I couldn’t change the past, but I could work on the present. I was miserable without Raphael. I knew exactly why I hadn’t picked up the phone. Sure, some of it was pride. Some of it was anger. I was tired of everyone judging me. The Order judged me for being a shapeshifter. The shapeshifters judged me for having the wrong kind of father. In a time when my life really sucked, I had needed Raphael to be that one person who didn’t judge me, and I was angry because he did. But deep under it all was fear. As long as I didn’t call him, Raphael couldn’t tell me that we were over.
How is it that I could run into a gunfight against overwhelming odds and put myself between bullets and civilians, but I couldn’t scrape together enough courage to speak to the one person who mattered the most to me?
I walked into the kitchen, picked up the phone, and dialed Raphael’s number. We had something, damn it. We loved each other. I missed him. He had to miss me, too. We needed to stop being stupid and sort things out.
The phone rang.
He would understand. If he just gave me a chance, I would make him understand all of it.
Something wet touched my cheek and I realized it was a tear. Jesus Christ. I wiped it off. It was good that I was alone and nobody could see it.
The answering machine clicked on. Raphael’s voice said, “Raphael Medrano. Leave a message.”
Keep it together. Keep it professional.
“Hi, it’s me. Jim asked me to look into the murders at your work site. I need to interview you, so I thought maybe we could meet at my office tomorrow morning.” Neutral territory, no memories to get in the way. I hesitated. “I know we didn’t part on the best terms, and I regret that. We both made some mistakes. I hope we can put this aside and try to work together on this investigation.”
I miss you. I miss you terribly.
“I would like a chance to clear the air. I…I have some things to tell you that are long overdue. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I hung up.
It hadn’t sounded right. That wasn’t exactly what I wanted to say. But then again, crying hysterically into the phone and sobbing about how his scent made me want to curl into a fetal position wouldn’t do any good. Sorry and tears had to wait until we met and were alone.
I could do this right. I just needed to sleep on it.
CHAPTER 3
The morning brought light and magic. I took a few extra minutes to decide what to wear. Not that it would make any difference, but I put on my pale blue shirt. It matched my eyes and looked nice. I put on my favorite jeans and looked at myself in the mirror.
Full-on makeup would be too much. I brushed some mascara on and styled my blond hair, which was doing its best to grow out of its shorter hairdo. Right after I got kicked out of the Order, I’d “frosted” the tips of my hair blue, but now the dye was all gone and I’d ended up with a head full of highlights instead.
Like a kid before the prom: gussying up and shaking with nerves. I crossed my arms and glared at myself in the mirror. Sniper, death, kill, tough, hooah. Okay, that was better.
Raphael always brought out a strange side of me. The wild side, the one that was knitted from pure emotions. That wild Andrea loved him completely and did irrational things, like sitting by the phone with her heart beating too fast, waiting for him to call, or running headfirst into danger against overwhelming odds to fight by his side. That wild Andrea once got arrested. We had gone away for a romantic retreat and while I left the hot tub in the courtyard of the hotel to use the bathroom, some floozy had attached herself to Raphael, not taking no for an answer. When I returned, instead of beating a swift retreat she suggested we should all have fun together. I had dunked her a couple of times. Unfortunately, I was pointing a gun at hotel security at the time, and the sheriff’s deputies showed up. Raphael ate it up. I was finally acting like a mated shapeshifter: irrational, possessive, and head over heels in love.
I didn’t know if that part of me was my hyena side or just that uncompromising fifteen-year-old girl that lives inside every woman, but now wasn’t the time to let her out. I had to stay rational, so I could apologize and try to mend things between me and Raphael.
Cutting Edge occupied a sturdy building on the northern edge of Atlanta, about an hour from the Keep. The Beast Lord, also known as Kate’s sugar woogums, had chosen the location, and he pretty much picked the closest place to the Keep that was still within city limits. Curran didn’t like to be without Kate and Kate didn’t like to be without Curran.
The door was unlocked. Great. I walked in. Ascanio looked up from his broom.
Despite having very few clients, Cutting Edge had an excess of employees, partially because Kate kept hiring them. According to her, Ascanio Ferara was an intern. In reality nobody with a drop of sense would hire him as an intern or anything else, except maybe as a traffic jam generator. If you stood him on a street corner, sooner or later some female driver would wreck.
Fifteen going on thirty, with glossy black hair and green eyes, Ascanio was beautiful. Not just pretty, not just attractive, beautiful. He had that whole fallen angel thing going—there was a devious, sly mind behind that innocent face and pretty eyes.
Like most male children of Clan Bouda, he was treasured and babied, more so because he was lost for most of his life and his mother had just found him a few months ago. In this short period he had gotten into every possible trouble imaginable, culminating with being arrested for having a threesome on the courthouse steps. The boy did not understand how the Pack worked, and finally Aunt B foisted him off on Kate. It was that or kill him. Kate’s solution was to make this raging ball of problems and hormones into our intern. How her mind worked, I would never understand. It was a mystery.
Ascanio snapped to attention and saluted me, holding the broom like a rifle.
I pointed at the broom. “No.”
“Why not?”
Because it would’ve made every ex-military instructor I ever had foam at the mouth. “You salute with your weapon as a sign of respect.”
He presented me with an expression of puzzled innocence. “I don’t have a rifle or a sword. The broom is my weapon.”
Smartass. “Kid, you make my head explode.”
“Ave, Andrea! Ianitori te salutant!”
Hail, Andrea, those who janitor salute you. Kate was forcing Ascanio and Julie, her ward, to learn Latin, because a lot of historical magical texts were written in it and apparently it was an essential part of their education. Since the lessons were conducted in the office during our copious spare time, I was learning the language along with them.
I pointed at Ascanio. “Not another word. Latin is a dead language, but that doesn’t mean you get to molest its corpse. Finish sweeping, ianitor.”