Lucas stood there watching me, with his wild-wolf eyes. “Take care of yourself, Edie.”

“I will. Promise.”

He closed my passenger door, and let me go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Gina groaned a few times during transit, and I felt for her. I didn’t get drunk often, but I knew how she’d feel in the morning, physically at least. Emotionally—I blew air through half-parted lips. Dating a were-bear—almost becoming one? And I thought I had the market cornered on bad ideas.

I followed Asher’s quick directions and reached a neighborhood I hadn’t been to before.

It was genteel. Not new money, but comfortably old—the houses were sprawling two-story brick affairs with dormered attics, surrounded by full tall trees. This was the land of the normal, storybook almost—strange, considering I knew Asher was anything but. I pulled into the driveway and left the engine running for Gina.

Asher met me at the door, looking like the Asher I knew best. Olive skin, dark hair, dark brown eyes. He took one look at me, and then past me to Gina, still slumped over in my passenger seat. “You want to put her in a spare room, or a spare bathroom?”

“Someplace with a lot of tile.”

He followed me out to my car, and we retrieved her. Gina kept murmuring things that sounded sad, while Asher helped me help her down his entry hall. We made it up the stairs together, and I arranged her inside a clawfoot tub while Asher went to get extra towels. I sat on the toilet beside her, petting her hair, and Asher returned to lean against the wall.

“Do I want to know what happened?”

“Girl meets were-bear, girl falls for were-bear, were-bear says if you love me you’ll let me bite you, girl says good-bye.” I wished I had an IV start kit and a banana bag—IV fluids with vitamins and minerals—right about then. We could’ve set her impending hangover straight in no time.

Asher’s eyebrows rose high up his forehead. “I meant at your house.”

I looked down at Gina. Chances were she wouldn’t remember any of this, so I told him. About Gideon, and Veronica. He let out a low whistle.

“Good thing she waited until after Christmas to dump them on you.”

“You’re telling me.” The kind of leverage Jake would have over me, if I’d had to have a sleeping vampire and a mutilated daytimer hidden in my bedroom closet during Christmas lunch. I shook my head at the thought.

“You think she’s going to be all right here?”

“I hope so.” She was propped up, and she looked pretty cozy. Asher’s house was warm against the winter, but I knew the ceramic tub she was curled up in was cold enough to feel good, in that way that you craved when you were wasted. I sighed and put my hands to my head.

“Want a glass of water, or a glass of wine?”

Wine would have been lovely, if I hadn’t had such a shining example of the early stages of alcohol poisoning lying nearby. “Water, please.”

* * *

I followed Asher down the stairs. His front room had been turned into a library, with a fireplace and a wide desk. He’d already stoked a fire. “You’re the only one who lives here?” I was suddenly nervous about leaving Gina alone.

“Just me,” he said, and disappeared into what I assumed was his kitchen.

I walked around, looking at the spines of all the books. Hardbacks and paperbacks, crammed together, sometimes two deep, or perpendicular to one another—I could see all the titles, or fragments thereof, peeking out. Ancient philosophy, science fiction, modern biographies, the lives of Catholic saints.

“You read?” I asked when he emerged again.

“All the time.” He handed the water to me. I took it without looking and kept walking around as he sat down on a leather couch. “Stop looking at my things.”

“I can’t.” I pulled out a hardback copy of Quo Vadis and saw two Stephen King novels stacked up behind. “It’s like you’re the Wizard of Oz.”

“How so?”

“I’m behind the curtain now. All of this … makes you feel more humane.”

“Don’t you mean human?” he corrected me.

“That too.” The couch he was on was long, more than enough room for him and three of me. But I was too restless tonight to sit down. “It’s been a really long day. I need to think things through.”

“You mean there was more?”

“Yeah. I got jumped by two weres this afternoon.” Asher moved forward on the couch, but I waved him back. “Don’t worry, Dren saved me. And who would have thought that I’d ever get to say that aloud.”

“What the—just what are you getting into, Edie?”

“That’s the thing. I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It’s complicated, but I don’t think I’ve pissed anyone off.”

An eyebrow rose higher on his forehead. “Does it have to do with you being an Ambassador of the Sun?”

“I don’t think so. But I can’t honestly say. They acted weird, Asher, the weres. When Dren arrived, it was like they woke up.”

His frown grew deeper. “When do you have to go back to work?”

“Tomorrow night. Which I’m actually okay with, seeing as I at least get to have tranquilizer guns there.” I stopped pacing back and forth and leaned against a desk strewn with papers.

He cleared his throat for my attention. “Can your friend in the friend zone make a friendly suggestion?”

“Certainly.”

“This time. For real. Get the fuck out of town.”

I bit my lip and looked at the hardwood floor. “I still need my job to protect Jake, Asher.”

“He looked pretty clean to me.”

“Yeah, he’s good at that.” I put my hands up to my head and ran them through my hair. “There’s just never any guarantee it will last.”

“You know, some people who knew you might say your life was worth a little more than his.”

I lifted my head up and glared at him. “Asher—”

“You’re a nurse, you help people, you give back to the community—you pay taxes. What does he do?”

“He’s my brother—” I protested.

“A lot of people start off life with siblings. But when you die, you die alone.”

I inhaled and exhaled a few times. “I’m not ready to give up on him yet.”

“I bet. It’s fun feeling needed, until it gets you killed.”

A large log in the fireplace broke and sizzled, as fresh wood was exposed to the heat of the flames. I turned to watch it, because it was easier than looking at him. “You sound a lot like a co-worker of mine.”

“Whoever they are, they must be very wise.” I heard him stand, and he walked over to me, blocking my view of the fire. “I have to be what I am, Edie. I have to do what I do to survive. You—you can still get out.”

“What would I be then? Who would I be?” The person I was before all this craziness started—I didn’t want to go back to being her. To being like everyone else. The type of girl who’d never gotten to have any adventures or know that there were vampires, or have people count on her for life and death. As much as sometimes I hated or was scared of my current job—it made me feel alive in a way that I never had before. Leaving town wouldn’t just mean giving up Jake. It would mean giving up my entire life.

“There’s nothing wrong with normal,” Asher continued.

I looked up at him. “Says the most abnormal man I know.”

He gave me a bitter smile, then walked past me to sit at the chair behind his desk. “You’re welcome to stay the night here, with your friend. I’m afraid I still have some work to do.”

Despite the fact that I’d asked for it, his dismissal hurt. “Was that what you were doing earlier at the club when I called, working?” He’d met me once upon a time at a club, after all.

He tilted his head. “Does it matter if it was?”

I knew he had every excuse to be out. It wasn’t like we were a thing. And for him, the more people he could touch, the more people he could be. I assumed touching people equaled power. I inhaled and shook my head. “Never mind. Thank you for your hospitality, for me and for Gina. I’ll be upstairs.” I started walking toward the stairs.

“Are you jealous of them? The ones that I touch just to touch, just to see?” he called after me, his voice low.

“Of course I am.” I could have denied it, but why lie? Asher and I had slipped through each other’s fingers before we’d even known why. And I was angry that he was still here when if the world was a fairer place, I shouldn’t have to be alone.

“You can’t judge me for doing what I need to, to survive. If a wolf is a wolf, and a shark is a shark, then a shapeshifter is and will always be a shapeshifter. What do you need to survive, Nurse Spence?”

I turned around and his head was resting on folded hands, his coffee-dark eyes watching me. The fire behind him cast a glow, making him look devilish. I knew this room was warm enough that once you took your clothes off, you wouldn’t remember how cold it was outside.

“Don’t make me have to tell you,” I said. “Just guess.”

Asher stood and rounded his desk. He stood in front of me for a moment, looking down, and I felt that current of electricity that you get when you’re prey, yes, but prey that can still say no. All the power to make us go forward or hold back was inside my hand.

I reached up and touched his cheek.

A knowing smile crept across his face. “You’re still wearing your badge.”

“Of course I am. I’m horny, not stupid.”

He turned and kissed my palm, and then took it in his own hand. Stepping forward, he closed the space between us and wrapped his arms around my waist. His hands were strong, like I knew they would be—it would have been easy to relax into him and let him take control. But now that we were here—I reached up and kissed him, hard. Angry. He slid his hands up my back and held me tight while I fought to be in charge, lips rough against his, trying to drink him in. It wasn’t sexy, I wasn’t trying to be sexy—I just wanted a chance to be fierce.