8. Cheribelle #4
“I know it’s not just because you’re a wolf shifter. You guys have high caloric needs, but I’ve met a bear-wolf or two in my life.”
“Bear-wolf?” he asked. “Sounds like a contradiction, if you ask me.”
“Bear is gay slang, it means—” I cut myself off yet again. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
He let out the driest chuckle I’d ever heard. “Potentially.”
“How do you know about bears?”
“The internet exists, Cherry.” Fuck, I liked the way he said my name. This was only my second time hanging out with the guy, and we were on a murder case, but he was just so… so… so! He pinged my mind in all the right ways.
Don’t worry, eventually the other shoe will drop, and he won’t be so shiny.
True. That always happened eventually. Either I would get on his nerves with all my peculiarities, or eventually I would see through things he didn’t want me to see through, and he’d drop me like a sack of stones.
Or he’s your customer and your contract with him will be over. That’s the goal of this, isn’t it?
Oh… right.
“Besides, I didn’t really hit my full growth spurt until I was halfway through college, and chasing my brother across every night club along the East Coast to try to get him back to his boarding school before he was suspended had a lot of people mistaking me for a twink.
You’d be amazed what you learn when people make that assumption. ”
The laugh I let out was loud enough to be antithetical to how stealthy we were trying to be. I slapped a hand over my mouth. “That’s wild,” I whispered once I had a handle on myself. “I can’t imagine you being a late bloomer.”
“Well, I was. Hit my first growth spurt around sixteen and shot up half a foot. I was a beanpole. At twenty, I grew another nine inches and put on weight.”
“Huh. But you never answered my question.”
“Hmm?”
“How you’re so fit.”
“Ah, that.” It was dark enough that I might have had trouble seeing the color that bloomed on his cheeks.
Luckily, the bright, lilac mist that rose from the ground around him allowed me to see his abashment.
“I use exercise as a form of meditation. I have a standing desk, a walking pad, and a home gym. Whenever everything starts to feel too helter-skelter, I either go for a wolf-run or work out.”
There was the slightest tinge of falsehood to his lilac glow, and I figured it was something subconscious, like he’d been spending more time working out than being a wolf.
Although I didn’t really have any deep, personal relationships with shifters, I got the impression they were all proud of their inner animal and that it was shameful to neglect it.
Or maybe I was full of shit. Either way, I grinned, honored that he would share that with me.
“I know what you mean. Anytime I get too wound up, I usually try to create something.”
“Yeah,” he said with another nod. “That tracks.”
I really would have loved to just stay there and keep talking to him, but we had a mission. We stepped through the exit door, pulling it closed behind us.
For a split second, we were in a stereotypical hallway, one that would have been ubiquitous in any school or office. But then, after a few steps, the air in front of us rippled like a vertical pool of water.
I knew a portal when I saw one.
I stepped through it, and sure enough, we were transported to a space that was the complete opposite of where we had just been. There was no doorman demanding passwords. There wasn’t anyone at all. Just lots of stone and sconces casting blue light along the walls.
“Charming,” I remarked before striding forward.
I hoped that our unorthodox entrance didn’t have us in a labyrinthian maze or trap.
“Remember,” Paul murmured behind me as we walked down a narrow hallway cosplaying as a medieval castle’s dungeon passageway. “We’ve got to keep a low profile. And there’s no telling who has enhanced hearing, so be careful what you say.”
I nodded, my gaze sweeping this way and that as my head filled with dozens of thoughts, all layered on top of each other.
There’s a turn to the right a few feet ahead here.
What’s that way?
An exit?
Oh, two windows ahead!
Are those glamours as well or could we break through them?
Kind of a long haul .
Is this modern lighting, or some kind of enchantment?
Maybe both? Yeah sure.
They hired a witch with up-to-date engineering knowledge but ancient aesthetics. There are stranger things in life.
Another turn.
But this one has a bathroom sign .
Wait, do I smell cigarettes?
Probably someone standing outside an exit and the wind blowing it in.
Good to know.
“You okay?” Paul asked, his voice still low as we approached another large door at the end of the corridor. This one wasn’t metal and didn’t look like it weighed a million pounds.
“Yeah, fine,” I said, and this time it wasn’t a lie. “Just observing.”
On top of the running dialogue in my head about the layout of the place, there were various splashes of color floating around.
For whatever reason, even the fresh ones were quite dull, so I figured it had to be a side effect of the magical barrier we’d gone through.
That made my brain itch, but I tucked it away to research later.
“We don’t have to do this,” Paul murmured. “It is dangerous, and I could come back with security.”
“They’ll spot your guys in a second, no matter how undercover you look,” I said quickly, which was also true. “And you need me here to see if I can spot anyone without a psychic signature and see who’s lying or not. Isn’t that the whole point of this little excursion?”
“It is, but still, if you want, we can turn around.”
The weight of his words settled in my heart. It wasn’t some huge, flashy sentence, but this was a guy who was doing his best to protect his remaining siblings and find out who had killed two of his family members. And here he was, putting my safety above that.
Speaks a lot about his character. What does it say about mine that I’m lying to him?
I’m not lying! I’m just being creative with describing the truth!
Sure.
“No, we’re doing this. Who knows how long we have to get information about this bounty before it vanishes forever?
Besides…” I winked at him. It wasn’t the best one I’d ever dealt out, but oh well.
“What’s the point of having your own personal psychic if you don’t take her out on the town?
Or in this case, into a criminal bazaar? ”
I was expecting him to open the door for me. What I wasn’t expecting was for him to reach for the door handle, stepping closer so I was sandwiched between him and said door with only a few scant inches between us.
“Oh, so you’re mine now?”
What the fuck? Dear Lord, he’s gorgeous.
Smells good too! But also, what the fuuuuuck?!
But the moment was over as soon as it happened. He stepped to the side so I could shuffle out of the path of the door as he pulled it open.
“After you,” he said, and I swore his eyes sparked with the same swirls of rose-colored energy that were emanating in the air around him.
Attraction. I’m seeing attraction.
Holy shit.
If we were in any other situation, I probably would have ruminated on that fact and twirled it every which way in my head, dissecting it for hours. But this wasn’t any other situation, because we were stepping into a place where we didn’t belong and needed to be on our best—or worst?—behavior.
“Whoa…” I breathed, for once at a loss for words as I looked around.
I had been expecting something as dark and dilapidated as the disguised building we’d first approached, but that wasn’t what awaited us at all. Instead, it was like we were stepping into a wide, long, and well-lit street that stretched on for longer than a city block.
Not much of the night sky was visible above, obscured by all sorts of vegetation hanging down from vines, thick moss, and bioluminescent plants.
But between all that, I saw stars that were overly bright, like someone had put a magnifying glass over the whole place.
It was stunning just as much as it was alien, and if I didn’t know better, I would think we were no longer on Earth at all.
“How is this possible?” I breathed quietly, which was probably still too loud, but oh well. I was caught up in just how creepy but cool, how atmospheric but uncanny, how beautiful but unnatural the whole place was.
“Probably pocket dimension magic,” Paul said with a shrug like it was the most obvious thing. Well, it looked like I had another thing to add to my ever-growing list of Tbr (to be researched, of course).
“Probably,” I agreed, like I had any sort of opinion on the matter.
But how they made the space ranked as slightly less interesting than how they arranged the space, and I took another couple of steps forward.
It was like a mix between a jazz festival, an Italian mezzanine, and a typical city neighborhood with brownstones on either side of the long street, some with business signs on them, some with open doors and people sitting on the stoops, and some as silent as the graves we’d end up in if we crossed the wrong person.
Exciting. Terrifying . But cool! But also, have you considered terrifying?
I looked at the large, open-air area to my left, where tables were all set up—enough for a couple dozen people to sit and eat at—complete with fairy lights strung up between posts.
Not literal fairies, of course. I was pretty sure those didn’t exist. Granted, with everything I was learning tonight, maybe I was wrong about that.
To my right, on the cobblestone that reminded me of a palazzo, was what looked to be a beer garden with a canopy over it, stretched wide to make a sheltered sitting area in case it rained.
Or maybe for anyone who’s sun-sensitive in these parts?
Interesting.
“Let’s start with that area,” I said, jerking my head in the direction of the outdoor seating area.
“Any reason or just intuition?”
“Good ol’ psychic gut feeling.”
“Right. I’ll get us drinks, so we can blend in. Any requests?”