Page 48 of Housesitter

“I hate being the centre of attention.”

It was thin. More like fog than smoke, but Kel saw the barely-there sketch of Shepherd’s mouth. I’m just special; it’s not my fault if people can tell.

“If you can’t lie to yourself,” Kel said. “Don’t try lying to me.”

Shepherd’s eyes narrowed. He slapped his hand over his mouth and backed away from the table. It didn’t help. Kel wasn’t going to share that, though. The taste of Shepherd’s lies on the back of his tongue was sour, like dish soap and grease.

“You can’t do that,” Shepherd said. “How did you…”

Kel stood up. He put his hand on top of the laptop and closed the case with a brisk click. Then he pressed his hand flat against it as he leaned forward.

“Maybe when it comes to curses,” he said. “The Shepherd doesn’t know as much as the wolf? Did you think about that?”

There was a pause. Shepherd’s hand lowered slightly, enough that Kel could see that his mouth and the smoke moved in unison.

“What?”

what?

“...you know what I mean,” Kel grumbled. He pushed himself up and stalk-limped toward the kitchen door. As he went, he tossed over his shoulder. “I don’t need you as much as you thought I would, so you’re trying to make something out of fucking nothing. I’ll find my own bed for the night. I’m sure the house has enough rooms that I don’t need to share with the help.”

He could taste the meanness of that in his throat. It was savory, like breathing in the steam from a fresh-out-of-the-oven roast. When Shepherd followed him, he’d have to make it up to him.

Apologise. Somehow make it genuine, since Shepherd was better than most at seeing through his shit.

Right now, though, it felt better than good.

There were scratches gouged into the baseboard of Dio’s bed. Deep, raw, fresh marks splintered out of the ornately carved mahogany. Kel, sprawled out on the silk sheets, could have stretched his feet down and touched them with his toes.

He was pretty sure they hadn’t been there last night.

Not positive—he’d not really been in the mood to check the decor—but pretty sure.

That made his ankles itch. That had always been his big night terror as a kid: that something would grab his feet—that had stuck out over the end of every bunk bed, sofa, or cot since he was eight—in the night.

It had been a stupid fear then. It was even more stupid now—wasn’t the house meant to be on his side—but it still took him a while to work himself up to swinging his legs out of the bed. He planted them flat on the rug, toes curled down into the pile, and it was only when nothing grabbed them that his shoulders relaxed.

The warm breeze on his ankles—warm, damp, rhythmic—was just a draft.

Kel got up and took two long steps away from the bed. When he looked back, his heart in his mouth, there was nothing there.

Somehow that didn’t help.

He shuddered and grabbed his jeans to scramble into them.

Shepherd hadn’t come after him.

Kel hitched his jeans up over lean hips and buttoned them.

He wasn’t sure what to make of that. It had never happened before. Usually people wanted to have the last word or get their property back or make him confess to something on the record. Nobody had ever just let go of the fight halfway through.

Although Kel had never used supernatural powers on someone mid-fight either. That probably would change how they reacted.

“Shit,” Kel muttered as he dragged his fingers through his tangled hair to get it out of his face. “I might have fucked up.”

The house didn’t care.

He could tell that somehow. It wasn’t like a telepathic connection or anything; he couldn’t feel it the same way he could the smoke in his chest. The house just felt…like when you had a cat. The sense that there was another living being nearby, but that it was pretty indifferent to you.