Shapeshifted

* * *



He took a look at the silver cross hanging on my wall. “I’d ask if you were religious now, but I think I know the answer to that.”



“You never know who’s going to visit,” I said, well aware that neither crosses nor silver worked on zombies.



There was an awkward silence. I waited for him to fill it. I figured he was here for a reason, and I didn’t want to give him any outs.



He walked into my living room and looked around. “I can’t tell. Is this a step up or down?”



“It’s a lateral move.” What does one normally do when one sees exes whom one perhaps wants to stay on congenial terms with, but only for five minutes or so? I walked over to my kitchen. “Tea? Coffee?”



He smiled softly. “I’m fine.”



Of course he was. Zombies didn’t need to eat or drink, except for show, and to regrow—and besides, he’d gotten to do the leaving, not the being left behind. Of course he was fine.



“Edie, I didn’t mean to—”



“Yeah. No one ever means to.” I walked past him and sat down on the far end of my couch. He sat opposite me.



“This is a nicer couch than your last one.”



“It is. So why’re you here?” I was actually more interested in where he’d gone, and why he’d left, but the answers to those questions were more likely to piss me off.



“I wanted to check in on you. The last time I saw you, you were in pretty dire straits.”



“You mean when you left me.”



“At a hospital. Your hospital.”



I crossed my arms again, this time over my stomach. The last time Ti’d seen me, I’d been stabbed by vampires and was bleeding at a prodigious rate.



“I was wounded too, Edie. I had to go … and heal.” We both knew what that meant for him. Killing people. Eating them. Not nice people, but still. “I didn’t leave town, though, until I knew you were going to be okay. I asked around.”



“You could have asked me.”



He rubbed his knees with his dark hands. “I should have. But—you know what I am, Edie. What I do. I should have never been with you.”



“Didn’t I get a vote in that?” I asked, my voice small.



He slowly shook his head. “No.”



“Ti—”



“I tried to tell you. I don’t know why I thought it could be different with you.”



“Maybe it could have been, if you’d just given things a chance.” I didn’t want to hope that things could change now, did I? I was still mad at him for leaving me, right?



“When we were in the back of that limo together, when you were bleeding out, and I was falling apart—you smelled like death.” He paused, and I could tell whatever he was going to say next would pain him. “And it smelled good.”



I started shaking my head. “You never would have, Ti, never ever—”



He cut me off without meeting my eyes. “No. And yet, I can’t deny what I am. What I’ll always be.”



“I don’t judge you, Ti—”



“You did once. And you should.” He shrugged softly. “It’s the right of the living to judge the dead.”



I bit my lips to keep quiet. Anything I said now would be the wrong thing. And yet— “Why’re you here now, Ti?” If he was back for me, I wanted to hear it. I didn’t know what I’d say at that point, but I wanted to hear him say the words. And if he wasn’t back for me, well, I wanted to know that too.



“I was out of town for a while. And when I came back, I wanted to check on you.”



“I’m not the reason you came back, though, am I.” It wasn’t even a question. If he’d wanted to come back for me, he would have done it already.



“No. There’s a magician here who says he can give me back the rest of my soul.”



It wasn’t me. It was never me. Ti’d been looking for the rest of his soul ever since he’d been freed as a zombie. He had half of it—enough to keep him him—but whoever had changed him had the other half, and had used it to control him. Getting or growing a whole soul was the only way he could really die. Not just be-dismembered-die, but really die and go to heaven, where he thought he would see all his old friends. His dead wife.



I crossed my arms again.



“I don’t know if he really can, but he’s working on it. He has power like I’ve never seen—no, I don’t see it, I feel it. He can do magic, Edie. Like my old master. The real thing.”



“What’re you trading him?”



Ti’s lips split into a rueful grin. “Money. Lots of it. But I don’t need it, like I am. And if it doesn’t work, I can always get more.”



I guessed employability wasn’t a big concern when you were immortal and didn’t always need to eat. I shook my head. “Why are you here here, Ti? Not in the metaphysical sense—why are you in my living room?”



He wouldn’t meet my gaze. “I wanted to make sure you were all right.”



“You didn’t need to talk to me to find that out.”



“Heh.” He ran a hand through his short hair. “I guess I thought I owed you answers.”



“You could say that. Seven months ago—you totally could have said that.”



“I feel really bad for the way things happened, Edie.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I mean it. Not that I can pretend to know if that even helps.”



It was the only apology I would get from him. Take it or leave it. I stared at my far wall, where a spider emerged from the corner, ran up, and, as if blinded by the lamplight, dove back into a crevice in the hardwood floor again. “I guess I should say that I’m glad for you.”



“It’s what I want. What I’ve always wanted. I just didn’t mean to hurt you along the way. I feel really bad about that.”



“You feel really bad about it?” I asked, my voice rising. “Yeah. I’m sure you do.”



Ti tilted his head. He was still handsome, no denying. Strong, responsible. I’d felt safe when I was with him. There’d been a crazy moment in time when I thought that maybe I’d loved him. I’d spent the past seven months shoving that part of me down.



“I’m glad you’re okay,” I said. “I’m pissed that you didn’t let me know sooner. And I’m sad that I was stupid, back then.”



He looked wounded, but he recovered too quickly for me to know precisely which part of my statement had hurt him. “What’s this about you being shunned?”



I leaned back. “I got into some trouble after you left. There was a werewolf problem, and a vampire problem—I wound up destroying all the extra vampire and werewolf blood at County Hospital.”



Ti’s eyebrows crept up his forehead. “When you get into trouble, you don’t do it halfway.”



I snorted. “Seems so.”



“Is that creepy little girl vampire still around?”



“Anna? Yeah. I haven’t talked to her since New Year’s Eve, though.” No matter how much I might like to, to somehow make her help my mom. “She’s the one who made everyone shun me to keep me out of trouble. No one’s allowed to talk to me now, on threat of death, I think. She set me free, by making me leave.”



He snorted. “I’ve never known anyone to get away from them before.”



I shrugged. “Seems I have. Nothing supernatural’s come knocking at my door since I moved. Until you. Although I admit, I don’t go out at night as often as I used to.”



“That’s probably for the best.” Another awkward silence passed between us until he spoke. “It’s almost dark. I should go.”



I didn’t have a way to convince him otherwise. I felt helpless again, like I had the last time he’d left me behind.



I cannot express strongly enough how much I abhor being left behind.



He rocked to standing, and this time I didn’t fight him. “I’m sorry I can’t give you what you need, Edie. Humans and zombies just aren’t—”



I cut him off. I didn’t want to hear it. “The time for that would have been a while ago, anyhow.” I walked around him and opened my apartment door.



He swallowed—the vestiges of another human habit—and nodded. “I think the shun is a good idea, Edie. I want you to be well. But I don’t want to see you around.” He reached out and put his hand against my cheek. “I mean that in the best possible way.”



I wanted to turn my head into his hand like a cat and lean into his strength, but I forced myself to stay still. “Thanks, I think,” I said as drily as I could.



“Good-bye, Edie.” He took a step back, and I closed the door after him.



Seven months is long enough to get over someone you loved who saved your life, right?



CHAPTER TEN



I didn’t sleep very well that night. I tossed and turned and Minnie got tired of putting up with me—when I woke up she was sleeping inside my closet, on the floor.



By the third time I’d snoozed my alarm, I was doubting the wisdom of signing up for a daytime job. It wasn’t too late to call up the sleep clinic and say I’d been pulling some sort of dickish prank, quitting without notice. “They’d love that, of course,” I mumbled to myself in the shower. But I got out the door on time to make the train, and I found myself rolling downtown, yawning through the first five stops.



“Ah, enfermera.” Dr. Tovar was standing at the bottom of the station stairs. “Decided to be on time today?”



I wasn’t sure where he got off acting so much older than me when he wasn’t. “You haven’t scared me off yet,” I said, trying to sound brash.



He tilted his head, as though acknowledging that fact, while still making allowances for it to happen sometime soon. As I caught up to him, he started walking, and I walked beside him.



“So what is this place? A traveling market?”