Storm in a Teacup (22 page)

"How did you get in here?"

"You already know that."

"How?"

"I am a good climber."

His voice is a deep baritone. Rich and rumbly. He sounds almost normal, almost like he's a Tennessean. Or at least a Nashvillain, as I call Nashville natives. Slight hint of a drawl. I don't know how he can speak like that, how he can speak like me. How he can speak at all. Though I guess demons can speak human languages, so why not shades?

"Can I sit down?"

I manage to walk to my sofa without toppling over, and a dribble of my pride trickles back into my psyche. I sit, sinking into the cushion.

He sits next to me. He's still ass-naked. I don't know how I feel about an ass-naked half-demon's bare butt on my sofa, but I'm not in any position to tell him to put on some underwear. Besides. He'd look fucking ridiculous in mine.
 

I press my back up against the arm of the sofa, pulling my legs up to my chest and plunking a pillow in my lap. "What do you want?"

"You're afraid of me."

"You bet your bare butt I am. You could rip me in half. I'd be a moron not to be afraid of you."

"I said I wouldn't hurt you, and I meant it."

I guess I don't have a choice except to believe him. "Do you have a name?"

"Mason."

It's such a normal, common,
Southern
sort of name that I have to bite back a laugh. "Did you choose it yourself?"

"Yes."

I bite my lip, hugging my pillow to my chest. He chose his name. That part's not so normal. "Why did you choose that name?"

"I saw it on a jar."

I blink at him. Okay.

"Why are you here, Mason? What do you want from me?"

"I want to understand why you have been killing my kind."

"Then we have something in common, because I want to understand why your kind's been slaughtering mine by the dozen. I've only killed four of you."

"Twenty-seven."

"What?" If I'd killed that many, Alamea and Gregor would probably hand over the keys to the Summit.

"You've killed twenty-seven of us. The four you know and the twenty-three from inside the warehouse."

"Well, bully for me, because that means your kind's taken out twenty-seven humans."
 

He sits back a bit at that. "We had no choice in that. They did."
 

"Did they know their bouncing bundles of hellkin were going to rip them apart from the inside out like some kind of reverse piñata?"

"I don't know what a piñata is."

He wouldn't, would he? I look at him — really look at him — for the first time. He's taller than me by several inches, which puts him around six foot three. He has dark brown hair, and his indigo eyes stand out against the pale skin of his...everything. He seems completely unaware that being naked isn't normal. Though I guess for him, naked is normal.

And he is naked. From shoulders that look like they belong to a comic book hero to the ten toes. His second toes are slightly longer than his big toes. Unnerved by this very human idiosyncrasy, I look back to his face.

"Look. Mason. Are we really keeping score? Who's killed more? Because if your kind continues to run rampant around the city, there are going to be a lot more bodies. A lot more. How many have the shades killed, really?"

For the first time, he — Mason — looks agitated. He frowns, and I draw back farther against the couch. I wish he wasn't so close. I wish I could believe he wasn't going to take off my head before I could do anything. I'm in my pajamas, and my closest sword is on the wall twelve feet away. There is no way I could get to it before he ripped me apart.

So I sit until he answers.

"Sixty-two."

Sixty-two people dead.
 

I did the right thing blowing up that warehouse if it would prevent another sixty-two deaths. Or seventy-nine if you factor in the hosts, though I don't know how to prevent that. I did the right thing. Made the right choice.

Didn't I?

"I can't guarantee I won't kill more shades, Mason. I can't. Not with...everything."

He looks at me. "I understand."

"You're not going to kill me now, are you?"

For a moment I think he is. He is still, so still. His muscles don't twitch or ripple. And then he frowns. "I said I wouldn't hurt you," he repeats.

"How are you so different than they are?"

"I'm not."

I can't help it; I guffaw. "I saw one of your kind rip a businessman's arm off in broad daylight not two blocks from here this week. And I saw the inside of that warehouse, covered in sixty-some-odd humans worth of gore." I stop, wondering how Mason can be so clean. I haven't seen a blood-covered shade since the one that exploded out of Lena Saturn.

"I'm not different than they are."

That is not the most reassuring thing he could have said. "Then why aren't you eating my bicep about now?"

"Because it would be wrong."

My lip twitches. I peek at him over my pillow. "Wrong. Yes, I suppose."

"When I was...born...I was hungry. Starving. Ravenous. I killed two humans and a deer in the large park to the south. But then I started remembering my mother's life."

It's strange to hear the word "mother" come out of a shade's mouth. I'm still not wholly used to any words at all coming out of a shade's mouth. But he's going on before his last sentence has even sunk in.

"The instinct was the first thing I felt. Hunger. A need to tear and kill. But then the memories started. I got flashes at first. Images. Of her childhood. They weren't all happy images. She was beaten. Abused. I started remembering words, forming sentences, thoughts. I hid out on the eaves of buildings and listened to passers-by. Heard their troubles, petty and profound. Some of them were like my mother's. I learned language and reading. At first I thought I had to kill, had to eat, had to tear through people like they were nothing but sustenance. But the more I remembered about my mother, the more I found I had something more than demon. She wanted to travel, to see the pyramids of Egypt and the Taj Mahal. Other people I listened to wanted similar things. Had dreams. They might still fulfill theirs. She never got out of Tennessee."

He remembers his mother. Is there a shade out there that remembers mine? A half-hysterical giggle wants to escape my throat at the thought of the half-hellkin half-brother that is suddenly a very, very real possibility. Unless he was in that warehouse.
 

Mason's not looking at me now, and my throat is dry, dry like something's baked the moisture out of it. Something else pushes through the thoughts of my connection to this, to him. He stopped killing because of a conscience? One that developed on its own? No demon has that. No demon has ever had that. They exist only to unbalance the scales, or rather, only to create that push-and-pull, the tilt, the teeter-totter of the cosmos. Sure, humans can be shitty. Humans can be nasty and cruel and malevolent. But hellkin can't be good.

It takes me several minutes of silence to come around to the fact that he's not saying hellkin are good. He's saying his human side gave him something the demon side didn't.
 

Choice.

There's another word for that.

Free will.

And if he has it, so do the others. With that realization, my certainty about having done the right thing vanishes. My fingers tighten on the corners of my pillow, whiter than the ivory fabric.
 

"You understand."

I give a taut nod. I understand, but my stomach is not happy with this understanding. It's not happy with the epiphany. I still can't process it. I've never in my life killed a norm. Not by accident, not on purpose. Not a human, not a witch, not a morph. None of them. Mediators are bound to a code of ethics, and that's one of the main tenets. Do not harm those we are born to protect.

How do I reconcile that tenet with a creature free to choose between the farthest extremes of good and evil? Is that even a real question?
 

Does that tenet now extend to shades?

The faces of the shades I've killed appear in front of my eyes. What have I done? I'm covered in blood again, and no number of bubble baths will wash it away.

"What is your name?"

The question takes me by surprise, and I answer reflexively. "Ayala Storme."

"Ayala."

I nod.

"You are still afraid."

I nod again. Afraid doesn't cover it. I've never been so confused in my entire existence.

It takes me three tries to get my next question out. "Do you think others like you will make the same choice?"

"I can't speak for them. But yes. I think so."

I feel like he never answered my very first question, so I ask it again. "What do you want from me?"

"I want you to help save the ones who can be saved."

I take a sharp breath through my mouth. My head starts nodding, almost against my will. The first thing I learned was never to kill the innocent. These creatures didn't ask to be born. They didn't ask for any of this. If I can save the ones who are like Mason, I will. "I'll help you."

There's a shade on my sofa. And I've just agreed to help him save more shades. How we're supposed to tell who can be saved, I don't have a fucking clue. I could be killed for this, and not just because the shades are dangerous. The Mediators could look at it as treason.

"Is that all?" I make myself look at Mason, make myself look into his indigo eyes. They're uncanny.
 

Mason gives me a wry smile. "I could use a place to stay."

Oh, my gods.

"I have a spare bedroom. You can stay there. On two conditions."

"What are your terms?"

"You can stay there as long as you don't bring any corpses into my home. That goes for killing humans. If I find out you killed a norm, I will kick you out." I can't bring myself to threaten his life, not with him so close and my heart pitter-patting against my ribcage. He nods as if this is a given. Hell, it might be.
 

"And what's the second condition?"

"You put on some gods-damned clothes."

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I've never had a brother – not counting the one that might be running around now — and I've never had a live-in boyfriend. My selection of male clothing is zero.

Thank the gods for the internet.

After making Mason measure himself, I order him a bunch of jeans and t-shirts. All the shirts he wants are blue.
 

The next-day shipping with Saturday delivery is astronomical and costs me an extra hundred dollars. But I'd rather that than continue hanging around with a naked half-hellkin creature. I've very carefully kept my eyes away from his un-Ken doll areas, and the last thing I want is to be sitting on the couch and have him walk by with them at eye level.

I dig through all my clothes and finally find a pair of purple yoga pants I accidentally bought three sizes too large. They fit him, and I'm too unnerved seeing him in purple pants to snicker. None of my shirts fit him. His shoulders are too broad. I can deal with him shirtless. At least his bottom half is covered now.

My head hurts enough by midnight that I want to bury myself under my duvet and stay there. The problem is, I'm still too terrified to do that. I don't know what made me say Mason could stay in my home, and sleeping with him across the tiny hall gnaws on the last tiny nerve that I have.

I go through two and a half bowls of Marshmallow Martians before he asks me if something's wrong.

"You're anxious. And eating a lot of that stuff."

"Marshmallow Martians. My favorite cereal."

"You're anxious," he repeats.

There's no point in lying. "I'm afraid to sleep with you here." I'm still picturing being surrounded by the orange pinpricks of shades' eyes. I close my eyes and swallow a bite of cereal.
 

"Even though I said I wasn't going to hurt you, you are still afraid of me."
 

It's not a question, so I don't answer that. Instead, I shovel more marshmallows into my mouth. I always eat the cereal bits first. "You don't know what it's like. To be surrounded by twenty-three things that want you dead. More than wanting you dead. That want to eat you. You'd be scared too."

At least I think he'd be scared. Who the fuck knows?

He sits down across from me and reaches out a hand toward mine. I flinch away.

I've never been this jumpy, and I hate it. Almost as much as I hate okra. And I really hate okra.

"Please."

I don't get the please at first. Then I see that his gaze is resting on my hand. Great. He wants to hold hands. The thought makes a bubbly laugh burble past my lips. I snap my teeth shut. I'm never going to sleep like this. I can feel my pulse fluttering in my wrist.
 

I slurp down the rest of my cereal and stretch out my arm toward him.

His fingers touch the back of it, sliding farther so that his palm covers my hand.

His skin is warm. Not slimy. Warmer than human skin though. Morphs run hot, about a hundred and two degrees, give or take. He feels warmer. Maybe a hundred and five. Like a high fever. His touch demands nothing, only reassures me with its gentleness. It's not a romantic gesture.