Erika closed her eyes and leaned into his strength. She had been falsely composed for so long, she’d forgotten she was fronting, what had once been a survival skill now an ingrained habit that went so deep, it had become a defining characteristic of hers.
His broad palm stroked up and down her back and he murmured against the top of her head. In return, she held him tightly, and in doing so, tried to communicate through touch that which she couldn’t possibly say out loud.
Because it was lame. And crazy—
A quiet vibrating sound stiffened them both, and he gave her a quick squeeze and then went over to the duffle to take out his cell phone. Whatever the text was, he seemed to read it twice. Either that or it was a long one.
“It’s an all-clear.” He shook his head as he typed out something, his blunt fingers flying over the little screen. Almost immediately, there was another vibration as a response came in. “V says everyone’s okay and there’s no engagement, but Wrath’s calling all the fighters on rotation in from the field tonight.”
“Wrath…？”
“Our King.”
Erika could only stare across in wonder as he continued to communicate with whoever was on the other end of the texting. A king? As in… a whole society, living under the radar in Caldwell, with their own political hierarchy, their own problems, their own world? And this had been going on for how long? And “engagement,” “fighter,” and “field”—those were military words.
Like they were at war.
But come on, as if she hadn’t seen that up close and personal?
And it was at this moment that she realized why she was so calm. As shocking as all of the revelations of tonight had been, they actually explained everything that hadn’t sat right with her and so many others for so many years: From her headaches to the completely clear brain scans of her homicide colleagues, from those ritualistic murder scenes that had happened with some regularity to the bodies found in inexplicable conditions, from the confusing fact patterns reported by witnesses to everything that had been simmering under the surface that she—and all the other detectives charged with investigating violent crime in Caldwell—had struggled to reconcile within the context of the world that appeared to be true… all of it was suddenly making sense.
And she would take a shocking reality over an irreconcilable fiction-quilt of crime scenes that made no sense and gaps in the memories of so many otherwise reasonable people.
Erika went over and sat on the couch.
A moment later, Balthazar came across and settled in beside her, laying the phone facedown on his thigh. When his heel bounced, and he rubbed his jaw, she got the impression that if she’d had a cigarette, he’d have taken one. Or twelve.
As a previous smoker, having quit in her early twenties, she could remember being twitchy like that when the cravings hit.
“So did we humans get the no-sunshine part right?” she asked. “That you can’t go out in the daylight, I mean?”
He seemed to have to refocus. “Ah, yes, that’s correct. And we do live longer than you. We also do tricks.”
“Mind control.” She touched her temple. “I’m aware of that one.”
She wanted to ask more questions, about the enemies of his kind, and his history, and how long he had been in—
“Are you married?” she asked sharply.
“No, I’m not mated.”
“That’s what you call it?” And she was so relieved, she got a little dizzy. “Mated.”
“Wives are known as shellans. But as I said, I don’t have one.”
“Well, I clearly don’t have a husband or a boyfriend. You’ve been through my closets, after all.”
The side of his mouth lifted. “They were really nice closets. So neat.”
“I like to know where things are.”
As their no-BFD conversation petered out and they fell silent, her awareness of him expanded to fill the basement, her attention so rapt, she forgot to track the sounds inside the townhouse or look out for threats. He was just that… captivating. He was like an animal, she realized—and she didn’t mean that in a pejorative sense. Sitting here on her yeah-whatevers blue-and-white couch, with his eyes trained across her little cellar and his limbs relaxed… he was anything but casual. He was like a tiger, poised to attack, even at rest.
She pictured him fighting that shadow in the bookshop, all vicious moves and power.
Then she remembered the pair of them going through her house just now, him out in front, leading the way with that big body of his, everything from the cut of his jawline to the set of his broad shoulders promising one hell of a beatdown if anything got in his way.