“I need a lot of things,” she told him. “I’m guessing I won’t get them.”
“It’s not about me,” he said, his temper taking an edge. The blade warmed happily in his pocket, sipping up both conflict and promise. “It’s bigger than that.”
Her eyes narrowed; he thrilled to the spirit behind it and just as quickly doubted himself as the knife hummed in response. My feelings?
She knew none of it; she said, “Think much of yourself?”
He crossed the room in three long strides; she held her ground, lifting her gaze to his even as he crowded close—rude, deliberate. He jabbed a finger toward the window. “I think nothing of myself,” he told her, feeling the truth of that; feeling the burn as it rose in him. “But I can see. Can you?”
“Maybe more than you think,” she muttered, and it was then that she looked away. “Look,” she said. “I’m here. I’m following my nose. That’s all. Okay?”
He gave her the darkest of looks. “It would be okay if I believed that was all there is to it.”
She regained some asperity. “What there is to it,” she said, “is that I’ve been robbed every which way but loose, and I have to go take care of that. If you don’t mind.”
Right. Yes. Of course.
Time to remember how people lived in the world when there wasn’t a demon blade involved.
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, rolling his head. Releasing tension. “Listen,” he said. “I need to finish sleeping this off.” He didn’t define this; he suspected that after the previous night, he didn’t have to. “There’s no telling how long it’ll take to get your finances sorted out, and I could use a favor.”
She crossed her arms, not hiding her suspicion, and waited.
“Food,” he said. “More of those workout drinks. Something microwaveable.” As her face cleared with understanding, he added, “Necessities for you in exchange.”
“I—” she said, protest in that single syllable...until she closed her mouth and looked away, then back again. “I can pay my own way.”
He suddenly felt unutterably weary. Burning. “Please. Just...please.”
Her surprise showed. “Oh,” she said, disarmed. “Oh. Okay then. I mean...you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” But at her skeptical expression, he smiled wryly. “I will be fine.” A day of rest—full, deep rest—and he could start tracking down what he’d felt in this place so far—the origins, the areas of deeper feeling, lingering traces. He’d sort out the undercurrents of this place; he’d figure out what was going on.
And he’d figure out how she was part of it.
Gwen found something disconcerting about filing reports—the car break-in, the mugging—with someone else’s wallet tucked away in her jacket.
The good thing—could there possibly be a good thing?—about the situation was that on this day, she was just one of many. Resulting in perhaps the oddest thing of alclass="underline" no one saw anything strange about the siege of incredibly bad and possibly not coincidental luck she’d apparently had painted on her back the evening before.
Get out of Albuquerque. Just get out.
She could have done it. A bus ticket home, just like that. She’d pay more for rekeying the damned car than it was probably worth anyway.
But she didn’t go to the bus station, and she couldn’t quite have said why she hadn’t.
Maybe it was the way he’d said please. Maybe it had been the look on his face as he’d burst into the stairwell first thing that morning, ready to do battle when he could barely stand. Ready to lend a shoulder when battle hadn’t been necessary.
Anyway. He’d asked her to bring back some food. She could do that much. She flexed her lightly skinned palms and went to work.
She stopped in an internet café and quickly searched up the contact information for her credit cards and her bank. The first thing she bought with Michael MacKenzie’s money—Mac...you’ve got your fingers in his wallet, so call him Mac—was a disposable cell. From that she called the credit card companies, already heading for the bus stop.
The closest store wasn’t far from the hotel; she walked back from there, soaking up the Albuquerque valley heat on a crispy dry spring day in a marginal neighborhood of real-life people, the city’s tall buildings and fancy business district looming off to the west. Colors, sun bright even through new sunglasses, a constant stream of traffic and people.
How long could a single day be?
Amazing to discover it was still barely noon as she dragged herself back to the hotel. Laden with the reusable cloth grocery bags she’d picked up along with the groceries—and basic toiletries, and underwear, and a few basic Ts and sport shorts—she hesitated in the lobby.
She could get her own room. On his card, sure, but it wasn’t like she wouldn’t pay him back, and—
The wallet felt heavy in the grocery bag where she’d dropped it.
His whole wallet. His whole identity. Entrusted to her, just like that.
And if anyone knew what it was like to lose that little bundle of selfhood...
No. She’d ask before charging her own room.
She adjusted her grip on her various burdens and headed for the elevator, bumping the call button with her knuckles. Getting the hotel key from her front pocket was an exercise in persistence and dexterity; getting the door unlocked, more of the same.
She took no more than a step into the room before dropping the whole kit and kaboodle, exhaling a huge sigh of relief as she shook out her hands. She rescued the key card, pushed the door closed, and leaned back against it with a dramatic groan.
And that’s when she noticed he hadn’t so much as moved. Still in bed, still just as she’d left him, moments after he’d flopped down in the first place. One arm flung out over the center of the bed, the other over his eyes, angled so one leg bent over the side of the mattress, that foot still on the floor.
“Um,” she said. “Mac?” And didn’t expect the spurt of concern, nudging purchases out of the way to hurry over, putting a hand on his leg. “You okay?”
Unbelievable. She was watching his chest, battered and tattooed—waiting for the rise of it—and it seemed to take forever, dammit.
But there it was, slow and long and even. A man deeply asleep. Just as she’d left him.
She bet his arm was asleep, too, dead weight on his face.
Without much thinking about it, she perched on the small slice of mattress beside him. This muscle-strapped body had become familiar to her last night—but in the light of day, those hours now seemed a marginal reality. And she no longer had the right or the reason to touch him. Nothing more than what she did now, laying the back of her hand across the side of his face and then on his neck.
No longer so very hot. Now just warm, another human being going about the business of being alive—and not so very bruised anymore at that. He didn’t stir at the transgression, but a brief spate of goose bumps rippled over his arms and shoulders.
She let her hands rest in her lap, considering him. Considering this. The situation...the moments that had led her here, and the stark understanding that she had no idea where to go. Not in the next moment, not in the next hour, not in the next day.
He’d wanted to know about her father.
He was going to ask her again. She’d seen that much in him. If she stayed. She looked at the tattoo. Here, in the daylight, hardly obscured by the faint pattern of hair across his chest. She looked, and her breath caught and—