Asil’s Third Date Asil and the Not-Date #3
She raised an eyebrow at him and he understood. Physically she was no match for a violent man, but she had dominance, and that could help keep her safe.
“I’ve been doing this for ten years,” she told him with the chill in her voice that her eyebrow had promised. “Outside of a few bruises, I’ve been fine.”
Tilter of windmills, he thought. But that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Interesting that his wolf wasn’t upset with her tartness—not as restless in her company as it had been in Kelly’s, though the young man from his first date wasn’t as tempered by life as she was.
Maybe it was because she wasn’t challenging him—her eyes met his and then slid away, as though someone had taught her not to engage in a stare-down, good manners at an instinctive level.
There was this also: the wolf respected and honored a fighter who took care of others.
She sighed, and the tension in his spine relaxed as she stopped confronting him.
“But I’ve moved mostly into macro work anyway—grant writing, property management, supervision.
I spend more time dealing with city officials and business owners than I do with clients.
” She slanted him a smile. “I only had a knife pulled on me once this month.”
He knew that she wasn’t lying. She had had a knife pulled on her this month. But she was trying to lighten the atmosphere—so he smiled, though he was not amused at her attempt to make light of such a threat.
“And that—the danger—was another reason my last boyfriend and I broke up,” she told him. “Mind you, Chris is a cop. And my job scared him spitless.”
As it should, he thought.
Maybe he’d let his opinion show too much, because she said, “I’m going to the ladies’ room. While I’m gone, you should think about how I am a grown woman who can think for herself and make her own decisions.”
“That sounds like an argument you are having with someone other than me,” Asil said, soft voiced.
She sighed, the outrage leaving her shoulders as she got to her feet. “And I need to think about overreacting.”
When she returned, she asked, “What do you do for work?”
He shrugged. “I manage money,” he told her truthfully—but didn’t tell her it was his own money he managed. “Boring. Which is one of the reasons I grow roses.”
The waiter came and they ordered their food.
She got a salad with steak on it—which he had never seen the point of.
Salad should be salad and meat should be meat.
He ordered a steak, medium rare out of deference to her “well-done, please” order.
People who liked their steak burned to a crisp often had unhappy reactions to the way he preferred to eat meat.
When the waiter left, Asil asked, “What do you like best about your work?”
“It’s never boring,” she said, playing with her wineglass. “I meet all kinds of people, you know? Good and bad. Broken. Strange. Survivors.” She laughed at a thought.
“What?” he asked.
“Last week we found a place for one of the regulars—one of the guys who’s been homeless for decades. It was a studio on the second floor. The first thing he did was open his window and pee on the head of his caseworker. And his neighbor. And the mailman.”
That had, at various times and places, been a common pastime for schoolboys—though they had been more likely to use chamber pots. Asil gave her a smile.
She grinned at him. “I’ve known him for years, we have a certain rapport—and I’m in charge of the case manager he peed on. So he and I had a visit.”
Asil waited.
“I asked him why he was peeing on people,” she said. “He started laughing. ‘It’s fun,’ he told me. ‘You should see their faces.’ ”
Asil laughed. This was going to be an enjoyable evening, he thought, no lionesses or graduate students in distress to rescue on this date. Not-date.
“How did you stop him?” he asked.
She paused, watching his mouth for a moment, took a breath, and shook her head. “You are too pretty.”
“That is true,” he said, “but I want to hear the rest of the story.”
She laughed, looked at him, and then shook her head again.
“Okay. Well, I couldn’t argue with him about it being funny.
His caseworker’s expression was”—she raised her eyebrows and made an exploding gesture with her hands—“pretty extraordinary when he burst into my office. So instead, I asked him, ‘What would you do if someone peed on you?’ He jumped to his feet, already mad. ‘I’d beat them up,’ he told me.
‘You can’t let that kind of disrespect stand.
’ I looked at him—and he deflated. He’s not stupid, just differently educated.
He told me, ‘I guess if I don’t want to get beaten up, I’d better not pee on people. ’ ”
“Did he stop?” Asil asked.
She nodded and the amusement faded from her face.
“I hope it will work out for him. It’s hard for the ones who’ve been out on the street that long.
He sleeps in his closet when he’s not back out with his cronies sleeping by the river.
” Her expression was wry. But then she shook off the story.
“My turn for a question. Why do your friends think you need a friend?”
He lowered his eyes and thought. There were several things that he could have said, all of them true but not the truth.
Her phone rang.
He’d been going to tell her something interesting—she knew people. Something interesting—or something light and funny to cover up whatever had caused his expression to turn thoughtful.
She glanced at her phone, intending to send it to voice mail if it wasn’t important. Joshua.
“I’m sorry. I have to take this.”
She got up and moved to the front of the restaurant to the empty benches by the door—halfway across the restaurant from her table, where her voice wouldn’t bother anyone.
In the relative privacy offered by the alcove, she accepted the call.
Joshua said, “Tami? I’m sorry to call but we’re trapped in Mama’s place and I’m pretty sure I smell smoke.” His voice had dropped in the last year, but it cracked when he said “smoke.”
“Trapped?” Tami asked calmly—because panic never makes any situation better. Joshua was claustrophobic—and had good cause to be so. If there was smoke, someone in that neighborhood would call the police. “You and the girls? Or all of you?”
“I don’t know about Mama,” Joshua said, obviously trying to mimic her calm demeanor.
“Something fell in the hallway and caused an avalanche and these fu—” He caught himself.
“The doors in the house open out into the hallway. I can’t get the door open.
” His voice cracked again, and he took a breath.
When he resumed speaking, he sounded much younger than his age and terrified.
“Mama had bars put on all the windows so the thieves couldn’t get in and steal her stuff—”
“I remember,” said Tami. The boy—young man, really—was well and truly trapped. “You should call 911 as soon as I hang up.”
“No,” he said. “Please, Tami. I can’t call them on Mama again. She tried to kill herself last time. I don’t think there is really smoke. Bea? Do you smell smoke?” There was a murmur Tami couldn’t hear. “No smoke,” he said. “Mama doesn’t mind if you come. But if the police come…she’s doing better.”
There was more hope than conviction in his voice.
“Okay,” she said. “I’m coming right now. Hold tight. If there is smoke—you call 911.”
She hadn’t driven. Her apartment was close so she’d decided to walk off her nerves about meeting her not-date. But she could call an Uber or a taxi if she needed to.
She glanced over her shoulder. Asil was putting money—three hundred dollars—on the table. As she watched, he stood up, gathered her purse and her coat. Something about her coat made him frown.
He was even beautiful when he frowned.
“I’m sorry,” said Joshua in her ear. “I know you told me not to meet the girls here, but it’s cold outside and they don’t have warm clothes.”
“It’s all right, Joshua. I’m coming.” Tami disconnected.
“Let me help,” Asil said, handing her purse over. He held her coat out so she could put it on. “If I don’t spend an hour and a half with you, they will cry foul and send me on a date with someone who likes drag racing or something.”
She stared at him. “How did you overhear my call?”
He wiggled his hands to draw her attention to the coat. She shrugged it on and turned to look at him. Her heartbeat picked up.
“It will be faster if I drive,” Asil told her, ignoring her question.
“But—” she said, and then her voice hung in the air as she looked into his eyes and saw the bright gold of his wolf looking out at her. “Werewolf,” she whispered.
He nodded. “Witch,” he responded flatly. Then his mouth softened a little. “White witch.”
She had had no intention of letting him know what she was. Her hands wanted to reach up and cling to her mother’s pendant—but she forced them to stay at her sides.
“No,” he said dryly. “I don’t go around eating little white witches. No, another werewolf wouldn’t pick up what you are unless they got very close to you. You are very good at concealing yourself. I just caught the scent of your magic on your coat.”
She stood frozen.
“Children are in danger,” he told her slowly. “I can help.” He paused. “Let me help.”
She blinked as if his last words had broken a spell. She took a deep breath and said, in a businesslike voice, “If you are a werewolf, you heard that whole conversation. Okay, let’s go save Joshua and his little sisters.”
It was stupid to get into a car with him, she knew that. But a werewolf wouldn’t need to trap her in his car in order to hurt her. And she was, as he’d said, a witch. She was not without power.
He knew she was a white witch. This time she couldn’t help it; her right hand wrapped around the pendant, but she said, “I walked here from my apartment. Where is your car parked?”
“Joshua is fifteen and has two much younger sisters who are five and three,” the witch told him.