Shapeshifted (32 page)

I looked down at my own chest. “I think I can thank Olympio for that.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah. He didn’t die. And he didn’t know anyone that did. He thinks we won.”

Asher’s eyes narrowed, and his gaze focused on me. “Did we?”

“As much as we ever do,” I said, and then I walked over to him. “I’m not used to your hair.” I stepped up to him and reached out for his hair, pulling down shaggy brown-blond bangs. They almost reached his eyes—he could be an emo guitarist if he tried, or with a little gel clean up to be a youthful accountant. He had the kind of face that would look better with glasses. He was still taller than me, but not very much more so, not too much to be comfortable to reach up and hold.

“What were we doing out there?” I asked the man who didn’t look anything like my friend.

“We were doing what was right. What we thought was right at the time.”

“But Ti’s dead—and I didn’t save my mom. Unless it turns out that Olympio can magic away cancer.” I rolled my eyes.

Asher ducked his head, and his hair slipped through my fingers. “I should have asked to save her. I know you chose Olympio.”

Save her—instead of himself? “That’s absurd, Asher—you’re a man, not a saint.”

His eyes wouldn’t meet mine. I took a step closer, took his chin, and pulled it gently up. It was the first time I’d touched him since the events earlier this evening—and instead of the brown I was used to, his eyes were now blue. What must it feel like to always see the world through different eyes?

I stared at him wondering for so long, he gave me a questioning look. “I’m sorry, I’m just not used to this,” I apologized.

“Neither am I.” He pulled away from me, and stood and shrugged with one shoulder. “Did you walk? Do you want a ride home?” He started walking for his door, and I followed him out.

I waited outside while he opened his garage and backed out a silver truck. He rolled down his window. “Get in.”

He left his window down as he drove, and I rolled mine down too. It was summer outside and dawn air was rushing in. He didn’t merge with the highway but went a side route in the same direction as my place, and I didn’t complain. Anything I said would be pushed away by the wind, anyhow. Pieces of half-dry hair whipped my face; I held them back with one hand. I propped my feet up on his dashboard, and he took an unexpected right-hand turn.

“Hey—” I protested.

“You’ll see,” I saw him mouth as he shifted gears.

It was strange to sit beside him in the car when I wasn’t used to this version of him yet. I stared out the window and concentrated on the wind. We wove down roads I didn’t know until we were in the middle of nowhere, a dirt track overgrown with trees. He pulled in and put the car in park.

“Out.”

“Where are we?”

He took his keys from the ignition. “Out.”

I hopped out of the truck and walked around to wait for him. “Is this where I find out that you’re also a serial killer?”

He frowned at me. “Do you really think that?”

“No.” I squirmed, feeling awkward. Nothing out here but trees and his stare. “I just have a smart-ass mouth. Why’re we here?”

“Follow me.” He walked past me and into the tree line. The trees thickened and then thinned out again, exposing a wide pasture with a small wooden building in the middle of it, not much bigger than a shack. “This is where I was born. Shapeshifters live far away from everyone else when they can. To protect them as long as possible from what they are.”

“To stop them … from touching people?” I guessed.

“Precisely.”

No one had lived in the building for a very long time. Ivy had grown up the walls, and the chimney’d started to break; there was a small pile of brick rubble beside it on the roof. Too many rough winters, and no one here to care.

“This place is special to me.” He stared at the lone shack, lost in his memories. “Last night, I thought I was never going to see it again.”

I smiled at him. “I’m glad you were wrong.”

“Do you know how long it’s been since anyone’s tried to protect me?” he asked. I shook my head. “When I met you in my office without your badge, I touched your skin. I could see through you then. Your entire life. Everything.”

I suddenly felt very naked and alone. “So?”

“I saw someone who always thinks other people’s lives are worth more than hers.” He took a step toward me. “You’re wrong.”

I made a face and rolled my eyes.

“I’m not kidding, Edie. Your brother, your mom. You’re so busy saving the world that you forget to ask who is saving you.”

I inhaled to protest, but I wasn’t sure how to fight back.

“And then you there, last night,” he went on. “I knew what you were thinking, Edie. Every time you touched me. Every time I touched you. Last night—last night, I held on to you like a rope. Thinking about you, thinking like you, they were the only things that kept me from going insane. I was so close, I was on the edge—but I still knew you.”

I held myself and crossed my arms. “It’s not fair that you know everything about me when I don’t know anything real about you.”

“That’s why I brought you here. This is real. I’m real. And you do know me.” His eyes were intense, and he was breathing deeply. “No matter what I look like. You will always know me.”

Emotions fought inside me. I was confused. I didn’t know what I wanted, or what he wanted from me, but this was almost too much. “I think you should take me home.”

He waited a long moment, then deflated and inhaled. “All right.”

*   *   *

I followed him back through the trees to his truck. He opened up my door for me, and I slid in while he walked around to the driver side. The wind and light through the trees overhead gave everything below moving dark spots, roaming pieces of shadow. He opened up the driver door and sat down, reaching out with his keys. If we drove away now—all this would be lost, in our past. I realized I didn’t want to lose anything else right now.

“Asher, stop.”

Holding the keys still, he slowly turned to look at me, with hope in his eyes.

“Edie, let me in. I won’t go,” he told me.

I nodded, so slight that he might not even have seen it.

He slid the short distance of the seat over to me and kissed me, pressing me up against the half-raised window glass. I was surprised by his intensity—I didn’t know his lips or his chin, or the feel of his stubble grazing me, but I knew him. I closed my eyes and let myself feel back.

Skin, warm and lean. I kissed him as hard as he kissed me, pushing my hands up underneath his shirt, touching him. He ran his hands over me like he’d never get enough of my skin. When he came up for air he grabbed me and pressed me to him bodily, my face into his neck. I could breathe in the smell of his hair, and he wasn’t vetiver-scented anymore; just shampoo and sweat and skin.

It was hard to breathe smashed against him. “You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” I told his shoulder, and he pulled back, shaking his head, eyes worried.

“I can’t read you anymore. Not since last night.”

I didn’t want to think about what that meant for him just yet, if he was a stunted shapeshifter or a full human—right now I was glad for a little privacy. I let my head fall back onto the seat behind me and smiled at him. “That would explain why your pants are still on.”

He smiled down at me and touched his forehead to mine. “Not for long.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

There wasn’t much room on his truck’s seat. He pulled me down to lay on the seat and we wrestled with jeans until we were out of them, him between my legs, my right knee wedged against his steering wheel. After six months of nothing but my fingers I was tight. He concentrated, pushing himself into me, and when my body relented, suddenly taking him in, we both gasped.

“Did I—”

“No. Don’t stop.” I moved beneath him. This was what it was like, to be with someone I’d been with before. It had been so long. He moved with me and we found a rhythm together. There was no way for him not to be on at least some of my hair, and the morning sun plus our friction was turning the truck into an oven, making him drip with sweat. But he was real, and this was real, for as long as he was in me. His face over me was earnest, watching me like I was the magical one, breathing in time with his thrusts. I reached up and my hand slid over his sweaty back, feeling the muscles of his shoulders working to hold him up. I ran the backs of my nails up his scalp, and held my hands there, framing his head, watching him back. I put one hand back to push against the door so I could press harder against him. Every time I arched he groaned, and the more I arched the harder he rubbed against all of me. I gasped again and he moved with more intent, and faster. I pulled his head down toward me so that our foreheads touched, and we were breathing the same air. It felt like we were one, me beginning where he ended, him beginning at the end of me. His whole body moved over mine, stomach-to-stomach, chest-to-chest, and when I began to cry aloud and let go he thrust harder until he came with me, finishing with a hoarse breath, calling my name.

He collapsed against me, and it was hard to breathe, but I didn’t mind. Asher carefully pushed himself up, half on, half off me, and slid an arm through my hair to hold my head. I nestled against him, watching the dappled light play off his shoulder and chest.

“You want to tell me your real name now?” I asked him, pushing a damp lock of hair off his face. Even though we were through he was still watching me carefully, as if at any moment I might change my mind and leave. “I mean, what if I want to say it next time?” I reasoned aloud.

“I don’t want to be that person anymore. I only want to be Asher with you.” Something tentative sparked in his eyes. “Next time?”

And suddenly, despite the fact that I already was naked, I felt even more so now. And trapped. “I mean—”

“No. That’s what I want too,” he interrupted before I could take it back.

My first instinct was to ask,
Really?
but before I did I realized I wasn’t that insecure. So instead I said, “Good.” He beamed down at me.

The real world crept in slowly, like eventually it always does. Now that we weren’t moving I wasn’t very comfortable, and I didn’t think his truck had a towel, but there was no way I was pulling away from him. Not this time.

“You do realize one of us has to move first,” I said after a while, when I was pretty sure I couldn’t feel my leg.

“Never.” He pressed his face down against my shoulder and chest and I ignored everything else to wind my arms around him and hold him tight.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

“I’m so glad you didn’t come over last night, Edie—you would have been trapped by that storm.” My mother stood in the doorway of her home, looking frail. “Summer storms are the worst.”

“Yeah, they are,” I agreed, and she smiled at me.

“Are you staying for dinner?”

“No. I just wanted to drop by and say hi.” Asher was waiting in his truck around the corner for me—I’d asked him to detour on my way home, and he’d obliged. “I’m actually running errands, but we can reschedule for later on in the week, any night’s fine.”

“Tomorrow night okay? Unless you have a hot date, that is,” she teased.

I made a face. For once I actually might, but I knew Asher would understand. Besides, my mom went to bed pretty early. “Tomorrow night’s fine.”

Her face wrinkled, and she squinted with a little worry. “Can I invite Jake?”

“Of course. You don’t have to ask, Mom. I’ll even bring something he likes to eat this time.”

My brother’s weight lifted, she smiled even more widely at me. “Thanks, Edie. I like it when we feel like a family.”

“Me too.” I leaned in and hugged her close. “Hey—hang on, Mom.” I pulled back a little and leaned out the doorway to wave down the street to Asher, gesturing for him to get out of his car and come down the street, and I gave my mom a silly grin. “I have someone for you to meet.”

*   *   *

I went back downtown with a bouquet of flowers to get my car the next day, surprised to find it intact. What, no one wanted to see what treasures were hiding in a Chevy? I opened the door, and heard someone shout my name.

“Edie!” It was Olympio, again on his bike. “I was waiting for you! I figured you’d come yesterday.”

“Sorry. I was busy.” I hadn’t left Asher’s bed for one blissful day. Even just sleeping beside him was nice. But today was back to being a grown-up, and dealing with things.

“Who’re the flowers for?”

“For Ti. I don’t think they’re going to find a body.” And if they did, they wouldn’t know whose it was. I’d try to find out where his wife was buried and put them together if I could, but I didn’t have enough to go on about his past. I’d borrowed Asher’s laptop this morning to try, but no luck. Besides, as my mother was fond of telling me, bodies were just our mortal shells. If there was any fairness in the world, Ti was already with his wife wherever they’d wanted to be. Now that I was with Asher, I was more inclined to believe things could be fair. Maybe.

“You want me to go with you?” Olympio offered.

“You got a lock for that bike?”

Olympio tsked at me. “Nobody’s going to steal it.”

“Because you’re the world’s greatest
curandero
now?”

“Exactly.” He leaned it against my car, and together we went back down to the ditch’s side.

*   *   *

The weather had gotten better immediately after our battle, and all the drainage had done its job. Now there were only long shallow puddles and muddy debris to prove it’d ever rained. We reached the bottom and walked up to the three metal mouths. The sun was coming up behind them, so the retaining wall cast shadows, and the tunnels—I didn’t think anyone could talk me into going into a tunnel ever again.

“Do you want to say anything?” Olympio asked when we’d reached the shadow’s edge.

“Not really.” I didn’t want to pray, and I didn’t know what to say. Ti’d been a good man for almost a century. It didn’t matter that his heart wasn’t beating for half of it. I walked forward, leaving Olympio behind. I reached the middle entrance and threw the flowers inside it. I heard them land with a splash, and knew they’d be there until the next rain. “I’ll always think of you when I see storms,” I said softly.