13. Paul #2
“Because although I get it, or I think I do, and I’m willing to try this again, he won’t. Chris is a one and done. If he finds out you tricked us in any way, not only would he make your life a living hell, but he’d probably shut down this whole operation and say we need to rely only on the police.”
“Your detectives can’t tell if an assassin doesn’t have emotions. Or if people are lying.”
“I’m well aware.” I also could still hear one of them dismissing my suspicions and basically accuse me of being paranoid. “So, while I respect you wanting to come clean with Chris, do you agree it would be prudent to delay that for a while?”
She huffed a laugh, and I shot her a curious look. “Was something I said amusing?”
“Oh, it’s just that you like to revert to more formal vocabulary when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
She raised one of her pale eyebrows. Huh, she must have been darkening them with makeup, because they were barely visible on her washed face.
Not a big deal, of course, but the idea that I was getting to see a clean-scrubbed, more vulnerable side of her appealed to my wolf quite a bit.
And he was about as happy as could be after getting his knot off and being served a hot meal.
Eh, who was I kidding. I was happy about that too. It was kind of easy to imagine this was what my life could have been like if I wasn’t born a VanMarche.
“I can see it, you know. Kinda sludgy blue little dashes around your head like static.”
“Are emotions always the same when you see them? Like will my nerves always be like that, or does it change?”
“It changes. I can’t explain the how or why of it, but I think they’re affected by intensity, what else is going on in a person’s life, if they’re feeling that emotion toward someone they trust, someone they don’t know, etcetera, etcetera.
” She waved her hand like she wasn’t explaining something deeply complex and magical.
Her abilities were the Old World powers that had largely faded from the world as humans took over more space.
“Fascinating.”
“Is it?” she said, giving me an odd grin.
“Don’t you think so?”
“I… suppose. I’ve gotten so used to it over the years. It was real overwhelming when it first started happening but now… well now it’s mostly par for the course.”
“Did it set in during puberty?” That was how it worked with us shifters.
We were largely human until our animal sides were able to rise to the surface, and that was when our enhanced senses, accelerated healing, and ability to shift rolled in.
Some children got them earlier or later than others, just like humans went through puberty earlier or later.
“Eh, no. I always saw little flashes in the corner of my eyes, but I was told it was my imagination. I also didn’t have the words to describe or even understand what it meant.
I was around nine when my ADHD got real apparent, and I tested into the gifted program at school.
That was a good distraction up until I was about thirteen and the stuff in my peripheral vision became much more… distracting.”
“You were in a gifted program?” I asked, trying to envision a young Cherry in school. It wasn’t difficult to believe that she was plenty intelligent enough to get into that program, but it was difficult to believe she’d want to.
“Yeah, why?” she asked with an acerbic look.
Although Cherry often oozed confidence, she had quite the insecure streak.
“Would it be less surprising if I chose to speak more eloquently? If I switched my cadence to something a little more verbose to align with the academic setting I once excelled in?”
“It’s nothing like that,” I said with a slight chuckle, leaning back in my seat. “Just thinking that you were likely a handful for a teacher. They probably had a hard time keeping up with you.”
“She did,” Cherry said, blushing slightly, and I liked the look on her. “Especially since I genuinely used to talk like that.”
“Did you?” Strangely enough, I could imagine that just fine.
“Yeah, but then people would make fun of me, ask me why I talked like I swallowed a thesaurus. Or they said I was trying to be better than them. As I grew up and got more responsibilities, I realized it was way more fun and took less energy to loosen up a little and use slang.”
“I think my journey was more the opposite,” I said, musing on the matter.
“Yeah, because you use your professional vernacular as a shield, as I mentioned, oh, approximately forty-five seconds ago.”
“Oh, did you? I don’t recall anything like that.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
We shared a chuckle at that, and it put me at ease that we seemed to be trending toward normalcy.
Good. I was glad I hadn’t ruined everything by giving in to my more animalistic side.
I wasn’t sure if it was a good thing that Cherry brought out my more impulsive nature, but there was no denying that she did.
“Do you wanna use the bathroom first?” Cherry asked once she was done with her food and the protein bar.
“I already cleaned up, so we can head back to the estate once you’re ready.”
“Fantastic! I’m gonna take a quick shower. I’ll probably be about half an hour. That’s not too long to make you wait, is it?”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I have emails to catch up on.”
And probably a lot of missed calls from Chris. Maybe even Penelope.
Probably not Jackson, though.
“Okie dokie, artichokie! Be back down in a jiffy!”
She hurried upstairs. When I heard the bathroom door close and the shower start, I went to her room and grabbed my phone. Then it was to the craft room for my belt and discarded shoes.
Although my dark hair was much more unkempt than I would prefer, I ran my hand through it and settled down to catch up on missed work.
No one would blame me for falling behind after what my family had gone through, but the distraction was nice.
Especially since the word was still spreading about the murders, according to the reports the sub-alphas and betas emailed me.
Time got away from me as I went through the tedium, but the tedium was a nice break from the high-octane action of the day before. However, when I heard her thundering down the stairs, I could already hear that something was off.
“Ready to go!” Cherry cried, already down the steps as I rounded the corner to meet her.
“Phone?” I asked, putting mine in my pocket. Although that wasn’t what I’d heard that was wrong, I just had a feeling about it.
“Shit! One minute!”
Then she was off on what had to be a part of her cardio routine as she ran right back up the stairs, skipping the last one despite her short legs. She returned just as fast, her cheeks slightly pink.
It was such a direct parallel to how our journey had started the evening before, and how she’d first gone to my estate, that I couldn’t help but feel a certain sort of déjà vu.
“Wallet?” I asked.
“Ah, fuck. ”
Up the stairs again. I thought about shouting a last warning to her, but I wanted to see if she would notice the thing that had initially tipped me off.
But no, when she ran back down, panting slightly, her feet were still in the fuzzy slippers from earlier and no socks.
“What?” she asked, giving me that same quizzical look. I just pointed down, and her gaze finally went to her own feet.
“Are you kidding me?”
Up the stairs again. Maybe some would consider the entire process annoying or juvenile, but it just made me laugh. She was just so Cherry in a way that delighted me.
Besides, I was sure I was an acquired taste to many as well.
It doesn’t matter if we’re both an acquired taste because neither of us will be tasting the other!
A true statement, but perhaps not the best one to make because I already had tasted Cherry, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t thoroughly enjoyed it.
I tucked that thought away before she returned with socks and a pair of sensible hiking shoes in hand. Much different from her spy-esque outfit from the night before. Although I wouldn’t be entirely opposed to seeing her in those boots again.
Professional, Paul! Professional.
Easier said than done.
“Let’s go,” I said, trying to play it cool.
Because really, cool was just about the last thing I felt.
“So anyway, like I was saying, this study found out that fungi are basically closer to animals than they are plants, and then there’s this other group that believes since mushrooms are electron-dense and can survive the vacuum of space, they were brought here by an errant comet or random space dust. So that’s why we really should eat more of them! Who doesn’t wanna munch on an ali?—”
While I didn’t mind Cherry’s ten-minute monologue, something caught at my senses, and I held up a finger. To her credit, she instantly cut herself off and looked at me with wide eyes.
“What’s up?”
I didn’t answer her. My wolf senses finally identified the scent, and I rushed forward at full speed.
Blood.
Not just any blood, but my brother’s.
Chris’s blood.
No. No, no, no, nononono!
I’d allowed myself to get distracted. To get caught up in Cherry and all her charisma and the soft press of her body. I’d?—
“About time you got here,” Chris muttered as I burst through the front doors and raced into the main sitting area. Not the most cozy or private place, but I knew he’d liked reading there as a teen so he could watch the comings and goings of the estate.
“Chris!” I blurted as he calmly wiped blood from underneath his nose with a silk handkerchief. Relief and joy flooded through me, and somewhere in the back of my mind, a small voice wondered what that would look like to Cherry. “What happened? Are you all right?”