Ninety minutes after the cats departed, the sun was starting to gray the eastern sky and low clouds were dropping, fog rolling down the hillside like an avalanche and along the road like a vaporous flood. A car rolled past. Then another heading the other way. A school bus rumbled and squeaked on a parallel road beyond the trees. The human world was starting to wake up and head to work and school. We needed to be out of here.
I tapped the mic three times, taps Rick would be able to hear even with the comms hanging around his neck. The taps stood for: LaFleur, report back to origination and insert point, ASAP. It was a reminder that they needed to become human again, that there was work to do. I three-tapped again. There was no reply because Rick had turned off his mic. And because his cat didn’t have opposable thumbs to turn it back on. And because his cat didn’t speak English. There were a lot of reasons why he didn’t respond, most of them amusing.
Moments later, on the hillside, I caught a hint of movement, red in the infrared range. Two slinky cat shapes were working their way down toward the road, strides lazy, in no hurry. I made my way to my truck and started the engine, waiting for them to shift back. I wanted to leave them as they had left me, but weres in the midst of shifting were vulnerable, and I knew better.
But that didn’t mean I had to wait till they got dressed. The moment I saw a human shape in the low-light goggles, still naked and steaming in a greenish haze, I drove off, stopping once for fresh bakery bread and a bear claw that tempted me like a sweet devil. The claw was greasy, nowhere near as good as Mama’s, and I was able to eat only part of it, but the to-go coffee was surprisingly tasty, much better than the burned sludge I expected.
I picked up a second coffee—my regular in the coffee shop—along with an egg and bacon on flatbread, which was wonderful. Upstairs, I checked in with HQ, where Tandy was turning everything over to JoJo, who had gotten up from a nap in the back room. T. Laine was typing up a report so fast the keys clacking sounded like castanets. Soul was in the break room making coffee, looking gorgeous and curvy and sophisticated, her teal and aqua gauzy skirts moving with the air from the heater vents. Or from her magic. Shape-shifting magic was different for each shifter species and arcenciel magic was the least understood of all.
I was eating and inputting my report when Rick and Occam came in. Rick went to his office. Occam stopped at my cubicle, and I could see him reflected in the window where my plants grew, his body dark and indistinct against the rising sun.
“Nell, sugar?” he asked, sounding very Texan, the way he often did after a shift to his cat.
I hit enter and saved my report. Picked up my coffee and spun in my chair to face him. His blondish hair hung long. His beard was a postshift two-day growth and scruffy. His eyes were more-than-human golden. He was wearing jeans low on his hips and his T-shirt was faded and too tight, showing abs and biceps and deltoids. His arms were up, hands on the cubicle walls, balanced. “You still mad? We shouldn’ta left you.”
“Not mad. Actually it kinda makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.” His eyebrows lifted, wrinkling his forehead in confusion. “Makes me feel like I’m really and truly part of Unit Eighteen,” I explained.
“I’m not following you, Nell, sugar.”
“If I’d been T. Laine or Tandy or JoJo, you’d still have forgotten me. You were being cats, already focused on the hunt. It’s the human’s and witch’s and empath’s job to look after the werecats when you get focused on werecat issues. So forgetting me made me one of the team. You didn’t think you needed to babysit the probie. Or the woman. I apologize for hanging up on you. I hadn’t thought it through at the time.”
“Day-um, woman.” Occam looked half-impressed, half-fearful. “Just when I think I got you figured out you go and do something unexpected. So you ain’t gonna be getting us back for forgetting you?”
“Oh, there’ll be payback.” I sipped and spun back to my laptop. “That’s Unit Eighteen’s way.”
Occam snorted a laugh, all cat. A little intrigued. And I realized that I had, maybe, just flirted with the cat-man. A plant-woman flirting with a wereleopard. I felt a blush race up my throat into my face.
JoJo yelled down the hallway, “Gather ’round. Report!”
I picked up my laptop and stood, taking one step toward the hallway. Stopped in a sudden jerk. Occam hadn’t moved. I was too close. I wanted to step back, but that would have been weak. I wanted to bull my way through him, but that would have been . . . dangerous. I wanted to cover my chest with the laptop. Weak. Wanted to hit him with the laptop. Dangerous. I couldn’t think of anything to do that would be neither weak nor dangerous.
I raised my head and met his eyes, golden and glowing cat eyes. Yeah. Dangerous.
“Cat-boy,” JoJo yelled again. “Get your butt in here and stop scaring the probie.”
“Probie ain’t scared,” Occam growled. “Probie ain’t never scared.”
I thought that was the nicest compliment I had ever been given. A complete untruth, but nice that he would think I was brave when I was more often a worried, panicked rabbit, like the one eaten by the owl only hours past. I smiled, ducked my head, and pushed Occam out of the way, using my laptop to keep from touching him with my whole hand, though I felt his were-warmth on the backs of my knuckles. He resisted for just a moment and I pushed harder. He gave way and I walked past him, head high, laptop holding him away from me as I made the turn to the conference room. He followed. Cat-close.
His pursuit felt like the start to something new. I didn’t know what, but I was feeling quite captivated by life and whatever it was sending my way. I also knew that if Occam had been a human male shadowing me this close, I’d have been scared. Worried. But it was a cat. It was Occam. And that was infinitely preferable.
In the conference room I took my seat and opened my laptop. Pea and Bean (the two grindys were too similar for me to tell the difference) raced up and around the tabletop, around the Christmas tree that hadn’t been there yesterday. The grindylows were looking for treats, chasing each other. It was rare to see both at the same time, and I had no idea how they got around or how they knew when they were needed. According to official intel, no one knew that and speculation was rife. I just considered it their particular magic and let it go at that. Tandy gave them sunflower seeds, which both grindys adored. They settled at his place, rolling around like kittens playing. I figured they were still around because the weres had gone catty and were still acting catty, even in human form.
Rick stood at the far side of the table, leaning against the wall behind him, arms crossed over his chest, very alpha, in-charge, predator-ishy, without saying anything. The rest of the unit scattered into our regular places, not assigned seating, but the spots we had each gravitated to and semiclaimed.