Chapter 9
9
Elliot Crane
Thanks for the coffee.
Seth Mays
No problem.
I’d made a full pot of coffee in the coffeemaker so that there would be coffee hot and ready when Elliot got up. He was not a morning person, and usually rolled out of bed around nine or even ten. He actually slept for what seemed to be a full eight hours. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had that much consecutive sleep pretty much ever. Even when I’d been sick, I’d slept in fits and starts, not solid chunks.
Getting about six hours was my average, hence my addiction to coffee. In my defense, pretty much everyone in law enforcement or CSI work was addicted to coffee.
I spent the morning doing paperwork, all of the fun stuff that was required to become a certified employee of the state of Wisconsin and Shawano County, plus tax forms, HR processing forms, and so on. And then I’d been introduced to Sheriff Jefferson Mallet, a tall man with thick, dark hair and a skin tone that looked sun-bronzed. He’d asked a couple perfunctory questions, then shaken my hand, welcoming me on board.
It was well after one by the time I managed to get through all of that. I made my way back to the crime lab, such as it was, to find Roger and Lacy working on matching tire treads and shoe prints.
“You all legal now?” Lacy asked me, grinning and showing her teeth. Neither she nor Roger had masks on today. Not like I was worried about it, but I wondered what protocol was here.
“I am,” I replied with a nod.
Lacy reached over, picking up a bowl, and offered it to me. A glance inside showed me chips with some sort of orange powder on them.
“Oh, um. Thanks. I have some… food allergy issues,” I said, feeling heat on the back of my neck. “I can’t have dairy.”
“You moved to the dairy state and can’t have dairy?” Roger asked, sounding both pitying and incredulous. It was then that I noticed the wrapper of a massive sandwich, a pile of chips next to it, as well as a pickle.
“Not by choice,” I replied. “But yeah. I realize that I’m facing a bit of a challenge.” He hadn’t sounded mean, and I didn’t want to start things off on the wrong foot with my new coworkers.
“I’m sure Terry will make you something without cheese,” he said.
“Terry?” I asked.
“Terry runs the food truck that makes the rounds to all the government buildings,” Lacy told me, speaking around a mouthful of her own sandwich. “I’ll take you over and introduce you.”
“Oh, um, I brought?—“
“Nonsense,” she replied, standing up and brushing her hands on her thighs. “I’m buying you lunch on your first official day. Especially after you had to do all that paperwork and did an impromptu crime scene yesterday!”
“Oh. Um. Okay. Thanks.”
I let her take me outside and across the street to where a little food truck with the words Terry’s Tucker painted on it in green letters on bright yellow was parked.
I was introduced to Terry, which led to an explanation about alpha-gal, and Terry made me a turkey sandwich on rye and promised to come up with some more exciting options for me in the future. Terry also sold chips of several kinds, not just cheddar and sour cream flavor, so I got some salt and vinegar, and Terry gave me several fat garlic pickle spears.
Terry also promised that the cookies used shortening instead of butter, and then insisted on giving me two of them on the house to welcome me to Shawano.
By the time I finished my lunch, I was actually starting to feel like I might actually like living here.
I called Noah first, now that all the paperwork made it official.
“Hey, Sethy,” he answered. “You okay?”
“I’m good, Nono,” I told him. “I got the job.”
He whooped, although I could tell he wasn’t as excited as I wanted him to be.
“You still think this is a bad idea,” I said, his dourness dampening my excitement.
He sighed. “I’m glad you got the job,” he said slowly. “But I’m still worried about you. And I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” I admitted, because I did. This was the farthest we’d been from each other ever in our lives. “But I like these people, Noah. I think I’ll really like working with them.”
“And Elliot?” The way he said Elliot’s name was not flattering.
“He’s good,” I said, deliberately misunderstanding the question.
“You know what I mean,” Noah grumbled. He wasn’t wrong.
“It’s fine,” I replied a little shortly. It wasn’t, not really. Because I wanted it to be something it wasn’t and wasn’t going to be. Not because Elliot was being mean or callous or anything like that.
Noah sighed again, but he let it drop, although he’d already rained on my parade, so it felt like it didn’t really matter.
We talked for a while, catching up. I asked about Lulu, forcing myself to be charitable, which was—embarrassingly—easier now that I found myself in a situation where Noah wasn’t terribly happy with the state of my love life, either. Because I could hear the same defensive protectiveness in his voice that I felt in my own chest when it came to the people Noah dated.
When I hung up with him, I called Quincy, although she didn’t answer, instead shooting me a quick text telling me she was at a scene. I texted her back, telling her I got the job and that she should call me later.
And then I sent one to Hart.
I didn’t expect him to call me in return—a text, sure, but my phone started ringing, and it was his name on the screen.
“Hiya Hart.” I’m sure I sounded surprised.
“Mays,” he replied, sounding the way Hart sounded when he wanted something or was about to make your life difficult by asking you to do something that was going to eat up your Sunday afternoon. I had no idea what it might be, though. “I—I mean, congrats on the job.”
“Thank you…” I’m sure I sounded extra awkward, because I couldn’t imagine he’d called me just because he wanted to congratulate me. He easily could have done that by text, and in my experience, Hart was generally a texter unless he thought it was important.
“They did a reference call day before yesterday,” he told me.
“Thanks,” I said again.
“I mean, no problem. I just—You need to know what you’re getting into, here, Mays.”
“What I’m getting into?”
Hart sighed. “Look, I didn’t tell you all the nitty gritty details of what went down out there last Christmas. But if you’re actually going to stay there, you deserve to know what kinds of people you’re going to be working and living with.”
And then he told me.
About the previous medical examiner, and how he’d helped a group of anti-Nid radicals kill shifters, and how some of them were cops. I’d known a lot of this, but not some of the details. And not how long he’d been doing it. Hart told me about what he’d seen and heard as a normie human growing up in Shawano, even though his best friend had been a shifter.
I wasn’t shocked. Maybe a little disappointed, but Shawano was a small town in a mostly-conservative state. I was from one of those. I knew what it was like. And, honestly, what I’d encountered in Shawano had actually seemed pretty tolerant, although I was mostly keeping my status as a shifter to myself. Except for Elliot.
But talking to Hart was actually nice. A lot of it I’d already heard from Elliot, but another perspective was also useful, so I thanked him. “I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, yeah,” came the typical response. But then things took a bit of a turn. “And… Seth?” Hart never called me Seth. It made me suddenly nervous.
“Yeah?”
“I have a piece of advice.”
“You do?” I don’t think Hart had ever given me advice. Sure, he’d just dropped a lot of information, but none of it had been a recommendation about what to do or not do.
“Yeah. About El.”
Uh oh .
“Look, Hart, I know?—”
“He probably babbled some shit at some point about not wanting a relationship blah blah fucking blah, right?”
“Uh. Yes?” This was weird. Hart and I were not this close. I knew Hart and Elliot were, but I was not included as a part of that. Or maybe now I was? It was weird.
“Let me tell you something about Elliot fucking Crane. He’s a stubborn bastard, he bites when he’s upset, and it’ll take the goddamn Huns to knock down the emotional walls that asshole has built up.”
I had no idea what to say to that.
“He’s had one, I repeat, one serious romantic relationship, and that ended in a shitstorm so bad we burned everything it touched. I’m not going to give you details, but it’s been one fuckboy after another since. Or none at all, sometimes.”
I swallowed. “O-kay.”
“The point is that the stripey dick doesn’t know what’s good for him—I ought to know, I’m almost as fucking bad—and he’s not going to do anything about the feelings that he clearly has and has buried in a hole somewhere in the goddamn yard.”
“Feelings?” This conversation was just getting weirder, but it was also going in a direction that had my pulse racing for a different reason. Because if Elliot had feelings for me… But I couldn’t let myself hope too much. I was already in for serious heartbreak as it was.
“Yeah, fucking feelings,” Hart repeated, and he sounded about as uncomfortable as I felt. So at least we were in it together. “That shithead cares about you, why, I don’t know— no offense—but the stupider thing is that he’s not going to say anything about it because of where it might land him.”
“Where might it land him?” I asked.
“Somewhere squishy where he might have to admit he’s not as much of a big, tough badger badass as he’d like to think.”
I snorted. I couldn’t help it.
“Laugh all you want, Mays, but do you know what he told me?”
“What?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
“He let you touch his wood, dumbass.”
Okay, that was a fast jump. “Not that it’s any of your business,” I pointed out. I had just been getting used to talking about feelings with Hart, and now he wanted to talk about my sex life? Nope. Just nope.
“Jesus fuck, Mays. Wood. Boards. Pine, oak, whatever fucking tree shat it out doesn’t matter. I don’t ask and I don’t want to know about his dick. Fuck.”
At least Hart sounded about as embarrassed as I was. “Yes, Hart, I helped him get some work done. It was the least I could do.” We were not going to talk about what other kinds of wood I helped with.
“He let you help him build his little outdoor shower thing.”
“Uh… yeah?” That didn’t seem particularly remarkable to me. Elliot had a project, I helped. I was living rent-free in the house, so helping with things like garden boxes and outdoor cedar showers was literally just me not being a total waste of space.
“There are four—no, now five people on the fucking planet he has allowed to touch his carpentry shit. I am one of them. His dad was another. My dad is the third, and Henry is the fourth. And now you, Seth Mays. Two of those people have known him since the day he was born, and the other two of us have known him since he was five fucking years old. And you, my special- ass snowflake, have known him since goddamn March . And he’s letting you touch his shit.”
“Uh…” I wasn’t sure what to do with that. I mean, it did sound important when Hart said it that way, but it certainly hadn’t seemed momentous at the time. Just like, hand me the hammer .
“He won’t say a goddamn thing about it because he’s short a few emotional braincells,” Hart continued, and it took an act of will not to ask if he was the pot or the kettle. “And he’ll just swallow it down until it fucking chokes him. He won’t even tell me what he’s feeling, but if he let you use his tools, and I mean his fucking hammer and screwdriver and lathe and whatnot, then you’re important to him.”
I let out a breath. “Okay.”
“So two things, and then we never have to speak of this again. One, you break his heart, and I will be the last person you ever see because your body will be chopped up into a hundred pieces and scattered all over the north woods in places that even a bloodhound couldn’t fucking find.”
Okay, then.
“Two,” he went on, as though he hadn’t just threatened to murder and dismember me, “you’re going to have to be the one to speak first. Because he won’t. And I can’t tell you if he loves you yet, but he definitely cares . So if you want this to be something, you’ll have to start it.”
I was trying to figure out what to say to that when Hart spoke again.
“And three?—”
“I thought you said two things.”
“Shut the fuck up and listen, Mays.” He didn’t sound angry, though. “I like you. I honestly think you’d be good for him.” He sighed, but I could tell it was the kind of sigh that was leading somewhere, so I stayed quiet. “Elliot is the second most important person in my life, and I want to see him happy. But he’s a goddamn badger and takes the whole solitary mustelid thing a little too seriously, so he’s going to react badly. Maybe badly enough that you’ll have to sleep on somebody else’s couch.”
Which probably meant the break room at work or under my brand-new-to-me desk. Hooray.
“You need one, I’ll call my mother, and she’ll absolutely take you in, but if I do that, you’ll remain her surrogate child for the rest of your life, so deploy that chute only in a fucking real emergency, you got me?”
I swallowed, terrified and oddly touched and a little warm-feeling because Hart was offering to introduce me to his mom , and that meant that he actually liked me. Not in that way—but you know what I mean. “I got you.”
“Good. And Seth?” There was my name again.
“Yeah?”
“I’m rooting for you.”