Nicole Peeler - [Jane True 01] (11 page)

“So, what do you usually order?” he asked, scanning the menu.

“I always get the tuna melt. I like tuna.”
Be careful, Jane
, I
thought, blanching internally.
You don’t want to overwhelm him with your
cool sophistication.

“I prefer red meat,” he replied, conversationally. “I’ll get the
rib-eye.”

He looked around the diner. “Nice place, very homey.”

“Yes,” I said. “It should be.” I leaned over the table,
conspiratorially. “Louis and Gracie—they’re the owners; he’s the guy that
greeted us—spent a fortune on an interior decorator to give the place a
‘country diner’ feel. Which the decorator did. Only it looks exactly the same
as when she started, except for there’s more peach involved. Gracie swears it’s
all in the little touches, but nobody else can see any difference.”

Ryu barked his absurd laugh, causing old Mrs. Patterson to glare at him
from over her clam chowder, and I giggled at both of them.

At that moment, Amy came over with her pad and pencil. Her
dishwater-blond hair, complete with dark roots, was cut in a shaggy surfer ’do,
and she was dressed more like she was headed for a bonfire on a beach in
California than a Northeastern winter. She also had the habitually lazy eyes
and perma-friendliness of someone who smoked loads of pot. So I was more than a
little surprised when, after seeing who I was sitting with, her expression
changed from friendly and open to closed and threatening.

“Jane,” she greeted me with a nod before turning her attention to Ryu.
“And who might you be?” she questioned, coldly. All traces of friendly stoner
were gone; Amy suddenly crackled with energy and malice. Whatever was going on
here was beyond me.

Ryu introduced himself amicably enough, and Amy seemed to back down a
little bit. But they both still had the air of two dogs circling each other. If
they started sniffing each other’s butts, I was out.

“Did you check in with Nell?” she asked, still on guard.

That crafty little minx
, I thought, as I realized what was
happening.
She’s one of them… she owes me fried cheese for keeping secrets.
In my world, fried cheese is the gold standard.

“Of course.” Ryu responded. “Nell knows of my presence here. I’m
investigating Jakes’s murder.”

I looked around, astonished. He’d said that really loud, and Amy’s
out-of-character animosity toward him must have attracted attention. But no one
in the Trough was paying us any mind; in fact, it was like we weren’t even
there at that moment.

While Amy sized him up, Ryu smiled at me. He’d obviously noticed my
shocked expression.

“No worries, Jane. They won’t pay us any attention if I don’t want them
to. And right now, I don’t want them to.” I was about to ask him more questions
when Amy finally finished her assessment.

“Okay, then.” Her attitude went back to normal and she was, once again,
in surfer-waitress mode. “What’ll you have?”

I ordered lemonade with my tuna melt, and Ryu ordered a Coke when he was
told there was no booze available.

When he ordered his steak, Amy responded by asking, “Let me guess, you
want it very rare? Maybe even bloody?” He grinned at her and she rolled her
eyes. “I’ll be right back with your drinks, dudes,” she said, giving me a
friendly bop on the head with the menus as she walked away.

“So,” I said, as soon as Amy was out of earshot. “What do you mean they
can’t see you? And what is Amy?” Then I thought for a moment. “Matter of fact,
what are you? And how did she recognize you?”

Ryu leaned back in his chair. He was smiling at me like the cat who’d
stolen the cream. I got the feeling he was enjoying his role as tour guide
through the world of the supernatural.

“She recognized me because I’m doing a sort of reverse glamour. I’m here
on official business, so I’m broadcasting my presence, my credentials, to the
natives. But in a way that only other supernaturals can sense. Otherwise we
can’t really recognize each other, although, obviously, some of us stand out.
It’s hard to miss a satyr, for example. What with the horns. And the lack of
pants.”

At Ryu’s joke I gave a very unladylike snort, nearly died of
embarrassment, and then somehow managed to knock my napkin-wrapped cutlery off
the table. He caught it before it hit the ground.

“And glamouring answers why people can’t see us when I don’t want them
to,” he said, setting my cutlery down a safe distance away from me. “My
particular kind live closely with humans. Not all kinds of supes do, and, for
some of our various factions, human life is a complete mystery. But I live a
significant amount of time as a human. I have a human surname, albeit one that
changes every twenty years or so. I own a house; I have a social security
number; I pay taxes. Which is probably why you think I appear more normal than
someone like Nell, or her kelpie.” As he said the last bit, his lips curved,
just slightly, and I remembered the promise he’d made about proving how different
he actually was. My breathing hitched, and he smiled as if he could hear me.
“Anyway, the point is that I am used to humans. So throwing up glamours when
humans might see something fishy is pretty much reflex. I bet you can feel it,
if you pay attention. Shut your eyes.”

I did as he asked, and I suddenly did feel something. It was like the
slightest of cool winds blowing across my exposed skin, raising the hair on my
forearms.

“Wow,” I breathed, opening my eyes to find Ryu smiling at me.

“Get ready for a lot of ‘wow’ from here on in, Jane.”

I gulped, not sure if I was supposed to be reading anything more into
that statement.

“Amy?” I prompted, nervously changing the subject. Ryu smiled,
knowingly, and I cursed my clumsiness.

“As for Amy, she’s a nahual: a shapeshifter,” he explained. “They’re not
like the two-formed; they can shift into anything they wish. But otherwise they
have less access to the elements than two-formeds.”

“And that translates as…” I prompted him, gently.

“Right. That translates as: nahuals are shape-shifters but that’s pretty
much all they can do. Obviously, they’re stronger and faster healing than
humans, and they live longer. But they can’t do much of what humans would call
magic. Selkies and other two-formeds can shift only into the one alternative
shape, but they have more power. Like you do when you swim, they can manipulate
the elements.”

What he said knocked me for six. It should have been obvious, but it
wasn’t until he’d said it.

“So, you’re telling me that when I swim, I’m manipulating the ocean?” He
nodded.

Ryu’s casually telling me I used some kind of magic when I swam was
completely crazy at the same time that it struck me as completely logical. It
answered so many of my questions. Why I didn’t drown, or freeze. Why I was so
strong in the water. My brain went deeper. Why I
needed
to swim. I
flashed back to Nell telling me to go “recharge my batteries.” Then my brain
went too deep. “The bodies,” I whispered. “The Sow didn’t just let them go, did
she?”

“No,” he answered, calmly sipping his Coke. Amy must have brought us our
drinks while I was in my little trance. I stared down at my lemonade, unseeing.

“That’s how we knew something was up the night you found Jakes. Your
release of power was loud; almost as loud as the night with your… friend.”
Here, Ryu finally looked uncomfortable. “Nell knew something had happened, but
she felt you go back to normal swimming so she assumed you were okay. When she
bothered to investigate, it was already too late and Jakes was in the hands of
the humans.”

I blinked back tears, trying to steady myself. This wasn’t the time or
the place.

“So,” I changed subjects, helped along by Amy bringing us our dinners.
Ryu’s steak looked almost raw it was so rare. “If Amy here is a nahual,” Amy
gave me a little smile and bobbed her head, “then what are you?” Amy snorted
with amusement as she walked away, shooting Ryu a look that said, “Have fun.”

Ryu thought about that one, taking the time to cut off a piece of bloody
steak and pop it into his mouth. He chewed slowly before swallowing. “Well,” he
said. “How should I put this…” He appeared to be at a loss. “You’ve been told
how we are the origins for many different myths and legends, yes?” I nodded,
and he continued. “Well, some myths hold more truth than others. For those of
us who live most intimately with humans, there has been a tendency to
understand us less… accurately.”

I swirled a French fry in some ketchup, rather enjoying his
discomfiture.
It’s about time you had a turn feeling out of your depth
,
I thought smugly as I raised the fry to my mouth.

“I’m what is known to my people as a baobhan sith,” Ryu said,
pronouncing it baa’-van shee. “Like I said, we live closely with humans, so
we’re pretty famous. We’ve inspired tons of humans myths. Like strigoi,
nosferatu…” I stopped chewing as my eyes widened in alarm
. Holy shit,
I
thought.
He’s a goddamned
—

“In short, you would probably call me a vampire.”

I nearly choked, bits of fried potato going down the wrong pipe. I was
coughing like crazy, my eyes watering while Ryu whacked me on the back, urging
me to drink my lemonade.

I could feel the whirl of Ryu’s power around us, so no one else in the
diner noticed my near-death experience. Except for Amy, who shot me a
sympathetic look as she disappeared into the kitchen.

When my coughing fit subsided, and I was able to breathe normally again,
Ryu returned to his chair. He looked both concerned and amused, and I wanted to
kick his shins under the table. I sat and sipped my lemonade until I could talk
again.

“So,” I finally managed to get out, “you’re a vampire.”

“Yes, and no.” He smiled. “As you know, I can move about during the day,
although it is true that our strengths are diminished in the daytime. And we
are certainly not dead humans. We are very much alive and very much
in
human.”

“It’s great that you’re alive and all, but what about the bloodsucking?
And the killing? And the fangs?”

He ran one hand through his brown hair, giving his head a good scratch.
His hair was so thick that if it weren’t short it might look like a toupee. It
glistened like melted milk chocolate in the diner’s bright lights. Then I
realized he was watching me stare at him. He smiled as I looked down, hastily.
“It’s true we drink blood, but not for food. Food we get like you do.” He
gestured at his plate with a little flourish. “From blood we get what we call
essence, which is to the elements what energy is to matter in your human
science. Basically, we feed off human emotions. The most potent emotions are
love and hate, but it’s nearly impossible to stimulate such powerful emotions
quickly. So mostly we feed off fear or lust. Sometimes a little of both.”

I thought about what he had just said while I ate a bite of my tuna
melt. I swallowed carefully and said, “So, you can scare somebody, and then
feed off of them, and that tops up your… essence tank. From which you derive
power, like I guess I do from the sea.” He nodded. “I get how fear works,” I
continued, “but lust?” He looked at me like I was a bit slow, and I reflected
for a moment. “Oh, of course,” I said, blushing. I was
very
slow.

“So, we don’t need much blood, and certainly not enough to exsanguinate
somebody. But we do need to be around humans. Most other supernatural beings
don’t generate the right caliber of emotional essence.”

“And can the humans you bite, can they… catch it?” I knew I was being
vague, and Ryu looked annoyingly amused.

“It?” he queried, his lovely lips curling in a smirk.

I sighed. I could tell he was one of those people who liked to make
things difficult. “You know, vampirism. Like in the movies.”

He shook his head. “Forget everything you’ve seen in the movies,” he
said. “They are—for the most part—based on misconceptions, half-truths, or out
and out fantasy. I don’t carry a virus or a pathogen or a curse. What I am is
another species, or race, to you. If I bit you,” he explained, “you could no
more get ‘vampire’ than you could give me ‘human’ or ‘female’ or ‘Caucasian’ by
biting me.”

I kept eating, trying to take in everything he was saying.

“Does it hurt?” I asked eventually, curiosity getting the better of me.

“It can, if we’d like it to.” Ryu’s voice was low, his eyes suddenly hot
on mine. “But it can also feel very good, indeed. And we can heal a bite, no
problem. Which feels quite nice, as well.”

Those words, coupled with the heat of his gaze, made various bits of my
anatomy, which had been dormant for the past eight years, rocket to life. In
order to cover my confusion, and to keep the whimper that was hovering just at
the back of my throat from escaping, I bit into my pickle.

“As for the fangs,” he continued, “they only come out when we’re…
excited.”

I tried to keep my face noncommittal as I took a sip of my lemonade.

“Told you I was different.” He smirked, and I nearly choked, again.
Note
to self
, I thought.
Stop eating around this man. He will be the death of
you.