The Dead (The Thaumaturge Series Book 1) (17 page)

“Hmm. Is it good?”

“I think it is.”

“And what are we doing now?”

“I have to run by my store and check on the pipes.”

“The pipes?”

“Yeah, to make sure they don't freeze.”

“Oh,” he said, and fell silent. Then, in a very quiet voice, “Can we grab something to eat? I haven't eaten since . . . ” he didn't finish but he didn't have to. He hadn't eaten since before he had been killed, of course.

“God, sorry,” I said. “There's a little diner up ahead-will that work?”

“Yes, sure.” he sounded eager and I felt a pang of something that may have been guilt. I should have offered him breakfast earlier.

After you found him squatting in your truck?

Well, yeah. I pushed that vicious little voice away and instead pulled into the parking lot of The Dinner Bell. He followed me inside, his shoes slipping on the packed ice.

I felt eyes on us right away, the door jingling overhead as we walked in. It was Sunday, after all, and The Dinner Bell was one of the only places open on the Lord's Day. All those good Christians watched as we walked down the line of occupied tables and booths and slid into the only open seats, which of course were front and center at the counter. I could tell that Marcus could feel the weight of the stares, too. He was sat a little hunched, his eyes hooded and his mouth tight.

“We should just get food to go,” he said to me quietly.

“If you want,” I replied, catching the eye of the waitress and giving her a smile. She smiled back, but there was a certain wariness I had come to expect. Her eyes flicked from me to him and then back again.

“I do,” he said. He didn't smile as the waitress handed him a menu. He seemed to shrink a little under her curious gaze. I thought of all the sides of him that I had seen so far - the swagger, the bravado, the anger and tears.

“What's the deal?” I asked quietly, when the waitress moved away.

He shrugged. “I just feel really out of place.”

“Eh, don't worry about them,” I said, waving a dismissive hand. “They're looking at you because you are with me.”

“Is this not your usual date spot?”

I huffed a laugh. “Nah. Usually I spring for the truck stop on I-90. They have prime rib on Fridays.”

His mouth twitched up a bit, but his shoulders stay hunched, and I wished I could have reached across the little space between the stools and put my hand on his.

I felt someone approaching on my other side, and swung my stool.

“Hey Ebron.”

“Oh, hey, Chad,” I said, my stomach sinking.

Chad Metz – officer of the law, uncle to a little girl I’d resurrected after a swimming accident, Seattle Seahawks fanatic. He was five or ten years older than me, built like a Sequoia but going pudgy around the middle, and he was just so
American
. He had been in the army. He liked country music. He had an American flag flying on an honest-to-God flagpole in his front yard. He was married with three kids, and he was always inviting me over to barbecue and watch football with him. And I think he sort of had an unhealthy obsession with me, but that might have just been
my
unhealthy need for validation talking.

“Who's your friend?” Chad asked. I caught of whiff of fresh laundry smell off his Trouts Unlimited tee shirt. His sunny smile split his ruddy face.

“Uh, Chad, this is Marcus,” I said, hoping that my voice sounded normal. “Visiting from out of town.”

Chad stuck his big meaty paw out and Marcus shook it robotically.

“Good to meet you,” Chad said, and clapped me on the back. His voice lowered. “Call me when you have some time. I want to talk to you about something.”

“Ten-four,” I said inexplicably, then winced at my own nervous nonsense.

“I have an idea,” he whispered loudly, leaning in close enough to let me know that he'd enjoyed maple syrup with his breakfast.

“Gotcha,” I said, more forcefully.

He took the hint, looking back and forth between us and then gave me an elbow to the ribs, along with an exaggerated wink. Ugh. I thought that he had had suspicions about me before, but he was definitely jumping to conclusions now. I wondered if my hickey still showed.

“Say no more, man! At least you treat to breakfast afterwards!” He wouldn’t stop grinning. God spare me the helpful tolerance of well-intentioned hicks.

“Chad...” I warned. My old shop teacher sat two stools down and he gave me an uncomfortable side-eye. Marcus stared intently at the chipped counter top.

“Sorry, man!” Chad gave us both a nod and me another wink.

“I'll call you soon,” I said, and he was still grinning when he walked away.

Marcus gave me a look I couldn't interpret, something between horror and amusement, and I smiled back. “So we're getting the food to go?”

When we finally reached my store, Marcus immediately settled himself in the chair by the front window and set to work on his food, all before I could even get the key wrestled out from the lock. I stood in the doorway, knocking the water off my boots and watched him, enjoying the sight of him eating. It felt faintly voyeuristic, seeing him do something so completely, mundanely human. Almost intimate. He glanced up, mouth already full, and saw me watching him. “What?”

“Nothing,” I said, and headed to the back room with my face flushing.

We passed the rest of the morning companionably. The pipes were in good shape, but once started I found that there were plenty of small tasks that needed my attention. I stocked some new products, swept up the storeroom, and worked on repairing the touchy electrical system in the tiny bathroom in the very back corner of the building. It was little more than a water closet, hadn't been updated since the building had been built in the late 1890s, but I sorely wanted a bathroom that I didn't have to share with my customers.

Marcus eventually wandered back to see what I was doing, and found me seeing to the dozen or so fresh plants I grew in the back under UV lighting. His face registered surprise, and I supposed it did rather look like some sort of illegal growing operation, but I saw him relax a bit when he recognized some of the more common herbs.

“So how did you end up doing this?” he asked, hopping up to sit on a stool, his long legs swinging in front of him.

“I just sort of fell into it.”

“Odd thing to fall into,” he observed, watching me.

“I suppose it is. How did you end up doing witchcraft?”

“Eh,” he said dismissively. “There's really nothing interesting about that. I met Shaina in college. She was way into it already, had been since high school.” he gave a low chuckle. “I kinda thought that she was a freak.”

“Imagine that,” I said dryly, and he tossed a dried aloe stalk at my head.

“But I felt like there was something to it. 'Cause I could, you know, feel stuff. Feel energy.” he shrugged. “Turns out she was right.”

“But how did you get into it?” I pressed. “You didn't drop out of college, obviously, if you graduated, so how did you explain to your parents that you aren't an engineer?”

He blinked at me. “Who says I'm not an engineer? I have a job, you know.”

“Oh. I guess that makes sense. Not a lot of money in professional witchery, I'll bet.”

He snorted. “But my parents. Oh God, they're
horrified
. Can you imagine? It's bad enough having a gay son, but a gay son who is a witch? And we're black? My father hasn't been able to look me in the eye for a year.”

“So you're . . . out?” I asked quietly, avoiding his eyes by carefully snipping some mint from plant.

“Yeah,” he said, as though it were a stupid question. The he paused and I felt him looking at me. “Oh. I take it you aren't? I thought that guy had the restaurant knew.”

“People know. My family knows. They . . . found out,” I said, not quite able to keep the bitterness from my voice. “But I don't advertise it, if I can help it. I live in Heckerson, Montana. It might as well be the 19th century.”

“I'm sorry,” he said softly, and there was sadness there, enough to make me look up.

We regarded each other for a minute. The dusty light hit him just right, the shadows filling in the deep hollows of his cheeks, highlighting the arch of his eyebrows and the curve of his jaw. He leaned back on the stool, elbows resting on the counter behind him, the long planes of his body full on display. It was, I thought, a rather provocative pose. Only the seriousness of his expression kept him from looking lewd.

I swallowed heavily, uncomfortable under the weight of his gaze. I wasn't one to really take pains with my appearance, and I could only imagine what he saw when he looked at me. A scruffy hick in torn work pants and scuffed boots? I hadn’t cut my hair in ages and now it touched the collar of my frayed thermal shirt, long enough to be shoved messily behind my ears.

My body seemed to grow its own dirt; even when I scrubbed I couldn’t get the gunk out from under my fingernails. Summers of hauling hay bales and working cattle helped keep me lean, but I couldn’t seem to put on any muscle. I felt like a whippet, bony and thin. I was used to standing out, but Marcus made me feel terribly exposed. I dropped my gaze, coughing uncomfortably.

“So you and the vampire then?” he said casually. I wished he would change the subject like any normal person.

I shrugged. “We're friends.”

“How'd that happened?”

“I met him when I was a teenager. He found me in the woods with a -” I bit of the rest of my words and looked dumbly at him. Leo had found me bringing a fox back to life and had been fascinated enough to confront me. But I couldn't tell him that.

“With a deer,” I finished lamely, but he didn't seem to notice. “I think he wanted the blood.”

“And he's never, you know, hurt you?”

Not unless I ask him to
. “No.”

“Do you love him?”

“Fuck, Marcus,” I snapped, glaring at him. “I've known you for about five minutes. Little personal, don't you think?”

“Sorry. I've just never met a vampire before. What's he like?” and then, as it occurred to him. “Does he drink your blood?”

“No. Never.”

“Hmm. But you guys . . . you know.”

“Marcus,” I complained, and he grinned, his eyes lighting up.

“You are! What's that like? Is he super strong?” His eyes narrowed. “Does he throw you around?”

“I really don't want to talk about this with you.”

“Okay,” he said, but his smile didn't fade. “But let me ask you this: are you guys exclusive?”

I just looked at him, completely at a loss for words. He slowly slid off the stool and moved towards me. He clearly knew what he was about; he moved like water, his legs and hips and shoulders gliding sinuous and slow. I took a step back, watching him warily, but he stopped a respectable distance away, watching me with his head tilted.

“Are you?” he asked again.

“Why?”

“Well,” he gave an amused snorting. “There was a reason I put a spell on you. Just wondering if I am wasting my time.”

“You are,” I said firmly, but my body had other ideas. It was reacting to him in entirely other ways, and it was with some awkwardness that I shifted my weight, trying to ease the sudden pressure in my pants. He noticed, his eyes flickering downward, and then back up to me. They shocked me with their color, green like the color of aspen leaves.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

I really, really wasn't. I stared at him, at his ridiculously gorgeous cat eyes, and his bottom lip, shining a little from where he had just licked it. The smooth slope of his shoulders. I could so easily imagine just walking over to him and sliding my arms around his back, pressing my hips against his and taking his infuriating mouth in a kiss. It wouldn't have to be anything else. It didn't have to go any further.

I wanted to. I very badly wanted to, I realized, staring at him. It wasn't just his looks. I liked his cockiness, and his temper. The way he oscillated between being stuck-up and being vulnerable. I liked how his mouth kept twitching when he spoke, how he seemed to always be making jokes and hoping that I would get them.

But the space between us felt insurmountable. I couldn’t really walk across the room and take him into my arms. Impossible. Leo would kill me.

Would he though? The thought itched at my mind, stubborn and painful. Leo was the one who was always encouraging me to find other lovers, to gain some experiences with other people. I’d been with other people, but I'd never gone past anonymous sex with anyone else. He knew I was waiting for him.

Besides, I knew very well that he wasn't exactly faithful to me.

No, more likely than not Leo wouldn't care in the slightest. He had made it clear to me time and again that whatever was between us was a casual thing. And though I had pined over him for years, desperate and hopeless and aching, he never treated me as anything more than a good friend.

But he had called me his lover. There was that.

But that was so little. Christ, couldn't I have a little bit more?

Marcus stayed still, watching me while my mind twisted in torment. I could think of nothing to say that would explain, no way of telling him that, yes, of course, I wanted him. But he was a witch, and I had seen him lying dead in the snow. I couldn't trust him, but oh, God, the look in his eyes. I wanted to know how his hips would feel, moving under my hands.

I waited too long; the moment passed. Marcus gave me a terse nod, and the suggestive tilt left his body, just like that.

“Well, the offer stands,” he said stiffly, going back to perch on the stool.

“Marcus . . .”

“You don't have to say anything.”

“Good, cause I don't know what to say.”

He smiled a little. “Is it me? Or are you just afraid?”

“No, God, it's not you. You're -” I inhaled a ragged breath, and made a vague gesture.

“Then what? The vampire?”

“No. I don't know. Fuck, this is a lot. I've never been propositioned like this before.”

“Oh?” a little gleam came into his eyes and his mouth twitched. “I find that hard to believe.”

Hadn't he been listening at all? I felt a flash of annoyance and self-pity. Wasn't the state of my life blisteringly apparent? Looking at him leaning there all cocky and self-assured and confident made the lonely bleak landscape of my life seem all the more painful.