27

DOCTOR’S ORDERS WERE to curl up next to Nathaniel and share energy with him while we slept. As doctor’s orders went I’d had worse. Micah had lain next to him while I got my shit together. Now it was my turn. We’d have shift changes of lycanthropes sleeping next to the wounded until they were healed. There was something about just the closeness of the beasts’ different energy that sped healing for the shapeshifters. They usually put two shapeshifters per wounded, but we didn’t have enough of them at the Circus to guard the building and put two apiece on Nathaniel and Claudia, who was just down the hallway. I’d checked on her, but she’d been deeply asleep. I’d been assured she’d be fine and she already had her bunk buddy, so I did what I was told for a change. I stripped down and cuddled with Nathaniel.

I let myself sink in against his side, one leg over his thigh so my thigh touched just the edge of his groin, not for sex, but because it comforted us both. One arm went around his waist. The rest of me snuggled in against his body until we fit like two puzzle pieces shaped and molded to form the corner of the picture. It was a place to begin, so that the other pieces could fit in around us, and eventually if there were enough pieces the picture would be whole, and everything would be fine.

I drank in the smoothness of his skin, the sweet vanilla scent of him, but under it all was another sweet smell. Sweet copper pennies, blood, meat, his body opened up and hurt. I snuggled lower on his body to bury my face deeper against his skin until all I could smell was his skin, whole and sweet.

Nathaniel fell asleep first, and I lay in the darkened room feeling his body rise and fall under my arm. I listened to his soft breath as it deepened. He usually fell asleep before I did, but I fought sleep so I could feel him beside me just a few minutes longer. I knew how close I’d come to never having him beside me again. The thought made me wrap myself tighter around him, and eventually I slept beside him.

I was back in the living room staring down into Haven’s blue eyes. I raised the gun and started to pull the trigger, but it wasn’t Haven anymore, it was Jason. I had a moment to raise the gun ceilingward and not fire into his blue eyes, and then it was Haven again and he was shooting me.

I came awake gasping, and only Nathaniel’s body beside me let me know it was just a dream, just a dream. I lay there with my pulse thudding on my tongue, chest painful with the beat of my own heart. I heard the door open softly, and my hand went under the pillow automatically for the gun I’d placed there, but it was Nicky, back in human form, and armed. Apparently he’d been on guard outside the door. He closed the door softly behind him and walked toward us. I started to take my hand out from under the pillow and then didn’t. I liked the weight of the gun in my hand while the werelion walked toward me. Nicky was mine in a way that no one else was, mine to the point where there was almost not anything left of who he’d been, but I’d thought Haven had been tamed, too. Be a bitch to be wrong twice in the same day.

He held his hands out to his sides, showing that he was unarmed. Something about how I lay on the bed, or maybe even my hand under the pillow, had let him know I was spooked.

He whispered, “You cried out in your sleep. Are you all right?” He stayed where he was, hands still out.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding, and nodded.

“Can I come closer?”

I nodded again and tried to force myself to let go of the gun under the pillow. I circled my hand around it a little more firmly as he moved toward the bed. He smiled down at me and started to reach out to touch my arm.

I whispered, “Don’t.”

He stopped moving, frowning. “What’s wrong?”

“Bad dreams.”

“About me?”

“No.”

“Then why can’t I touch you?” he whispered. It was a good question. I thought about it and finally realized I had to stop being this spooked. I couldn’t function like this. Either I trusted Nicky or I didn’t. We’d never trusted Haven enough to put him on guard duty here, even if he’d have done it. In fact, Nicky was the only werelion we trusted that much. That had to change. Anyone we couldn’t trust had to leave St. Louis. With that decision, a little tension eased.

Then there was the sound of church bells, melodious and sweet, but it would wake Nathaniel. Nicky got my cell phone off my piled clothes and handed it to me without being asked. I’d forgotten to turn off the ringer.

I took the phone from him, forcing myself to let go of the gun so I could prop myself up better. Was it a bad sign that I felt less secure without the gun actually in my hand? I felt Nathaniel shift behind me and knew the phone had woken him. I answered the phone without checking to see who it was, just wanting the noise to stop. “I’m here.” And I knew it was more a snarl than a greeting.

“Blake, is that you?”

I didn’t recognize the man’s voice at first. “It’s me. Who is this?”

“You fuck me and my people over that completely and you don’t remember me. Perfect.”

I had a moment to try and think. The clue was, he said me and my people. “Jacob?”

“Yeah.”

Nicky looked down at me with his one eye and his spill of bangs halfway down his face. He was watching more intently now, like a cat that sees movement.

I tried to picture Nicky’s tall ex-Rex. He had blond hair going gray around the edges, but the face and body that went with the hair were still muscular and firm. When you’re a werelion Rex, you have to stay in shape. Besides, all the shapeshifters age slower than normal humans, something about shapeshifting repairing their cell structure. “What do you want?”

“You always this friendly on the phone?” he asked.

“Yeah, when I’ve just been woken up.”

“It’s daylight where you are.” Which implied that where he was, it was night. Since he and his pride were international assassins and kidnappers, among other things, he could have been anywhere in the world.

“I work nights, Jacob. What do you want?”

“Maybe I don’t want anything. Maybe I’ll just hang up and let you take care of your own mess.”

“Jacob, it has been one of my harder days, after an even harder night. Tell me what you called to tell me.”

“I got offered a contract on you and your boyfriends, Blake.”

“What kind of contract?” I asked.

“They didn’t want us to kidnap anyone this time,” he said, voice quiet.

“Assassination,” I said. My voice sounded bored.

“You don’t sound surprised. Did you already know that it was happening?”

“No, I didn’t know.” Nathaniel put an arm around my waist, drawing me more firmly against his side.

“But you aren’t surprised,” he said.

“Let’s just say that my surprise is all used up for a while. I’ll assume that if you were taking the contract you wouldn’t have called.”

“I turned it down. I told the person calling that no one should take it, that if they did you’d find a way to fuck them up.”

“Thanks for that, Jacob, but I take it you don’t think they’ll take your warning to heart.” I tried to feel something about the idea that they’d tried to hire people to kill us, but I didn’t feel anything, not really.

He didn’t answer my question, but asked one of his own. “How’s Nicky?”

I thought about a lot of answers but finally said, “Ask him yourself.” I handed the phone to Nicky, who said, “A little wired, but good.”

He was quiet for a few seconds. “No, really, Jacob, I’m good. I’ve never been this relaxed.” He laughed. “Yeah, I guess you’re always happy when you’re on the drugs, but I don’t come down, Jacob.” He laid his hand on my bare shoulder. The moment he did, I felt a little better, a little warmer. Nathaniel cuddled closer, and it was better still. “All I have to do is touch her and it’s just an upper,” Nicky said.