Five minutes after the hour she’d suggested, Mary arrived. Her small form was entirely lost in a padded blue winter coat that hung all the way to her ankles. She saw me and joined me at my table with a brilliant smile that I nearly lost myself in before regaining wits enough to stand up and take her coat.
Under it she wore a tight red sweater and black jeans that accentuated every single curve of her body, and I swear I simply ogled her for a good few seconds before hanging up her coat and accepting her hug hello.
“It’s good to see you,” she said as we took seats opposite each other. “With everything that went down, I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to see me again.”
“Powers, no,” I admitted. “The only reason I hadn’t called was because I was forbidden to talk to the Clan.”
She smiled at me and then glanced down at her menu. We both went through them in companionable silence until we found what we wanted, and put them aside to wait for the waitress.
“I’m sorry for using you for information,” I said quietly after we ordered. “I don’t have a lot of contacts in this city, or I wouldn’t have.”
“We lean on the friends we have,” she told me. “It’s not like you weren’t up-front about what you were asking for. Are you having any luck on your end?”
“Some,” I said cautiously, looking around the restaurant full of humans. “Not sure how much I should talk about it in public—or at all.”
She nodded acceptance of that. “All right, then, tell me about you!”
“What do you want to know?” I responded, fumbling for some acceptable answer.
“Well, tell me about your parents,” she decided.
“My mother was a historian and apparently a changeling, though I didn’t know that till after she passed on,” I told her, speaking quietly enough when mentioning the inhuman parts, I was reasonably sure no one else heard me. “I was raised on a university campus, for all purposes.”
“I’m sorry about your mom,” Mary said impulsively, reaching across the table to squeeze my hand. “How did your dad take it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never known him—no idea if he’s even alive or not. About all I know is that he was true fae.”
The redheaded girl across the table from me shook her head, and I realized she hadn’t let go of my hand. A slight shift on my part and we were holding hands across the table, which she met with a brilliant smile.
“The whole changeling thing is hard for me to grasp,” she admitted, also speaking quietly so we wouldn’t be overhead. “Shifter...genes, for lack of a better word, are much more dominant—any child of a shifter is a shifter, end of story. One reason why there’s so many of us, I guess.”
I nodded. Fae, including changelings, worldwide only had about three quarters the numbers of the shifters, and between fae and shifters, we made up almost two thirds of the inhuman population of the world.
Of course, said population was around a hundred and fifty, maybe a hundred and sixty thousand people all told—a tad less than a quarter of one hundredth of a percent of the world’s population.
Our dinner arrived, interrupting that line of discussion. I finally released Mary’s hand so I could eat, and dug in with ravenous hunger.
After a few minutes of both of us thoroughly demolishing our food—both of our species had highly active metabolisms, after all—I eyed Mary across the table and snuck my hand out onto the table. I didn’t quite take hers, but I definitely offered mine.
She quickly slid her hand into mine with that same brilliant smile.
“What about you?” I asked. “What’s your family like?”
“Well, there’s Clementine, the doctor, who everyone in the Clan looks up to,” she started. “There’s Mom, the dire wolf shifter from Ireland—I’ve mentioned her. She passed on when Clementine and I were still kids.”
She was quiet for a moment, probably reflecting on the similarities to how her mother had died and the current situation with the vampire cabal.
“What was your father like?” I asked to break that chain of thought.
“He was the lynx shifter who fell in love with and earned the love of a dire wolf,” Mary said simply. “What he lacked in power he made up in charisma, wisdom and the willpower to stand up to anyone. I remember, when I was younger and Tarvers was a new Alpha, my father arguing him down from some of his more dangerous plans.
“It was my father who negotiated the Covenants between Tarvers, Oberis and MacDonald,” she told me. “I think that was when he managed to convince my mother he was worth her time. He had the will and wisdom to talk three powerful men into working together instead of staying at loggerheads.”
“What happened to him?” I asked softly.
“Car accident,” Mary said, her voice equally soft, and I squeezed her hand comfortingly. “One of those freak things that can happen to anyone—he was hit by a semi, crossing the street. There is damage even shifters can’t heal—he was killed instantly.”
The arrival of the bill distracted us from the morbid tone of the conversation, and I quickly paid it. Dinner sorted, Mary rose from her seat, offering me her hand to pull myself to my feet.
“Walk with me?” she asked as we pulled on our coats.
I nodded and followed her out of the restaurant. We walked a bit of the ways down the street, shivering against the cold until we’d passed out of sight of anyone in the foggy night. Once the fog had enwrapped us in glittering whiteness, Mary stopped and turned into me.
My arms came up around her almost without thinking, and for a long moment, we simply stood in the night, sharing warmth and holding each other. I couldn’t say which of us moved to kiss the other first, but heat warmed me from the inside as our lips touched.
We stood there like that, warming each other, for a long moment, and then a cold breeze swept through the fog and we both shivered, breaking apart slightly.
“Mary, I—” I began, but she laid her finger on my lips.
“Jason,” she said quietly, “if you were about to suggest anything other than going back to your apartment and continuing this in warmth, don’t.”
14
AS IT TURNED OUT, Mary had neither experience with nor enthusiasm for the idea of waking up at five o’clock in the morning. Her response to my alarm going off was to tighten her arms around me. Since we were both completely naked, this was more than a slight distraction from my plan to get up and ready for work.
It was with more than a little regret that I squeezed out of her embrace and began the process of getting ready. Shared blankets were warm, and the basement apartment was cold first thing in a winter morning.
I showered and shaved and dressed for work, and then sat back down on the bed next to Mary and leaned in to kiss her gently awake. She didn’t move for a moment, then slowly opened her eyes and returned the kiss.
“I have to go to work,” I told her quietly. “I take it you don’t get up this early.”
“Not really,” she admittedly sleepily, the blanket falling away from her and exposing a very nice view.
“The door locks from the inside, if you want to sleep a bit longer,” I told her, leaning in to kiss her again. “I do have to go, though.”
She pouted adorably for a moment but then nodded.
“I’ll make sure everything’s locked up,” she promised. “Are you free tonight?”
“No,” I said sadly. “I have some Court business to deal with after work.”
“Okay,” she murmured, sliding back down into the bed. “Call me when you can; let me know when we can hang out, ’kay?”
I carefully tucked the blankets up around her and claimed one last kiss.