CHAPTER 9
Sleeping in a tree seemed like a great idea in theory. In practice, I woke up just before sunrise, all achy, my fur damp with morning dew, and reeking of decomposing blood. Apparently not all of it had washed off in the river. The magic had fallen, with tech once again holding on to the planet’s reins, and the magical forest of yesterday was a soggy, muddy, and unpleasant place. Faced with the lovely choice of remaining in my beastkin shape or trotting across the city butt-naked, I decided that fur was preferable. I cleared the river and stuck to the rooftops.
I had conspired to break the law with my ex-boyfriend, who I professed to hate, broken said law, destroyed the victim’s attack dog/magic creature in a fit of murderous frenzy, and then run away across the city, wandered around some woods, and fallen asleep in a tree in my beastkin shape.
When I went off the rails, I didn’t do it halfway. No, I flipped a few times, caught a lot of air, and then exploded in a fiery crash.
I made it to my building, walked up the stairs to my apartment, and stared at my door. My keys were in my backpack, which I had dropped before we fought the monster in the warehouse. The bars on my windows were welded to a metal frame built into the brick wall. I could probably bend them, if I strained hard enough and wrapped something around my hands, since the bars had silver in them, but I’d take out some of the wall with them. How the hell was I going to get inside without busting the door?
Footsteps came from below. A moment and Mrs. Haffey walked up the stairs, carrying something wrapped in a kitchen towel.
Awesome.
Mrs. Haffey saw my furry butt and stopped. For a long second we stared at each other, she in a pink bathrobe and I, six feet tall, furry, bloody, and smelling like a wet dog who had rolled in a swamp.
Don’t scream. Please don’t scream.
Mrs. Haffey cleared her throat. “Andrea? Is that you?”
“Yes, ma’am. Good morning.”
“Good morning. Here, I made you a carrot cake last night.” She held the toweled object out to me.
I took it and sniffed, wrinkling my black nose. “Thank you. Smells wonderful.”
“I just wanted to thank you for Darin. We’ve been together for so long. I just don’t know what I would do without him.” She stepped toward me and hugged me.
Oh my God, what do I do?
I hugged her back, as gently as I could, with one arm.
“You take care now,” Mrs. Haffey said, smiled, and went downstairs.
She’d hugged my furry, smelly, bloodstained self. She had no idea, but I would run back into that basement and fight off a hundred of those bugs just because she hadn’t screamed when she’d seen me.
I needed to get inside and change into my human shape, pronto. Before any neighbors decided to call the cops because there was a monster breaking into that “nice Texas girl’s” apartment.
I gripped the handle of my door. It turned in my hand, but my brain didn’t process it right away and I slammed my shoulder into it. The door flew open with a thunderous thump and I rolled into the apartment, springing into a crouch.
My apartment smelled of Raphael. If he was still here, there was no way he wouldn’t have heard me.
I kicked the door shut, snarled a little to let him know I meant business, and set out to search. A quick glance told me that my living room was Raphael-free. My bedroom was also empty, and so was my closet. I made a full circle, came to the kitchen, and stopped. My nylon mesh backpack sat in the middle of my kitchen table, with my dress and shoes still in it. My tablecloth was missing in action and long, jagged scratches covered the table’s surface. The scratches looked suspiciously like letters.
I climbed on a chair and looked at it from above.
MINE.
Oh, that’s great. Fantastic. So mature. Perhaps he would pull my pigtails next or stick a tack on my seat.
I shoved the table. Who did he think he was, breaking into my apartment and vandalizing my furniture? I had never done that to him. I had never ruined any of his things.
I went to shower and scrubbed myself clean.
I mean, what the hell was I even supposed to do with this MINE thing? One moment he was shoving another woman under my nose, the next he’d decided we were back on and couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting with the program. An old song surfaced in my memories. Love is all you need. Maybe, but in real life love was rarely all you got. Raphael and I also had pride, and guilt, and anger, jealousy and hurt feelings, and all of it was mixed into this giant Gordian knot. Untangling it seemed impossible.
Smelly, ugly, stupid bouda moron. I should’ve emptied a jar of fleas in his car. It would’ve been good for a laugh. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it would make me feel better.
I put on my clothes, sat down at the kitchen table, tried my carrot cake—it was delicious—and looked at MINE some more. This was so unlike Raphael. The echoes of his roar floated up from my memory. Raphael was subtle. He seduced and enticed, and he was really good at it. So good that I had fallen for him even though I had sworn that hell would freeze over before I let a bouda touch me. This was very much unlike him. Was he really that desperate to get me back?
I wished I had been born in a different time. Somewhere in the past, before the magic, before the shapeshifters, when I could have just been a cop and done my job. When Raphael would have been a regular guy and I would have been a regular girl, and none of the complicated shapeshifter things would have gotten in the way. Or better yet, I wished the magic had never come. But that would mean that I wouldn’t have experienced the magic forest. I would be slower, blinder, deafer. Weaker. No, the magic was here to stay and so was the other me. I had suppressed her for so long, and now she had taken the wheel and was giggling maniacally as she drove me off the cliff.