Avery
“Cyn-thia?” I peered over the rim of my dark glasses at the polished man seated across from me. He’d made an effort to dress down this morning. And still, even amid the backdrop of the tacky, twenty-four-hour, empty dive diner we’d met in, he’d managed to pull off a look that said casual Armani chic.
“You do this to fuck with me, don’t you?” I drummed my fingers against the Formica tabletop, staring at my new passport. “And … Pressley? I’m supposed to pass for a Cynthia Pressley Blackwood? Tell me that’s not the name of some bitch you banged in boarding school.”
“She left a lasting impression,” he deadpanned over the pen in his mouth as he proceeded to shuffle through the tidy stack of papers, manila envelopes, and folders inside the briefcase balanced on his lap. “Sign these.” He tossed a folder onto the coral pink surface in front of me, prompting me to reach forward and borrow the pen from his mouth.
“Full signature by all green markers, please. Initials only by all blue.”
“I have a Ph.D., you know.”
“Copy that. Not as Cynthia P. Blackwood, you don’t.”
I worked the pen, doing my best to replicate the signature on the passport. “Putting ‘black’ in a name doesn’t make it a black girl name, Wyatt.” I glanced up in time to catch his pink lips parting, his white teeth revealing themselves, softening his anxious features.
“No? And here I’d hoped to offend your Latina heritage this time.”
“Who says you didn’t?”
“Navajo, too?” His grin broadened, but it was forced.
I groaned. “Hellfire, you smell nervous. You should come out with it before I start imagining something worse than whatever your bad news is.”
“Coffee?” a pitchy female voice interrupted. A matronly server in a fuchsia apron approached with a fresh pot in hand.
“Yes, please. She’ll take it black,” Wyatt informed the waitress, his eyes on my face as the woman proceeded to pour my cup. “She’ll also have eggs Benedict over an untoasted muffin, with one side of hash browns and a double side of bacon.”
Wyatt was the only man alive whose balls I wouldn’t take for ordering on my behalf.
“Thank you,” he said with a smile once she’d finished dispensing coffee and scribbling down the order. He issued a perfunctory nod of appreciation in the woman’s general direction that somehow managed to charm her to the point of blushing, when in reality it was classic Wyatt body language for “you’re dismissed.”
As she departed, I shook my head at him and muttered, “I hated guys like you growing up.”
“Excuse me? Guys like me?”
“Why aren’t you eating?”
“It’s almost two a.m., Cyn-thia. I ate earlier—closer to midnight—while I was waiting. Don’t change the subject. What guys like me?”
“Right. Sorry about that …” I shifted my position on the sticky vinyl bench seat. I’d forgotten how late I was. “Got held up at the airport.” I cleared my throat. “With things.”
His brow arched. “How many things?”
I brought my coffee mug to my lips and blew. “Eight.”
He made a noise of irritation in the back of his throat and ran long, shapely fingers through his full head of brown locks that were beginning to show signs of grey. “Where?”
“C terminal. Rogue hunter welcoming committee.”
“Fuck. They knew you were coming then.”
Not a question. So I ignored it. I decided not to mention the surprise attack on the light-rail ride from the airport.
Within werewolf society, rogues had long been universally demonized. And annihilated without exception. Given that my initial werewolf encounter had been with a rogue who had slaughtered the closest thing I’d ever had to a family, I should’ve been inclined to agree with the popular werewolf society assessment. But if my years of scientific study had taught me anything, it was that not everything that deviated from nature was abhorrent. I still believed in positive genetic mutation.
And while I may not have been a rogue in the true werewolf sense, as far as the species’ spectrum of “normal” went, I wasn’t exactly within range either. My daughter was off the charts completely.
“Ever play anymore?”
“What?” Wyatt snapped, his composed demeanor cracking.
“Piano,” I clarified, my eyes on his long fingers that were now yanking distractedly at the roots of his hair. “Ever play?”
“No.” He frowned. “Never. Why would you ask?”
“No reason. Just something I’ve wondered about. I always mean to ask you—”
“Stop. You’re a terrible subject-changer. Avery, we can’t keep thi—”
“Am not. I was admiring your hands, asshole. Remembering the way they used to look when you played that summer I—”
“Wait—admiring my hands?” he pressed with a bemused grin. “As in … finding them attractive?” He held them out in front of him over the table, flipping them back and forth, palms up and down, making a great show of inspecting them. And proving once again that the same old tricks still worked on him. “By God, I believe you’ve accidentally complimented me, Ms. Blackwood. You know, ‘guys like me’ do tend to have damned fine hands.”
“’Course you do.” I pushed the last of my signed paperwork into said hands. “Make them useful and put that away before I change my mind and demand a cooler identity.”
“Copy that,” he said with a laugh. “By the way, you’ll find a backpack for Ms. Cynthia Pressley Blackwood under your seat.”
“Mmmm … I knew I smelled overpriced leather. Very nice …” I mumbled as I recovered the hidden treasure beneath my bench seat. “Ms. Blackwood hauls around a men’s black leather Louis Vuitton backpack? Interesting touch. And … wowza!” I gasped as I began to rifle through the fancy backpack. “Baby, you shouldn’t have,” I gushed as I took inventory of the weaponry, gadgets, and stacks of cash. “I love it when you go all Bruce Banner on me.”
“You mean Bruce Wayne. And you’re welcome.”
“Who? Oh, thank God,” I exclaimed upon spying a ziplock bag of pill bottles amongst the goodies Wyatt had brought me. I was nearly out of my supply of ovulation suppression hormones. “Wait a minute …” I lowered my sunglasses to the tip of my nose in order to better peruse the contents of the bag on my lap. “Is that a hush puppy? Dr. Banner, you know I don’t do silencers.”
“It’s Wayne. You mean Bruce Wayne. This is the city, Avery,” he lectured, speaking just above a whisper. “If you’re going to use a gun, you need a silencer.”
“It fucks my aim, Banner. Isn’t this still a red state?”
“Wayne. Banner is the Incredible Hulk’s alter ego. Purple. Colorado is still a firmly purple state.”
“Whatever. Either Bruce. Doesn’t matter; this is all awesome. But I’ll never use the silencer.”
“Either Bruce? Doesn’t matter? Aside from being completely different superheroes, one’s out of Marvel Comics and the other’s DC.”
“So?” I shrugged. Taunting him.
“So?” he parroted, eyes widening with exasperation. “So they’re entirely different comic universes.”
I’d long ago discovered the fun of watching mature, sensible Wyatt become rankled over my professed ignorance of comic books—his one sophomoric obsession. It was a game we played that never got old.
The truth was I knew a lot about comic book superheroes. Because during the darkest week of my life, while I was chained up inside a cage in the basement of Wyatt’s Connecticut estate awaiting the initial change that would classify me as an X-files creature forevermore, Wyatt had relayed story after story to me about every single superhero and supervillain he knew of.
He’d stayed by my side through it all—even through the final three days of the disgustingly vile, excruciatingly painful transformation that should have killed me—safely on the other side of reinforced metal bars and holding a tranquilizer gun, of course.
I grinned and reached across the table to pinch his cheek. “Whichever one has cool gadgets and secret spy shit and tosses around wads of cash is the one you remind me of. Thanks for the backpack of goodies and the new identity, Daddy Warbucks.”
“Daddy Warbucks?” His hand flew to his heart. “The crotchety bald billionaire from Little Orphan Annie is not a superhero, and you fucking know it.”
I grinned in the face of his feigned outrage as our server arrived with my order. I thanked her, even as I eyed my plate with apprehension.
“Better than it looks,” Wyatt assured me once she was beyond earshot. “Presentation’s not their strong suit at this particular establishment.”
With a snort at his use of “establishment,” I dug in. I was famished. To my delight, I found that he was correct. “Not bad.”
“See? When have I ever led you astray, my Orphan Annie? Trust me, you need that silencer.”
“Now who’s the bad subject-changer?”
“Certainly not me. I just made a perfect segue from ‘I’m right about this diner’s food’ to ‘I’m always right about everything,’ and therefore you should listen to me with regard to the silencer.”
“Can’t believe you’re still single,” I managed over a mouth stuffed with eggs Benedict. “Do you list ‘expert know-it-all’ on your date-a-billionaire-dot-com profile?”
He gave me a tight-lipped smile and leaned forward on his elbows atop the table. “Well, Cyn-thi-a, between my busy schedule of constantly covering your tracks, not to mention your daughter’s very existence, altering your crime scenes, and bribing countless witnesses and officials, there’s not been much time for dating.”
Ouch. “Point taken. I’ll use the silencer. I’ll be less conspicuous and try to blend in more—” I started to promise, until a shout of disbelief from the opposite side of the table halted me. “What?” I huffed. “I will!”
Wyatt bent closer and said, “Avery, you couldn’t ‘blend in’ before you were the shape-shifting mother of an unholy berserker who the entire supernatural world is determined to destroy.”
“She is not an unholy berserker!” I admonished in a whisper-shout.
“No, ’course not. Speaking of which, so sorry I missed little Sloane’s ninth birthday celebration. If the police statements, fire department reports, insurance claims, and five lawsuits are any indication, the party was an incomparable success.”
My gut knotted. Wyatt had tried to tell me the party was a bad idea.
“About that …” I withdrew my sunglasses completely in order to look my only friend in the eye as I prepared to eat crow.
To my surprise, he was already smothering laughter behind his fist, his blue eyes bright, awash with humor. His laughing countenance took years off his face. It also made him look like his late little sister, my best friend, Sloane.
“Wait—” I shook my head, my body settling in relief. “You’re really laughing about this? Wyatt, I swear to you, I didn’t know before that pizza party that Sloane could start fires with her thoughts,” I spoke truthfully of my daughter, who was his late sister’s namesake.
“No?” He chuckled, canting his head to the side and bestowing that whimsical grin that had given me butterflies as a teenager. “Can’t imagine why you wouldn’t just assume that at this point? Pretty sure our little supernatural problem child could unleash a nuclear explosion with her thoughts were she so inclined.”
I ignored the way my heart warmed at his use of “our.” I knew it to be a slip of the tongue rather than a proprietary claim. Wyatt had never cared for my daughter—had pleaded with me to abort her in the womb. But Wyatt loved me. And he loved his late sister Sloane. Two things I shamelessly continued to use to my advantage where my daughter Sloane was concerned.
“In any case, I own what’s left of that entire strip mall now if she ever feels the need to practice her pyrokinesis skills again.”
“I’ll pay you back every penny—”
“Ha!”
“I will! How much are strip malls in Cleveland going for nowadays?”
“Stop being absurd and eat.” He gave me his stern big brother look that meant the conversation was over. “You might not be hungry after what I have to tell you.”
“Ah. See? I knew you had fun news coming.” I tapped the side of my nose. “Canine olfactory never lies. So what’d you find out down in South America about this breed of superbeasts coming for me?”