Shadows Fall (2 page)

The espresso maker beeped that it was finished brewing, so I poured a double shot into a twenty-four-ounce cup, then filled the rest with the boiling water. After popping a lid onto it, I carried it out to the guy. I may have put a little extra swish in my steps, just in case.

Honestly, my gaydar was for shit. I never had a chance to develop it because in the Romany culture, being gay meant being
marime
—outcast. On the streets, it could mean death if you propositioned the wrong guy. Plus, it was the south, which meant twice the amount of self-loathing closet cases just looking to beat out their sins on some unlucky ‘mo’. So whenever
I
scoped out someone to get my rocks off with, I had to know for damn sure if he was gay first—which meant picking him up somewhere obvious, like Scorpio or some other gay club. That was just as hard, because the noises of the club mixed with the noises of the dead were just too much to handle.

I noticed hottie’s eyes were everywhere, bouncing off the walls, checking things out. I hoped he wasn’t, like, casing the joint or something, because Uptown Java’s till
so
wasn’t worth all that trouble. The guy’s eyes roved over Chelsea and then me. He lingered on me a little longer, but I didn’t pick up any obvious spark of interest. It was like he was cataloguing everything into some mental databank for future use.

Setting his drink on the table, I tried giving him a warm smile—one designed to say ‘if you’re gay, I’m interested’
or
‘if you’re straight, we’re all friends here, bro.’ He just returned my smile politely and said a quiet “Thanks.”

The door jingled again, and I turned my head to see who it was. “
Shit
,” I said under my breath, but I’m fairly sure hottie heard me. He didn’t look like a guy who missed much. But I had bigger problems.

The person who’d just walked in was Chelsea’s sometimes boyfriend, Jay. I called him ‘Lunk’ in my head, because he was such a meathead, but I was afraid one day it would slip out and that would be the end of Titus McGinty—because I was pretty sure the guy was a psychopath.

“Excuse me,” I murmured to my customer. I hurried back behind the counter to stand shoulder to shoulder with Chelsea. “What the
fuck
is he doing here? I thought you said he was gone for good.”

Chelsea’s sheepish look said it all. She’d obviously taken him back again. Jesus Christ. This was bad news. Jay was not a good guy. He was covered all over with hard, ropey muscles, and scars. He also had some scary looking tattoos. I couldn’t say for sure if they were gang-related, but it wouldn’t be that farfetched a guess. He had olive skin, but I wasn’t sure if he was Latino, or just had a really nice tan.

I didn’t really care; I just wanted him out of my shop. “Get rid of him,” I hissed, just within Chelsea’s hearing range.

She stepped up to the counter and did the boob-squish thing again to make her girls stick out. “Babe, what are you doing here? I thought we were going to meet up after I got off.”

“Yeah, well, I came now,” he answered, sneering at her, then at me. “I need some cash. Gimme what you got on you.”

He started to come around the counter, but Chelsea met him at the swinging half door, blocking his way. It didn’t even slow him down. He just pushed her out of the way. “Gimme your purse,” he demanded.

She handed him her blue Coach bag but shook her head. “You can look, but I don’t have any cash. No one carries cash anymore J.J.”

Good job, make him feel stupid
. I cringed because I fully expected him to backhand her, but he didn’t. He dumped out her purse on the back counter, just to make sure she wasn’t lying. When he saw that she really had no cash, he crossed over to the register and pushed a button to open the drawer. How he’d known what to push, I had no clue.

I might not live to regret it, but it was time to intervene. I walked up and shut the drawer, almost catching his fingers in it. “Don’t touch the till.”

Talk about poking a hornets’ nest. Jay glared at me and drew himself up to his full height, which was only about two inches over me. Unfortunately he probably had half my weight just in solid muscle. And he got right up in my face, nose to nose. “I’ll touch what I goddamn wanna touch, faggot,” he grunted, and I was reminded of a gorilla fighting over the last banana. I couldn’t help it, I snorted.

Bad move. He grabbed me by the shirt collar and lifted until I was standing on my tiptoes. “Think that’s fucking funny?”

I closed my eyes and braced for the hit I knew was coming, until I heard a quiet voice from off to the side. “Excuse me.”

Both of us turned our heads to see the customer standing on the other side of the counter. Jay lowered me back down but didn’t let go of me.

The guy used his hand to sweep one side of his leather jacket away from his hip, on which a badge was clipped. Behind the badge was a holstered gun. “There a problem?”

Jay turned back to me, and I felt his fingers tighten. “You called the cops?”

“Jesus Christ, no. The guy was just here trying to enjoy a cup of coffee. I wouldn’t have had any need to call the cops until you tried to steal from me, which was about thirty seconds ago.”

I saw the cop’s lips twitch before he turned serious again. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. If you do so willingly, there won’t be any trouble.”

Jay looked at Chelsea, then at me, then back at the cop whose right hand was hovering close to his sidearm. Finally, he let me go, hard enough that I stumbled back. He pointed at Chelsea. “I’ll pick you up later. You better have some cash.”

He started to leave the shop, but I called out to him before he reached the door. “Jay,” I said in what I hoped was a reasonable tone. “Don’t come back here or I really will call the cops.”

He flipped me off over his shoulder and slammed out the door. Everyone in the room seemed to breathe a collective sigh of relief once he was gone. I turned a genuine smile on the cop—and yeah, that explained the checking everything out.

“Hey, thanks man. I’m glad you were here.”

“No problem. He come here a lot?” he asked, eyeing Chelsea.

“Not really, and he’s certainly never tried to steal before. I meant what I said. If he comes back, I’ll definitely call the police.”

“Probably a good idea,” he said, and stuck out his hand. “I’m Charlie. Charlie Hale.”

“Well, thank you Officer Hale. Uptown Java is certainly indebted to you. I’m Titus McGinty, and this is Chelsea Freeman.”

“It’s Detective Hale actually. Nice to meet you, Titus.” He set his cup on the counter and slid it over to me. “Can I get one more for the road?”

“Sure. On the house.”

“Your boss won’t mind?”

“You’re looking at him.” I knew I was young for a business owner, and it was a rather improbable series of events that led to me becoming such, but every now and then I got to have a little fun with it—like the look on his face when he realized it was my shop.

“Oh, sorry. You’re just so young, I didn’t think… Never mind. Thanks for the coffee,” he said when I handed it to him.

The flush on his cheeks was so incongruous with his rugged masculinity that it was kind of adorable. I fought the urge to swoon because now that I knew he was a cop, it was even less likely that he was gay. Oh well, a man could dream.

Detective Hale cast a worried glance at the door, and then he pulled something out of his wallet to give to me. It was his business card.

“Calling the cops would be the right thing to do, but sometimes responses can be slow if you go through 9-1-1. If you get in a situation with that guy and you feel y’all might be in danger, you can call me. I’m usually around.”

I was impressed. It would probably be a good thing to have a detective for a friend. “Thanks Detective.”

“My pleasure. Well I’d better get back to work. Y’all be careful—use that if you need it.”

“Bye, Detective,” Chelsea and I said in unison.

Once Charlie had gone, I turned to Chelsea and gave her my best
what-the-fuck?
look. “Really, Chelse? You’re back with that asshole?”

“You don’t know him. He’s got a sweet side. And he said he was sorry for the last time… it wasn’t like he meant to sprain my wrist.”

“He
what?
You told me you
fell
.”

Chelsea paled and started wringing her hands—one of my biggest pet peeves. “Oh. I forgot I said that. Look, we were arguing and we just got out of control. I pushed him first!”

I rubbed my hands over my face hard and shook my head. “Jesus Christmas, Chelsea, what have you gotten yourself into?”

I knew from growing up around several abusive relationships—my parents thankfully not included—that there was nothing I could say she wouldn’t reason away. She had to decide for herself to leave Jay; I just hoped she did it before he killed her. I didn’t want her to be one of the souls I tried to ignore day in and day out.

Chapter Two

Customers had started coming in for the morning rush, and we didn’t talk any more about Jay after that. It was almost lunchtime when Riot finally dragged his ass in for his shift. He came in looking contrite—not because he was really sorry but because he knew what I was going to say.

Holding out his hands, he approached the counter with an appropriate measure of caution. “I know, I know. I’m sorry,” he said preemptively. “I had to pull an all-nighter on the webcomic and once I crashed, I was dead to the world. Apparently I slept right through my alarm and, like, fourteen calls.”

In addition to drawing the graphic novel for a publisher called Arcane Studios, Riot also published his own Yaoi webcomic. He did it all—the drawing, the color, the text—completely for free. At first I was baffled at how he could give away work like that, before he explained how much building that fan base had sold his print work, merch, and hard copies of the webcomic, and had gotten him invitations to all the best cons. It was impressive… but it had nothing to do with my coffee shop.

“Ry, you know I love you like a brother, but if you can’t handle this job, quit.”

“Nah, man. I need this job.”

“Yeah, and why is that again, Mr. Rich-comic-book-artist-slash-trust-fund-baby?” I was only teasing him because I enjoyed it. I knew very well the reason he liked to have a job to come to.

“I need the mindless work of it to quiet the voices in my head. I know it’s hard to understand,” Riot answered.

I understood all too well. Though Riot was talking about his characters, I had an entirely different set of voices in
my
head. I’d never tell Riot about them, though. He was a guy firmly rooted within the evident truth—he’d never believe anything that couldn’t be proven in front of his eyes. Hell, I’d even heard of him making fun of people like John Edward and that Long Island lady—calling them hacks and scammers. “‘Miss Cleos’ in fancy suits” was his favorite line.

I don’t really blame him. I wouldn’t believe me either.

“Besides, I’m the only one who can make the specialties,” Riot continued, oblivious to my preoccupation.

“Huh, what?”

“Dude, ‘the drinks of the week.’ I’m the only one who can make them. I
invented
them.”

“We could train Chelsea.”

Riot guffawed and Chelsea glared, because all three of us knew that
that
was bullshit.

“Seriously though. You okay man?” Riot asked. “You seem awfully distracted.”

“We had a run-in with Jay this morning,” I mumbled, because I’d caught sight of one of the wraiths outside the window.

“Yeah, he’s in a mood,” Chelsea said, poking out her bottom lip and thankfully sucking up all the attention in the room. “Some hunky cop drove him off.”

I lost track of their conversation as I studied the grayish figure with its hands seemingly pressed against the glass. It wasn’t the woman from this morning; it was a young girl. She was about thirteen, skinny as a rail, and had a ghastly slash across her face almost as if someone had tried to peel the skin from her skull. I silently thanked the Goddess that I couldn’t hear her, but her pleading expression said it all.
Listen to me.
Help me. Set me free
.

I closed my eyes to block her out. More often than not, I couldn’t communicate, I could only see and hear. Also, it was very rare that there was actually something I could do to help them get what they needed, but that didn’t stop them from begging—torturing me.

“Titus.” Riot’s voice snapped me out of it.
Again.
He stared at me hard for a few seconds, as if he could see inside my head like one of his characters. Then he gave me a lascivious grin and waggled his eyebrows. “Maybe you pulled an all-nighter too!”

“Christ, I wish. I haven’t gotten laid since the stone age.”

“No wonder you’re so uptight.”

“You can fuck right off. Why don’t you go do some actual work?”

Unoffended, Riot walked away chuckling but flipped me off on his way to the back to wash up.

* * * *

The hot cop had started routinely having his morning coffee at my shop, although he rarely spoke to anyone; he just sat and looked through his files while he sipped his drink. Though his schedule seemed erratic, I thought I had his days off figured out—sometimes Tuesdays, the occasional Thursday, or never. And despite my better judgment about getting anywhere near the cops, I could feel myself becoming interested.