CHAPTER TWELVE

For Noelle to have been such an efficient creature, she certainly spent a lot of time in a tub.

Tamatsu had been perched on her toilet seat for the better part of half an hour, waiting for her to emerge from her bath. All the time waiting made him angry. He wasn’t angry because he had to wait, but because he’d been sitting in her bathroom for half an hour and she hadn’t noticed.

Careless woman.

He twined his fingers and stared at the white subway tiles on the wall in front of him.

She chanted the lyrics of some old song he didn’t know, splashed a bit, and then moaned indulgently.

He was tempted to pull the curtain back and give her the hard stare she so obviously deserved, but doing such would likely result in her bumped head or a flooded floor.

So, he sat tracing the same tile with his gaze, again and again, until her phone rang ten minutes later.

She opened the curtain, screamed, and then pulled the curtain shut.

He heaved a silent sigh.

“What are you do— Ugh!” She reached out from behind the curtain, patted blindly behind him. “Are you manipulating your energy? I should have sensed you.”

He had been tamping down his power output so as not to risk her reflexively attacking him before he’d fully materialized on her end. Shrugging off his energy bridle, he moved to avoid an accidental touch, and she finally snatched the towel she sought from the back of the commode.

More splashing. Swearing. She hustled out of the tub, hobbled past him with wet hair and a scowl, and grabbed her phone off the vanity.

“Noelle Flint,” she said in a sunny voice like the fraud she was.

He clucked his tongue, earning himself a scowl from her.

She stared at the mirror in front of her, turning her face to better examine a scratch she must have earned during the day’s exploits. “Oh, did you? Well, that’s wonderful news. I can give the listing agent a call and see how motivated the seller is. The house has been on the market for six months. If the owners want to quibble about the appliances, though, then perhaps it’s best if we move on. I know you had your heart set on that school zone, but with your higher loan approval, your options open up in a significant way.”

Tamatsu retook his seat on the commode.

She pressed the sides of her scratch, grimaced, and then shrugged. “Okay, will do. I’ll give him a call, and if they seem amenable, I won’t call you back. I’ll go ahead and put the offer together and email both of you. Sound good? Great. Talk to you soon.”

She disconnected, then slowly turned and narrowed her eyes at him.

They didn’t say anything. Him, for obvious reasons. He could only speculate on why she didn’t speak, but he suspected surprise had something to do with her silence.

He smoothed his coat over his lap and looked at that tile again.

Tarik had told him to go, so Tamatsu had, begrudgingly, gone.

Perhaps not completely begrudgingly.

Confronting Noelle hadn’t been high up on the list of ways Tamatsu had wanted to spend a night, but he had wanted to see her. He always had, as if he were afraid he’d forget what she looked like in the matter of an hour. Seeing as how he hadn’t forgotten anything about her in hundreds of years, the fear was unfounded.

She returned to the tub side, clutching the hem of her towel to pin it down, and bent with her knees pressed tightly together as if to avoid scandal.

As if I haven’t seen it all already.

She pulled the tub stopper and then turned to him again. “I guess I shouldn’t bother asking you how you got in here.”

He turned his hands over.

“I have to admit teleporting is a pretty neat trick. I wish I had such an ability sometimes when I want to get inside foreclosure homes to take a peek around.”

He canted his head, not following her train of thought.

“When they’re sold at auction, they’re generally sold as-is. They could have serious interior issues and you’d never know until you took possession. Sometimes, they’re a profitable risk; sometimes, they’re a huge fail.”

Ah.

She grabbed another towel and strode through the door. From the bedroom, she called back, “I’ve gotten lucky three times, but have been burned twice. The houses should have been flippable, but the evicted homeowners trashed the places before the sheriff arrived. They’d taken out all the appliances and stripped the woodwork and such. I haven’t done anything with them yet. Still trying to figure out how to make lemonade out of lemons, you know?”

He draped his coat over his forearm and followed her.

Sales work. Is that where all the warriors have gone?

She was perched on the end of her big, frilly bed examining the toes of her right foot.

He leaned against the dresser across from her.

“I ripped off a bit of toenail in the desert.” She wriggled her toes, and then sighed. “Have you done anything at all to try to remove your fish problem?”

He shrugged. An imprecise response, for sure, but he couldn’t very well explain without talking. If he’d had one of those expensive phone gadgets he could send her a text message or email, but all that typing seemed tedious, and people would expect him to respond all the time if he had one. He didn’t know how Tarik did it all day … or who the hell Tarik was sending his screeds to.

“Can your curse even be removed?”

He could actually nod for that.

“And I assume you want to.”

Again, he nodded. As a portal opener, he’d once been able to bar such creatures from the earthly realm with a spoken command, but obviously that wasn’t a tool he had at his arsenal anymore. Tarik had tried, but he didn’t have the exact same abilities, nor did Gulielmus. That was why cooperation had always been critical in the days when they’d still journeyed together. They’d all had different skills.

Tamatsu wouldn’t need to pester competitive weather gods about their destructive negligence if the trio had been able to demand respect as they once had.

He rolled his eyes. Coatrisquie had apparently taken a break from her pregame training endeavors and had appeared at his side just long enough to tell him, “I asked, and so now they’re moving it up a day. Sorry I even said anything to them.”

Petty assholes.

“Is your problem … something I could help with?” Noelle asked. “I need details.”

He blinked noncommittally.

She sighed and ran a hand through her wet hair. “There’s a notepad in the nightstand if you want to be bothered with writing.”

Reflexes had him starting to shake his head, but instincts got him moving.

Tarik kept telling him he was self-sabotaging, and maybe he was, but Tarik didn’t have room to talk. He punished himself for damned near everything.

Tamatsu started toward the nightstand at the left, only to be redirected with Noelle’s quiet, “Other side.”

He turned on his heel, went the other way, and draped his coat over the corner of her bed as he went.

The room was profoundly mauve. Exceedingly feminine, with dusty rose paint on the walls and a floral print on the bedspread. The last bed they’d shared hadn’t been a bed at all, but a mat. They’d put their knees through the wringer, but at least mats couldn’t be broken. A bed like Noelle’s, though …

He gripped the tall post at the headboard and stared up at the carved finial.

One forceful tug, and he could have snapped the post in two. Metal, she would have been able to do something with. She would actually be able to tie him up.

Not that he would invite such a diversion.

Ever.

As he opened the drawer, rolling his eyes at himself, a door creaked open behind him.

A glance revealed that Noelle had stepped into her cavernous closet.

For a moment, he listened to her click hangers together and mutter about forgotten dry-cleaning.

He shook his head and peered into the drawer. Never in a million years would he have imagined her to be the sort of woman who’d need services of dry cleaners. He’d pegged her as a wash-and-wear kind of warrior.

He sat on the edge of the bed and narrowed his eyes at the door.

Where does she hide her knives now?

She may not have been careful about creatures teleporting into her house, but she always kept herself armed. He didn’t doubt for one second that a fair percentage of her body weight when she was dressed were things with blades.

“Oh! I leafed through my mother’s magic journal to find out what she’d written about voice-snatching,” Noelle said from the closet.

Tamatsu leaned his head toward it expectantly.

“There wasn’t much there, but she’d pondered what would happen if she were to attempt a snatch from someone who could speak magic.”

So, nothing.

He let out the breath he’d held. Getting his hopes up had been pointless.

“Elves can work spells on occasion, but for the most part, our magic works on intent, not words. I’ll keep poking around, though. There’s got to be someone who knows more about this than I do. Mine isn’t an especially common gift. None of the other guards had it.”

She’d once told him that very few of her gifts were common in that crew. The fact she could take people by surprise was undoubtedly one of the reasons she’d been placed with Clarissa.

Her uncommonness and unpredictability was why he’d been so enthralled by her.

Still am, perhaps.

He rooted through the drawer. The notepad was on top of the junk, and a pen was nearby. He took them both, but kept rooting, since he was there. She shouldn’t have expected good manners from him. In fact, she’d liked him once because his manners were so poor.

He rifled through bookmarked paperbacks, individually wrapped cookies—he slid those into his shirt pocket, save one, which he ripped open and ate—a box of business cards, a spare phone charger cord, and a box of condoms.

The condoms, he flicked toward the trashcan in the corner. He couldn’t fathom why she’d need them.

At the plink of the box hitting the can, she poked her head out of the closet and looked around.

He gave her a brazen stare.

“What was that?” she asked.

He shrugged, peeled the notebook back to a clean page, and then uncapped the pen.

“All righty, then.” She hit the closet light and emerged wearing two-piece pajamas that left everything up to the imagination.

But Tamatsu didn’t need imagination. He had memory. He knew what how her body curved beneath those manly stripes, and there was nothing at all masculine about her.

She padded into the bathroom, calling over her shoulder, “Do you think it’s too late to call Willa? I used the office’s virtual network to access the files on Jenny’s computer. I got the info she needed without having to go in.”

When she poked her head out of the bathroom, she was batting at her long black hair with a paddle brush.

She used to brush his hair. She’d sit behind him with her legs wrapped around his torso and she’d torture every tangle out of his hair. He hadn’t cared, because as long as she’d been touching him, the torture felt good.

“Tamatsu?”

He blinked, then looked at the pad as a distraction for his absentmindedness. He shook his head.

“Right. I imagine Coyotes stay up a little later than average citizens, even if they are schoolteachers. But wait … she’s not a Coyote. She’s a demigoddess attached to the Coyotes. Ugh.” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “After all these years, this mess still confuses the hell out of me. I never really encountered any shifters until I left Ireland. I mean, yeah, selkies and such, but they’re not quite the same. Selkies are fae, and being fae myself, I know fae. Bah. Be right back.” She stepped out into the hallway. Moments later, her soft footsteps bounded down to the first floor.

He set down the pad, stood, and walked to her dresser. There were several framed photographs atop it. He didn’t recognize most of the people—couldn’t tell if they were human or other, couldn’t tell if they were friends or more.

Friends at the very least, though. If they were important enough to put into a frame, they had to have meant something to her. Like maintaining friendships, framing required effort.

With his hands in his pockets, he eased around the perimeter of the room. He noted the small personalized touches and the wear-and-tear typical of people living someplace for a period of time. There was a scuff low on her doorframe where she must have grabbed hold every time she pivoted in and out of the room.

How long has she been here? A year? More?

He continued his self-tour with a peek into her closet. Walk-in, neatly organized. The best he could tell, her clothes were arranged by function, and then color. Most of her shoes were still boxed—the work shoes, probably. More of those sexy heels and flats that only looked inexpensive but likely cost enough to feed a frugal family of four for a week.

Perplexed, he picked up a running shoe that looked as though it had seen both ends of a dog’s digestive system. The sneaker had been chewed up and covered with mud. The mate hadn’t fared so well, either. The laces were missing, as was the tongue, for some reason he couldn’t even begin to guess.

Noelle hovered behind him. She peered around his side, and groaned. “Ugh. Jenny and I did a charity mud run with some of the other ladies from the office a couple of weeks ago. I should trash them, right? I really should. They’re probably not worth the effort to clean up, even if I haven’t put enough miles into them yet.”

He cocked a brow and pointed to the shoe with the missing tongue.

“Forgot about that. My memory is …”

Shit. Her memory was shit.

“I think I had a bit of a tussle with a guy afterward.”

He closed his eyes and gave his head a minute shake.

“What? The fight, I couldn’t help that. The guy was trying to make off with an old lady’s purse. As far as the running-in-mud thing, well, I do have to work to maintain my fitness level. Elves aren’t naturally fit.”

Again, he shook his head.

“You assumed I came out of the box this way?”

Opening his eyes, he set the sneaker back atop the plastic bag on the shelf.

“Nope. I don’t get much strength training in anymore, but I try to get out and run on days I’m not too busy. I get home late sometimes, and running solo at night isn’t a great idea, even for people who have a little magic.”

He agreed, at least, as far as she was concerned. He doubted anyone would harass him during a jog, but his size likely deterred most confrontations.

Since he’d already been caught snooping, he continued his perusal of her closet. He didn’t know what he was looking for precisely, if anything. Perhaps some hint of who the woman was in her modern life. Perhaps some hint of what she used to be, too.

She chuckled. “You know, the last time I caught a guy in my closet, he was looking for souvenirs.”

Tamatsu ground his teeth and flicked a finger at the sleeve of one frothy formal concoction.

“He’d already found something he wanted in my dresser. I guess he was looking for a scarf or something to go along with those panties. I was so stunned, I didn’t say anything. He walked past me kind of bashfully, clutching my underwear. He put on his shoes, stuffed my panties into his pockets, and then ran.” She chuckled again. “With people like that, you’ve got to let them find their own punishments, you know?”

Tamatsu was out of knuckles to crack and his jaw was getting achy from gnashing his teeth.

“I don’t imagine you’re looking for my underwear.”

If he’d wanted them, he would have just taken the ones she was wearing, otherwise, what was the point?

He lifted the lid on a long, shallow, abused-looking box on a shelf that would have been difficult to access for a woman of Noelle’s insignificant height.

Ah.

Knives. She hoarded them the way some children collected Happy Meal toys.

He cut her a look.

Her grin was crooked. Guilty little elf.

“Gotta keep them somewhere. I used to have one in each purse, but that system didn’t really work for me. I have knives I like more than others, and I always ended up having to swap them out. Now I grab a purse, grab my wallet, and pick the knife I want, depending on my mood.”

He let the lid fall. The system was a reasonable one. He preferred to keep his weaponry consistent, however. His katana, a couple of daggers, and a gun he rarely needed to discharge.

“Lots of the ladies from the guard have switched to firearms. I understand why they would. I do have some, but I don’t prefer them. Blades are quieter, and I suppose my reflexes are still honed to them.”

He nodded at that, very nearly enthusiastic that they agreed on one small thing.

“I put on some water for tea. I’ll probably be up for a little while. I need to get some docs out tonight. When I opened my email program downstairs, my hard drive started making some very suspicious cranking sounds. I’m sure when I look, there’ll be hundreds of unread messages.” She groaned and cracked her back with a shallow arch.

He used to threaten to take her out of her misery when she did that, and she’d quip as she climbed onto him, “But then you’d be miserable, too.”

He hadn’t wanted to admit that she’d been right. What angel would admit he’d been brought to his knees by a small slip of a woman?

“I don’t know why I always manage to get the high needs clients.”

He knew a little something about high needs clients. Although his itinerant lifestyle generally minimized the need for amassing funds, he tried to have a bit of cash on hand. There wasn’t an “Alex” in every town he visited, and he had to feed himself somehow. So, he took odd jobs. Very odd, at times. He did what he had to, to keep himself flush and his bloodlust tamped down.

“A murder a day keeps the cravings away,” Gulielmus had once joked.

“Oh. There’s the kettle whistling. Have fun exploring the Cavern d’Noelle.” She cracked another one-sided grin, then stepped out.

He followed. He’d seen what he’d needed to, or perhaps, simply hadn’t seen any evidence that she was much different than the woman who’d once tried to raise his sword.

Same Noelle, just modern. Too many people he knew had changed, sometimes for the better. Mostly for the worse.

He turned off the closet light and, deciding against rummaging through her dresser drawers like a thieving lecher, followed her downstairs.

He was hungry again, and shouldn’t have been so soon, but his hungers played off each other. He kept one at bay by feeding another, and, in spite of his efforts to ignore her sensuality, lust flared.

I should go.

There were gods he could be silently tormenting, but he didn’t want to go yet.

Her kitchen was situated in the back of the townhouse and faced a greenway. Golf course, maybe.

He stood near the built-in table peering out the window at the darkened lot.

She puttered in front of the stove. “For all intents and purposes,” she said, “this house doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense for me. The location’s not close to work—not that anyone would really want to live so close to the strip—and I don’t play golf.”

He turned to face her.

She was pouring hot water over the tea ball infuser in her mug. He could tell from across the room that she preferred her tea leaves to be too damn dark, but he forgave her for her poor taste. She was Irish, after all. He preferred for his tea to be green.

Or eighty proof.

She shrugged and set the big kettle back atop the burner. “I bought the house because of the office space. It’s sunny and built into a corner. Has two windows. Rooms with small or no windows remind me of a coffin. I hate that. Too much of my life has been spent belowdecks in ships. I want to be able to see where I am and easily escape if I have to.”

Her trek downstairs had been so harried that he hadn’t noticed her slippers before. They were furry things, and seemed unmatched, but weren’t. They had faces on them.

She lifted one foot, then the other, obviously noting his observant gaze.

“Christmas gift from Jenny. She thought they were funny, and I agreed. We go to the movies all the time. We see the Marvel ones right when they come out. Sometimes, we play hooky from work and go to the matinees where we don’t have to worry about taller people sitting in front of us and blocking the screen.” She chuckled.

He still had no fucking clue who, or what, was on her slippers. Sometimes, he got tired of being out of the loop on everything. Tarik probably would have known. He was more … interested.

Tamatsu pointed to her feet.

“Didn’t see the movie?”

He shook his head.

She raised the foot that had the slipper with the yellow-haired man. “That’s Thor.” She pointed to the other—the one with the odd black headpiece. “That’s Loki.”

Bullshit.

The figures on the slippers didn’t at first glance resemble the gods he knew. Thor’s flaxen hair was right, but Loki wasn’t nearly so cute. Tamatsu wouldn’t dare call the man ugly—and certainly not to his face—but he’d certainly offer some synonyms if pressed.

Thor … I wonder where Thor is.

Thor could have put an end to the silly weather games, but Tamatsu hadn’t seen him in centuries. He could have been in hiding—the only way he could get his brethren to leave him alone for a time.

Humming quietly to herself, she padded in her comical slippers from counter to fridge, and pulled the door open.

Food being his master, he glided over.

She grabbed cheese and something else from a drawer, one of which she tossed at him.

He snatched the purple blur from the air and bit into it before he’d fully registered that the thing was a plum.

“Bought way too many at the farmer’s market. We have pop-up farmer’s markets around here. They’re totally illegal, but no one ever rats the sellers out. They set up on a different street every Sunday morning. No one ever knows where they’ll be until the e-newsletter goes out. They’ll say something like, ‘I’m parked on Twelfth, enjoying the view for the next couple of hours.’ No implication of illegal activity, so it’s not their fault if a few of their buddies decide to come park, too, right?”

Tamatsu would have laughed if he could have made a sound, and he’d trained his body not to try anymore. He did smile, though. The scheme was something Gulielmus’s boys might have done. They were brazen hustlers, just like their father, although they likely would have balked at being called such.

“I tend to be the sucker who shows up right before they’re about to leave and who’ll buy whatever is left so they don’t have to take so much stuff home. That’s how I ended up with all this damned bacon.”

That magic word had him floating the rest of the way to the fridge. He drew in a dramatic inhalation at the sight of the meat drawer, piled high with parcels wrapped in white butcher paper.

She lifted a few. “Cherrywood. Bourbon-brown sugar. Thick-cut. There might even be some plain bacon in here, too. Maybe I’ll figure out something to make before it molders.”

Carefully avoiding her hand, he rooted out a pack. He was no better than a starving dog scavenging a bone, and he wasn’t going to be ashamed of that.

Laughing, she bumped the refrigerator door closed with her hip. “Help yourself. Let me know if you want something to go with that, but I’m sure you can find what you want. I have a habit of buying groceries and never actually doing anything with them. I’m never home. I guess I’m doing my part to stimulate the economy, though.”

Oh, he’d eat them for her.

She dropped the infuser from her mug into the sink, and then carried the tea and her fruit toward a hall that must have led to the office. “Make yourself at home,” she called back, and then stopped. “It’s … nice to have someone here making noise,” she said haltingly.

Oh?

“If I think it’s you, I won’t keep reaching for the knife taped under my desk. So, ugh …” She made a noncommittal gesture with one full hand. “Keep doing that, I guess.”

Make yourself at home.

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had told him that. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually had a home. A roof over his head? Sure. He had plenty of those. But trailers in the desert and shacks in swamps didn’t constitute homes. They were places to isolate himself.

Maybe that wasn’t enough anymore. Maybe he needed to finally admit to himself that he couldn’t outrun nostalgia, especially when the trigger could very well be the cure.