Storm in a Teacup (24 page)

Mason finds the television entrancing. "And this is all fake? It's all made up?"

"Yeah. Those people are actors who are dressed up and made up to play the parts. They learn what to say and where to stand and what to do, and then cameras shoot it. Don't you have any memories from your mother about this?"

He thinks about that. "I guess. I don't remember everything she knew. Just snippets. Language. The important things. I guess this wasn't important to her."

That's fair. Television sort of pales in comparison to an abusive childhood.

I let him pick what to watch. He can read, which I find strange. I shouldn't be surprised, because he said he picked his name by reading a jar.

A jar. The guy can jump off a two story building without breaking so much as a toenail, and he picks his name from a shaped piece of fragile glass.

How's that for irony?

The knock startles me. Mason's been watching television for the last four hours, and I've been watching Mason. It's funny to see someone get influenced by fiction for the first time. He's watching a chick-flick right now about a witch who falls in love with a trash collector, and I think I even saw a tear glimmer when they had their inevitable break-up.
 

I shake my head, walking to the door. It's got to be the meat delivery.

I pop open the locks and open the door.

Ben's on the other side.
 

Great gallumphy fuck nuggets, what is he doing here?

"Ben?" I shoot a wild glance over my shoulder. I can barely make out Mason's head around the kitchen wall, but that momentary look tells me he's frozen and gone still. I turn back to Ben. "What are you doing here?"

He cranes his head around me, trying to see what I was looking at. "Mira said she was going to come check on you, and I asked if I could do the honors instead. Got company?"

Mira. I forgot. I completely forgot. My brain spins through various explanations for the shade in my living room. Long lost buddy? Being a Mediator means I have zero familial relations to blame for unexpected visits.
 

"Um. Yes. A friend."

Ben's fingers tap against the door jamb. "Can I come in, or do I have to stay out here?"

I move out of the way, but not without a moment's hesitation. Thank the gods Mason's not bare-chested in my purple yoga pants. I don't think I could explain that one if you gave me an hour to think up a story. Not when I'm supposed to be recovering from my little slap fight with death.

The door closes behind Ben, and he slides out of his shoes. Shit. He's planning to stick around.
 

"Mira didn't mention you had someone visiting."

"She didn't know. He arrived after she left." There. That's true enough.

I see movement out of the corner of my eye. Mason rises from the couch, his fluid walk and barely-contained musculature screaming shade — at least to me. Ben hikes an eyebrow, and for a second his mouth turns downward in a kicked-puppy sort of look before his face achieves noncommittal nonchalance once more.
 

"I descended unannounced," Mason says with a smile that displays his sharper-than-human canines. "I heard Ayala was hurt and wanted to make sure she was okay. I decided to stay a while."

"Ben, Mason. Mason, Ben." I flap my hand between the two of them, conscious of the ricocheting pulse in my wrist.
 

Ben extends his hand, and Mason shakes it a bit too vigorously.
 

"Nice to meet you, Mason. How do you and Ayala know each other?"

I've got nothing. My mouth drops open. Ben's been around for most of my life. There's pretty much no one from my MIT era that he doesn't know already, and I don't have friends from summer camp or witches circle or any other non-Mediator experience I never had the fortune to tally up.

"We met at a buffet a while back," Mason says.
 

I snap my teeth together. A buffet? Really? I don't have a choice — I have to go with it now. "Yep," I confirm, "An all-you-can-eat buffet with really questionable food. Never going back there, are we Mason?"

"Not unless we want food poisoning."

"Or our insides ripped out," I agree.

Well. That's close enough to the truth.

"I guess you don't live in Nashville then." Ben's looking at me like he's never seen me before.
 

"I'm from Cincinnati," Mason says. I choke on a nervous titter. Cincinnati's where the chick-flick Mason's been watching is set. By the music I hear, he's missed the happy ending.

Ben nods. "Never been to Ohio."

"You're not missing much."
 

We're all still standing in my entryway, and the knock at the door sounds as loud as a slummoth's roar. I jump. Oh gods. Not right now. The meat.

I look through the peep hole. Sure as Sunday, there's a man in a white smock with a large cardboard box on the other side of the door, tapping his foot in rhythm with music I can hear blasting even through the door. Guy's gonna blow out his eardrums.

I can't ignore him. Ben watches me expectantly, and Mason's nostrils flare. Can he smell the meat through the door? I turn back to the door and open it.
 

The guy pulls his earbuds from his ears, and the volume of the music increases. Mike and the Morbid Morphs. Interesting choice of band. "You Ayala Storme? I got your forty pounds of flank steak for you."

There's silence behind me, but I can almost hear Ben wondering why I need forty pounds of flank steak. I play dumb. "Forty? I ordered four."

"Ma'am, the order's right here. If you'd ordered four, that'd be some damn expensive steak. Even our filet mignon's not that dear." He pronounces it
fill-it mig-nun
and chuckles when he's done like he's made a fine joke.

"I must have made a mistake. Looks like I'll be eating lots of beef stew." I sign the clipboard he offers me and heft the box from the floor.

"I was gonna bring that in for you," the delivery guy says.
 

"I've got it."

"You sure do. Strong for a girl, aren't you?"

I grit my teeth. "Thank you." I kick the door shut.

"Forty pounds of flank steak? You're never going to eat all of that before it goes bad, Ayala." Ben makes a move as if to take the box from me, but I scowl and head into the kitchen.

"That's what a freezer is for, Ben. You freeze things and then thaw them later. Then they don't mold or spoil."

"Hey, I'm not the one who accidentally ordered forty pounds of meat."
 

Praise the gods for Ben's gullibility. Mason sniffs at the box, and I shoot him a look. Not hungry, eh?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

If I thought spending the night in bed with a shade holding very sweaty hands was awkward, it's not such a huge surprise that sharing coffee with one while the guy who has a crush on me looks on plays its trump card within five seconds of our asses hitting my kitchen chairs.

The caffeine calms me a bit. Just a bit.
 

I don't know what it will do to Mason, who takes an experimental sip while Ben stirs an obscene amount of sugar into his mug.

I mean, I like my coffee sweet, but four spoons?
 

No one speaks, but Mason makes a face when the black coffee hits his tongue and spares a wistful glance at the refrigerator, where I jigsawed his meat into every available cranny to make it fit. I don't know why Ben's still here, and from the look on his face — somewhere between bafflement and constipation — he doesn't either.

"So, Mason. What do you do for a living?"

Not that question. Fuckles. If he says trash collector before I can think of something more suited, I'm breaking my mug over his head. And I like this mug.

"Mason's a taxidermist," I blurt out.
 

Mason frowns at me, uncomprehending. Ben's constipated look eases, and he takes a drink of his coffee.

"That sounds interesting."

My sole reasoning for choosing that profession is that I saw Ben get really squidgy around a stuffed elk once. I think stuffed animals — the real ones, not the fuzzball plush wereleopards little norms get for Winter Solstice — give Ben the jibblies.
 

I clearly picked the right one, because silence spreads over us again.

Ben pushes his coffee cup back and stands. "I should be going. I just stopped by to check on you, and you seem fine."

"I'll make sure she's okay," Mason says, and I talk over him.

"Yep, happy as a lark. Lark-like. Not concussed anymore."

"Cuckoo is more like it," Ben says, but he smiles at me before I can shake off the awkward of the last half hour enough to get offended.

I walk him to the door. "Thanks for checking. I'll see you later."

"Gregor wants to see everyone for debriefing Monday night at ten. Will you be there?"

Debriefing. I can manage that. I nod. Ben looks over my shoulder at Mason, who's back on the couch. "Have fun with your...friend."

For once, Ben gets to see me balk at any other man besides him. "What? No. He's not that kind of friend."

Ben shuts the door, and the tiny light of hope in his eyes is enough to make me regret my outburst.
 

Maybe letting him believe I'm banging Mason would get Ben off my back.

Then again, maybe not. Some guys seem to go nuts for love triangles.

I can't watch Mason eat, so I leave him alone in the kitchen while he does his thing. He says he's not that hungry, but I trust a shade's appetite about as much as I trust a hungry lion in a butcher shop.

A text from Gregor lights up my phone while I'm sitting in my bedroom waiting for Mason to finish licking his chops. I'm forbidden to patrol until after the debriefing. Another day of sloth and nervousness, here I come.

Mason and I watch five movies on Sunday, and I'm so burned out on the boob tube by the end that I insist we turn it off.

Silence is its own oppressor.

"Do you have a plan?" I ask him.

"A plan for what?" Mason's eyes stay attuned to the dark television screen as if he's searching for hints of the pictures.

"For reaching the rest of your kind. Do you know where they hide out? Where there's another nest?"

"I know a few places."

I can understand the vagueness of his answer, but I've never much cared for vague.

"How will you find them?"

"I can...feel them."

That makes me sit up straighter. It's like his statement poked me in the ass.

"You can feel them? What do you mean?"

He frowns, breaking eye contact with the blank TV screen to look at me. "You can't feel your kind?"

"Only if they touch me."

"I have an awareness of them. I can sense how close they are, what they are doing."

"That's helpful." I'd rather not walk up to a shade in the middle of a blood bath and ask if it's grown a conscience lately.

Tomorrow I have to work, which means I have to leave Mason here for hours. Since we're not creating any specific strategies for my helping him to save his kind from themselves, I decide now's a good time to bring it up. "So tomorrow I have to leave here for a while."

"Where do you have to go? To an office?" We watched some movies with offices.