CHAPTER FOURTEEN

If Noelle knew Tamatsu was stalking her, she was doing a bang-up job of pretending otherwise, in Tamatsu’s opinion. She was leading around a couple that drove one of those lint-speck two-seater electric cars. They were about to tour the third nearly identical townhouse in a row.

Tarik, leaning against the corner of the unit across the road along with Tamatsu, held up his hand in a “wait” gesture and put his phone to his ear. “Willa?” he said into the mic.

Ah.

Tamatsu hadn’t heard the phone buzzing. He turned his gaze toward Noelle. He couldn’t see her anymore. They’d gone into the house. Fortunately, there hadn’t been any of his usual sort of other-realm disruptions that might have aroused attentions of onlookers. She would have felt obligated to come to his defense, which wasn’t at all necessary. He was perfectly proficient in fighting his own battles, though she certainly did the job with a great deal more finesse than he bothered with.

“Were you able to get in touch with the gentleman Noelle referred you to?”

The volume on Tarik’s phone was up high enough for Tamatsu to make out the demigoddess’s responses without Tarik having to repeat them.

She hadn’t called.

“I’m a punk,” came her tinny-sounding response.

Tarik rubbed one temple and emitted a soft grumble. “Perhaps you can press Tito to phone him on your behalf.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she returned. “I mean, it’d be one thing if Tito were a Coyote, but he’s affiliated with the Cougars, and Cougars and Coyotes are oil and water. I don’t want the guy to give me a quick no only because we broached this in an impolitic way.”

Noelle passed in front of the window in the unit and then quickly disappeared. She’d looked frustrated when she’d walked into the house, as if she were already tired of the excursion. That wasn’t surprising. She’d never been what humans called a “people person.” He’d liked that she hadn’t been, because he’d wanted her all to himself. Selfish of him, maybe, but he hadn’t cared. He was Fallen. Propriety didn’t mean jack shit to him.

“What about Lola?” Tarik asked. “She may be affiliated with the Cougars, but he would respect her for her power.”

“Or he might be scared spitless of her.”

Tarik grunted an admission.

“Can’t you call?” Willa pleaded.

“No. I’ve already interfered in the matter far more than a being of my kind should have. We’re supposed to maintain neutrality. The fact that I’m not fighting one battle after another with other supernaturals is because I try not to make new enemies.”

Tamatsu let out a silent scoff that still managed to make his friend roll his eyes. The truth was that Tarik was far better at eliminating his enemies than he was at abstaining from making new ones. Yet another reason most lesser angels avoided him, and a number of lesser gods, too.

Much of the crew in Ohio wouldn’t even talk to Tamatsu if Tarik were nearby.

Noelle had ascended to the second floor. She paused in front of a bay window, and Tamatsu slipped farther back into the shadows.

Initially, he’d told himself he was simply going for a walk, and perhaps to look for someplace to stretch his wings. Instincts had him trailing a certain real estate agent, however. He didn’t think she’d try to abscond or that she’d find herself in any trouble. He’d just … had to, as if there were some kind of powerful magic dragging him along behind her. He’d felt that once a long time ago, before she’d vanished. Some kind of elf trickery, probably.

“Send him an email,” Tarik said.

“He’ll be offended!” Willa shrieked. “Email is so impersonal and cowardly.”

“Is there no one in your pack who can do this for you? No one at all?”

“No one I’d trust. I don’t know if you’ve noticed lately, but everyone is so scattered and disoriented. The power balance is off. The group wasn’t groomed well and has too few dominants. We’re suffering for that negligence, and I don’t have the magic to make anyone a dominant. I barely have enough magic to keep my hair from going gray when the peanut-brains in the pack decide to set off fireworks on July Fourth knowing good and well there’s a burn and fireworks ban in Maria.”

In Tamatsu’s opinion, Willa not only needed a pack alpha but an entirely new leadership structure. Bringing in that many new Coyotes was going to cause unpredictable disruptions in Maria, no matter how carefully she went about it.

Tarik must have thought the same thing, but he released one of his deep, thunderous laughs and put his head back. “I cannot wait to watch this.”

Willa groaned. “Jeez. Maybe I can ask Noelle. She said she’s good at talking people into things.”

Or out of them.

Especially where clothing was concerned. A whispered “This” accompanied by a point, and he’d strip for her with no hesitation. Probably still would, just to tease her. They’d never touch again, but he’d make her want to.

“The worst she can tell you is no,” Tarik said.

“I really need her to say yes. Can’t you convince her? Please?”

Tamatsu turned back to his quarry and shook his head solemnly.

Have mercy on the woman, friend.

“How much is this worth to you?” Tarik asked her.

“Uh. I don’t know, but I’ve got five tickets to the next middle school band concert if you want them. Those suckers normally retail for two-fifty each, but I hear scalpers give them away for free.”

Tarik rubbed his temple again. Tamatsu happened to know that his friend’s opinion of the band’s performance ability was only slightly more favorable than his own.

“That’s the best I can do, angel. I’ve got no magic, I spend all my spare money on school supplies, and I’m not particularly well networked. Come up with some favor I can actually do that won’t require me to compromise my Renaissance-era morals, and I’ll drop everything to make stuff happen. Please?”

For fuck’s sake.

Tamatsu gave his friend a nudge. He hated hearing women beg. At least, ones who weren’t Noelle. She owed him that and more, and, somehow, he was going to get what was his or else something of equal value. He’d pondered what that might be all night, but had come up with nothing.

Maybe I should make her talk to all those feckless gods.

The idea wasn’t that bad of one. At the very least, the confrontations would be good for a laugh.

“Fine,” Tarik said. “I’ll speak with her.”

“You wouldn’t happen to be teleporting her back this way anytime soon, are you?”

“We’ll see. I’ll be in touch.” Tarik ended the call, right as Noelle stepped out onto the house’s stoop.

She looked both ways, and then hurried across the street. “What are you two doing?” she asked, glancing around as if two creatures older than the human reckoning of time wouldn’t know how to be discreet.

“You knew we were here?” Tarik asked.

“Didn’t see you at first, but of course I knew he was around somewhere.” She crooked her thumb toward Tamatsu.

“How so?”

She passed a hand through her bouncy ponytail and forced a hiss through clenched teeth. “Psychic shit. Clicked on all of a sudden. If only I could find Waldo so fast.”

Tamatsu cocked an eyebrow in query.

Noelle made a dismissive wave of her hand. “In your copious free time, swing by one of Vegas’s many library branches and do a search for Where’s Waldo? I’d venture to guess that Waldo blends in better than you two, in spite of your love affair with neutral colors.”

“How should we go about making ourselves less conspicuous, then?”

Tamatsu really wanted to hear the answer to that, too. He leaned against the wall, crossed his arms over his chest, and raised his chin.

She swallowed and, slowly, turned her wide-eyed gaze up to him. Stupefied, apparently. She blinked several times.

He liked her speechless.

“Well?” Tarik asked.

Once more, she blinked, but then she looked away. “Uh.” She passed a hand through her hair again.

Speechless and unbalanced, then?

She seemed so harmless when she was like that.

“I think maybe a good start would be for you to sequester yourselves to some indoor space and—”

Tamatsu had barely heard the start of the whining sound before Noelle had reached beneath her skirt. She pulled a knife, and tossed it with a grunt toward a fish head exiting an adjacent realm.

The creature hit the ground with a splat.

She put her hands on her hips and continued, “And never make yourself seen by the general public. Your presence is disruptive.”

“We’re not bothering anyone.” Tarik strode to the defeated creature and nudged it with the side of his boot.

A sibilant hiss seeped out of its mouth, and then it deflated with a pop, insides scattering.

Staring down at her entrail-splattered legs, Noelle growled. “Damn you. A little warning next time, maybe? These pantyhose were twenty bucks and have to be hand-washed. I can’t go back into the house like this.”

“No, I imagine not.” Tarik handed her back her knife. He’d kindly wiped it for her.

“Gods.” She dropped the weapon into her tote, and then scurried behind a few trashcans in the alley. “You guys are over seven feet tall,” she said, shimmying behind the bins. “Even if you dressed like the locals and didn’t spend your time skulking …” She lifted the lid of the closest bin and deposited her soiled hose. Seemed a waste to him, though he could certainly understand why she’d write them off. “People would still stare at you.”

She rooted through her tote as she stepped back around.

“Oh?” Tarik asked.

She ferreted a packet of wipes from her bag and got to work cleansing residual smears from her bare legs.

Somehow, in spite of her less than average height, her legs always managed to look a mile long. Felt pretty short when they were wrapped around him, though.

“Need to get a tan,” she muttered, wadding up her wipe. “Wouldn’t need the hose if I had one. I might go to one of those spray tan places. I can’t keep a natural tan.” She let her eyes cross. “Not the way Clarissa can, apparently.”

“Clarissa works outdoors,” Tarik said.

“I can’t picture that. I knew her as the coddled queen who was rarely outside of the palace walls. That was one of the reasons I worried about her so much after the diaspora. She’d never really been anywhere and I figured she’d get lost.”

“Perhaps lost was what she wanted.”

“Yeah. You’re probably right. Look.” She narrowed her eyes at Tarik, and then turned to Tamatsu. “I’m doing my best to work out what happened to your voice. I swear, I am, and I actually have an idea of how I might be able to jog my memory, but you guys need to go away. You’re distracting and I’m trying to sell a house. I’d really like to get this couple off my client list as soon as reasonably possible.”

“What’s wrong with them?” Tarik asked, and Tamatsu had been thinking the same. Ever his mouthpiece.

“They have unreasonable expectations of what they can get for their budget. They want the Taj Mahal, and the best I can do for them within the city limits is Tent City. First-time buyers. I don’t usually work with them, but I’m doing a favor for a guy in my office. I traded him a higher commission lead because he needed the money. Then again, he always needs the money.”

Favors.

A good segue. Remembering Willa, Tamatsu gave Tarik a nudge.

“Ah.” Tarik cleared his throat. “We’ll take our leave momentarily, but speaking of favors, Willa is having some … difficulty reaching out to your Coyote contact.”

“Just tell her to keep calling. He’s probably not answering his phone because he’s wearing fur at the moment.”

“Not that sort of problem. She’s too afraid to call him.”

Noelle closed one eye. The lid had been twitching.

Tamatsu actually smiled then, a practice his facial muscles were wholly out of practice with. Apparently, she hadn’t lost that tic after so many years.

“Pardon me?”

Tarik shoved his hands into his pockets and looked to the sky. “I believe she is something of a functional introvert. If she sees the same people day after day, she engages with them fine. She doesn’t seem as assertive toward people she doesn’t know.”

“An introverted demigoddess managing a Coyote pack? And here I was thinking I’d heard everything.” Noelle crinkled her nose. The only way for her to have looked more like an elf at the moment would have been if she’d had pointed ears. She wasn’t cute—not by Tamatsu’s standards, anyway. Her features were too graceful for anything about her to be sweet. Still, there was definitely something charming about the expressions she made when she was bemused. They made him want to grab her and cover her face with kisses until she squealed in that wonderfully vulnerable way she used to.

Dangerous thoughts.

“She likely needs a partner,” Tarik said blandly. “It’s a wonder she’s been on her own for as long as she has.”

Tamatsu bobbed his eyebrows at that. He and Tarik spent plenty of time of apart. They weren’t dependent on each other by any stretch of the imagination, but they generally moved as a duo. A trio when Gulielmus had his shit together, but two was almost as satisfying. They didn’t only watch each other’s backs. They kept each other from going stir crazy. Creatures that lived for as long as they did needed frequent touchstones so they’d stay grounded … so they’d have reasons to endure.

Life was boring sometimes.

Too boring.

“I’ll give him a ring later, or will get in touch with Willa and see if she wants to do a three-way—” She wagged her finger at Tamatsu before he could even think it. “Not like that.”

Pity.

“A conference call. Three-way isn’t a phrase I should utter anywhere within a mile of you after what supposedly happened the last time, not that I can remember the details.” Noelle flicked her wet wipe into a nearby garbage can. “Anyhow, I’ll call her. Now, shoo.” She made the appropriate hand-flapping sign language to go with that word. “I mean it.”

Tarik snorted.

Tamatsu folded his arms over his chest, leaned against the side of the building, and hooked up an eyebrow at her.

“You said you were leaving.”

“Momentarily,” Tarik said.

“What are you waiting for?”

“Nothing in particular. Why are you rushing us off?”

“I already told you. You guys don’t blend in.”

“Would you have us visit Brooks Brothers to rectify that? We could. We’d have a much harder time glamouring the wings without our usual outerwear, however. Gulielmus was always so much better at altering his appearance, especially when he was an incubus. If you want to talk about threesomes and other acts of sexual deviance, that’d be an interesting conversation to have with him.”

Noelle’s eyelid began to twitch again. “I …”

Tamatsu really wanted to hear the rest of her objection. He pushed up both eyebrows.

“I …” She swallowed. Her gaze, in Tamatsu’s general direction, looked to be a bit unfocused.

“How many yards of pinstripes do you think a tailor would need to suit a man of seven-five?”

She swallowed. Audibly.

“I’m assuming we could forego the ties. They’re not really necessary in this environment, I imagine.”

Her cheek on the same side started twitching, too.

Tamatsu cut his friend a look.

Tarik may have been speaking in jest at first, but Tamatsu liked the idea of undoing Noelle’s self-control in any way he could. He didn’t want to spend money on clothing, but if doing so would make her blush so charmingly and sputter as she was, he would. It’d be the most fun he’d had since having to give up sex after she’d left him.

He could have been like Gulielmus. He could have slaked at least some of his urges in the same way and made sex his job, but Tarik had been there. He hadn’t been able to stop Gulielmus from going completely offside, but he’d had a small victory with Tamatsu.

At Tarik’s pinch to Tamatsu’s glamoured wing, Tamatsu opened the eyes he hadn’t realized he’d closed and straightened up.

He needed to stay focused. He had idiotic weather gods to go antagonize.

“We’ll rendezvous with you later,” Tarik said to Noelle, whose vision looked more focused then. She had her gaze pinned on Tamatsu, and there was no judgment in it—just curiosity.

Too bad he didn’t have any answers to give her. Only excuses.

“I’d imagine you want to see Jenny again soon,” Tarik said to her.

Noelle slid her gaze slowly toward him, nodded, and hitched her tote up to her shoulder. “I’d appreciate you taking me to her when I’m done. Later, I mean. I’ve some things to do at the office.”

Tarik gave her a slight bow. “Of course.”

With one more curious glance at Tamatsu, she turned on the heel of her pumps and sashayed across the street.

Tamatsu breathed a silent sigh. Didn’t matter what she was wearing. Never mattered. Layers of leather and armor. Dresses with voluminous skirts. Snug pencil skirts worn with shirts that weren’t buttoned all the way up to the neck. He wanted her—wanted to peel back her layers and devour her for as long as she’d let him.

The problem was there was no way that would be long enough for him.

Couldn’t be. He was insatiable. Abstinence would be far less painful in the long run.

She was no longer in the line of his vision. She’d reentered the house across the street, but he still stared until Tarik got in front of him.

“You need to get a handle on this,” he said. “Do whatever it takes.”

If only that were such a simple thing.

“A blind man could see that she still wants something from you, and if I’ve pegged you right, you’re pleased with that. Pettiness doesn’t suit you.”

Tamatsu rolled his eyes.

“Hear me. I’m not so callous that I would assert that you be her partner again and never touch her. That would be a cruel thing to suggest, and not just for you, for her, too. I’m certain she hasn’t been a nun.”

Tamatsu gave his friend a shove away from him—the closest to “fuck off” he could say without having a voice.

“I anger you, but I speak only truth. Certainly, you didn’t expect that she hadn’t touched anyone else. Perhaps you’ve thought more of what you’ve lost in the ages since you’ve crossed paths than of what she may have lost, too.”

But she’d gotten to touch people, and he hadn’t. Tamatsu closed his eyes again and forced out a ragged exhalation. No, he had. He’d touched others. When she’d left for her errand, their pallet had barely cooled before he’d pulled someone else onto him. She hadn’t been his last.

He’d told himself for so long that he was simply meeting a need like any other, and that she couldn’t malign him for that. After all, he’d had her permission, but of course she should have been angry. He could have tried to wait.

He’d never told her about his hungers and how they perverted his relationships with people. For a long time, he’d assessed everyone he met as someone to either fuck or kill, until his priorities shifted.

They were always shifting depending on which sin he thought was worse on any given day.

He hadn’t given her the same honesty she’d given him so breathlessly. He’d taken her for granted and assumed Noelle’s openness had no limits.

Maybe he’d deserved his punishment.

He looked at his friend. Just looked at him for a long while.

I don’t know what to do.

He didn’t know if there was anything he could do.

“I can’t solve your problems for you,” Tarik said quietly as if he’d just read Tamatsu’s mind. “You know that. I have too many of my own, but I can help you implement solutions once you determine what they are.”

What if there aren’t any solutions?

Tarik rolled the shoulder of his bad wing in the slow, thorough way he always did. The wing was stronger than it’d been since he’d damaged it, but would never be in optimal condition. There was no way to fix it, short of an infusion of magic no one would be willing to give up. He didn’t expect anyone to give up their magic for him, either.

He coped.

He conditioned himself the best he could, and functioned through the ache.

Why can’t I?

Tarik was no stronger than him. His fortitude was no greater.

So why can’t I?

There was no damned reason he couldn’t. He simply needed to want to.

And he did, because he wanted Noelle. No one else could have her. The fact that anyone else had gotten close was entirely his fault, and he was going to make amends.

Perhaps he’d never get his voice back—and he was becoming resigned to that possibility—but he could be … happy, at least for a while.

A while was better than nothing. Forever was a long time to live when there were never any highs to pull him up out of his lows.

So low for so long.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and started for the sidewalk.

He could choose to be high.