from his trancelike state, he blinked, looked at her, and then his shoulders visibly relaxed. “I… uh…” He swallowed. “Are you good?”
Her grin turned lopsided. “Am I good? Oh sure, I love taking a beating before lunchtime. Thanks for asking…”
She stopped talking when she realized the two of them had gone back to ignoring her. “You know,” she said, “I can always go find another tent if you need some time to yoursel—”
“No.” Carlito jumped to his feet and then with a crooked grin at her started backpedaling toward the exit on the opposite side of the tent. “I have to go check on the horses. Bye.”
Nodding at her and without bothering to look back at Eli, he disappeared.
Her brows touched the tip of her bangs when she turned toward Eli.
“And you think I have problems,” she muttered.
With a growl, Eli curled his lips. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“’Kay then.” She swallowed the willow-bark tea. Which was surprisingly not bad at all. It tasted woodsy but also sweet, like he’d added some honey to it. Immediately she began to feel a lessening in the aches twisting her muscles up in knots.
“So why exactly are you here, then?” she asked without preamble once she’d wiped her mouth.
Eli slipped his hands into his jeans. “I’m sorry, okay. It’s just, it weirds me out that you know something I’ve been keeping hidden for months.”
“Months.” She whistled. “That kind of blows, Eli.”
He shrugged. “Yeah, but if anyone were to find out about us, they’d kick Carlito out of the circus and I’d never see him again. At least this way, we have our moments.”
“That’s crappy. And not much of a way to live. And why would they kick him out and not you?”
“’Cause Carl’s not family.”
“Would people really care that you’re gay, Eli? I mean, that sounds so incredibly stupid.”
He shook his head. “No, they wouldn’t care. But they do care when the feelings are more than just a fling. I mean, you see what they did to you and Cain.”
She twisted her lips. “Yeah, but Cain didn’t let them. And you don’t have to either.”
He sighed. “It’s not that simple.”
She kind of thought it was but also knew it wasn’t her place to push it.
“Anyway…” Eli flicked his wrist. “Cain wanted to know how the knifeplay went.”
She snorted. “Horrible. It’s like I couldn’t even remember how to hold one.”
She stared at her hands. How could she have forgotten how to do something she’d learned years ago, that
’d been second nature to her at one point?
Before the accident she’d not even needed to think. The act of knife throwing and wielding had been so ingrained it’d been muscle memory.
Today, not at all.
The first time she’d grabbed a blade, she’d fumbled it so badly it’d very nearly gotten Helga in the gut. The next time she’d actually managed to throw it, but it hadn’t gotten anywhere close to the target. It’d hit a chair several yards to the left and landed with a mortifying thunk in the dirt.
That was when Helga had decided to come at Flint, claiming that maybe seeing an attack head-on might help spur the instinct, but she’d barely even managed to take her first step before she tripped over her undone shoelaces and landed face-first.
“I want to cry. Nothing’s going right. It’s like I’m forgetting who I am.”
Eli patted her knee. “Maybe you’re not forgetting, bee, maybe you’ve been rebooted.”
“Why. Please, God, somebody tell me why everyone always wants to give me a nickname? And bee, gah, that’s horrible.”
He chuckled, crossing his arms. “Well, it was either that or beanpole seeing as how you’re nothing but skin and bones.”
“Hey.” She tapped his shoulder. “I’ve got curves.”
“Yeah, but not the right kind.” He winked.
Smirking, she wiped at grains of dirt still caught at the corners of her mouth. “You’re horrible for a girl’s self-esteem. Just sayin’.”
“I’m sure if I were into girls, I’d think you were hot. You do have a nice face.”
“Oh gee, thanks.”
They shared a stupid grin.
“But seriously, Eli, you think I’ve been rebooted?”
The Complete Tempted Series Page 46