“How sweet!” my mother cooed.
“It is. Thanks.” I set the cuff on my wrist.
Peter looked to Asher. “I bet Edie doesn’t have a single jar of silver polish in this house.”
The doorbell rang, saving me from more cleaning tips. “I’ve got it—” Jake announced as I stood. He walked over and beat me to the door. “Hey, Raymond,” he announced. “Raymond, meet my family. My family, meet Raymond,” Jake added in his casual cool-guy way.
While my nurse radar was only in its infant stages, it didn’t take much skill to know the guy on my stoop was still using. Raymond was a white guy with dreadlocks, wearing fingerless gloves—he looked thin, picked at, and strung out. My heart sank.
“It’s been great seeing you, Mom, Peter.” Jake leaned down and gave my mother a kiss on her cheek.
“You’ve got your leftovers, right?” my mother asked him.
“Of course.”
My mom beamed at him. “I’m very proud of you, Jake.” I knew this was how it began. Him moving back in—thank God for Peter. He’d put an end to the previously endless cycle of Jake leaching off my mother, getting clean at expensive rehab centers, and then getting dirty and disappointing her all over again.
I knew it it was my time on Y4 that had gotten him clean and my continued employment that kept him that way. As long as I worked on Y4, the Shadows would stop him from getting high. Not that that had stopped him from trying. You could say my brother lived in hope.
Still, I’d almost been proud of him today too—until I’d found out who he’d be hanging out with tonight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Asher stuck around to help load the card table and chairs into my mother’s SUV. Then, confident she was leaving me in good hands—and probably warring with her twin urges for me to stay celibate until I was married, while being profoundly hungry for grandchildren—my mother and Peter took off, my mom waving wildly through the window until they were out of sight.
I sighed and looked back at Asher.
“Can you change into you?”
Asher shrugged. His shoulders widened and he became two inches taller. The shirt wasn’t part of the show, and now it clung to him tighter than it had before, filled out by his chest instead of the beginnings of a potbelly.
I wanted to ask, Is this really you?—but that was the thing with Asher. I’d never know. I knew some girls went in for mystery, but Asher’s ability to shapeshift went beyond.
I couldn’t not think he was handsome, though. Beautiful dusky olive skin and coffee-dark eyes, and an English accent at will. I sighed. “If my mom had thought I was dating you—or this you—instead of Kevin, she’d never forgive me till the day I died.”
“Is that a complicated way of saying you find me handsome?”
“It’s a complicated way of saying it’s complicated.” I walked past him to sit on my couch. He sat down beside me. “Why is my brother hanging out with such losers?”
“You know that guy?”
“No. He’s probably someone Jake met at the shelter. But I know his type. Not all of us need to touch people to know who they are.”
“Who else is he going to be friends with? It’s not like homeless people are upwardly mobile.”
“You sound like Peter.”
“I could.”
I whirled on him. “You didn’t, did you?” I wasn’t sure what verb to use for Asher’s ability to absorb other people’s spirits—if that was even the word—and look like them.
“I meant I could talk like him. Something tells me he’s pretty easy to imitate.” Asher leaned forward. “Did you really think I’d copy your mom?”
I shook my head back and forth. I wasn’t sure if I was negating him or negating me. “I didn’t know. You didn’t, right?”
“No, of course not.”
“Would you tell me if you had?”
“Not if it would upset you. But I didn’t, so it doesn’t matter.” He gave me a cryptic smile. “I found out what an Ambassador of the Sun is for you.”“Way to change the subject. Do tell.”
“Keep in mind that my people can’t impersonate vampires, just daytimers—and sometimes that gets us into places while other times it just gets us tortured and killed. Still, the last time anyone saw one of these ceremonies, from the periphery of the room, it looked like there was a lot of blood, and some churchy statements about the Ambassador being the vessel who kept the remnants of their humanity.”
“In a jar? Or a scrapbook?”
“The memories are hazy. It was a long, long time ago.”
“Is it in a record book I can read?” On the off chance I could make more sense of it, reading it personally.
“Shapeshifter records don’t work like that. It’s more of an oral tradition, let’s say.” He tugged at the confines of Kevin’s shirt, pulling at a too-tight sleeve.
I realized that me forcing him to be something he wasn’t just because it was what I was comfortable with was lame of me. “You can change into someone more comfortable, if you want to.”
“No, it’s okay. I need to go.” He pulled his shirt down one more time, then paused. “Unless—” he said, looking at me, lips spreading into an easy, hopeful, smile.
I was flattered to have his attention, and then just as quickly ashamed to be pleased. I told myself there was nothing wrong with recognizing you were sitting next to someone beautiful. My recent loss hadn’t frozen my heart or made me blind. And I knew from work that people expressed their grief in different ways. I could take him back to my bedroom and express quite a lot between now and the time I had to go back to work tonight. It might not be guilt-free later, but he was the type of partner to ensure that the ensuing guilt would be worthwhile.
My phone rang. I quickly went to answer it. It was County’s automated system, asking me if I wanted to come in four hours early for a half shift. “Yes,” I told it, and then hung up. “Work called. They need me to go in early tonight,” I explained, apologetic, pocketing my phone.
Asher rocked to standing. “Some other time then, maybe.”
I didn’t want to promise anything, but I also didn’t want to close any doors. “Maybe,” I agreed, walking over to my front door. He pulled on the coat that he’d worn coming over, luckily Asher-sized. “Thanks for the information and the bracelet, Asher.”
“You’re welcome. Thanks for lunch.”
We were both in my short hallway, crowded together as he passed. I didn’t know what I ought to do, but I felt like I should do something. I leaned up and pecked him on the cheek, much as he had me when he first came into my home. He looked startled, then theatrically dismayed.
“How did I, the great Asher, fall into the friend zone?”
“By being a friend.” I opened up my front door. “Don’t worry. The sex zone still sometimes sends cookies and the occasional rescue ship.”
He looked down at me, an amused smile lifting his beautiful chiseled cheeks. He stood close for a second, close enough for me to smell his vetiver cologne, and then stepped outside.
“Merry Christmas, Asher.”
“See you around, Edie.”
I stood in my doorway until he made it into his car safely, then watched him drive away. I wondered if I’d made the right decision. Sometimes the best way to get over being hurt was to rip the Band-Aid off, after all.
But there was nothing to do now but nap. I set my new bracelet into the box Anna’s knife had come in, and then I tried to sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tons of people came down with the Christmas Flu. Other popular sick days included Thanksgiving, New Year’s Eve, and the Fourth of July. If you couldn’t personally come down with an illness, you could always count on a family member, or spontaneously need to care for an incontinent cat. I knew our nursing office wasn’t allowed to ask why people called in sick, due to some union provision against doing so, which would be nice if I ever got to take a mental health day. I could blame blindness—I just couldn’t see going in.
I was as tired as I thought I’d be when I got up, and drove to work in a blur. Reaching the visitor lot, I got a spot close to the door—unsurprising, since it was still the holiday—and pulled in. For the rest of the world, it was still Christmas Day. For me, Christmas felt like yesterday, and today felt like it was everyone else’s tomorrow. Working night shifts did something awful to your sense of time if you didn’t try to fight it, and it was especially hard in winter, when it was cloudy and dark. Today was no exception. The sun was almost gone, just a dull pressing lightness, like the beginning of a migraine, hiding behind thick clouds.
I got out of my car, locked it from the inside, closed my door, and headed toward the lobby. Someone was outside on the small patch of lawn, retching their guts out into a garbage can. Nothing like the holidays for alcohol poisoning. I picked up my pace before they could recover for long enough to stop me for directions.
The bright lights of the lobby made a man standing inside the first set of automatic doors cast a long shadow. He wore a high-collared trench coat and a wide hat with a low brim. At my approach, his head tilted up and I saw his face.
Shit. Dren.
“Hello, Nurse.”
I was overwhelmed with a deep sense of unfairness, the earnest and befuddled kind that you usually only feel when you’re a child. This was my home—sometimes even more than my apartment was. How dare he come here, now, threatening me. My jaw clenched.
“Your brother sleeps at the Armory every night,” Dren informed me. “I suppose it’s better there than the cold ground outside, but what’s the matter, Nurse? Don’t you love him? Or is he why you’re here?” He looked back into the lobby beyond.
“Stay away from my family, Dren.”
“Why should I?” His eyes glittered with amusement at my discomfiture. “You still owe me.”