Chapter 26
As it turned out, Nadja was abysmal in the kitchen. She wasn’t surprised by this as she’d never really tried to cook anything more than the basics. She could boil noodles. She could make rice. She was excellent with a microwave.
But according to Robbie, she was a hazard to herself and everyone around her with a chef’s knife.
She didn’t think she’d been that bad, but when Robbie had come to check her progress and seen the mess she’d made of the bag of onions, he’d sighed, kissed her neck, and said, “Well, if the good Lord had made you smart, pretty, and good in the kitchen, you’d be too powerful. ”
She’d laughed, but with a firm peck on the lips and a firmer swat on the ass, he’d all but herded her out of the kitchen.
Nadja wasn’t often idle. Back home, she worked a lot, spending long days at her office with clients, and then working more at home to update charts and notes, manage billing and insurance. Then, when all of that was done, she often logged on to Voyours to feed herself.
But she felt an itchy lack of purpose here. She couldn’t do anything with her clients, not unless JJ had somehow decided to install internet that was capable of loading a webpage in less than ten minutes.
She couldn’t work. She couldn’t help Robbie in the kitchen.
The cabin was so small, and she and Robbie had so little that tidying happened sort of automatically.
Nadja made her way down the hallway from the kitchen into the large rec room.
Everything was neat and tidy. She pushed the bar on the door and went out onto the wide, wraparound porch, sitting heavily in one of the rockers.
The air was crisp, and she was glad that she’d remembered to grab her big, calf-length puffer coat before tossing a nearly foaming-at-the-mouth Robbie into the backseat of his car and driving to the commune.
She watched her breath puff in the air and remembered a dragon she’d met once in Hell who could blow smoke rings and shapes.
Once, she’d seen her create the Taj Mahal in a single exhale.
There, in the rocker, alone even though the sounds of the pack moving about were all around her, Nadja felt a strange pang of loneliness.
She’d never worried much about “belonging” before.
After all, she didn’t really belong here on Earth.
This was temporary. She was simply serving a sentence, doing a penance, before she’d be called back to where she’d come from.
But with the sounds of people chatting and laughing, pups howling and yipping, power tools and motors, leaves rustling underfoot, and tinny in the distance, the tinny sounds of the CD player in the kitchen, she wished she did belong.
“If you go any deeper into that brain of yours, girlie, we may never find you again.”
Nadja jumped and turned to see that Rose had taken a seat in the rocker next to her.
“I didn’t see you,” Nadja said with a shake of her head.
Rose snorted. “Obviously.”
“How… how are you?”
“If I were any better, I’d be you.”
Nadja snorted.
“Yeah, that joke usually works better when the other person has some signs of life.”
“I have signs of—oh, never mind.”
Rose grinned, revealing a gold tooth. Nadja wondered if the gold tooth remained when Rose shifted. A wolf with a gold tooth would be something to see.
“And how are you?” Rose asked, looking askance at Nadja while she rocked.
“I’m—” Nadja had begun to answer with a stock reply. I’m fine. Never better. Living the dream. She stopped herself, though, because she didn’t really know how she was.
On the one hand, she was better than she’d been in years.
Decades. She was full, she was energized, she was cared for.
She’d woken up with a cup of hot coffee on her nightstand and Robbie wrapped around her like a vine.
She was happy, which was new. New and exciting and terrifying all at the same time.
But she was also feeling pinched by the uncertainty of the situation.
No matter how much house they played, she wasn’t Robbie’s mate.
This was pretend. And while the pretend had turned into something fun and lovely, that didn’t make it real.
He would know if she was his mate, after all, and he hadn’t said anything.
Even if he had, she didn’t belong here. Who knew when she’d be sent back to Hell?
That eventuality had never bothered her.
She’d appeared on earth in a flash of brimstone, and she’d be removed from earth in the same way.
When she’d imagine it, she had only hoped it didn’t happen in the middle of a session with a client.
Depending on the client, that would be a giant mess, one she wouldn’t be around any longer to clean up.
Before Robbie, it wouldn’t have mattered much if she was called back.
Her clients would wonder what had happened to her, but she’d given Magda a binder entitled “What to Do When I Disappear” and was confident that Magda would make sure that the business side of things was handled.
As for her Voyours clients, the internet was so fleeting.
Sex workers came and went all the time. Geoff would miss her, as would her other regulars, but they’d move on.
Her replacement was a mere keyword search away.
It was the main reason she never let herself get close to anyone, Magda excluded.
Then again, Magda never really gave her a choice.
But the thought of forming bonds with someone and then abandoning them, never to know where she went or what happened to her, didn’t sit well with her.
It felt unethical at best, cruel at worst.
And yet she’d found herself entangled in the very situation she’d worked so hard to avoid. Because for better or worse, she did have a relationship of sorts with Robbie. Were she to disappear without a word, he would be devastated.
Maybe it would be better to end it herself as soon as possible. The prospect of that was painful for her, for reasons she didn’t understand. He wasn’t her mate. She wasn’t his. They were friends, new friends at that, who were just pretending.
Why, then, did it make her feel like she would vomit to even consider walking away from him? It would be the kindest thing she could do, keeping him safe from worse heartbreak and worry, and yet even the thought made her feel ill.
“I’m fine,” Nadja finally settled on.
“Mm-hmm,” Rose said. She looked over her shoulder at the rec hall, where the CD player was blasting Whitney Houston and Robbie was singing “How Will I Know?” in a squawking falsetto.
“Come on, girlie. Let’s take a walk.”
Nadja followed her off the porch and down the trail that led past her cabin and into the woods. It was the trail JJ had taken Robbie to for runs. Robbie said it led down to a lake.
Rose didn’t say a word as they walked, not to Nadja anyway.
But she had plenty to say to the members of the pack as she passed, asking after someone’s cold and complimenting the paint someone else had chosen for their front door.
She scolded a trio of kids for playing too near the prickle bushes but then laughed to herself as they passed and sang, “They’ll learn the hard way, I suppose! ”
Nadja followed behind, feeling more like an outsider than she ever had. She hadn’t spent much time around the pack, other than the first council meeting and that one pasta dinner. But Rose interacted with everyone with the ease of close family.
Eventually, they passed the last cabin, Robbie and Nadja’s cabin, and the forest sounds grew louder as the sounds of the pack faded in the distance.
They broke through the trees a while later, and then the lake appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.
It was smooth as glass, reflecting the towering trees surrounding it, the clouds in the sky.
Rose led her to a boulder and sat, patting a space beside her.
“Now, I’ll ask you again. How are you?”
With the ravens chattering in the trees overhead and the breeze ruffling the branches, it was somehow easier to answer than it had been before knowing that Robbie was twenty feet away, boisterously singing and clanging around the kitchen.
“I don’t know,” Nadja asked.
“Talk to me, Goose,” Rose said, chuckling to herself.
“I just… I don’t want to hurt him.”
Rose was quiet for a long moment. The ravens croaked, and something small rustled in the underbrush nearby.
“I don’t worry about him,” Rose said.
“But the pack—”
“Loves him,” Rose interrupted. “He’s pack, no matter what happens between the two of you.”
“But JJ said no unmated males are welcome in the pack.”
Rose nodded. “That’s true. And there’s a good reason for that. But that man of yours is more golden retriever than wolf, and that’s obvious to anyone who spends more than thirty seconds with him.”
Nadja smiled at the image. Robbie was a big puppy, friendly and keen and excitable and silly and everything she’d never once been herself. She felt relieved to hear that from Rose, that no matter what happened between herself and Robbie, that he’d be accepted. That he’d be safe, that he’d be loved.
“He is a golden retriever. You’re right about that.”
“I’m glad you brought him here. He’ll be good for the pack. You both would be good for the pack, if you decide to stay. Lord knows enough of us around here need therapy.”
“I can’t stay. I’m not his mate.” It felt as if all of the sound in the world died with that statement. The birds, the breeze, the rabbits in the underbrush. Everything went quiet, as if the earth was listening, waiting for what came next.
Rose, however, simply shrugged. “That’s not really my business.”
“Isn’t it pack business?”
“Yes and no. The stories have it wrong, you know. A wolf knows their mate, but it’s not like the whole pack knows it before they do. We’re good, but we’re not that good.”
“But Robbie would know. He would have told me.”
“Would he?” Rose asked, and Nadja couldn’t help but think of Magda and all of her infuriating questions, the answers to all of which she already knew.
“Wouldn’t he?” Nadja threw back.