Chapter 7
THE ALARM on Jory’s phone went off too damn early. He was used to working from late morning to closing, and switching over to four in the morning sucked. And he wasn’t even sure his night off had been worth trading shifts for.
Smacking at his phone to turn the damn thing off, he forced himself up, stretching to work some of the stiffness out of his back and hips. He wasn’t sore, which was one plus about the evening. The sex had been amazing, and getting to know Mal had been fun, until his randomly shifting personality resurfaced.
He remembered too many drug addicts he’d counseled as a minister, too many people who jumped from apologetic or kind to enraged at a single misconstrued word. In any other circumstances, he might be inclined to put up with Mal’s issues, because the sex really had been awesome. However, at the moment he couldn’t afford to get entangled in anything.
After he got cleaned up, he grabbed the backpack he’d had ready to go since his conversation with Neal, locked up, and went to work. The kitchen already smelled wonderful when he let himself in through the unlocked back door. He found Selma sitting at the pastry table, sipping a cup of coffee while Hana worked on a laptop beside her.
“How are you conscious?” he asked Hana, knowing she’d done all of his prep work the night before.
“I’ve got class at seven and a lab report to finish. I’d have been up all night anyway, so don’t even think about apologizing. How’d the date with Mr. Man-Bun go?” Hana asked without looking up from the laptop screen.
Jory tried to keep his expression neutral as he grabbed an apron. “It was nice. He’s not just hot, he’s nice, and he’s….” He shook his head, moving as if he was in a daze. He was like Jory, and that thought was mind-boggling. But he was also as fucked-up as Neal, and probably just as addicted to something. “I don’t know.”
“So,” Hana said, her tone teasing, “are you going to see him again? Did he ever lose that space-cadet look he’s got? Is he good in bed?”
“No, no, and that’s not your business.”
Hana’s typing paused as she glanced up at him. “Struck out?”
He smirked.
“There’s nothing wrong with a date that doesn’t end with sex, or being enough of a gentleman not to gossip and brag about it,” Selma insisted, although her sly grin suggested she didn’t really believe what she was saying. “But something must not have clicked if you’re not going to try a second date.”
“We clicked, we had fun. We’re more alike than I ever thought possible. But I can’t handle crazy right now, and he’s nuts.”
Selma watched him shuffle around the kitchen, pulling out chilled cookie batter and sheet pans. “Jory, if something did go wrong, you know you could talk about it, right?”
“It’s fine. I do need to talk to you about something, though.” He set out a half-dozen sheet pans and parchment paper. “I think I might have to leave. The city, I mean.”
The clacking of Hana’s keyboard ceased.
“I love it here, I really do, but something’s come up. I wanted to give you as much notice as I could so you can start looking for someone else to help Hana out on the closing shifts.”
“If you’re in trouble, I would never force you to stay. You’re here often enough I’ll have to find someone to cover late mornings too, but we can manage.” She set her coffee down on a far counter, pulled on a pair of gloves, and began to help him with the cookies. “But the entire building is safe. Nothing comes any farther than the dining area without my permission.”
“Or mine,” Hana said, pouting. “I guess maybe I owe you an apology for Mr. Man-Bun coming into the kitchen.”
“Huh?”
Selma glared at her daughter. “You did what? Knowing that he made Jory nervous, you invited him in?”
“I invited him up to my place, so I don’t see how she did anything wrong,” Jory pointed out.
“The both of you!” she shouted. “Do you have any idea how much trouble it is to revoke a standing invitation? You might need to come up to the house for a few days until I get the building sorted out again, but afterward it’ll be safe.”
“No.” Jory squeezed his eyes shut, frustrated and confused. “He hasn’t done anything threatening, he’s just weird. I need to leave because….” There was no chance the real reason was going to sound sane, but for once he couldn’t think of a lie. “A drunk homeless guy who buys my liquor warned me I should go. Because a friend of his, who’s totally delusional and obsessed with music, told him that I was in danger.”
The stunned silence stretched on for too damn long before Hana snorted.
“He’s a friend,” Jory tried to explain. “And the last time he warned me that I should leave somewhere, I didn’t take him seriously, and it sucked. A lot. The only reason I survived is because he stuck around to help me, but I’d rather not do that again.”
Selma wasn’t laughing. She gave him a serious nod and took a deep breath. “I’ve heard there are some fae bards who can see the past and future, and everything else, in music. It’s supposed to drive them so mad they can’t see what’s right in front of them. You,” she said, giving Hana a look. “You can be polite. Too many people have problems finding a place in this world, and laughing at them instead of doing something about it is just rude.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. The way Jory said it was funny, that’s all.”
“I figured if I beat around the bush, it’d just sound worse when I finally got to the point,” he muttered.
“Where would you go?”
He shrugged. “As far as I can get on a Greyhound.”
The sooner he left, the better. He’d been so focused on the possibility of getting laid last night that he had barely thought of the possibility of Adam finding him. He’d even entertained the idea that he might be able to stay for a bit, before Mal’s mood changed. But he wasn’t going to put his life on the line by hanging around.
Selma stared at him. “Did your friend have any idea what might happen?”
Jory transferred the pans into the bake oven. “He didn’t say. But I might be able to ask him tonight. He usually comes by around closing time.”
“He’s the one you give all the cupcakes to!” Hana shrieked. “I know there’s someone back there when you go outside, but I’ve never actually seen anyone. I’ve been dying to know.”
“Maybe I’ll be able to introduce you sometime.”
Jory spent the day working, trying to get everything done that he possibly could. When he ran out of things to bake and prep, he started on the monthly cleaning rotation that involved moving, scrubbing, and degreasing the kitchen from top to bottom. Hana had disappeared that morning to do whatever graduate students did. When she came back for her regular shift, Jory was relieved when she didn’t push him to work the front counter. Not that Mal showed up. He walked Hana out near ten, then went back to find something else to do in the kitchen. He couldn’t go up to his apartment just to let regrets and anxiety drive him insane. It was better to drive himself to exhaustion.
When he had finally run out of ways to waste time, he looked at the cookbook Mal had given him yesterday. It was beautiful, a massive hardcover with full-color photos of everything. Too often, cookbooks that relied on photographs to drive sales turned out to be crap, but he would give this one a try regardless.
Especially since he wouldn’t be able to take it with him. Big and beautiful meant heavy and bulky, and he’d rather use the room in his backpack for clothes and toiletries. Even with a reference, getting a job without having taken a shower in weeks was just impossible.
He opened the book, skipping the obligatory introduction and quick overview of how to bake, jumping right to recipes. Each seemed like a unique variation on old standards, but there were some he’d never tried, and some things he’d never even thought of before. Even the basic chocolate chip cookies involved three times as many steps as the average recipe—it looked tedious and like it would take forever. It was exactly what he wanted.
Near midnight, he propped the door open to help the place cool off while he cleaned up his mess. It was half past one before he was finished, taking a stack of warm, and admittedly delicious, cookies out to the back steps in case Neal showed up.
He wasn’t sure how long he had waited, sitting on the back stairs, when he heard the shuffling of footsteps in the darkness.
“It’s been a few days,” Jory called, getting up and going to meet him. “I was starting to get worried—”
A growl from the opposite side of the alley cut him off. It was a deep, visceral sound that left Jory trembling. He spun to face the sound, carefully moving back toward the door.
In the dingy glow of the alley, he saw a creature that might have leapt off the pages of a horror movie. It was almost wolf-shaped, but it was as large as Jory himself, and covered in wisps of black fur that seemed to move the shadows around it, all but hiding it from sight. Its eyes burned like glowing coals, making its eye sockets look hollow. It stood on the steps of a fire escape fifteen feet off the ground, baring teeth the size of kitchen knives. It leapt to the ground with ease and then stalked forward. “What the fuck?” Jory said, stumbling as he backed away. He risked a glance toward the man behind him and felt dread coil around his spine. It took Jory a moment to place the man’s face once he realized that it wasn’t Neal at all. It was the man from the diner.
He looked like he had once been a businessman, with short-cut hair and a suit that had probably been nice before it was shredded. Now he looked more like something out of a cheap zombie flick than a person.
“You were at the restaurant,” Jory said, drawing his gaze back and forth between the monster and the man. He tried to move away from both of them, but the alley was barely wide enough for a single car, and soon he was pressed against the brick wall. “Uh, is that… dog, I guess… yours?”
The man’s head tilted awkwardly as he looked at Jory.
Jory looked at the stairs and the door of the café, wondering if he could make it. The creature was practically between him and the door, and it kept creeping closer. Jory moved the other direction, keeping his back to the wall.
The man turned to follow him, as if the monstrous wolf wasn’t even slightly concerning. His eyes were pale, small silver circles where his irises and pupils should have been, and he was staring at Jory as if he couldn’t believe that he was real. “What are you?” the man asked, his chapped, almost-blue lips barely moving. Then he hissed, a deep, resonating buzz that no human body should be capable of producing, and the sound seemed to echo off the brick walls around them.
The monster snarled and advanced at a run. Finally the man turned to face the animal, his head lolling to the side unnaturally. He moved at a shamble, limbs jerking awkwardly as the creature lunged, its jaws closing around the man’s shoulder before driving him to the ground.
The man didn’t scream, even as blood dripped from around the animal’s muzzle and the sound of fabric and flesh ripping under its teeth joined the constant, feral snarl.
Jory fell back against the asphalt, his gaze riveted to the horror unfolding before his eyes. He scrambled to get back onto his feet and grabbed his phone as he struggled to run.
He called 911 and tried to give the woman who answered a frantic account of the attack, but his terror and the exertion from something as simple as running to the end of the alley left him gasping.
He made it to the sidewalk and rushed around the corner, determined to go around the block to let himself back into the Black Cat through the front. The growling and ripping sounds from the alley hadn’t stopped, and Jory forced himself to keep moving, staggering forward and coughing as he struggled to breathe.
When his vision began to dim around the edges, he dropped to his knees, focusing on forcing his lungs to work. In front of him, something growled. He lifted his head and saw another shadow-cloaked wolf sitting in front of him, eyeing him curiously.
As his vision darkened completely, he wished he’d been able to push enough air out of his lungs to curse.