“No, you should come by. Really. There’s already other people here,” we heard Jake say from inside my bedroom.
Asher looked from person to person, wondering what the rest of us were cuing on. Oh, dear God—what if he touched Jake, and after this would be able to rearrange his features to look like him? Or my mother? Whom had he passed a plate to tonight? Just when things were feeling normal—I should have known not to let my guard relax. Then again, after only two hours of sleep, what guard did I have left? I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Edie?” Asher asked.
“It’s okay,” my mother said, putting her hand out toward Asher’s to pat it, an attempt to dissipate the tension we all felt in the room.
“No it’s not!” I lunged across the table to intercept.
“Edie!” Peter reprimanded.
“I’m sorry. It’s just been a long day.” I took Asher’s far hand safely in my own and pulled him toward me. “My family just has some secrets, is all. I’m sure you understand.”
He looked down at my hand clutching his beneath the table, my knuckles white. He squeezed my hand back. “Of course I do, dear.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I didn’t feel it. For all I knew, it was already too late.
Jake returned to the table, gesturing with his phone. “Sorry, that was my ride.”
“We could drop you off, Jake,” my mother began.
“Nah, you guys need to make good time.” He said the words like he was mocking them, because he was.
“Well, at least let us make your mysterious friend a to-go plate.”
“I, for one, want to know what Edie got,” Peter announced.
I glanced over at Asher. There was a slight yet possible chance that he really had forgotten my family would be here today and had bought me something frivolous and personal. I wouldn’t put it past him to embarrass me. I looked around the table, and it was obvious I wasn’t going to get out of this.
I steeled myself, picked up the box, and shook it. Something heavy thunked inside, and I sighed with relief. The wrapping came off quickly, revealing a simple silver cuff. I had no doubt it was real silver, and the look in Asher’s eyes confirmed it.
“For just in case,” he said. In case I needed to burn anything that was allergic to silver.
“How sweet!” my mother cooed.
“It is. Thanks.” I set the cuff on my wrist.
Peter looked to Asher. “I bet Edie doesn’t have a single jar of silver polish in this house.”
The doorbell rang, saving me from more cleaning tips. “I’ve got it—” Jake announced as I stood. He walked over and beat me to the door. “Hey, Raymond,” he announced. “Raymond, meet my family. My family, meet Raymond,” Jake added in his casual cool-guy way.
While my nurse radar was only in its infant stages, it didn’t take much skill to know the guy on my stoop was still using. Raymond was a white guy with dreadlocks, wearing fingerless gloves—he looked thin, picked at, and strung out. My heart sank.
“It’s been great seeing you, Mom, Peter.” Jake leaned down and gave my mother a kiss on her cheek.
“You’ve got your leftovers, right?” my mother asked him.
“Of course.”
My mom beamed at him. “I’m very proud of you, Jake.” I knew this was how it began. Him moving back in—thank God for Peter. He’d put an end to the previously endless cycle of Jake leaching off my mother, getting clean at expensive rehab centers, and then getting dirty and disappointing her all over again.
I knew it it was my time on Y4 that had gotten him clean and my continued employment that kept him that way. As long as I worked on Y4, the Shadows would stop him from getting high. Not that that had stopped him from trying. You could say my brother lived in hope.
Still, I’d almost been proud of him today too—until I’d found out who he’d be hanging out with tonight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Asher stuck around to help load the card table and chairs into my mother’s SUV. Then, confident she was leaving me in good hands—and probably warring with her twin urges for me to stay celibate until I was married, while being profoundly hungry for grandchildren—my mother and Peter took off, my mom waving wildly through the window until they were out of sight.
I sighed and looked back at Asher.
“Can you change into you?”
Asher shrugged. His shoulders widened and he became two inches taller. The shirt wasn’t part of the show, and now it clung to him tighter than it had before, filled out by his chest instead of the beginnings of a potbelly.
I wanted to ask, Is this really you?—but that was the thing with Asher. I’d never know. I knew some girls went in for mystery, but Asher’s ability to shapeshift went beyond.
I couldn’t not think he was handsome, though. Beautiful dusky olive skin and coffee-dark eyes, and an English accent at will. I sighed. “If my mom had thought I was dating you—or this you—instead of Kevin, she’d never forgive me till the day I died.”
“Is that a complicated way of saying you find me handsome?”
“It’s a complicated way of saying it’s complicated.” I walked past him to sit on my couch. He sat down beside me. “Why is my brother hanging out with such losers?”
“You know that guy?”
“No. He’s probably someone Jake met at the shelter. But I know his type. Not all of us need to touch people to know who they are.”
“Who else is he going to be friends with? It’s not like homeless people are upwardly mobile.”
“You sound like Peter.”
“I could.”
I whirled on him. “You didn’t, did you?” I wasn’t sure what verb to use for Asher’s ability to absorb other people’s spirits—if that was even the word—and look like them.
“I meant I could talk like him. Something tells me he’s pretty easy to imitate.” Asher leaned forward. “Did you really think I’d copy your mom?”
I shook my head back and forth. I wasn’t sure if I was negating him or negating me. “I didn’t know. You didn’t, right?”
“No, of course not.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Not if it would upset you. But I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.” He gave me a cryptic smile. “I found out what an Ambassador of the Sun is for you.”
“Way to change the subject. Do tell.”
“Keep in mind that my people can’t impersonate vampires, just daytimers—and sometimes that gets us into places while other times it just gets us tortured and killed. Still, the last time anyone saw one of these ceremonies, from the periphery of the room, it looked like there was a lot of blood, and some churchy statements about the Ambassador being the vessel who kept the remnants of their humanity.”
“In a jar? Or a scrapbook?”
“The memories are hazy. It was a long, long time ago.”
“Is it in a record book I can read?” On the off chance I could make more sense of it, reading it personally.
“Shapeshifter records don’t work like that. It’s more of an oral tradition, let’s say.” He tugged at the confines of Kevin’s shirt, pulling at a too-tight sleeve.
I realized that me forcing him to be something he wasn’t just because it was what I was comfortable with was lame of me. “You can change into someone more comfortable, if you want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I need to go.” He pulled his shirt down one more time, then paused. “Unless—” he said, looking at me, lips spreading into an easy, hopeful, smile.