Broken Soul

CHAPTER 4 An Offer to Dish

“Jane?”

I started, realizing I had been standing, without greeting him, my eyes on the flowers. “Ummm.” Moving woodenly, I opened the door and stood aside to let him in.

Wearing a faint, quizzical smile that would have done my Ranger partner proud, he said, “You act like no one ever brought you flowers before.”

“Yeah. Once.” Rick. Rick had brought me daisies and sunflowers. But I didn’t say that. “What do I do with them?”

Bruiser’s face changed, and I had no idea what the new expression meant. I didn’t take my eyes from the flowers to get a better look. His voice soft, he said, “They go in a vase. On the nightstand by your bed. Or on the kitchen table. Or on the coffee table in the living room. They go where you can see them most often, and, seeing them, remember that you deserve flowers.” When I still just stood there, he said, “I’ll get a vase from the kitchen. I’m sure Katie left some here. Why don’t you get dressed. And then we can have breakfast. I brought beignets from Café du Monde, and tea.”

“Yeah. I’ll go get dressed.” I could tell my voice sounded weird, but I turned and went to my room, shutting myself in. I stood there, my back to the paneled door, staring stupidly. Flowers? I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt and braided my hair, debating on makeup. I finally put a touch of lipstick on my bottom lip and smeared my lips together to mush the color around until there was just a tint left. And found myself staring at my reflection in the mirror, my amber eyes catching the light. Rick had brought me flowers. Rick had deserted me. Now Bruiser had brought me flowers.

Flowers. With catnip.

My Beast was silent but excited, alert, and curious, ears flicking, eyes intent.

I walked back into the living room and followed the smells of beignets and flowers to the kitchen. Bruiser was facing the window, drying his hands, backlit by the window light, so I could see only a profile, his brown hair darkened by glare, his nose a tad too strong for classical beauty, yet well formed. It was a totally sexy nose. He was tall, strong-looking, capable. His stance said he could handle anything, protect anyone, or die trying. Something tightened in my middle.

Behind him, on the table, was a cut crystal vase that had been in the butler’s pantry, the bouquet inside it, the blooms fluffed. Short snips of stems lay in a small pile, where he’d trimmed them. I vaguely remembered that the stems of cut flowers had to be trimmed every few days.

Beignets were on china plates from the top cabinet. Tea had been poured into matching china cups. They were sitting on saucers, with tiny little napkins beside each. There was real cream in a tiny pitcher I had seen somewhere on a shelf and a matching sugar-holder thingy. And polished silver spoons. And the flowers. In a vase.

Beast was peering out through my eyes, staring at my bouquet. She sniffed and filled our/my head with the scent. Catnip? she asked. For Beast?

Yeah. Catnip. The fancy flowers were bad enough. The catnip was something much worse. The aroma expanded as if trying to fill the house.

Bruiser had moved in here not that long ago, a temporary arrangement, he’d called it. Then he had moved back out, and back into vamp HQ, to help with the transition of the old primo—him—to the new primo—Adelaide. Now he wasn’t even a full-time blood-servant, or at least, that was the way I had interpreted the meeting earlier. I didn’t know what he was to Leo. And I didn’t know what he was to me. We had danced. We had killed rogue vamps together in Natchez. We had shared a few intense physical moments brought on by mutual attraction and once by magic. But I had no idea what any of it meant or where I wanted us to go.

Bruiser seemed to sense me behind him and turned. I stuck my hands in my pockets and frowned. His face emotionless, he moved around the table and pulled out a chair. I knew how to do this. I’d been taught proper Southern manners in the children’s home. But I hadn’t practiced in more than a decade. Shoulders hunched, I took my seat and lifted my weight in the ungainly half crouch that allowed him to push my chair in the requisite few inches.

Bruiser handed me a napkin, which I placed over a thigh. He moved my teacup and the sugar and creamer closer. I added both to my tea as he took his seat at the corner, ninety degrees, and only inches, away from me. The house was mostly silent, one of the boys upstairs snoring softly. My palms were slightly moist and my heart was beating fast. The air conditioner came on. It was May, and already hot in the Deep South.

I expected Bruiser to put food on my plate and make me eat it with a silver fork. But he didn’t pass the beignets. Instead he lifted a box from the basket and set it in front of me, to the side of my dainty cup.

The box was maybe twelve inches by fourteen, wrapped in shiny gold paper with a darker gold bow, the ties all long and curly. From the way he handled it, the box was too heavy for jewelry, which was my first panicked thought. Just from looking at the box, I could tell that whatever it held was expensive. Even the paper looked like it cost a small fortune. I stared at it. I was doing a lot of staring. I was pretty sure I wasn’t breathing.

I dragged in a breath, scrubbed my sweaty hands dry on my jeans, and reached for the bow, pulling the ties until the ribbon fell away, My fingers were stiff and clumsy, but I got the paper open without tearing it. It seemed a crime to tear that paper. I set the stiff wrapping to the side and opened the plain white box. Inside was a second box, this one of carved wood, put together with wooden pegs. The wood felt old when I touched it, but well-oiled. I lifted the lid. Nesting within, on a swath of red velvet, was a knife, secured in a scabbard.

My mouth went parched, my hands icy and dry. A faint tremor ran along my fingers and vibrated through my core. I felt a small smile tug at my mouth, and I shook my head, feeling like there wasn’t enough air.

Bruiser said, “It’s a Mughal Empire, watered-steel dagger from India.” When I didn’t say anything or lift my eyes from the wondrous scabbard, he went on. “The knife was made in the seventeen hundreds, and has a slightly curved blade with a central ridge and double grooves. It has a gold-overlaid palmette and cartouche at forte, with a gem-set, jade-hilted handle.”

Still smiling slightly, breathing deeply to catch up on lost air, I lifted the scabbarded dagger and pulled the blade free, holding it to the side so the window light fell on it. The steel was beautiful, with a blued sheen that spoke of careful work with forge and hammer. There were nicks in the blade, but Bruiser hadn’t honed them out, and I was glad. They had history, each nick and scratch.

Bruiser, his voice the caressing lilt of a weapons lover, said, “The jade hilt has hand-carved scroll quillons centered with a carved stylized lotus leaf, and the pommel is in the form of an African lion’s head with gold inlay and set with golden topaz for the eyes.”

He didn’t have to add that the stones were the same shade as my own human eyes. I ducked my head, feeling the weight of the knife and its history in my hands.

“The scabbard,” he said, “is velvet-covered wood, jade-mounted, nineteenth century, with a carved jade chape and lock. A certain wily salesman suggested that the blade is charged with a spell of life force, to give the wielder the ability to block any opponent’s death cut. Pure balderdash, but it makes a nice tale.”

Silence fell between us, and I sheathed the blade, sliding it into the scabbard that had been shaped and carved just for it. The chape of the scabbard and the quillons met, the carved lotus flowers snapping together perfectly, with a small tap of jade on jade. “Why?” I asked, gesturing to the table with the dagger and scabbard, and then to the knife with my free hand. “Why this combination of . . . stuff?” Why flowers and catnip? But I didn’t ask that part.

Bruiser reached forward and took the blade, placing it in the nest of scarlet velvet. He took my hand. His palm was heated, the skin callused, and his fingers closed over mine. Deep inside me, something that was raw and ugly and bleeding stopped aching. Just . . . stopped.

“I thought for a long time about how to approach you. I thought about jewelry, or a Harley. I have a beautiful, fully restored Indian I thought you might like. I thought about a piece of Cherokee pottery I have somewhere, packed away. But each of those things touches on only a part of you.”

I tilted my head, watching our hands, not his face. His hands were well formed, fingers slender and strong.

Not reacting to my silence, Bruiser went on. “I chose these things because they seemed to speak to the heart of you. To the deep darkness that is part of you. That still, lightless, solemn place where, I think, no one has ever gone.”

My hand tightened, ever so slightly, when he described me, the hidden me, the soul home where all that I was, and all that I am, and all that I might someday become, lived. My soul home, in the tribal fashion, was a cave, an empty cave, with water-smoothed rock walls, and a fire pit in the center.

“You have honor,” Bruiser said. “That is a rare quality in this world.” He lifted my hand and pressed my knuckles to his mouth. His lips were hot and firm on my icy flesh.

I was now breathing too fast and shallow and I felt the cold prickles of hyperventilation.

“Men don’t think to give you flowers,” he murmured, his lips moving on my skin before he let our hands drop, still clasped, “because you have the heart of a warrior. The soul of a priestess. The heat of a long-burning fire. But we should give you flowers, all of us, if for nothing but to share their wonderful fragrance and beauty.” He smiled slightly, his lips moving in my peripheral vision. His thumb stroked the skin on the back of my hand, once, twice, slowly. “That is why the flowers. The catnip, that quiet, delightful scent, is for your beast, the cat I saw you become, one night.”

I pulled in a slow, nearly painful breath. Smelling the catnip. Inside, Beast rolled over, paws in the air, and purred.

“The dagger? Because you are a weapon, from the soul out. And because I have been such a weapon, and shall be one again, if you agree. The china and crystal, the linen napkin and silver spoons,” Bruiser said, “are more for me than for you. Because I have been all those things, once, long ago, and I would share that world with you, if you will let me. If you will let me stay with you.”

I pulled in another breath, feeling light-headed again. The scents of catnip, tea, and steel filled me like a mist fills the night.

“For a reason or a season,” he said. “For a year or a lifetime. For a poem or a song. For a victorious battle or a bloody death. For honor. I would stand by you for as long as I might live.”

Questions filled my head, bouncing like balls in a box. I looked up from our clasped hands, into his brown eyes, afraid of what he might be asking me. His eyes had golden flecks. Had I noticed that before? And his nose. I found his nose so captivating. It was bony and commanding all at once. His hair, the color sable in this light, fell over half of his forehead and down into one eye, tangling with his lashes. Through the falling strands of hair, I could see, barely, his widow’s peak and the tiny mole that rarely showed at his hairline.

As if he knew my questions before I thought them, he said, “If we survive this coming war, you and I, we may live three or four human lifetimes, far longer than any human has lived since the flood, since Methuselah walked the Earth. Jane Yellowrock, I want you to be part of that life, in whatever form or capacity you may choose. I won’t push; I won’t demand. But I wish to be with you, if you will allow me to do so.”

“And if Rick comes back?” I hadn’t expected to say the words. Had no idea where they had come from.

“You deserve someone who will honor you first and last. And if you choose a man who dishonors you, then you are not the woman I believe you to be.”

I smiled at that, because that was how I felt, but hadn’t had the words to frame the thought. “Touché. And if Leo objects?”

“I was quite careful of the legality of my wording this morning,” he said. “Leo may not like that I court you, but he will have no choice.”

Court? I pulled my hand from his, unsettled. “I don’t know how to talk about relationship stuff. You need to know that. I have no idea.”

“I, however, have decades of practice,” he said, with an amused, almost lofty tone. “Later, when you’ve had time to think, we’ll talk. Now we need to eat,” he said. “And drink this lovely tea. It’s a special, finest, tippy, golden, flowery orange pekoe from Ceylon, a first flush tea that I brought with me from the council house.”

“You stole Something Far Too Good for Ordinary People?” I asked.

Bruiser grinned at the old tea lover’s joke and indicated that I should taste the tea. I did. And it was indeed SFTGFOP, and by far the best tea I had ever tasted. I sighed and closed my eyes as the flavors moved along my throat. When I opened my eyes, Bruiser had placed a beignet on a plate and put it by my tea saucer. He could have used the silver tongs I hadn’t noticed until now, but he didn’t. He set the beignet on the china plate with his bare fingers, white powdered sugar on them. He lifted his hand . . . and licked his fingers.

He licked his fingers . . . The sight went through me like the antique weapon might through silk gauze. This man, this Onorio . . . He was way more than silver and fancy manners. He was Bruiser. I smiled and picked up the pastry. Bit into the cooling beignet. I set the beignet on the plate and sipped the tea. In silence, we ate the picnic breakfast, me coming to understand that Bruiser wanted me. Me. When he could have any sexy blood-servant or vamp he wanted. And . . .

I wanted him too. I always had.

But there were so many things that lay between us: I’d taken a mate recently and it hadn’t worked out so well. Bruiser had helped to hold me down so that Leo could force a feeding and attempt to bind me. That he’d had no control over his own body at the time didn’t help a lot, not on an emotional level. Also, Bruiser didn’t know about Beast. I wasn’t sure I was ready to take a man to my bed without telling him about Beast. Without telling him everything about me. And then there was Bruiser’s Onorio status and what that might mean about him and his life and his future. More secrets. There were chasms of the unknown between us right now. Deep and dark chasms, full of shadows and wraiths and the gloom of darkness.

After the meal, Bruiser washed the dishes and poured us both something more familiar—me a big mug of my own tea, with Cool Whip and sugar, just the way I liked it, and himself a mug of coffee, from the espresso machine in the butler’s pantry. Holding the mugs, he gestured to the living room. “Shall we talk?”

I wasn’t sure I could, exactly, or not right now. But I also couldn’t find a good reason to refuse, so I led the way and sat on the sofa, curling my legs under me, and accepted the mug, sipping, waiting.

“Leo received a new communiqué from the Mithrans in Paris,” Bruiser said, his voice easing into a more businesslike tone. “Because of the contents of the letter, he intends to train his people in European Mithran tactics and fighting methods, lessons to begin at nine thirty tonight. Eli and you and I are to attend. A meeting and discussion about the European Mithrans will follow.”

“I thought he threw you out today.”

“He did.” Bruiser’s gaze met mine above the rim of his cup, his eyes filled with amusement. “Unlike Grégoire, who chose to keep his Onorios with him, and they chose to stay, I am no longer part of Leo’s personal servants. He will not have a live-in whom he cannot bind.”

“Leo has trust issues?”

“He’s stayed alive for five hundred years because of those trust issues. So, yes. However, I know more about the ins and outs of Leo’s personal household and the council’s day-to-day activities than anyone alive. For that knowledge, I am still a valuable employee to the New Orleans council and to Clan Pellissier, and I was sworn to that service from an early age.” He sipped, thinking, and shrugged. “As Onorio, I have other, less specific uses and great value. So, after you left, Leo and I struck a bargain, one I found exceedingly beneficial financially. I will continue to be employed by the clan, under one-year contracts, for a period of three years, at which time we may renegotiate the terms of my employment or I may choose to leave the clan entirely.”

“Fancy words for he offered you a lot of money and you took it.”

“Essentially, yes.”

“Sooo, you go to work there every day but you sleep somewhere else?”

“I have a small apartment on St. Philip Street, just around the corner.”

“The Saint Philip Apartments?” I was getting to know the Quarter and the businesses and people who comprised it.

“Unit eleven,” he said, sounding wry. “I rented it the last time Leo threw me out. I moved the last of my everyday things into it this morning.” He shrugged. “It’s only nine hundred square feet, but it’s one of the few units to be completely renovated. It isn’t quite the exquisite accommodations of a lair of the Master of the City of New Orleans, but for the moment it’s mine, and comfortable enough.”

“Ah.” There seemed to be not much of anything to say to that.

He seemed to notice the uncomfortable silence that followed, and said, “And on that pithy note, I’ll take my leave. I’ll see myself out. Until tonight.” Bruiser left his mug on the small table beside the couch and strode toward the door. He left me sitting sleepily on the sofa, a cooling mug in my hands, and a glorious memory of his backside clenching in the lightweight cotton pants as he left. Bruiser had a really great butt. “I’ll pick you up at six for an early dinner. Wear a dress.”

As the door closed, I murmured into my mug, “You could move back in here. We have an empty room upstairs.” And felt how the words tasted, how they felt on my tongue, the texture of the invitation, and the faint thrill that ran along my skin. “Or maybe not. Maybe I’m not ready for a man in my life again.” And then I heard his parting words. Dinner? In a dress?

My cell vibrated and I looked at the screen to see a text from Soul. Must rearrange current case. Will be in NOLA soonest. Which told me little, but did at least indicate that she was taking me seriously.

A moment later, I smelled Eli on the stairway. He moved like a cat on his bare feet, and he’d lived here long enough to avoid the squeaky spots on the old stairs, but there was nothing he could do about the air currents, and with the AC on, his scent preceded him. “Hey,” I said.

He leaned around the corner. “Is it safe to come in?” I nodded, and Eli went straight to the espresso maker. He was wearing jeans and layered T-shirts, and managed to look deadly even without shoes. Moments later, he sat across from me in the chair he favored, his hands holding his own mug. “You want to talk about it?”

I don’t know what I’d expected, but an offer to dish wasn’t it. My eyes widened in reaction and Eli flashed me a quick glimpse of teeth. “I overheard part of that. The floors are uninsulated, you know. And that was a proposal if I ever heard one. Which is interesting since I believe you two will be having your first official date tonight.”

“No, it wasn’t.” The words said themselves before I could think them through. “It’s not a date. I mean, no ring, no lovey-dovey words, no—”

“Flowers. Catnip. Food. Tea. And a knife that might be worth thousands. Dinner and a dress. Proposal and a date night.”

My eyes stayed wide and I hunched my shoulders. “No,” I breathed. “He didn’t propose. He didn’t. I don’t want him to propose. I don’t want him to love me. I’m not ready to be shackled into a relationship.”

Eli’s grin widened, taking on a teasing twist. “A proposal tailored just for you. Thoughtful, reasoned, romantic. As much as food, flowers, and knives can be.” When I said nothing, Eli added, “Maybe it wasn’t a marriage proposal. But it was a something proposal. I think you just have to decide what that something is.” He stood and moved silently to the stairs.

“You are an evil, evil man,” I said. Eli just laughed.

A nap was out. No way could I sleep when I had a date . . . a date . . . with Bruiser and martial arts practice afterward at fanghead HQ. Was I supposed to wear a dress and bring sparring clothes to change into? And clothes suitable for a vamp meeting afterward? What kind of dress was I supposed to wear? Something I’d put on for a security gig for the vamps? I wandered into my bedroom and opened the closet. It was . . . full. Or nearly so.

When I moved here, I’d arrived with the clothes on my back and a change of undies, my few other clothes and boots sent on by the postal system in a big brown cardboard box. Back then I’d had more weapons than clothes. I’d lived in jeans and tees and leather. Now. Crap. Now I had a girl’s closet. Full of clothes. Girl’s clothes. Long dresses suitable for vamp ultra-formality. Shorter skirts for the more casual occasions. Pants for the same. Dancing skirts. A fuzzy purple T-shirt with a dragon on it, the shirt charged with healing by a witch friend. It wasn’t a pretty dragon, either, but one of the toothy, village-terrorizing dragons, its body striped like a coral snake, wings spread wide, covered with striped red skin and feathers. So ugly the dragon was beautiful. I had jackets, and a turtleneck sweater made of silk knit. I had shirts. Lots of shirts, some made of cotton that had to be starched, and some of silk, and some that could be tossed in a washer and dryer and looked perfect immediately. I had boots and boots and more boots, and two sets of fighting leathers and three pairs of dancing shoes. Of course I still had guns and knives and the small box of vamp-killing charms that Molly had made for me before I came to New Orleans. I reached onto the top shelf and my fingers found what my eyes didn’t want to see, the box hidden by an obfuscation charm. The box was smooth and beautiful, once my eyes could finally focus on it. I clutched it to me and looked back into the closet.

I had . . . stuff. My heart was beating wildly. The tea I had just drank rose in an acidic swirl. Choking. Burning. I pulled the box tighter against my chest, the wood corners pushing painfully into my flesh, but not grounding me. Not giving me ease.

I had a dry cleaner. A grocery store that delivered. I owned a house.

Holy crap. I had put down roots.

I dropped onto the bed, clutching the box of charms to me, and stared at my closet. A closet full of dresses.

Somehow I had become a . . . a girl.