“Don’t tell my mom,” he said.
“Hismom,” Cin, the girl he had a crush on, scoffed. Cin was a skinny little thing with spiky dyed blue hair. She had some kind of magic ability, but she wouldn’t say what it was. Also she shoplifted a lot.
“Great.” Lorenzo scowled at the ground, embarrassed. He was still basically a good kid; Zoey was afraid that he wouldn’t be for much longer. He’d dropped out of computer engineering tech school, even though he was really good at it, and now he spent his free time hanging out with this group of low-level criminals, and sooner or later he’d find himself in real trouble. And that would break Andrea’s heart.
“Hey, it’s a beautiful day to go dumpster diving!” she said loudly, and the kids dropped their spray paint cans and hurried over to her. This was Zoey’s way of keeping the kids from burglarizing and vandalizing the neighborhood. If they had food, and she kept them busy, they wouldn’t be starving and they had less time to make mischief. And due to her map magic, she could guide them to the dumpsters behind the high end grocery stores in the better neighborhoods, and avoid security guards, random guard gargoyles, and other nuisances.
They followed behind her on their battered bicycles, zipping around all obstacles. She felt badly about letting Lorenzo come, because he was supposed to be home, but at least if he was with her she knew he wasn’t out spray-painting a building or boosting cigarettes somewhere in an effort to impress Cin.
The dumpster behind Le Gourmand yielded some major finds – bags of apples, bags of oranges, day old French bread, bags of donuts. The owners of Le Gourmand were pretty considerate, and when they threw away expired food, they tried to make sure it was in good enough shape that it could be used by those who needed it.
“This is great!” Cin crowed, hugging a bag of food to her chest. Then she glanced at Lorenzo, and said in a low voice “I’m sorry I made fun of you earlier. It must be nice to still have a mom.” She always felt like she had to put on the tough badass act for the other kids, but some sweetness seeped through sometimes.
“No big.” Lorenzo shrugged, trying to look casual, but he couldn’t hide the smile tugging at his lips.
Zoey closed her eyes pictured the route home, and suddenly sensed obstacles. Several of them. Too bad her map magic wouldn’t tell her what they were. Every route home that she considered, something popped up to block her.
She couldn’t tell, but she had the odd feeling that the obstacles were specific to her.
“Guys,” she said. “We need to split up. There’s something in between us, and our neighborhood. Can you hang out here for a little while? I’m going to try to find a way back there, and I’ll call you with the all clear.”
She chose a route that added half an hour to her ride home. It was night time when she glided to a stop in front of her building. A delivery van was idling there, and a man stood by her door with a huge crystal vase full of peonies.
Dominic. It could only have been Dominic. But how did he know they were her favorite?
“Zoey Monroe?” The man said, as she eyed him warily.
“She skipped out on her rent and left town. You’re lucky you missed her, she was a major twatmuffin.” She quickly sidestepped him, wheeling her bike.
He moved in between her and her front door. “He said you’d say that.”
“He said that I’d say Zoey skipped out on her rent and she was a twatmuffin?” she said skeptically. “That’s awfully specific.”
“He said you’d give me some smartass answer and say you weren’t her. You look like the picture he showed me.”
Dominic had a picture of her? Yikes.
The delivery man shoved the vase of flowers into her arms and stood back, waiting.
“What else?” Zoey said impatiently.
“You got a tip for me?”
“Yeah, avoid Main Street, the traffic is murder right now.”
He gave her a look that most people reserve for times when they’ve stepped in something smelly. She ignored him and maneuvered her way awkwardly to her front door, wheeling her bike with the vase tucked under her arm.
The protection wards over the doorway recognized her, and the front door lock clicked open. Reluctantly, she set the vase down in the lobby. They were beautiful, but she wasn’t taking a gift from the Blood Oath pack.
She carried her bike upstairs to her apartment, and called Lorenzo on his cell phone to tell him that it was safe to go home, and also he damned well better apologize to his mother for going out without telling her.
Then she plopped down on the couch to try to figure out what to do next. OK, so Dominic was sending her flowers. At her apartment. And he had a picture of her.
All those times she’d yearned for a man who actually made her feel desirable and sexy and worth pursuing? She hadn’t imagined a scenario like this. She didn’t even know what was going on right now. She didn’t know where Dominic lived, what he specifically did for a living, what he was like as a person. What would it mean to be the mate of a Blood Oath Capo? Most of the parties that she’d catered had been attended by single men – she knew because married pack members wore a chunky gold wedding ring with two wolves side by side. The wolves had little ruby eyes.
She had catered one family event for them, in the tourist area. Strictly PG. It had been a birthday party for the six year old twin cubs of a high ranking pack member. The wives were beautiful, perfectly made up, exquisitely dressed.
The women all had seemed to be happy, as far as she could tell. Were they putting on a show? Did the women feel like they’d sold their souls, marrying into a crime family like that? If so, they didn’t make it obvious – but then, of course they wouldn’t.
