Any Port in a Storm (12 page)

I can see her face wall up at the question. Maybe disobey was the wrong word for me to use. To defect doesn't sound much better though.

For a moment I don't think she's going to answer me, but she starts to speak, haltingly.
 

"I've known you my whole life. You always did your job so well. When we were Mittens, you always had my back. Figuratively and most of the time literally." She gives me a sad smile, and I know she's thinking of the time we both ended up with backs full of rakath spines, pulling them out of each other.
 

The memory also makes me think of Carrick, and my mouthful of cheese sours on my tongue.

Mira's going on. "You always had my back," she says again. "I guess that day, seeing the way they used you and the way that gods damned witch turned you in and doped you up — well. I thought it was time someone had yours."

I meet her eyes and open my mouth to say something, but whatever words were about to materialize vanish under the sound of Mira's front door opening.
 

"Hey, it's me," Wane's voice comes from the entryway. "I brought lunch. Guacamole and rotisserie chicken —"
 

Her voice drops off, and I can actually hear the morph woman sniffing the air.
 

"Are you drinking?" she asks.

Wane appears around the corner, today in street clothes. Jeans and a tight royal blue t-shirt that makes her eyes pop and a black leather jacket. She stops when she sees me, frowning at the Pooh Bear mug. "Ayala. Hi."

I'm not sure if she's pissed that I'm here or just surprised, but I give her a small wave and a smile as friendly as I can muster. Which probably isn't very.

It seems to settle her anyway, and she nods at the mug. "Early start?"

"Rough night," I say.
 

Mira hops up and grabs a few plates from the kitchen, as well as a carafe of orange juice. Wane sits down at the head of the table, diagonally from me.
 

"More stuff with the shades?" She plucks a piece of cheese from the plate in front of me, peering at me.

I don't want to go into it again, but I nod. "Have you heard anything from Saturn?"

From the way Wane's gaze lingers on me, I can tell she senses that I don't want to talk about my night. She looks over her shoulder to the kitchen, where Mira's returning with lunch supplies.
 

Wane gets up to help her spread out the food, and I watch them move around one another. They interact seamlessly, each anticipating the other like dance partners. A little unnerved, I take a cracker. If I didn't believe Mira when she said they weren't a couple, I'd assume they were.
 

"Eat," Mira orders me when she sits down. She shoves a plate my way, and I salute, throwing some chicken and guacamole on it, along with some potato salad and chips.
 

For a little while, I can forget the weight on my chest. Mira and Wane banter back and forth, and I quietly let their easy camaraderie stitch my tattered emotions back together.

I even manage to laugh.

But when it comes time to go home, my smile fades, and not even Nana hopping forward to meet me at the door can dispel the tension I feel in my apartment. Carrick emerges from his bedroom when he hears me close and latch the front door. He smiles as if nothing's wrong, and reaches out to touch my shoulder.

I have to force myself to reach back and touch his.
 

CHAPTER TWELVE

I can't let myself try to overanalyze Carrick's gesture or its timing. Instead, I sequester myself inside my room with Nana, dusting off my TV for the first time in ages. My housekeeper Clyde hasn't been by this month, and there's Nana fur everywhere. I send him an email asking him to come this week. The thought of him waltzing around the apartment and belting songs from Hair makes me happy. It restores an ounce of normalcy to my psyche.

The rest of the weekend passes in a strict routine. Saturday night I go on patrol, bag a couple hellkin in Percy Warner Park, snag some lo mein on the way home, and sleep till noon. Sunday I do the same, keeping to my room. Carrick vanishes for most of Sunday, and having my apartment to myself airs me out like an open window in spring. By the time Monday morning rolls around, I feel almost human again. I even stop and get donuts for the office on my way to work.
 

When I arrive at eleven, I push open the door to a startled explanation and a non-harmonious yell of "SURPRISE!"

I almost drop the donuts.

Laura beams at me, her hair pulled back in a tidy bun. She's in olive green today with a plum-colored beaded necklace. Meredith and Leeloo, the two witches who usually work three till eleven, grin from the kitchenette, and Parker claps his hands excitedly at the dumbfounded look I must be wearing.
 

"You guys," I say, a welter of strange emotions fizzing in my chest. I put the box of donuts on the ledge at Parker's desk, and a pair of cornflower blue eyes peeks up from the other side.
 

My jaw falls open. "Alice?"

Her hair, which used to be in a state of constant panic and sprayed within an inch of its life, is now a golden shade of blonde instead of peroxide platinum. It falls in gentle waves to her chest. She has crinkly crow's feet at the corners of her eyes where before her face was unnaturally smooth from whatever metaphysical face lift was the flavor of the week at the witchy beauty salon, and her face blossoms into a grin, tears filling her eyes.
 

She's got a smudge of pink on her right front tooth.
 

Some things never change.
 

I dart around the desk and throw my arms around her. She smells like peonies and sunshine, and she hugs me back with a firmness and confidence I don't remember her ever having before.
 

I probably hold onto her too long, because Laura gives a little cough that sounds suspiciously like she's trying not to cry, and I hear Leeloo grab a tissue from the box in the kitchenette. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her hand it to Parker.

Releasing Alice from the hug, I pull back to look at her again. She's wearing jeans and a light blue sweater, and she looks…happy.

Something wet drops on my boob, and I reach up to wipe my eye. "Well, hells. Surprise. You weren't kidding about that, were you?"

Alice reaches out and grabs my hand, squeezing it. "Come on! We got food."

She drags me into the conference room, where they've laid out brunch across the entire table.
 

Laura comes to stand beside me as I fill up my plate, tossing a raspberry jelly donut from my box onto the edge of it. "I thought it might be nice to celebrate your promotion," she says.

Fuck me, but my eyes won't stop leaking today. I put my plate on the table and hug Laura, which I think surprises her, because for a moment she goes so still I wonder if I frightened her.

"Well," she says. "Well."

I remember what I told her about this job and what it means to me, and when I pull back and plop my butt down in a chair to eat, I see her watching me and think she's probably thinking of the same thing.

Laura bustles around for a few minutes, then goes to the head of the table and raises her glass. "To Ayala, and to a long and prosperous partnership."

"To Ayala!" the rest of them echo her, and we toast with sparkling cider that I down quickly to disguise the gods damned tears that won't quit pooling in my eyes.

Alice sits down next to me, her plate overflowing. For the next hour, I listen in a happy haze as she tells me about her time at the World Summit, about learning meditation and martial arts — once she says it, I look closer and can see the new definition in her muscles through the thin cashmere sweater — and about how she has learned so much about the Mediators and what they do. She doesn't seem to care that none of the others except Laura really know why she left, and her bubbly words make me feel something I haven't felt in a long time.

Pride.

For all the frustration and pain and uncertainty of these last few months, with Alice sitting next to me, I feel like I am capable of doing good. That she is safe and happy and whole partly because of me. That she is brave and always has been, first for trying to seek out her friend in the scariest, most dangerous parts of our world, later for healing herself.

I am proud of her. When I tell her so, she gets teary again. I guess it's contagious today.

"Thank you," she says.
 

I know for what, and I shift in my chair, feeling uncomfortable. "You did the hardest part yourself," I say. I mean it.

She snorts, and when she looks at me, I see a clarity in her eyes that's either new or heretofore unnoticed.
 

"You never had to help me," she says.
 

I don't have time to answer, because somebody hits me with silly string, and then it's war.

But my answer sticks inside of me anyway. Yes, Alice. Yes, I did.

Laura lets us all leave work at five — not that any of us got much done — I hug Alice one more time and head back to my apartment. She's going to be joining the company again, and she's not even kicking Parker out of his job. Laura's hiring her back as an executive assistant, hands on help for the two partners.

Two partners. I'm going to be partner.

It's finally starting to feel real, this promotion.

Carrick's not home when I get there, so I throw together a box of macaroni and cheese and chop up hot dogs to go in it. I remember Ripper making fun of me when I was a Mitten, telling me that hot dogs were made up of ground harkast demon parts. He's five years older than me, and he was just out of training himself, and I was a belligerent little brat of a Mitten, so I grilled up an entire pack of hot dogs and ate them in front of him. I even managed to get back to my room before I hurled.

He felt so bad about it that he came clean right away and took my splat shifts for the next month.
 

Haven't seen Ripper in a while. Probably because he's BFFs with my archnemesis, Ben Wheedle.

Actually, Ben's not worthy of that title.

When I'm done eating, I leather up and prep for my night's hunt. I haven't heard anything from Gregor about training with the shades, so dial up the Mediator hotline and ask if they've got any hotspots. They point me toward Stones River Bend Park on the east side of town where they say they've had a bunch of frahlig activity.

The park is in the bend of the Stones River, as its name would suggest, and it's dotted with little lakes. Frahligs like freshwater rivers and ponds, and while they're not my favorite demons to slice and dice, they're at least pretty stupid and don't see well out of the water.

Never swim after dark.

I park at the end of a cul-de-sac on the western edge of the park, heading toward the coordinates the Summit gave me. A Great Horned Owl hoots through the trees, its quivering song rising in the night. Another owl answers, and I almost feel as though they're letting me know the way is clear.

Their calls die out when I reach the first lake — more a cluster of three ponds — and I take that as a cue to unsheathe my swords.
 

I skirt the lakeshore, listening for the telltale splashing and slurpy snarls that indicate the presence of a frahlig. When no such sounds come, I venture northeast into the park. Back in the trees, there is nothing but silence.

Ahead of me, a pink glow appears.

I stop in my tracks and look behind me and to the sides. Jeelings are bad enough alone, and I don't care to find out what would happen if there's more than one. The last time I had to actually fight one I almost died. Eleven feet tall, they have massive bone protrusions from their shoulders, and that's one of their finer points. They give off that pink glow for hells-knows-whatever-reason, and from the strength of the glow ahead of me, this one's either really angry or there's a jeeling party.
 

I can't count on this one running away from me like the one in Belle Meade did.

I type out a message on my phone to the hotline, letting them know that their frahligs are jeelings and that I'll try to get a count without dying.