Four
Saturday morning, there was knocking on my front door. I answered in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt with one eye open, not sure what was happening, and there was Cole, grinning crazily at me and carrying a bag that smelled amazing.
“No,” I said.
He chuckled. “Yes. I want to eat with you and talk to you and—”
“No,” I repeated.
“Wait, c’mon, just listen.”
I scowled at him.
“I went to your restaurant.”
“I already know that from the bag I can see in your hand.”
“Stop being an ass.” He grinned wider. “And start being the sweet man I met last night.”
I grunted to stop myself from smiling. He thought I was sweet? No one ever thought I was sweet.
“Your place is gorgeous, by the way. It feels like a sanctuary from the outside world in there. I was a bit overwhelmed once I was inside.”
There was no containing the smile this time.
“Dakota—is that right?”
I nodded.
“Dakota told me what to order, and I’m assured that what I have here is your favorite veggie omelet, and I got it just like she suggested, with lots of extra mushrooms.”
“I––”
“And she had me order the Denver omelet with fake ham for myself,” he said with a shudder, “which sounds vile, but I’m keeping an open mind.”
“Yeah, I can tell from the look of revulsion on your face.”
“Anyway, Lupe said you like the coffee I have in the car for you, which, I have to admit, smells amazing and is in a weird mug.”
“It’s not weird, it’s made out of red clay with mica in it.”
“Well, take this and I’ll go get it.”
I took the paper bag—everything from what you carried your food in to our to-go containers, was compostable at The Bower—and waited as he dashed down my front stairs back to his Tacoma pickup. He had to come back up the stairs slower or he would have spilled.
“This was very nice of you but—”
He held up a hand to stop me. “All I want to do is share a meal with you and talk to you, so could you please just let me?”
Ondine picked that moment to fly over, land on my shoulder, and stare at Cole, studying him. Why she was there, and where she’d come from, I had no idea.
“Who is this stunningly beautiful creature?” he asked, marveling at my winged friend but not daring to reach out and touch her. “Is she a peregrine falcon?”
“No.” I grimaced. The fact that he knew something about birds was potentially problematic. “She’s a gyrfalcon.”
“Is she really?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get her?”
“She was hurt, and I found her when I was visiting the coast years ago.”
“And she’s been with you ever since?”
Thankfully, he didn’t ask me which coast. “She has.”
“She doesn’t fly away?”
“She does, but she always comes back.”
“May I pet her?”
Her talons tightened on my shoulder. “Apparently so, but gently.”
“Of course.” He reached out, curling his fingers in, and slowly ran the backs of them down the length of the feathers on her side. “Oh, Mere, she’s so beautiful.”
He was the beautiful one, and he smelled like oakmoss and smoke from a smoldering fire, and musk and sandalwood, and it took everything in me not to lean in and breathe deep.
“What’s her name?”
“Ondine.” I barely got it out.
“I’ve never seen one up close. She’s just…breathtaking.”
“Man, you’re gonna give her a big head, and she already thinks she’s the goddess’s gift to the world, so…”
“The goddess’s gift?”
I shook my head. “Just come in,” I invited him, lifting my shoulder to get Ondine to move to no avail. She was not budging.
Cole did what everyone did when I stepped aside and allowed people to cross my threshold—he stood and stared.
It was beautiful inside, and it should have been for how long I’d worked on it.
The house wasn’t square, it was round, and from the outside, with the curved glass and petrified wood, it resembled a jar.
Winding stairs went up to the second floor, where the library and my gallery of paintings were, along with a beautiful bedroom that had been meticulously curated over many years.
There were no stairs to ascend any higher, but up another level, there was a ledge built on the right that was closed on three sides but had no door, only a cozy loft space where, sometimes, Teague could be found.
He had asked for a space with me, but it had to be inaccessible to anyone but him, and I had granted that request.
The vast first floor, five thousand square feet, was where my bedroom and bathroom were, as well as another spare bedroom and adjoining bathroom.
I had built the kitchen along one wall of the opalized petrified wood that also made up the floor.
There was a guest bathroom, a huge, curved fireplace, currently lit and the only stone in the home, and an enormous sectional that made a giant, squared-off U that framed it.
I had thick rugs on the floors, great specimens of Navajo weaving, and both knitted and crocheted blankets that had been gifts from my servers over the years.
“Holy shit, Mere, this is amazing. Christ, I thought your restaurant was beautiful, but this is… Do you give tours here?”
“Funny,” I grumbled, before I took the food to the kitchen and told him to go ahead and look around.
You could stand in the center and see everything, and there was another area opposite the hearth with a rocking chair and a smaller overstuffed couch next to a table and a reading lamp that looked out on a small clearing.
There were trees all around it, so it felt like you were in your own private space, and the window ledge was wide enough to sit on, bookended by two walls made of the same petrified wood filled with ammonites and opals.
Cole, who had slipped his shoes off just inside the front door, now lay down on the smaller couch and stretched out, flipping on the lamp, as it was dark and cloudy outside.
“Aren’t you hungry?” I asked him.
“I am, but I have an overwhelming desire to take a nap here and—wait.”
“What?” I took a sip of the café de olla Lupe had sent for me.
“Wasn’t your falcon white with black flecks a minute ago?”
“No,” I lied, because she was very clearly blue and green at the moment. And not even in a subtle way where I could say “Oh, yes, those are varieties that appear in nature,” but more like deep ocean colors that no gyrfalcon in the history of ever had displayed.
“Yes, she was.”
I grunted and opened the bag. Ondine hopped down from my shoulder to see what I had, but once she realized there was no meat of any kind, she lost interest.
“So she can just change colors whenever she wants?”
What was I supposed to say? That my falcon was a brat and was trying to force me to reveal that not only was she a magical creature, but so, in a way, was I?
And it wasn’t as though I hadn’t planned to tell him everything—I had to if I wanted to pursue anything with him at all—but being pushed was never something I enjoyed.
That being said, as fearless as I was in almost all areas of my life, my heart was something I was far more protective of. But now was not the time to be timid. I needed to be brave. Fortune favored the bold, after all.
“Yes,” I told him. “Because she’s magic.”
He stared at me. “You were going to lie.”
“I was.”
“What made you change your mind?”
I took a deep breath. “Without honesty, what can any relationship ever hope to be?”
“And so you were truthful because you’re hoping for…what, with me?”
“Friends, to begin with,” I replied, even though I knew the conversation I had to have with him about his place in the pack might even preclude that. It was sad really, because I already liked him.
“Always a good start.”
“It is.”
Quick exhale. “Okay, so she’s magic, and so are you.”
“Of a sort. Not like her.”
“I see.” He smiled. “So, more importantly, does she not eat veggies?”
“Never,” I told him. It was pretty great that he wasn’t immediately pressing to learn everything about my magical abilities. That was terribly confident of him, like he had all the time in the world to learn my secrets, and I found that wildly appealing.
“Does she hunt?”
“Yes.”
“Do you let her hunt on your land?”
“She goes where she wants when she wants, believe me.”
Clearly, Ondine didn’t like my tone, because she bit me to show her displeasure, then flew up high to sit on one of the exposed beams in the ceiling.
“That was mature,” I told her.
She fluttered her wings for my benefit, then settled. I noted that she was back to the colors a wild gyrfalcon would normally be.
“So animals can hunt on your land?” Cole asked me, returning my attention to him.
“Of course. Animals don’t kill for no reason, they do it to eat and to protect themselves.”
“But because we’re hunting just to hunt, even when we’re shifted, your land knows the difference.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s because that was your intention when you drew it.”
“Correct.”
“Okay.” He nodded, grinning, clearly pleased that I told him the truth. “So you can draw a boundary but your magic is rudimentary at best?”
“You sound like you don’t believe me.”
“No, I believe you, but it seems to me a boundary that powerful would need to be made by someone very powerful themselves.”
“It’s actually a very basic warding spell,” I told him. “A lot of people draw circles all the time to keep things out and keep them safe.”
“Like on TV shows where they make salt circles.”
“Exactly.”
“But because you’re magic, it has a bit more bite.”
I chuckled. “Because I’m a creature of punishment, it has more bite.”
“What kind of punishment?”
He leered and accompanied it with an eyebrow waggle, and I heard his suggestive tone clear as day. I scowled at him.
“What?” He was defensive.
“This is not supposed to be a pervy conversation.”
“You’re the one who brought up punishment.”
“Wow.”
“Whatever. Judge me later, just know that if you want to punish me, for anything, you go right ahead. I’m ready.”
I tried really hard not to smile at him. This was not at all how I’d seen this conversation ever going. I’d expected fear or disbelief, not him taking it all in stride. “Come over here and sit down at the table.”