Page 27 of The Turning of the Tables

I sighed, then left the apartment, running down the flight of stairs from Noah’s door to the entrance that opened onto the shared parking lot. I put down the back seat, making as much space as I could for the pieces of Elliot’s table, a little worried that a massive table-top wasn’t going to fit. I tried to reassure myself that Elliot had been in my car and knew how big it was.

I pulled up to the hotel, then reached for my phone to text Elliot—except before I could hit send, he was coming out through the glass doors. I deleted the message I was typing, shoving my phone back in my pocket.

Elliot had on ripped jeans and a grey t-shirt with slightly-faded red letters reading ‘Wisconsin’ spread across his pecs. Today’s earrings were tiny silver hoops—no beads or bangles. Annoyingly, he still looked good.

“Hey,” I greeted him when he opened the door.

“Morning,” he half-grunted, then yawned. It was nine—I like to wake up with the sun, so the fact that Elliot was so clearly not awake yet was kind of adorable.

Rule Two, Seth.

“Where to?” I asked him.

He passed me his phone, on which he’d pulled up an address. I tucked it into the phone holder attached to my vent. “Thanks.”

Elliot grunted.

We passed a Starbucks on the way, and I decided that caffeine first was probably a good idea, given the tired scowl that had settled onto Elliot’s well-defined features. I pulled into the drive through, and managed to get Elliot to gruntout something about chocolate, so I got him a mocha and myself a hazelnut latte. He did dig out his wallet and shove cash at me before I got to the second window, which I exchanged for the coffee—Elliot ignored my offer of change, clutching the coffee cup like a lifeline.

“Really not a morning person, are you?” I asked.

Another grunt. Then he took a long pull from his mocha.

Don’t ask me why I found this strangely attractive. I couldn’t explain it—and I really shouldn’t have been feeling it. Because Rule Two.

I decided that I was going to stop trying to start a conversation with a man who was huddling around a paper cup of coffee like it was the last ember of a dying fire in the frozen tundra, and I instead focused on following the directions on the phone. Although that only killed an additional three minutes.

“Which unit?” I asked him as I pulled into the driveway of the storage facility.

Elliot stirred. “Seventeen.”

We made our way down the first aisle of drive-up units, one side counting up from one, the other side down from forty. Seventeen was in the fourth aisle. I stopped the Cruiser in front of the door, pulling up close so that any other cars that happened to come through could get past us.

I slid out of my side of the Cruiser, wincing a little as my bad leg hit first. It wasn’t a good pain day—my knee was alternating between a deep ache and a sharp, stabbing sort of pain, my back felt sore, my wrist felt like it needed to crack, and one elbow ached when I straightened it out. Not a good day to be moving heavy furniture, but here I was. When you have Lyme, you don’t get to decide which days are good and which days are bad. But I couldn’t very welljustnotdo things on the bad days. People didn’t stop dying just because my knee hurt more.

One benefit of Noah having odd hours was that he was usually asleep when I left so I didn’t have to have the same old argument with him about how I shouldn’t go out when I was in pain. The point I always made was that if I didn’t go out when I was in pain, I wouldn’t ever go out.

So I went out anyway, pain or no pain.

I took a sip of my latte, forcing myself to not limp as I rounded the back of the Cruiser. Limping just threw everything else out of balance and would make my other hip hurt, or my other knee… Point is, limping wasn’t worth it.

Elliot had pulled out a keyring, and was trying to open the padlock while not dropping his coffee. It wasn’t working terribly well, so I went over and took the mocha from him.

He looked up at me. “Thanks,” he grunted, then easily undid the lock, leaving it hanging as he lifted up the door, muscles bunching in his arms and across his back.

Rule Two might be in effect, but I could still enjoy the view.

He reached out a hand, and it took me a second or so to realize that he undoubtedly wanted his coffee back. I passed it over, and he immediately took another long drink.

Inside the storage unit, there were several stacks of boxes, mostly pushed to the walls, leaving an open space in the center that currently contained several large pieces of wood balanced on sawhorses. There was also a table saw.

“Is that yours?” I asked Elliot, nodding toward the saw.

“Nah,” he replied. “It’s Taavi’s.” He gestured around the storage space. “Most of this is Taavi’s,” he said.

I suppose I don’t know all that much about Taavi, when you get right down to it. I know he’s a Xoloitzcuintli shifter, and that he must have the ability to tolerate excessiveswearing and not be too overly sensitive to live with Hart. Don’t get me wrong—I like Hart. I enjoy teasing him, and I like to think that some of the crap he gives me in return is because he likes me, too. He must, since it was me he’d called to ask questions about evidence collection from Wisconsin. I just wouldn’t want to spend all day, every day with him.

“From… Arizona?” I thought I remembered that was where Taavi was from.