Discount Armageddon

Fifteen

Still in that semilegal sublet in Greenwich Village

GETTING MY FAMILY OFF THE PHONE was simplified when Dad got an email from Uncle Ted. Uncle Ted was following reports of a basilisk sighting off I-5, and really wanted some backup. (Basilisks are no laughing matter. Not unless your idea of “funny story” involves the phrase “and then the lizard turned my wife to stone.”) After delivering a few more hurried admonishments about checking in and not letting myself end up alone in a room with Dominic, Dad hung up. Mom and Antimony were right behind him—the last thing I heard was Antimony shouting, “Just let me get my crossbow!” before blessed silence descended.

Well, blessed silence aside from the horns honking in the street outside, the pigeons on my windowsill, and the distant, ecstatic cheering of the mice. I wasn’t feeling picky. My family was staying in Oregon, and I had the possible dragon all to myself.

I paused in the act of plugging my phone into the charger. I had the possible dragon all to myself. Perversely appealing as that thought was, it also wasn’t fair. If there was even the slightest chance that the dragons weren’t extinct, there were some people who needed to know about it.

The dragon princesses.

I wasn’t actually scheduled to work until the next day. My job at Dave’s Fish and Strips may be about as intellectually taxing as watching paint dry, but it’s still exhausting, and I always try to take the days on either side of a major dance competition off. It’s safer that way, and reduces the odds of my becoming so tired that I lose my ability to deal with idiots. Knocking someone’s teeth out because they didn’t tip well is not a swift route to job security.

After a quick shower and an unhealthy meal of leftover pizza, spray cheese, and corn chips, I changed into clean clothes, put on a new pair of running shoes, packed a few replacement throwing knives, and jumped out the kitchen window. The pigeons were getting used to me. There were a few ruffled feathers, and I got my share of irritated looks, but none of them actually took flight as I plummeted past them, grabbed the fire escape rail, and slung myself across the courtyard. It’s amazing how quickly and completely the natural world can adjust. People forget that pigeons aren’t hatched from cracks on the sidewalk; they’re wild birds that have simply learned to exist in symbiosis with the human race. Their adaptation is proof that it can be done. We should applaud the pigeon as a survivalist totem, not call them “rats with wings” and shoo them off our windowsills.

The muscles in my thighs and shoulders loosened up as I ran, finding a rhythm that allowed me to compensate for the lingering stiffness in my left knee. My injuries hadn’t been as bad as they could have been. The bruises didn’t even slow me down much, although I felt them every time my heels made impact. I really hit my stride about halfway to Dave’s, and finished the journey at full-speed, almost laughing from the sheer joy of feeling the wind against my face and the city beneath my feet. I felt like one of those spandex-wearing superheroes in the comic books that Sarah and Antimony swap back and forth when they think the rest of us aren’t looking. I felt like I could fly.

Even Superman has to land eventually, even if it’s just to talk to somebody who doesn’t have super powers. I started slowing down as I got closer to Dave’s, dumping speed by throwing needless tricks into my progress, so it would be less jarring when I finally touched down. I finished with a half-cartwheel that left me in a crouch, the remains of my inertia bleeding out through the sole of my right foot. I glanced at my watch. Decent speed, especially considering my injuries.

“Guess I’m going to live after all,” I said, and straightened. Dust from the rooftops clung to my jeans and the palms of my hands. I took a moment to dust myself off before walking over to the rooftop door, testing the knob, and—upon finding it unlocked—letting myself inside.

The dressing room was deserted except for Carol, who was engaged in her usual mortal combat against her own hair. The tiny snakes covering her head writhed and snapped at her fingers, dodging frantically in their efforts to avoid the wig she was trying to clamp down over them. I couldn’t entirely blame them. My hair was always sticky with sweat and matted in weird patterns when I had to wear my Valerie wig for any length of time, and my hair isn’t independently alive. I knocked on the doorframe. She looked up, turning her head fast enough to give her bangs the opportunity to sink their fangs into her thumb. They did so, with gusto.

“Ow!” yelped Carol, dropping her wig and shoving her injured thumb into her mouth, going cross-eyed with the effort of glaring at her own hair. The snakes, sensing danger, promptly withdrew into hissing clusters. “’toopid ’air,” Carol mumbled around her thumb.

I winced. “Sorry about that. Are you going to be okay?” A lesser gorgon like Carol can’t actually turn people to stone—their gaze doesn’t work on anything much larger than a guinea pig—but that doesn’t make them harmless. The bite of their serpentine hair (and yes, I realize exactly how that sounds) can kill.

Carol shook her head, pulling her thumb out of her mouth. She squinted at the rows of tiny puncture wounds. “We’re immune to our own venom,” she said, matter-of-factly. “Hi, Verity. I thought you weren’t on duty tonight.”

“I’m not. I’m here to see Candy—is she here?”

That got Carol’s attention. She turned to blink at me, even her hair standing at attention and directing all of its several hundred eyes in my direction. “Seriously? Is this one of those ‘if I tell you where to find her, you’ll walk out of here with her head in a bag’ situations? Because I don’t like Candy very much, but I’m still pretty sure I’m not allowed to sell her up the river.”

I rolled my eyes. “Gee, Carol, way to tell me what you really think of my loyalties. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t even particularly want to call her nasty names. I just want to talk to her. So is she on duty or not?”

“Sorry. It’s just, well … if anyone around here could inspire you to homicide, it would be Candy, right?” Carol shrugged, looking sheepish. “Yes, she’s on duty. She should be taking her break soon, if you just wanted to wait here. You’re not exactly, um, what Dave would call ‘projecting a professional image’ right now.”

“You mean I don’t look like a Playboy Bunny? My poor heart breaks.” I walked over to perch on the edge of the dressing table, turning to peer at myself in the mirror. I was developing a pretty nice shiner around my right eye—I didn’t even remember getting hit there—and one of the only really visible scrapes ran down the same cheek. I looked like I’d been letting my boyfriend beat me up for fun. “You should’ve seen the other guy,” I muttered.

“What?”

“Never mind.” I hoisted myself up to perch on the makeup counter, careful to stay out of range of Carol’s hair. “So what’s been going on around here for the last couple of days? I am experiencing a drought of gossip, and demand the sweet rain of information.”

“Well,” said Carol, as she picked up her wig and resumed her efforts to stuff her hissing hair beneath it, “Kitty called from the road, and it turns out her boyfriend’s band isn’t doing quite as well as she expected, which I don’t think is surprising in the least, but she, of course, thought they’d be the next big thing. Anyway—”

I leaned back against the mirror, listening to Carol talk, careful to nod at the right places and make the correct exclamations of surprise when prompted. Bit by bit, she coaxed her snakes under the wig, settling them one row at a time, like a general trying to control the world’s most disobedient army. “You should get a beehive wig,” I said, without really thinking about it. “One of those huge bouffant hairstyles. Then you could just hollow out the center, so you wouldn’t have to squash your snakes when you put it on.”

Carol’s hands froze, eyes going wide and startled. “I never even thought of that!” she said. “Big hair is in again, isn’t it?”

“Not quite that big—” I protested, but it was too late; the seed was planted. Carol resumed stuffing snakes beneath her wig, smiling bright as sunshine.

“I’ll go to the wig shop after my shift. Thanks, Verity. You’re the best.”

“You’re, uh, welcome,” I said, unable to keep myself from thinking of those old urban legends about girls whose beehive hairdos turned out to be full of spiders, or earwigs, or other horrible things. How long before “and her hair was full of venomous snakes” joined the roster?

Oh, well. If you can’t actually be an urban legend in your own right, I guess inspiring one is just about as good.

“Slumming in the bestiary again, Price?” asked a snide voice from the doorway. I glanced over. Candice was standing just inside the room, arms crossed defensively across her chest, model-pretty features drawn into a scowl. Her shoulders were set like she expected a fight. Maybe she did. I had told her the Covenant was in town not all that long before, and now here I was with another bombshell.

I slid off the counter, keeping my body language as open and nonthreatening as I could manage. “Hey, Candy,” I said. “I actually came to talk to you, if you could give me a few minutes? It’s sort of important.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What could you possibly want to discuss with me?”

I glanced unobtrusively toward Carol, who was trying to look like she wasn’t watching this little drama in the mirror. “It’s sort of private. Would you mind coming up to the roof with me?”

“Why, so you can throw me off?” Candy demanded.

I bit the inside of my cheek and counted to ten before saying, very carefully, “I have no intention of throwing you off the roof, and if you’d rather we talk here, I’m perfectly willing. I just thought you might like to have the chance to decide whether or not to tell the Nest, rather than risking this getting into the rumor mill and reaching them some other way.”

Carol rolled her eyes. “Thanks for putting such trust in my discretion.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about.” I jerked a thumb toward the air vent. “You really think Dave doesn’t have this place bugged?”

“Good point.” Carol turned in her chair, half her snakes still exposed and snapping fiercely at the wig. “Candy, go up to the roof with her. If you’re not back down here in ten minutes, I’ll get Ryan and come looking for you. Promise.”

Candy still looked unsure. I sighed. “If you don’t think my information was worth your time, I’ll give you fifty dollars,” I said, picturing my groceries for the week growing wings and flying away. I could always make do with leftovers stolen from the kitchen at Dave’s. That was mostly what I’d been doing anyway.

“One hundred,” countered Candy.

“A hundred—Candy, I make the same amount of money you do! Less, even, since you get better tips.” She had an ice princess demeanor with a Playboy Bunny’s looks. I’m no slouch in the looks department, but my tendency to break fingers that “accidentally” touch my ass means I don’t tend to get the tables with the repeat customers.

“One hundred, or I don’t go with you,” said Candy, lifting her chin in an imperious gesture that telegraphed exactly how serious she was. Only the promise of money—all but irresistible to a dragon princess—was getting her to the rooftop, and fifty wasn’t going to cut it.

I sighed. “One hundred, if you think my information isn’t any good.”

“Deal,” said Candy, and unfolded her arms. Moving with quick efficiency, she untied her apron, placed it in her locker, and padlocked the whole thing, protecting her tips. She went through that ritual every time she took a break, and it had long since stopped being insulting; it was just another part of being who she was, a dragon princess surrounded by creatures that looked like her, but really belonged to another species altogether.

Sometimes I think evolution really didn’t do the totally human-form cryptids any favors. It’s so easy to forget that they aren’t like the rest of us—geeky, like Sarah or Artie, or maybe a little spaced-out, like Uncle Ted, but still essentially just folks—and start judging them by human standards. You can’t do that. It isn’t fair.

“Ten minutes,” said Candy sternly to Carol, and left the room, heading for the stairway to the roof.

Carol turned back to the mirror, her reflected lips mouthing the words “good luck” as she went back to stuffing snakes beneath her wig. I rolled my eyes beseechingly toward Heaven, and followed Candy out of the room.

Candy beat me to the roof by almost a minute—a minute I was sure she’d carefully deducted from my promised ten. She was more than ten feet from the door when I reached the top of the stairs. She raised her hand, saying sharply, “Stay there.”

I raised an eyebrow, letting the door swing shut behind me. “You mean, stay here by the door?” Candy nodded. “You know, it’s harder to keep secrets really secret when I have to shout them at you. Can you at least come a little bit closer?”

Candy narrowed her eyes. “How do I know you’re not planning to throw me off this roof?”

I bit back the urge to groan. “Because if I was going to kill you, I’d just shoot you, okay? Gravity is not my weapon of choice. Look, the deal’s off if you don’t come close enough for me to tell you what I came here to tell you. So you’ll have come up here for nothing.”

That, at least, got through to her. Candy took several grudging steps forward, until she was still out of arm’s reach, but at least close enough for me to talk to without shouting.

“Thank you,” I said. Forcing my body language to remain as nonthreatening as possible, I asked, “Candice, have you ever heard anything—anything at all—to indicate that the dragons aren’t really extinct?”

She reeled back as if I’d just hauled off and punched her in the face. When she focused again, it was to give me a look of such fury that I felt a little bit punched. “Is that why you brought me up here?” she demanded. “To make fun of me? What, cable isn’t enough for you people, you have to find other ways to entertain yourselves? That’s swell of you. That’s just plain swell.”

“Candy, we think we may have found a dragon.”

She froze. Literally froze, dewy blue eyes gone so wide that I could see the whites all the way around her irises. I didn’t think she was breathing.

“We weren’t looking for it, exactly, but I have access to a telepath, and she says—”

“Where?” asked Candy. Her voice was barely a whisper, and mostly ripped away by the wind, but I recognized the shape of it on her lips. She took three long, runway-perfect steps forward and grabbed me by the shoulders, succeeding in shaking me twice before the surprise wore off and I pulled myself away. “Where? Don’t you keep this from me, don’t you dare, and if you’re lying, I swear, if you’re lying—”

“Candy, calm down!” I shook my head, holding up my hands defensively. “I only just found out, okay? I haven’t been keeping anything from you. Anyway, we think there may be a dragon sleeping somewhere under the island, and we think it’s connected to the recent disappearances.”

Her eyes widened again—with anger, this time. “What, so you’re blaming the dragon? Is that why you wanted to talk to me? You’re looking for bait?”

“What? No! I’m blaming the disappearances on humans, some sort of snake cult, probably, trying to wake the dragon up the way they’d summon a snake god.” I let my hands drop back down to my sides. “If there is a dragon, I want to protect it. I want to prove that it’s not the source of the trouble we’ve been having recently. And I wanted the Nest to know as soon as possible, because this affects you.”

“More than you know,” she said bitterly. Shaking her head, she asked, “So what do you want from me?”

“I want you to go to the Nest. I want you to tell them what we’ve found, and that I’m trying to find a way for you to get to the dragon. If there’s anything that might tell me where to start looking, anything at all, I need to know.”

Candy studied my face, tilting her head slightly to the side as she asked, “Why should we tell you? Why shouldn’t we just go looking on our own?”

“Two reasons. First off, if there’s some sort of snake cult in town making virgin sacrifices, they probably already know how to get to the dragon. I’m sure they’d look at you and the Nest as a perfect virgin buffet.”

Candy blanched. “And the second reason?”

“I went down into the sewers earlier today, looking for clues.” I decided not to mention the fact that Dominic had gone down with me. That seemed like a little bit too much for Candy’s nerves. “I got jumped by a bunch of lizard-dudes I’d never seen before. It was like The Land of the Lost down there. Unless you’re sure they’d be happy to see you, you probably need some sort of—” I stopped midsentence. Candy had gone pale and started to shake, suddenly looking like she was on the verge of tears. “Candy? What’s wrong?”

“There’s a dragon,” she whispered. “There’s definitely a dragon, and somebody’s hurting him. They have to be hurting him if they’re making servitors. Oh, Verity!” My name came out as a wail, and she was suddenly doing something I would never have expected in my wildest dreams: she threw her arms around my shoulders, burying her face against my chest. “We have to find him!”

I patted her awkwardly on the back. “Don’t worry,” I said, as confidently as I could. “We will.”

Apparently, “I may have found you a dragon” counted as big enough news that Candy didn’t make me pay her for going up to the roof with me. Good thing, too—at a hundred dollars for ten minutes, I would have been borrowing money from Ryan just to pay off my debt to Candy. Never owe money to a dragon princess. Their interest rates are murder.

As for the pressing question of the night, namely—“What’s a servitor?”—Candy was willing to answer it in detail. Too much detail. After providing a vivid installment of Things I Never Wanted To Know Theater, Candy promised to speak with the rest of the Nest about the dragon and call me with anything they knew, and went back inside to finish her shift. I watched her go, then went racing back across the rooftops to my apartment. Her surprise had been genuine—I was certain of that—and with what I’d just learned, I needed to check in sooner rather than later.

No one was picking up at the house. That wasn’t a surprise, considering they’d left for the basilisk hunt not that long before, but I still said several words we’re supposed to be careful about using in front of the mice as I hung up. General cheering greeted my profanity, along with a few ecstatic mentions of the Feast of Washing Out Mouths With Soap. I didn’t have the energy to tell them to keep it down. If the mice wanted to have a party, let ’em. I had bigger—much, much bigger, as in “dragon-sized”—fish to fry.

I was sitting down at my computer, composing an email with everything I’d managed to learn so far (not nearly enough) when there was a knock at the apartment door. My head snapped up like a jackalope scenting a pack of coyotes. My presence in the apartment was, after all, technically illegal, since the original lease forbade subletting and the apartment’s actual tenant was on extended vacation somewhere in Canada. I didn’t exactly encourage things like “visitors,” especially since a lot of the people who’d be coming to visit couldn’t pass for human in a dark alley on a moonless night.

The knock came again. The mice gave a subdued cheer. “Hush!” I hissed, standing. “You get out of sight while I answer the door.”

“But, Priestess, the Holy Feast—”

“Will be honored, if it’s a man, and if I let him through the door,” I said. “Now hide.” The mice scattered, vanishing under furniture and into hidey-holes. Only a few pennants and some pigeon-bone accessories were left to show that they’d ever existed, and those could be excused as my having morbid taste in dolls. (Antimony did that once, taking a bunch of mouse-designed ceremonial gear to school as part of an art project she billed as “Barbie Meets Modern Primitive.” She got an “A,” and an appointment with the school counselor.)

The knocking came a third time. It was starting to sound impatient. “Shit,” I hissed, giving the room a quick once-over for obvious weapons before shouting, “I’ll be right there!” I triggered my screensaver—no point in giving some nosy neighbor an eyeful—and half-ran across the room, yanking open the door.

Dominic De Luca gave me a look that was half-exasperated, half-amused, and held up a large paper sack which smelled enticingly of fried chicken and the usual assortment of sides. “Before you begin shouting at me for having your address, I wish to note that I come bearing peace offerings, and am prepared to apologize for further intruding on your privacy. I simply thought we should speak, and I no longer trust you in coffee shops.”

“Fair,” I said, and grabbed his arm, hauling him into the apartment before shutting the door firmly behind him. “Sorry, I’m trying to avoid attracting the attention of the neighbors. Technically, I can’t legally be here, so—”

The room erupted into cheers. Quite literally: with mice crammed into every cushion and hidden under every piece of furniture, it sounded like the apartment had suddenly been possessed by the spirit of Super Bowl Sunday. Dominic’s head whipped around, eyes going wide. “What in God’s name—?!”

“Oh, crap,” I groaned, putting a hand over my face. “I should have expected this. I should have known, and spent the night at Sarah’s or something. This is all my fault.”

“Why is the apartment shouting at us?” Dominic groped for his belt, presumably to produce something he could use to attack the cheering, hostile … apartment. If he had a knife intended entirely for stabbing haunted sublets, I didn’t want to know about it. I uncovered my face and clamped my hand down over his, holding him in place. He gave me a startled look.

“I’m really, really sorry about this, but it’s the Holy Feast, and it’s just not going to stop until I do this, so please don’t take things the wrong way, okay?” He was still looking completely baffled. “Oh, to hell with explaining.” Stepping into his personal space, I leaned up, and kissed him for the second time.

The cheers got even louder. But after a few seconds, I don’t think either of us was listening to the mice.

Dominic tensed for an instant before he was kissing me back, all the urgency I’d sensed in him earlier returning, and joined by a strange sort of relaxation, like he’d come to terms with the reality that I was kissing him. Things got good faster this time; he wasn’t holding back. With one hand pinned under mine, and the other filled with fried chicken, it wasn’t like he could exactly put his arms around me, so he turned us around instead, pinning me up against the wall beside the door. It didn’t feel like being trapped. It felt like an embrace, one that couldn’t use the standard materials, and so had to find a way to improvise. I like a man who knows how to think on his feet.

Our first kiss ended when he pushed me away. This time, there was no pushing. He leaned into me, and I strained to press myself more solidly against him. Dominic made a small growling noise in the back of his throat, clearly frustrated by the unavailability of his hands. The cheers were tapering off, and my hormones were starting to go insane. Right. If I was going to get the situation—and myself—back under control, this was the time to do it. Right now. Not in five minutes, despite the fascinating thing Dominic was doing with his tongue. Right now.

Pulling back with a gasp, I looked into Dominic’s eyes, seeing my own thin control reflected there, and gasped, “You just walked in on the Holy Feast of I Swear, Daddy, I’ll Kiss the Next Man That Walks Through That Door. It was the only way to make them stop.”

He blinked.

“Seriously.”

Dominic blinked again. Seeming to realize that the cheering had faded, he stepped back, letting me move away from the wall. “They … who?” he asked blankly.

“My resident colony of Aeslin mice.” Sensing that the mood was irreparably broken, I took the bag of chicken from Dominic’s hand and called, “You can come out now!”

“HAIL!” replied the mice, popping into view from places all over the room. It looked like a bad special effect on a Jim Henson TV show, and I’m used to them. It’s really no surprise that Dominic jumped, eyes going enormously wide in his suddenly-pale face.

“Your apartment is full of talking rodents,” he said, like this was somehow going to be a surprise to me.

“Yes,” I said.

“Your apartment is full of talking rodents, and you just kissed me again.”

It seemed safest to keep agreeing with him. “Yes.”

Dominic nodded slowly. “All right. You mentioned a … Holy Feast of some sort? Was that the motivation behind…?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean … chicken?” I held up the bag, forcing a smile that probably looked more like the painted grin of a crazy clown. “Come on. Kitchen’s this way.”

Of course, my kitchen was so small that there was no chance we could sit down. Even eating standing up at the counters wouldn’t work, unless we wanted to eat with our backs to one another. Somehow, I didn’t think that was going to reduce the tension between us.

The living room was out, unless I wanted to risk getting chicken grease all over my costume rack. The bathroom might work, if one of us sat on the edge of the shower stall, and the other sat on—no, the bathroom was out. That really left only one option, and given the Holy Feast we’d just been celebrating—given how much I’d really enjoyed the celebration—I wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

Dominic stopped in the kitchen doorway, looking first at the tiny room, and then at me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I opened a cabinet, producing a pair of plates, and offered him another overly-strained smile. “This may sound a little weird, but I think we’re going to have to eat in the bedroom. That’s the only place in this apartment with enough space for us both to actually sit down and eat.”

“Is that so?” Dominic raised an eyebrow, looking very marginally amused. “Are you sure this is not the second stage of your rodent-inspired ‘Holy Feast’?”

“Yes.” I nodded so vigorously it felt like my head was at risk of coming off. “That’s a different celebration.”

Dominic blinked. “You are very, very strange,” he said, after a long pause. He reached out to take the plates from me and then stepped back out of the kitchen doorway, allowing me to lead the way to the bedroom. I scanned constantly as we walked, looking for anything that would cause me to die of embarrassment. So far, I wasn’t seeing anything. There was a quiver of arrows leaning against the hallway wall—no big deal—and I’d left a hand ax out on my dresser. Sloppy, but still not a problem. I was more worried about the important things, like dirty underpants left out on the floor.

The fates were with me; all my delicates were safely out of view in the laundry hamper. I breathed a sigh of relief, setting the sack of greasy goodness on the edge of the bed. Having the blankets dry cleaned would cost a lot less than doing the same for my costume rack. I sat down on one side of the sack of chicken, motioning for Dominic to sit down on the other side. Safely distanced by calories and cholesterol, Dominic sat, passing me a plate as he did. I smiled wanly.

“So, dinner,” I said, leaning over to open the sack. “That was very sweet of you.”

“It seemed like the least I could do, given the circumstances.” Dominic reached into the fried chicken bag, pulling out a container of mashed potatoes and setting it delicately on the bed. “I wasn’t sure what the appropriate ‘I’m sorry I took you into the sewers without proper preparation and got you beaten up by lizard-men’ gift was.”

“Brass ammunition or an anti-incubus charm,” I said automatically. Then I paused. “Er…”

“You really are the strangest woman I have ever met.” Dominic sounded almost admiring. “Now, will you please explain the talking rodents, and how their religious observations led to you accosting me in your front hallway? I’m still trying to decide whether or not to feel taken advantage of.”

“They’re Aeslin mice.” I pulled the chicken bucket out of the bag, selecting a breast and a thigh before offering it to him. “Religious observations are sort of what they do.”

“I’ve heard of them, but I’ve never actually encountered them before.” Dominic glanced speculatively toward the door back to the hall. “They’re cryptids, aren’t they? Of a somewhat more diminutive variety than those we generally find ourselves opposing?”

“I try to avoid opposing cryptids of any size, but yes, they’re a type of cryptid. A very religious-minded type of cryptid. They’ve been living with my family for generations—since before we left the Covenant.” I started peeling the skin delicately off my chicken. “One of my multiple-great-grandmothers found them, and she just couldn’t bring herself to kill them, so she brought them home.”

“Maybe that was part of what made it so easy for your family to leave,” said Dominic. I shot him a speculative look. He shrugged. “They had already deviated from the laws.”

“Maybe so, but … it still wasn’t easy.” I looked down at my chicken. It was easier than looking at him. “I’ve read the diaries. We all have. It was a big decision, both times that it happened. For my great-great-grandparents, and then again for my grandfather. I mean, it was hard on them. They were turning their backs on everything they’d ever known, because they’d decided there was something that mattered more than doing what they’d been taught to do. Hell, what they’d been raised to do. This wasn’t a choice they made on a whim. This was everything to them.”

Dominic’s hand touched my knee almost tentatively. I raised my head, looking at him warily. He met my eyes, expression grave, and said, “I understand loyalties being called into question. I may not fully understand the choices they’ve made, but … I understand what could have inspired those choices.”

“Hey. Baby steps.” I smiled a little, and took a bite of chicken. It tasted amazing, possibly because I hadn’t eaten a decent meal in days, and combat burns a lot of calories. Lucky for me, Dominic was in a similar state, or the speed with which I inhaled both pieces on my plate might have convinced him that I was some sort of cryptid. Never a good conviction to inspire in a Covenant member, unless you feel like having an ash-wood stake driven through your chest.

“I always wondered what had caused your ancestors to throw their lives away like that,” said Dominic, attention apparently going to his chicken. He didn’t look at me as he continued, “It seemed a particularly arrogant means of committing suicide.”

I didn’t say anything. I just waited.

“The teachings of the Covenant are what allowed mankind to survive, once, when competition for resources was stiffer—when sometimes we were the resources in question. Without the willingness to kill, we could never have lived long enough to develop the capacity for mercy.”

“That’s probably true,” I allowed. “I think we have that capacity now, though.”

“Do we?” Dominic looked at me. “Sometimes I wonder.”

“Maybe wondering is enough.”

“Maybe so.”

We ate in silence for a few minutes after that, broken only when I asked him to pass a biscuit. Finally, Dominic set his plate (with its associated chicken-bone graveyard) aside, touching my knee with the fingers of one hand. He was less tentative this time.

“You kissed me once to prove a point,” he said. “Then you kissed me again to honor a rodent religious ritual.”

“It was the only way to make them stop celebrating,” I protested.

“Indeed.” Looking at me thoughtfully, he asked, “What would it take to get you to kiss me a third time, do you think?”

My heart didn’t literally stop, but for a moment, it sure as hell felt like it had. I coughed a little, getting my cardiac rhythm back on track, and managed to say, “Well, I guess you kissing me once might be a decent way to start.”

“And after that?”

“Well, after that, I’d say the odds of my kissing you again would go way, way up.” Suddenly, the brown paper sack didn’t seem like nearly enough of a barrier between us. In medieval times, unmarried couples had to sleep with a sword between them to make sure they wouldn’t get up to any funny business. About half of me wished I’d followed their example. The other half was joining the mice in cheering wildly. I gasped. “Oh, God, the mice!”

“What—?” Dominic stared after me, bewildered, as I grabbed the sack, jumped to my feet, and ran to the bedroom door.

“Bedroom privileges have been revoked for the remainder of the evening!” I shouted, chucking the chicken bag into the middle of the hallway, where it was immediately besieged on all sides by tiny, furry bodies. “I invoke the Sacred Law of Food for Privacy! Feast, and leave me alone!”

I slammed the door just in time to mute the cheering. Turning back to Dominic, I asked, “So, what were we talking about again?”

“I believe we had just reached the point of deciding that it was my move,” he said, and stood, taking two long steps forward to my position. Cupping his hands around the sides of my face, he tilted my head up toward him, bent forward, and kissed me soundly.