“I can’t do anything to help the MacKeltars, Barrons.”
“I didn’t say you should. Perhaps you should remain in the store tomorrow night. It’s the safest place for you.”
“You want me to hide?” My voice rose with disbelief on the last word. Months ago, I might have happily hid. Watched late night TV while painting my fingernails and toenails to match, a divine shade of pink. Now? Not a chance.
“Sometimes caution is the wisest course,” he said.
“Tell you what, Barrons: you come be cautious with me, I’ll stay in, too. Not because I want your company,” I said before he could make a pithy comment, “but because of that whole good-for-the-goose-and-gander thing. I’m not going to gander helplessly.”
“You’re the goose, Ms. Lane. I’m the gander.”
As if I could mistake his gender. “That was a double entendre,” I informed him stiffly. “I was being clever. Gander has multiple meanings. What good is being clever when the person you’re being clever to is too dense to get it?”
“I’m not dense,” he said just as stiffly, and I sensed one of our childish fights looming on the horizon. “As a double entendre it didn’t work. Look up double entendre.”
“I know what double entendre means. And you can just shove your stupid birthday cake. I don’t even know why I bothered!”
The silence was so protracted that I decided he’d hung up.
I hung up, too, wishing I’d done it first.
Twenty minutes later, Barrons stepped through the door from the back of the bookstore. Ice was crystallized in his hair, and he was pale from extreme cold.
I was sitting on the sofa in the rear conversation area, too aggravated to sleep. “Good. You’ve finally stopped pretending you don’t use the mirror. It’s about time.”
“I only use the mirror when I must, Ms. Lane. Even for me, it is . . . unpleasant.”
Curiosity overrode irritation. “What constitutes ‘must’? Where do you go?”
He glanced around. “Where is the cake?”
“I threw it away.”
He gave me a look.
I sighed, got up, and got it out of the fridge. It was a seven-layer chocolate cake, with alternating raspberry and chocolate cream fillings, frosted pink, with a Happy Birthday JZB in the center, delicately scripted and adorned with flowers. It was beautiful. It was the only thing that had made my mouth water in weeks, besides Unseelie. I set it on the coffee table, then got plates and forks from the cabinet behind the counter.
“I’m confused, Ms. Lane. Is this cake for me, or for you?”
Yeah, well, there was that. I’d been planning on eating a lot of it myself. I’d spared no expense. I could have downloaded forty-seven songs from iTunes instead. “They were out of black icing,” I said dryly. He wasn’t reacting the way I’d planned. He didn’t look the least bit touched or amused. In fact, he was regarding the cake with a mixture of horror and . . . grim fascination; the same way I regard monsters I’m about to kill.
I fidgeted. At the time I’d ordered it, it’d seemed like a good idea. I’d thought it was a humorous way of poking fun at our . . . relationship, while also saying, I know you’re really old and probably not human at all, but whatever you are, you still have a birthday, just like the rest of the world.
“I believe candles are customary,” he said finally.
I reached in my pocket, pulled out candles in the shape of numbers, and one I’d whittled to a stub of a period, and stuck them on top of the cake. He looked at me as if I’d sprouted a second head.
“Pi, Ms. Lane? I’d pegged you for failing high school math.”
“I got a D. The little stuff always trips me up. But the big stuff stuck with me.”
“Why pi?”
“It’s irrational and uncountable.” Funny girl, wasn’t I?
“It’s also a constant,” he said dryly.
“They were out of sixes. Seems this time of year six-six-six is big,” I said, lighting the candles. “Obviously, they haven’t seen the real Beast, or they wouldn’t be playing at worshipping it.”
“Have there been more sightings?” He was still frowning at the cake, looking at it as if he expected it to sprout dozens of legs and begin scuttling toward him, thin-lipped, teeth bared.
“It’s been transferring hands every day.” There was a stack of papers by the couch. The crimes the newspapers were reporting made eating breakfast while reading it risky.
He lifted his gaze from the cake to my face.
“It’s just a cake. I promise. No surprises. No chopped-up Unseelie in there,” I joked. “I’ll even eat the first slice.”
“It’s far from ‘just’ a cake, Ms. Lane. That you procured it implies—”
“—that I was having a sweet craving and used you for an excuse to indulge. Blow out the candles, will you? And lighten up, Barrons.” How had I not realized the delicacy of the ice I was on? What in the world had made me think I could give him a birthday cake and he’d be anything but weird about it?
“I’m doing this for you,” he said tightly.
“I get that,” I said. I was really glad I’d vetoed getting balloons. “I just thought it would be fun.” I stood, holding the cake out to him in both hands, so he could blow out candles before they dripped wax on the pretty confection. “I could use a little fun.”
I sensed violence in the room a split second before it erupted. In retrospect, I think he thought he had it caged, and was nearly as surprised as I.
Cake and candles exploded from my hands, shot straight up in the air, hit the ceiling, and stuck there, dripping gobs of icing. I stared up at it. My lovely cake.
Then I was trapped between the wall and his body, with no awareness of having gotten there. He’s frighteningly quick when he wants to be. I think he could give Dani a run for the money. He had my hands pinned above my head, braceleted at the wrists by one of his. The other was around my throat. His head was down and he was breathing hard. For a moment, he rested his face in my neck.
Then he pulled back and stared at me and when he spoke his voice was low with fury. “Never do that again, Ms. Lane. Do not insult me with your silly rituals, and idiotic platitudes. Never try to humanize me. Don’t think we’re the same, you and I. We’re not.”
“Did you have to ruin it?” I cried. “I’d been looking forward to it all day.”
He shook me, hard. “You have no business looking forward to pink cakes. That’s not your world anymore. Your world is hunting the Book and staying alive. They’re mutually exclusive, you bloody fool.”
“No, they’re not! It’s only if I eat pink cakes that I can hunt the Book! You’re right—we’re not the same. I can’t walk through the Dark Zone at night. I don’t scare all the other monsters away. I need rainbows. You don’t. I get that now. No birthdays for Barrons. I’ll pen that in right next to Don’t wait on him and Don’t expect him to save you unless there’s something in it for him. You’re a jackass. There’s a constant for you. I won’t forget it.”
His grip on my throat relaxed. “Good.”
“Fine,” I said, though I don’t really know why. I think I just wanted the last word.
We stared at each other.
He was so close, his body electric, his expression savage.
I moistened my lips. His gaze fixed on them. I think I stopped breathing.
He jerked so sharply away that his long dark coat sliced air, and turned his back to me. “Was that an invitation, Ms. Lane?”
“If it was?” I asked, astonishing myself. What did I think I was doing?
“I don’t do hypotheticals. Little girl.”
I looked at his back. He didn’t move. I thought of things to say. I said none of them.
He vanished through the connecting door.
“Hey,” I shouted after him, “I need a car to drive!” There was no answer.
A large chunk of cake dropped from the ceiling and splatted on the floor.
It was mostly intact, just a little goopy.
Sighing, I got a fork and scraped it onto a plate.
It was noon the next day when I got out of bed, cleared my monster alarm from in front of my door, and opened it.
Waiting outside for me was a thermos of coffee, a bag of doughnuts, a set of car keys, and a note. I unscrewed the thermos top, sipped the coffee, and unfolded the note.
Ms. Lane,
I would prefer you join me in Scotland this evening, but if you insist on helping the old witch, here are keys, as you requested. I moved it for you. It’s the red one, parked in front of the door. Call if you change your mind. I can send a plane as late as 4:00.
CJ
It took me a moment to figure out the initials. Constant Jackass. I smiled. “Apology accepted, Barrons, if it’s the Ferrari.”
It was.