Moonshifted (9 page)

“I’m Kevin. Nice to meet you all.” He waved from outside while scanning around the room to include everyone in his wave.

“Well, come on in, Kevin!” my mother said.

“Oh, no, Mom—”

“It’s Christmas, Edie—”

“I was really just here to drop this off.” He handed me a box. It was tiny, but had a weight to it when I hefted. “To drop this off for my special girl.”

My eyes widened at him—in anger and panic.
“Ash-er,”
I said, under my breath.

“Really?” My mother’s voice reached new heights. “Did you hear that, Peter?”

“Any friend of Edie’s is a friend of ours. Come in, come in,” he said, waving Asher in.

Jake was the only one who wasn’t fooled. He’d spent a week with me recently, helping me out after I’d been stabbed. He’d had the wisdom not to ask questions—and to be honest, I’d been able to handle most of my own care—but he’d known I hadn’t had any boyfriends calling, either on the phone or in person, during all of that time. He set his shoulders and gave Asher the once-over, subtly jerking up his chin in manly acknowledgment.

Jake being protective of
me
? Now, that was a change.

“We didn’t bring enough chairs, I’m afraid—”

“That’s fine, because Kevin was going—” I said, trying to close the door.

“Edie! Why didn’t you ever tell us about him?” my mother pressed, unashamed to interrogate me in front of witnesses.

“We just started dating,” Asher began, taking a step inside. “It was an office romance.”

My mother’s bearing straightened. “Are you a doctor?”

Asher laughed. “No. I do computer work for County. Someone downloaded a virus onto a computer on Edie’s floor, and the rest was history.”

“A very short history.” I sighed and let him in. “Come in.”

Asher grinned at me. “I thought you’d never ask.”

*   *   *

What followed was fairly painless, as these things go. An extra folding chair was hauled from my hall closet. My mother’s cooking was excellent, as always, Peter pontificated on random topics, and Jake kept his head down. Jake was off the drugs—one look at him and you could see it—but while he’d been using, he’d developed an almost vampire-like ability to deflect attention from himself. No one wanted to know anything about my job—and if they did, as a nurse, losing their interest was easy. Most people didn’t want to talk about piss, blood, or shit. And besides, my mother was more interested in my nascent “relationship” with Kevin and the currently vacant status of my womb.

“She’s always been concerned with her career, Kevin,” my mother began, apologizing for me. “But I’m sure if she met a good man, she’d settle down. She could work a normal job—there are nursing jobs during the daytime, my friend Frances has one, and her hospital even provides day care, she told me a few months ago at church. Do you attend church, Kevin?”

Asher did a much better job of answering to a strange name than I would have—I wondered if the forms he took came complete with names imprinted, like those written on the back of T-shirts for summer camp—but it was nice to see that my mother’s stream-of-consciousness way of speaking could derail even him. He swallowed slowly, looking a little pained, like the piece of mashed potatoes in his throat had corners. I grinned maliciously across the table at him.

“Well, Mrs. Spence,” he began.

“Grinder,” Peter corrected, not because he was mad, but because he couldn’t help himself.

“Mrs. Grinder,” Asher continued. “I haven’t been to church in a long time. But I was raised—and this will sound odd, I admit—half Catholic, half Pentecostal.”

“Really?”

“Really. I spent summers with my Catholic grandmother, but my father’s family are foursquare all the way.”

Somehow I doubted that was the case. Sure, someone who’d imprinted on him had probably gone to church once upon a time, but—my mother squinted at him, taking his measure, then she glanced at two-hours-of sleep me. “Well. As long as you practice some sort of religion…” At this late stage in the baby game, as I crested twenty-five and slid down toward thirty, she apparently couldn’t afford to be too picky.

Jake’s phone rang, and he excused himself to take the call.

The whole table held their breath—at least the part of the table directly related to me. Who called someone else on Christmas Day? Family—though I knew both Jake and I would make our calls to Real Dad later—or junkies, who knew no boundaries when it came to the necessity of getting high.

My mother glared at me. If it were up to her, I’d inspect Jake’s phone bill each month, tracing calls back to their sources, making sure that each and every one was church-approved. Unfortunately for her, I didn’t have that much free time, or any inclination. Despite things I’d done in the past, I was not my brother’s keeper. As long as his minutes were under the limit, he could be calling the Dalai Lama. Then again, my Evangelical mother’d hate that even more.

“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.

I was flattered to have his attention, and then just as quickly ashamed to be pleased. I told myself there was nothing wrong with recognizing you were sitting next to someone beautiful. My recent loss hadn’t frozen my heart or made me blind. And I knew from work that people expressed their grief in different ways. I could take him back to my bedroom and express quite a lot between now and the time I had to go back to work tonight. It might not be guilt-free later, but he was the type of partner to ensure that the ensuing guilt would be worthwhile.

My phone rang. I quickly went to answer it. It was County’s automated system, asking me if I wanted to come in four hours early for a half shift. “Yes,” I told it, and then hung up. “Work called. They need me to go in early tonight,” I explained, apologetic, pocketing my phone.

Asher rocked to standing. “Some other time then, maybe.”

I didn’t want to promise anything, but I also didn’t want to close any doors. “Maybe,” I agreed, walking over to my front door. He pulled on the coat that he’d worn coming over, luckily Asher-sized. “Thanks for the information and the bracelet, Asher.”

“You’re welcome. Thanks for lunch.”

We were both in my short hallway, crowded together as he passed. I didn’t know what I ought to do, but I felt like I should do something. I leaned up and pecked him on the cheek, much as he had me when he first came into my home. He looked startled, then theatrically dismayed.

“How did I, the great Asher, fall into the friend zone?”

“By being a friend.” I opened up my front door. “Don’t worry. The sex zone still sometimes sends cookies and the occasional rescue ship.”

He looked down at me, an amused smile lifting his beautiful chiseled cheeks. He stood close for a second, close enough for me to smell his vetiver cologne, and then stepped outside.

“Merry Christmas, Asher.”

“See you around, Edie.”

I stood in my doorway until he made it into his car safely, then watched him drive away. I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Sometimes the best way to get over being hurt was to rip the Band-Aid off, after all.