“I’m not giving you a big plate of steak as your meal again. And I’m not making beef crème br?lée again. Eat the sides,” Jack ordered.
“Ha! You’re not in charge of what I eat or what I don’t eat but hide under the couch, shrinky dink.” When Jack reached for a cleaver, Paul added, “Fine! But I’m doing it because I want to, not because I fear you.”
“Whatever works.”
“Hey, Chambers!” Mitchell had plopped down opposite them and started in on the risotto. “Bet you’re wondering why we call this the turtle table.”
“Why would anyone wonder that?” Paul demanded. “You always think we’re more interesting than we are.”
Jason glanced down at the shiny lacquered table, then back up. He had almost demolished his steak and was starting on the salad. “Because it resembles a tortoiseshell in color and pattern? Like a form of marquetry?”
“Huh.”
Now I’m going to get horny every time I think of marquetry. Dammit.
The chaotic meal—especially with the addition of Archer and Leah—which should have been a fifteen-minute study in embarrassment, was great fun. Even more impressive, Jason held his own under the barrage of inappropriate questions and observations. She was sorry when the meal was over and everyone went back to what they were doing when not gulping down risotto. That was a first.
They
(kiss me! I’ll also settle for a comradely pat on the boob. well, my under-boob)
shook hands at the door. “I’m sorry I couldn’t bring better news.”
She shook her head at him. “Nothing to apologize for. It was kind of you to take the time and let us know. I’ll be sure to reach out if I find anything new.”
“I will, too.” He hesitated, like he was going to say something else, then just smiled at her and left.
“Nice enough guy,” Jordan observed from over her shoulder.
“Uh-huh.” Nice didn’t begin to encompass the coolness that was Jason Chambers.
“Too bad about Dad’s case,” Paul added. “But this guy’s a huge improvement over Klown.”
“Kline,” she corrected.
“Pretty sure it’s Klown. And if it’s not, it oughta be.”
“He’s wonderful,” Angela declared. “Did you see his socks?”
“He had socks?”
“He had feet?”
“Monet’s Water Lilies.” She sighed. No question: Jason Chambers was making her care about art again. Hopefully it wouldn’t turn into some odd, embarrassing Pavlovian response. Museum visits would be a nightmare.
TWENTY-TWO
NOVEMBER 1889
KAMCHATKA PENINSULA, RUSSIAN FAR EAST
She had known when the contractions would not stop, even after her daughter had emerged, though in truth she had suspected for some time. She had gotten so big, every woman who saw her tried to smile and then looked away. A few pulled her aside: Do not worry, your man is a big man, and you! So tall! You have a large son in there, I am sure.
She had no sons in there. She had two girls. Twins, as she had been a twin seventeen years earlier.
We have to keep our ways, her mother had whispered, as her grandmother and great-grandmother had reminded their daughters, and back and back, all the way to their beginning, when Kutkh gave the Koryaks the moon and the sun. Without the old ways, we are no better than the Cossacks. Without them, we would have lost one villager for every two.
Pity the Koryaks on the mainland, who had suffered exactly that after enduring smallpox and war. She could almost feel sorrow for the Cossacks, who had never fought Koryaks and were amazed and fearful to see how her people waged war: with everything. Because their lives and their people were so, so precious, they set their homes ablaze to deny the Cossacks shelter. They killed their own women and children to deny the Cossacks slaves and the spoils of war.* Defeat was unthinkable, but if it came, there was nothing left for the enemy, and the price for all sides was high.
Her people’s love was fierce and all-encompassing, and not just in times of war. “Save me,” an elder would say, would demand. “I am sick, weak, show me my value. Did I not teach you the last blow? Do you not love me?” And so the mercifully quick death, rescuing a revered elder from the inevitable slide into the suffering of old age.
Twins? A double burden on mother and tribe. Instead of a strong, thriving infant, the village had to contend with two smaller, weaker babies who would drain resources. Twins were a tragedy.
“I love you,” she whispered to the one, raising a work-roughened hand to press over the tiny mouth and nose. “As my mother so loved my sister.” To the other: “And you in your love for me will someday do the same.”
Without those acts of love, what were they but godless savages?
TWENTY-THREE
Jason blinked, disorientated. The village, the smell of smoke and suffering and pain, was gone in a moment. He was back in his room
(back? you never left. just a dream, just the same dream)
and a few seconds ago he had been a member of the Alyutors, his reindeer cloak spattered with muck and blood, his blood, and he was pressing his hand over his baby’s mouth as an act of lo—
Oh. That dream again, the one where his sister had been killed and then, years later, he’d killed one of his daughters.
Stop showing the same slides, he thought irritably at his subconscious, the thing that never shut up. I know all this. There’s no need to keep hammering it home.
He groped for his phone and squinted at it: 5:57 a.m. A new record for that month. Not hard to reason why, either. After he’d returned from the cheerfully chaotic Drake dinner, he’d actually felt . . .
. . . felt . . .
. . . good?
Not only good, and sated, but pleasantly tired; he’d crawled into bed just after midnight. And slept, undisturbed, for nearly six hours.
Huh.
And he was hard. Nocturnal penile tumescence had reared its mushroom-shaped head once again. Like the groundhog predicting when spring will come, he thought, amused. His erection was more a cause for puzzled bemusement than alarm. It was a universal biological phenomenon most healthy men experienced; it didn’t mean that infanticide aroused him. As for what did . . .
Did the Drakes rekindle my sex drive?
Of course not, that was idiotic. Angela was rekindling his sex drive. Well, Angela and Paroxetine.
In fact, he’d been having a string of good days; his big black dog, it seemed, was going back to sleep.* It would lope back into his life soon enough, but as his mother had been fond of reminding him, even big dogs have collars.
He hopped out of bed and headed for the shower. He was halfway to the bathroom before he realized he was whistling “Chick Habit.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Sherlock yanked John forward by his jumper and claimed his mouth, his plush lips slanting over the smaller man’s—
“No update, I assume?”
“I wasn’t reading BBC’s Sherlock fanfic!” Angela slammed her laptop closed. “If. If you were wondering.”
“I understand.”
“Well, maybe just a couple of pages.”
Leah smiled, one hand on a slim hip, the other holding on to the doorjamb as if unsure of her welcome. Which meant Archer had given her an earful.
“You don’t have to hover, c’mon in. And you know Archer has frequent bouts of clinical insanity so you should take whatever he says about me with a metric ton of salt, right?”
“Archer told me you work hard to take care of the family and deserve your privacy.”
“Sometimes his insanity is more benign,” she admitted.
Leah laughed and let go of the door. “You’re a bundle of contradictions, did you know?”
“I didn’t, actually. What’s up?”
“Several things, but I don’t want to interrupt your—”
“Don’t say ‘work’ with quotation marks, implying I wasn’t working,” Angela warned, smirking. “I won’t have it.”
Leah grinned back and took the chair opposite the desk. “Your disgusting* fangirl secret is safe with me. Surely you must know that as the Babe Ruth of Insighters, it’s literally my job to keep secrets.”