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He thumped the truck he leaned on. “I already knew which car was yours, so I parked beside you. I’ll escort you home. ”
My bed and a shower sounded like a fabulous idea—and then I had a vision of him expecting to guard me from inside my home, complete with Gideon and Veronica. “Okay. But you can’t come inside. ”
“You mean your boyfriend doesn’t know?”
“What?”
“You always smell like a strange man. I just assumed. ”
“Yeah—no. ” I had not yet gotten so desperate that I needed to Frankenstein a half-man, half-parts-liberated-from-my-kitchen boyfriend. I’d be buying fresh batteries long before that. “He’s just a friend. ”
“You have a lot of strange friends. ”
“Don’t I know it,” I said, and grinned at him. “So—I guess I’ll drive, and—” I began, hunting for my keys.
“Do you eat?”
“Yes,” I answered without thinking.
“Good. I can guard you at a restaurant just as easily as I can at your house. When will you be up?”
Keys found, I looked up. “That’s cheating,” I protested.
“Unless you wanted to cook for me. I don’t mind eating in,” he pressed with half a shrug. “It’s the fights you know. Have to keep up my strength. I’ll even take a shower. ”
“Wow. A shower. That’s it. I’m in,” I said, deadpan. He waited, grinning. I realized I wouldn’t win if I didn’t muster up more energy to fight—and I might just not mind losing, anyhow. “If I say I’ll see you at seven, can I finally go home?”
“Sure thing. ”
“I’ll see you at seven then, Lucas. Good-bye. ” I waited until he got into his car before I got into my own.
Lucas’s truck followed me all the way home, and he didn’t get out of it, good to his word. Any more people hanging out in my apartment, and I’d have to start charging rent.
Minnie greeted me at the door, and Gideon was still communing electronically with my wall. “You’d better not be stealing cable,” I told him and went into the back.
A shower washed the last of the potentially imaginary vaporized puke smell out of my hair, I ate the very end of Christmas’s leftover mashed potatoes, and I crawled into bed at a quarter to nine.
* * *
I think I slept like the dead. Not as dead as Veronica, but close. I woke at six P. M. to a dark house, and a snuggling happy cat. Out the window I saw a dark sky and falling snow.
One hour to kill before dinner. I wondered how tonight would go. Company I could talk to, that wasn’t plugged into my wall or resting inside of my closet, might be nice, even if it was under duress.
It was in the silent dark when I was home alone, dealing with all my problems by m
yself, that I could admit that I missed Ti. He was the last man I’d dated. Zombie, really … but he’d felt like a man. Like a grown-up. Someone I could count on and rely on, up until when he’d left me. He had reasons for going, and they’d sounded valid, but I couldn’t rationalize away feeling left behind, especially when there was no guarantee he’d be coming back. There’d been a brief, so brief, window when I thought I wouldn’t have to be alone again, and that made my current loneliness sharp, nestled against my breast like a viper.
I decided not to feel bad about going out on my not-a-date tonight. Instead of tricky potential feelings with Asher, Lucas would be a better, less entangled, way to feel in control. He was handsome, and hey, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone out with a dog.
“What do you think about that, Minnie?” I asked, and reached over to knuckle her head.
My phone rang, and UNKNOWN NUMBER lit up its screen. A part of me got excited, and then another part of me squashed that part back into the box with the tight lid where it belonged.
“Hello?”
“Edie Spence?”
It wasn’t a voice I knew. Unknown really meant unknown. “Yes,” I answered, swallowing down a small knot of disappointment in my throat, trying to pretend it’d never been there anyhow.
“Are you alone right now?”
“Is this a prank?”
“It’s Viktor. Don’t hang up. ” I waited on the other end of the line. “You have to listen to me—I’m not the one trying to kill you, I’m being set up. They just need an excuse to kill me, the same way they killed my father. Anything a member of the Deepest Snow pack has to tell you is a lie. ”
I sat quietly in bed. “How do you expect me to believe you?”
“How can I prove it?” Viktor gave a rueful laugh. “If I could, don’t you think I would? But they’ve set me up—and there’s orders now to slaughter me on sight. I don’t have time or opportunity to come up with proof. I only know how they are, how they’ve been in the past. They murdered my father, and killed half my father’s pack. They’ll kill you too. ”
