Chapter Seven
The shark was waiting in Trevor's parking lot on Monday morning.
Trevor saw him from the building's lobby, a thick man leaning against a black SUV with tinted windows, arms folded, watching the door with the flat patience of a predator who had nowhere else to be.
He smelled him before he got too close: salt water and fish, the briny stench that clung to sharks even in human form, as if the ocean refused to let them go.
Trevor considered going back inside. His apartment had a lock and a fire escape and enough canned food to last a week. He could wait the shark out. Sharks were patient, but they were also easily bored, an evolutionary advantage in open water, a liability on land.
But the shark wasn't alone. A second one sat in the driver's seat, visible through the windshield as a silhouette and a glint of teeth.
And Trevor's car was right there, ten feet from the SUV, and he had a Wednesday session with Sero that he couldn't miss and a life that required him to leave his apartment occasionally.
He squared his shoulders and continued across the parking lot.
"Trevor." The shark didn't uncross his arms. His voice was pleasant in the way that a knife was shiny. "You're a hard man to get on the phone."
"I've been busy." Trevor kept his voice even. "I sent the shipment. Your boss should have received it by now."
"He did." The shark pushed off the SUV and took a step toward him. Just one. Enough to close the conversational distance from casual to intentional. "He wasn't happy."
"I told your people, the quality varies. It depends on the subject, the timing, a lot of factors. I can't guarantee every batch is premium."
"The Grizzly doesn't care about your process, Trevor. He cares about results. And the results he got from that batch—" The shark shook his head with theatrical disappointment. "Two hours. That's what he got. Two hours, and most of it was limp. His words, not mine."
"I'm sorry to hear that. The next batch—"
"The next batch needs to be like the one you gave him six months ago. The one that lasted a full day. He's been talking about that one like it was a religious experience." The shark's eyes narrowed. "What was different about it?"
Trevor's stomach dropped. Six months ago.
That had been a particularly good session with a wolf, genuine chemistry, genuine pleasure, none of the fear or coercion that ruined most batches.
The yield had been a strong yellow, the best Trevor had produced at the time.
He'd thought it was a fluke. Now the Grizzly wanted it replicated, and Trevor had no way to explain that quality depended on variables he couldn't control: the subject's emotional state, their trust, their willingness to be present.
And sitting on his shelf at home were two vials that made the wolf's yellow look like dishwater. Gold that the Grizzly didn't know existed. Gold that Trevor would not, under any circumstances, let the Grizzly know about.
The shark was watching him think.
"Let me check my records," Trevor said carefully.
"Check whatever you want. But the Grizzly remembers what good feels like, and he wants more of it. He's willing to pay triple for a batch that matches what he had. Triple, Trevor. That's a lot of money for a housecat who lives in a ground-floor apartment."
The insult was casual and precise. Trevor let it pass. "I'll see what I can do."
"You'll do more than see." The shark unfolded his arms and reached into his jacket. Trevor tensed, but what came out was an envelope, not a weapon. The shark held it out. "Half up front. The Grizzly's being generous. He likes you, Trevor. He doesn't want to have to stop liking you."
Trevor took the envelope. It was thick. He didn't open it.
"One week," the shark said. "Same quality as the good batch, or better. If you can't deliver that, the Grizzly's going to want to know why. And he's going to want to know who your source is."
The shark turned and got into the SUV. The engine started.
He felt the weight of attention, two sets of predator eyes watching him through tinted glass.
The SUV pulled out of the lot and turned onto the street, and Trevor stood in the parking lot with an envelope of cash and the taste of bile in his throat.
They wanted the gold.
They wanted Sero.
Trevor didn't go to his car. He went back inside, locked his apartment door, and sat on his immaculate couch with his hands between his knees.
The envelope sat on the coffee table, unopened. The succulent sat beside it, perfectly positioned, indifferent.
He needed to think.
The Grizzly's operation was simple: he was an old bear whose body had been damaged in a fight decades ago, and Trevor's serum was the only thing that gave him any sexual function.
The serum was expensive, difficult to produce, and, until Sero, inconsistent.
The Grizzly had tolerated the inconsistency because Trevor was his only supplier.
There was no one else who could do what Trevor did, because what Trevor did required a specific combination of alchemical talent, mechanical ingenuity, and a willingness to extract intimate material from other men without their knowledge.
The Grizzly didn't know about the machine's hidden function.
He didn't know that the serum was distilled from other shifters' sexual energy.
He thought Trevor was an alchemist who'd figured out a potion, which was partially true, in the same way that saying a bomb was "a device that released energy" was partially true.
The Grizzly didn't ask questions because the Grizzly didn't care. He cared about results.
And the results he wanted were golden.
Trevor went to the workshop. Opened the door. The overhead lamp clicked on, illuminating the bench, the burner, the magic circles, the racks. And on the shelf, two vials of liquid sunlight.
He could give the Grizzly one vial and keep one. That would satisfy the immediate demand and buy time. But it would also set the standard: the Grizzly would expect gold from now on, would demand it, would send sharks when Trevor couldn't deliver. And Trevor couldn't deliver gold without Sero.
Which meant the Grizzly would eventually want to know who the source was.
And when the Grizzly found out, he wouldn't politely request that Sero provide weekly samples.
He would acquire Sero the way he acquired everything: through money, through force, through the kind of leverage that came from operating outside the bounds of shifter law.
The Playground. The Grizzly was a regular there, an old bear with deep pockets and no patience for rules, the kind of client places like that existed to serve. A place where consent was a foreign concept and people were resources.
Trevor stared at the golden vials.
He could stop. Right now, today, he could flush the gold down the sink, dismantle the machine, return the Grizzly's money, and walk away.
He'd lose his income, his clients, his carefully constructed life.
The Grizzly would be furious, but Trevor was a housecat, small, fast, capable of disappearing into a city and not being found.
He could leave Vegas. Start over somewhere else.
Change his name, find a real job, become a person who didn't extract and sell other people's trust.
But that would mean leaving Sero.
And it would mean Sero never knowing what Trevor had done to him. He'd just vanish, the man who brought grapes and made quiche and booked four Wednesdays, gone without explanation. Sero would add him to the graveyard in his phone. Another name deleted. Another man who got bored and left.
That was unbearable. Not because Trevor couldn't stand to be forgotten, but because Sero deserved better than a disappearance. Sero deserved the truth.
Trevor sat in his workshop for a long time.
Then he picked up his phone and called the one person he could think of who might help him figure out what to do.
Amani answered on the second ring.
"Kinky Kritters, this is Amani, and if you're calling about reservations we open at—"
"It's Trevor."
A pause. "Trevor. Hi." The warmth Amani usually had in his voice was dialed back about sixty percent, which Trevor figured was fair. "What can I do for you?"
"I need to talk to you. Not on the phone. In person. Can I come to the club?"
"We're not open for another two hours."
"I know. I need to talk to you before anyone else is there."
Another pause. Longer this time. Trevor could hear the faint sounds of the club in the background, glasses clinking, the hum of the refrigeration unit behind the bar, Amani's breathing. He was weighing something.
"This about Sero?" Amani asked.
"Partly."
"Is he okay?"
"He's fine. He doesn't know I'm calling you."
"Then what's this about?"
Trevor closed his eyes. "I've done something I need to fix, and I don't know how, and you're the only person I trust to tell me if I'm wrong."
Silence. Then: "That's a hell of a thing to say to someone who specifically told you to be nice to his friend."
"I know."
"Come at ten. I'll be here. Bring coffee, black, no sugar. And Trevor?"
"Yeah?"
"If this is something that puts Sero at risk, I'm not going to be sympathetic. I'm going to be angry. Understand that going in."
"I understand."
"Good. Ten o'clock. Don't be late."
The line went dead.
Trevor put his phone down and looked at the golden vials one more time. Then he closed the workshop door and went to make coffee.
He arrived at Kinky Kritters at ten, two paper cups of black coffee in hand.
The building's lobby was empty. Bethany wasn't at the desk this early, the front counter bare except for a folded newspaper and a pen.
The elevator took him down, and the doors opened onto a club that was, for the first time in Trevor's experience, silent.