A Feral Darkness (28 page)

      
Settled within herself, she came around the SUV and discovered Masera sitting on her porch, Druid at his side. She walked slowly up to the porch and stopped some feet away, just standing there, waiting. He was the one who'd shown up at her place—again—without invitation. Let him take the burden of any conversation.

      
He didn't, not at first. At first he simply looked at her, making her suddenly aware of herself from the outside in. The chill of the April air across the exposed strip of skin at her navel, the waterfall feel of her hair against her back and swirling behind her knees. Because abruptly , she knew that's just what he was looking at—
staring
at, his gaze as tangible as the cold breeze that brought goosebumps up on her arms.

      
He stood, and took a couple of swift steps to stop short only inches from her, close enough to block the breeze, for her to feel the warmth of his body replace it.

      
That was when her world swirled and she knew Sammi had been right, that day in the break room a month ago. Whatever Masera thought about grooming and groomers, whatever else he was up to...right now, he
wanted.
Enough to forget why he'd come here, to forget that she'd never welcomed him, to forget that they'd last parted ways on hard terms.

      
Not things Brenna could ignore. Nor could she ignore the tension between them, or the way his hand drifted up to her hair by her neck, hovering but not touching.

      
The way she could feel it anyway.

      
So she took control. She ended the moment, looking up and into his eyes as she lingered over a single word. "Iban."

      
It startled him just as much as she'd meant it to. Enough so his hand fell away and he stared at her with all his intensity fled. She waited for his anger.

      
He laughed.

      
A guffaw, really—short and genuine. And then he backed up and made himself at home on her front porch step. "Brenna Lynn," he said, but even in the darkness she caught the quirk of his mouth.

      
"Iban," she said again, this time as an acknowledgment. And a demand, which he caught.
How do you know what you know?

      
"Roger's not careful with his files," Masera said, and now his subtle inflections made sense to her; they fit onto Eztebe's like a shadow template. "I was hunting for something else, I ran across yours, I peeked."

      
Brenna crossed her arms, silent. Not quite a demand, but certainly expectant. It sounded too much like just enough truth to get by.

      
He got the point, shrugged, and said, "I
was
hunting for something else. But I didn't know it wasn't in your file until I looked there." Fessing up, yes. Looking guilty, no. He'd been checking her out. And had he been checking her out, somehow, that day he'd come to the tub room to wash the Westie?

      
"Oh, I do feel better," Brenna said, suddenly sure of that last. "Not only do you sneak around behind my back, you sneak around behind Roger's. That certainly makes it all right."

      
He winced. "Brenna—"

      
"I could say I never even asked you to call me that, but Ms. Fallon doesn't suit me well, so..." She shrugged. It wasn't inviting.

      
"Do you suppose you could put that rifle up?" he asked, and that made her smile, because they both knew he was in no danger whatsoever. From the rifle.

      
"If I want to hit you—"

      
"—again," he quickly interposed.

      
"If I want to hit you
again
," though she recalled it as more of a shove, "I wouldn't use my grandfather's .22."

      
"No, you'd do fine with your own two fists," he said. "Or more likely your wits. Roger really has no idea what he's up against."

      
Brenna pumped the chamber open and left it that way, empty, and reached beyond him to lean the rifle against the porch railing. She snorted at the thought of her manager and said, "I think he knows well enough by now. He just tolerates me because I run a good grooming room, and it's hard to find anyone with that much experience who doesn't already have their own shop. I'm sure you saw plenty of remarks in my file."

      
"I saw enough to know that the reason you run a good grooming room is that you won't back down to him." He watched as she knelt to hug Druid; the dog's tail wagged wildly, and he rubbed his cheek on her leg. Claiming her, and "purring" as only a dog can purr, with deep breathing patterns verging on happy-groans. He waited until she'd finished murmuring to him before adding, "I don't understand why you don't have your own--"

      
As if she wanted to talk about
that
. "It doesn't matter. It's not why you're here, is it?" She gave Druid an abrupt final pat and stood, aware that the dog continued to lean against her leg in a sprawling sit, watching Masera just as much as she did. "To talk about my work?"

      
Silence. A long silence.

      
"No," he said. "It's not. I came for myself, I suppose. To try to understand what's going on here—and there
is
something. With the spring, the lane...maybe even your dog. Not
this
one, though there's no particular reason to leave him out, not with the way he acts."

      
"You were only here for one night," Brenna said. "What do you know about what's
going on here
?"

      
"What I observed in that one night. And morning."

      
"Hard to believe you could observe
anything
in the morning," she said pointedly.

      
"You'd be surprised."

      
Druid shifted against her and did a whisker inspection of her leg. Up as far as he could reach, down all the way to where her ankle met sneaker. He never kissed or licked, but the frequency of his whisker inspections was high. And this time, as often, he whined softly under his breath. Talking to himself.

      
"No," Masera said, watching Druid inspect and whine, "there's definitely no reason to leave him out."

      
"I have to wonder if you're really here because you want to pump me for information about Rob Parker, and you think I won't notice."

      
After a moment of looking away from her, Masera said, "Rob Parker is another conversation."

      
"Maybe." Brenna shrugged, found that her hair was no longer enough to keep her warm, and drew her sweatshirt on, tugging the sleeves up to leave her hands free. They fell down again a moment later, of course. One of Russell's hand-me downs, this one was. If she wanted to, she could withdraw her hands inside the sleeves altogether and let them flop around at the ends of her arms.

      
Sometimes, entertaining Sunny, she'd done that. This time, she shoved the sleeves back up again. "Maybe," she said again. "Though considering how interested Parker is in my spring, maybe not."

      
"Is he?" Masera said, surprised. He rubbed his index finger against the bridge of his nose, then—carefully—his eyes. "Extended wear contacts," he said wearily. "Don't mess with 'em."

      
"I'll remember that," Brenna said. "Masera, it's dark. I need to eat something. So does Druid. And I have to get ready for work in the morning."

      
"I know. I'm sorry," he said, sounding it, and spent a moment looking for words, his mouth twitching as he discarded this one and that. She finally sat cross-legged in the grass before the porch, which delighted Druid. He draped himself over her ankles and commenced a whisker inspection of her calves. Masera gave a little grin; it seemed to get him started. "The Basque provinces haven't been exposed to Christianity or even God for as long as most of Europe. You could say that we're a little closer to our roots than the rest of you. And some of us have a family history that puts us closer than others. It gives me a different perspective on things."

      
"Have you even
been
to Basque?"

      
"To Euskal Herria? Don't let my English fool you. I spent my childhood there—all except the first four years. Those, I spent here. And I came back when I was able. My brother—"

      
"Eztebe," Brenna said, and then smiled sweetly. The smile everyone expected from this face. The one that wiser souls knew not to take at face value. "Or Steven, but he prefers Eztebe."

      
He shook his head—not disagreeing, but perhaps in lieu of throwing up his hands. "Yes. He was born in Alsasua. And he wasn't old enough to really understand the way things were before—" He stopped short, as if he'd stumbled somewhere he didn't want to go. It gave Brenna the chance to let her own thoughts stray, to wonder why she was sitting out here in the dark. Listening. And wanting to hear more.

      
Maybe because she, as much as he—
more
than he—wondered what was going on in her life.

      
"My mother," he said finally, "is euskotar. Ethnic Basque. My father is Spanish, and he didn't truly understand her ties to her land. He brought her here; she was miserable. Nothing here spoke to her like it did in her homeland. She was Catholic, and she tried very hard to be a good one. But she was also
sorgin
."

      
"Of course she was," Brenna said, in no way interested in making this easy for him—and at the same time fascinated. On the one hand, he was as he'd always been to her—with something else going on beneath the surface, something he didn't share with anyone, but that seemed to drive him—and drive him right over anyone who got in the way.

      
She wondered if he knew that some people would politely step
out
of his way if they had the chance.

      
She wondered if it made him as lonely as it sometimes made her. To be so uncompromising of self.

      
"Sorgin," he said, and when he looked up, enough light caught his face so she could see that his eyebrows had gone to trying to pinch the bridge of his nose. "I don't want to use the word
witch
, although that's the literal translation...it's more than that, and not the things people think of when they think of a witch."

      
"That's why you asked if I were pagan," she said, smoothing Druid's ears flat to his skull as he fell asleep—and then stilling as she felt a bloom of anger. She lifted her eyes to glare at him. "You said
you
weren't. But you
are
, aren't you? Is it so easy for you to lie to me? You're probably sorgin yourself!"

      
"No," he said quietly. In the darkness, she thought she saw him wince. Good. "No, it's not so easy to lie to you. I didn't say I wasn't pagan. I said I was lapsed Catholic—and that's true."

      
"You deceived me," she said steadily, not backing off. Druid woke to give her an uneasy look. "It comes to the same thing."