Graveyard Shift

by Jenn Burke

  I froze, wondering where he was going with this.

  He rubbed my back. “That’s on me, not you, sweetheart. You’ve been pretty transparent—” I snorted, and he chuckled as he realized what he’d said. “Okay, yeah, that was bad. Sorry. What I’m trying to say...”

  I waited for him to continue. When the silence lingered, I said, “Would it help if you used police lingo?”

  “Shut up,” he said without heat.

  I kissed his chin. “You’re trying to say that you have a clearer picture of why I can do what I can do.”

  He let out a sigh of relief. “Yes.”

  “And that you feel bad about worrying that I couldn’t hold my own against Pike.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that it was hot.”

  His breath rushed out of him. “As fuck.”

  His vehemence made me smile. “Yeah?”

  “Oh, hell yeah.”

  Gently—and carefully, since we were in a shower with a slippery tile floor—Hudson guided me until I was pressed up against the back wall. The tiles were cold against my butt, but the shiver that ran through me had nothing to do with the change in temperature.

  “This okay?” His eyes were already dilated, a thin ring of glowing yellow.

  “Better than okay.”

  His lips descended to the crook of my neck and he licked the water off my skin. He nosed my beard and a hum of appreciation resonated over the rush of the water behind us. “I want to suck you off.” I almost didn’t hear him, his voice was so low. “But I need—I have to—”

  “Whatever you want.” I leaned my head back against the wall.

  His big hand wrapped around both our dicks. Mine had decided that yes indeedy, sex would be awesome, thank you very much. The feel of his rough skin—warmer than I was used to, thanks to the heat of the shower—made me groan.

  “God, yeah. Love your sounds.”

  He began a steady stroke with a fantastic twist as he reached the crowns—which was enough to pull a whimper from me. “More,” I begged, arching up onto my toes to chase that amazing touch.

  He mouthed my neck, not biting yet, but his teeth scraped my skin in time with every stroke. The sensation drove me higher, until I was teetering on the brink, needing that one more thing to tip me over.

  “Hudson!” I whined.

  His name wasn’t fully past my lips when his fangs pierced my neck.

  Stars exploded behind my eyes as I came, and came, and came. He grunted, his muscles stiffening, but as always, there was no evidence of our climax but mine splattered across our abs. Time grew fuzzy, hazy, until he lifted his head and licked the wounds. They’d probably be little more than nasty bruises by the time I managed to haul my wrecked ass out of the shower.

  He leaned his forehead against my shoulder, still shuddering a little. “So good.”

  “It’s a good thing I’m already dead. Just saying.”

  He chuckled and kissed my shoulder.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Much. Thank you.”

  “Good. I think we’ve wasted enough water to—”

  “Oh, shit!” He turned around and slapped the lever shut. “Damn, there goes the water bill this month.”

  I stared at him, then broke out laughing.

  “What?”

  “Perspective. In the past twenty-four hours, we’ve fought an army of vampires, the head of that army and a paranormal police troop.”

  “So? Water conservation is important.”

  I slid down the wall, still laughing even as Hudson muttered to himself and sought a towel. I caught something about orgasms frying my brain, which made me laugh harder.

  Until all of those battles I’d referred to—and what had happened, what I’d done, what we lost—came crashing down on me, and the laughter turned to tears.

  Hudson held me, and I didn’t remember much after that.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We reported Iskander missing the next day.

  Hudson called Isk’s mom to ask if she’d seen him—the first step in the scenario we were setting up. I felt sick to my stomach with every word he shared with her, and I kind of wished I could be the one on the phone—but as far as anyone outside of the paranormal community and my believers knew, Wes Cooper was dead too.

  For his mother and siblings, the nightmare was only starting. But Hud, with his practice at delivering bad news to good people—and playing a role undercover—gave no sign that he knew anything other than what he was telling Yasmin. Isk had decided to go for a hike yesterday, in the Rouge, and never came home. We only discovered that when we opened up the office this morning and there was no sign of Isk or his SUV, and he wasn’t answering his phone.

  After that, we followed through on our assigned roles of concerned friends and colleagues. Hud reported Iskander missing directly to Kat, as we’d previously decided—it made sense, because why wouldn’t he use his connections? She came to the Caballero Investigations office to interview us, as though this were the first time she’d heard of his disappearance.

  Then she joined the police already searching the park, along with the wardens and some off-duty Ontario Provincial Police officers. We remained in the office, waiting for news. I couldn’t sit still—I tried to focus on doing some work, but my mind wandered, unwilling to concentrate on any case, no matter how interesting. I ended up cleaning the office, resupplying the coffee pods and so on. Hudson stared at his laptop for minutes on end, but I knew he wasn’t actually absorbing anything because every now and again he would shift the mouse to reawaken the screen. Evan sat on the couch in the employee area, still within our sight, but separate, as he’d been since Isk had died.

  Lexi was back at our place, working on tracking down Sam’s relatives. She texted me now and again to check in on us, and let us know in return how things were progressing on her hunt.

  At 5:00 p.m., Kat called to report they’d found him and family notification was imminent. She shared a few more details, and Hudson closed the call.

  “Everyone knows,” Evan whispered.

  “They will soon.” Hudson looked tired suddenly. More his age. I felt it too. This secret that we’d carried was suddenly no longer ours, but instead of the weight lifting now that more people knew Isk was dead, it was heavier.

  It was all real.

  It hadn’t quite set in before now—I mean, I’d understood that he was gone. I knew what that meant. But a piece of my brain had clung to the idea that he wasn’t truly dead. We’d all cheated death—it was almost our family’s thing.

  But Isk couldn’t. Not this time. I met Hudson’s gaze. “Why?” My voice cracked.

  He opened his arms, and I didn’t hesitate to walk into his embrace. He kissed my temple and sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone knows why this person dies and that person lives.”

  “It’s not fair.” One of Evan’s hands rose to angrily swipe away a tear.

  I leaned into Hud’s chest, the rumbling of his voice comforting. “It’s not.”

  Evan looked up at me and for an instant, his expression was full of anger. And I got it. I was a god. I’d talked to Isk in the otherplane. Why hadn’t I been able to change his fate? Why hadn’t I been able to fix things? More why questions I didn’t think we’d ever have the answers to. Someday soon, I thought Evan might ask those. If he did, I wasn’t sure he’d be satisfied with my answers. I hoped that if that time came—when it did—he’d forgive me for not being able to do anything.

  Maybe then I could forgive myself.

  * * *

  The day of Iskander’s funeral dawned cold and sunny. It was one of those perfect late-autumn days, when the trees still had some leaves refusing to fall, woodsmoke drifted by on the breeze, and the air had a bite to it that said despite the gorgeous, bright sun, the gray skies and deep freeze of
winter weren’t too far off.

  Lexi, Sam, Priya and I gathered in our backyard. As much as I wanted to go to the funeral with Evan and Hudson, there was no way I could play the role of my own cousin today. I couldn’t pretend to have never met Yasmin and the rest of Iskander’s family. I couldn’t pretend to be only an acquaintance of the man. So we were in the middle of the back stretch of our property, out of sight of the nosy neighbors and the house across the street where our enemies had hidden. We stood in a semi-circle in front of a small table I’d lugged out from the living room. It bore a sketch Evan had drawn of Iskander, smiling and his pompadour perfect, along with a piece of wood Sam had carved her clan’s symbol into. Lexi had added herbs and flowers—though their meaning escaped me—and Priya had lit a single candle in a holder to prevent the wind from extinguishing it.

  Me? All I had were words.

  “Iskander was special. He was always calm and collected, the guy who sought the peaceful solution whenever possible. He loved his mom and brothers and sisters, but I didn’t know that about him to start. What I knew was that he was a damned good investigator—too good, because he figured out all of my secrets.” I sniffed. “Every one of them, the bastard. He was easygoing but sharp—so damned sharp. When Hudson shared the idea of opening up a joint firm, Iskander was so excited. You could tell that partnering with Hud—learning from him and teaching him too—was something he really wanted to do.

  “He never gave up, no matter what faced him. He never deviated from his determination to ensure his clients were taken care of and satisfied with his work. He never wavered in his devotion to those he loved. It was a privilege to know him, to call him one of my best friends, a member of my family and he—” I choked. “He will be missed.”

  Sam began to sing, a low lament with words I didn’t recognize. The melody was haunting, and the meaning clear—she was singing her adopted brother home. Lexi leaned into me, and I wrapped my arm across her shoulders. Small shudders racked her as she cried. Priya remained still, her eyes closed, and I had no idea what she was thinking. Maybe about her father, mourning her like this?

  Sam’s song grew ragged and I reached out my other arm to tug her into my side too. She ended the song on a barely audible note, then swallowed, and lifted her head to offer a lonely howl to the breeze slipping past.

  I hoped, in whatever beyond Iskander found himself in, he heard it.

  * * *

  The day after the funeral, I stood on our front step, shivering, as I stared at the vehicle Iskander had secured for me. The dealership had dropped it off a few minutes ago—I guess you got that sort of service when you paid cash for a truck. He’d taken the order to get the opposite of my Toyota to heart. If Hudson’s car was a monster, this was a beast with matching colors—black with red stripes down the side.

  Looking at it in the driveway was painful. Not that I didn’t appreciate he’d fulfilled his task, but I was sure Isk would have loved to see the expression on my face as I took in the size of it. The thing was massive. I didn’t even know if I could see over the steering wheel. I could picture him chuckling as he took in my open mouth and wide eyes, and my stammers of “How the hell am I going to drive this thing?”

  “Very carefully, I reckon,” Priya said.

  Hudson gave my shoulder a nudge. “Go take it for a spin.”

  “I need a fucking navigator,” I muttered.

  “I’ll go.” Evan was down the steps and at the passenger door before I moved.

  It took me a good ten minutes to acquaint myself with everything in the cab—how to adjust the seat, how to turn on the lights and the wipers, how to get the radio tuned to my favorite station, and how to turn on the hazard lights, just in case. Evan fiddled with various knobs and buttons, but any discoveries he made were met with little enthusiasm.

  Eventually I put the beast into gear and carefully navigated out onto our street.

  “You can go faster than twenty, you know.”

  “No, I can’t. This thing might take a kilometer to stop.”

  He chuckled softly and looked out the window. “It’s not a train.”

  “Feels like it.”

  The more I drove, the more comfortable I felt, though. I was used to my normal-sized Toyota and Hudson’s low-slung muscle car, so riding this high up was a novelty. It had plenty of bells and whistles—literally—to warn me about cars in my blind spot and whatever, which had me breathing a sigh of relief that the manufacturer had taken into account not-so-great drivers such as myself.

  Evan played with the radio a bit, tuning it to an alternative rock station instead of my preferred eighties and nineties one. He leaned back in the leather seat with a sigh. “This is nice.”

  “It feels like a tank. I’m pretty sure Isk went out and bought his dream truck for me.”

  Evan huffed, a breath that might have been another chuckle. “Yeah. Sounds like him.”

  “He probably would have come up with reasons to borrow it.”

  I caught Evan’s lips twitch out of the corner of my eye, but he didn’t look at me. The words Iskander had asked me to pass along rang in my mind. I hadn’t told Evan yet, because I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. Did I sit him down to have a serious talk? Wait until things had calmed down a whole lot more?

  Blurt it out while driving?

  “I saw Iskander. In the otherplane.” I kept looking forward, but I saw Evan’s head whip in my direction in my peripheral vision. “It took me a minute to realize what was going on.”

  “Did you—” Evan’s voice hitched. “Did you tell him to get back in his body?”

  “I did. He said there was nothing to go back to.”

  “Fuck.” The word was little more than a breath of air.

  “I begged him not to go.” I wasn’t ashamed to admit it; I only hoped it helped Evan rather than hurt him. “He didn’t have a choice, Ev. I want you to understand that.”

  “I get it. It wasn’t like before.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Isk hadn’t been running from pain that time—his body had ceased to function. Two very different things. I pulled the truck to a gentle stop at the next red light and glanced at Evan. “He wanted me to tell you something.”

  Evan’s hands clenched into fists.

  “If you don’t want to hear it now, it can wait. It doesn’t have to happen until you’re ready.”

  “Is it bad?”

  “No.” The light switched to green, and I guided the truck forward. “It’s not bad at all. Just...hard, maybe.”

  “Everything is hard. Getting up in the morning is hard. Eating food, drinking your blood, sleeping...it’s all hard now. So...go on, tell me.”

  “He wanted me to promise to take care of you.”

  Evan swallowed audibly, but he nodded for me to continue.

  “He said he wished you could have found out what you’d be to each other.”

  Evan swiped away tears. “He couldn’t have just said ‘I love you,’ huh?”

  “You know that wasn’t him. He would have wanted to tell you that himself.”

  “But he never got a chance to.” He sniffed. “Or maybe he didn’t—”

  “He would have wanted to be sure. One hundred percent. He was careful in everything he did. Precise. I think he knew—you could have been everything for each other, but...” I had to swallow past a lump. “You never got the chance to find out.”

  “No,” Evan whispered. “We didn’t. It’s so fucking unfair.”

  “It is. I’m sorry.” I tried to rally and inject some positivity into my voice. “But you’re the strongest man I know, Ev. To fight through everything you’ve been through. You—”

  “I don’t want to be strong. I’m so tired of being strong.”

  I reached out a hand, gratified when he took it and held on. “I know.” I abandoned the false optimism. “But that’s why you�
��ve got us, right?”

  He didn’t say anything, but the squeeze he gave my hand conveyed enough.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It took us another month to find relatives of Sam’s, talk to them, vet them, and discover that they were eager to welcome Sam into their family. Josie MacDougall-Laurent was her father’s older sister, who’d moved to New Brunswick to marry into another clan. Our background check came back clean, confirming that Josie and her husband were who they said they were, and good people, which left me with a bittersweet ache in my stomach.

  On the one hand, Sam should be with her family. On the other, I’d gotten kind of attached to the little punk.

  We waited in the foyer for Josie and her husband, Alex, to arrive. They’d flown in the night before and we’d had dinner with them. My impression of Josie was that she was kind. Goodhearted. Her husband was earnest and genuine. And yeah, I might have used my godliness to double-check, because if I couldn’t ensure the safety of the people who were mine, then what was the point?

  “Do I have to go?” Sam whispered. She was tucked underneath Lexi’s arm, almost hiding from the world.

  I moved to stand in front of her and crouched slightly so I could look her in the eyes. Damn, she’d be taller than me by next year, I’d bet. “We talked about this.”

  “Yeah, I know. I just... I like it here. With you and Hudson. And Lexi and Evan. And Priya.”

  “And we’ve all liked having you here,” Lexi said. “But we’re not a clan.”

  “You’re a family, and that’s almost the same thing.”

  “You’ll always be a part of our family, okay?” I rested a hand on her shoulder. “But being in the city isn’t the best place for you.”

  “There are tons of shifters who live in the city.”

  Didn’t I know it. “Adult shifters. Ones who grew up in clans in the country, or where they could run and embrace their animal selves. Or younger ones with shifter parents who know how to ensure they grow up right. We don’t have that, hon.”