Vicious Circle

Chapter 8

Nana stood in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. She had been there for not quite a minute. She’d shifted her weight and sighed heavily four times already. At my dining room desk, I sat typing out my recent activities and thoughts on my laptop. Writing it all down helped me keep it straight in my head, and suddenly there were so many threads in my life that I needed a visual. This kind of exercise had blossomed into the column that now provided my income.

Pointedly, Nana cleared her throat, but I didn’t stop typing.

“Aren’t you going to cook any dinner?” she finally said.

I glanced up from my computer screen and, even though I didn’t intend to stop typing, I couldn’t help it. Nana wore a white sweatshirt and white sweatpants. Her irritated, hands-on-hips pose accentuated her snowman body shape. Her white beehive was still ruffled in the back from an afternoon nap she insisted was only a few minutes of resting her eyes. I knew better—her snoring had greeted me when I arrived home from meeting Mr. Kline. It was a struggle not to let my amusement show.

“Well?”

“Not today.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Nope.” I paused to rethink how to spell “discipline.” Nana always said it dis-li-pline. A lifetime of hearing that pronunciation made me have to stop and think when I had to write that particular word; otherwise I’d put an extra l in it.

“Well, for your information, it’s after six. It’s dinnertime.”

“So?” A smile slipped onto my face. For all the hang-ups my childhood had provided, teasing her equaled the mildest retribution.

“So? I’m hungry! Poopsie’s hungry.” He loped in when she said his name. “I’m not eating out of a box again.”

“Chubby’s dog food is in the garage. And don’t you dare start feeding him table food!”

“His name is Poopsie,” she said defiantly, patting his head.

I saved my document, closed the laptop, and got up. “All right. I’ll feed him. But he’s going to be too big to be called ‘Poopsie.’” He followed me eagerly into the garage and across the cracked cement floor to his metal crate. I scooped his puppy chow into the bowl and placed it deep inside the cage, just like the puppy book said to do. “There you go.”

He didn’t move from his spot by the garage door.

“Go on. Your dinner’s in there.”

He sat and gave a whine.

“Okay. I’ll make her get you a cooler name.”

Another whine.

“And it won’t be Chubby.”

He barked and leapt into the cage and started to eat just as a motorcycle roared up my driveway, throwing gravel. I stepped back to the kitchen in time to see Nana slam the cupboard door in disgust and shuffle out. I announced, “Dinner’s here.”

“Delivery?” she asked, turning.

“Yup. You should smooth your hair down in the back.”

Her hands shot up self-consciously. “Who delivers out here,” she grumbled, heading for the living room as she spoke, “besides that grumpy paperboy who couldn’t hit a driveway if it were the size of Texas?”

“That paperboy isn’t tossing out papers while riding a bicycle, Nana. This is the country, not the suburbia you’re accustomed to. Out here, paperboys are grown-ups driving cars, and usually they’re going about sixty. If the paper’s on the property at all, he didn’t miss.”

From the living room, she’d have a good view of our guest coming in. Wanting to avoid her having a conniption, I started my warning as I jogged down the hall to the door. “His name’s Johnny.”

“The paperboy?”

“No, Nana. The man bringing dinner. Now Nana, don’t freak. He’s—”

Nana was already peering out the window. “By the lunar crone’s eyes, would you look at that!”

“Nana—”

“I thought they quit making handsome deliverymen back in the sixties!”

I stopped. She thought Johnny was handsome? Her inflection hadn’t been sarcastic; her words hadn’t been confirmation of a suspicion, but a surprised observation. His tattoos made him seem disturbingly scary to me. I stared at her as she stood at the window with the curtains parted, smiling out at the porch. Johnny’s boots thumped across the wooden boards. He was knocking before I could open the front door.

“Hello, Red.” Johnny smiled, his low voice warm and rich. His tone said so much more than “hello.” Behind him, the golden leaves rained down from my pair of oaks. Wind whipped over the porch and through the screen to chill me as I stood staring up at him, ensnared like a cat in a cage.

Johnny wasn’t the kind of guy I flirted with. Remembering how we’d talked on the phone, embarrassment clenched my stomach. I forced my attention to neutral space—the floor—catching details of his jacket and black T-shirt beneath, the leather pants he wore. Where did guys over six feet find leather pants? Johnny was at least six foot two. His motorcycle boots, with silver-plated chains clinking, oozed utter bad-boy coolness that no red-blooded female could deny—and added another inch to his height. His presence screamed power and danger.

Everything he wore enhanced his dangerous look, and all of it was on purpose. Didn’t that justify my fear? Did that mean I didn’t have to beat myself up for being shallow, since I was only reacting the way he wanted people to react to him?

My hand shook as I tucked my hair behind my ear, bit my bottom lip, and looked up again.

He wore his black hair pulled back as usual, leaving the tattoos on his face strikingly exposed. Black lines surrounded and decorated his eyes like the Eye of Horus or Wedjat. My heart beat more slowly and my blood felt colder in my veins. Multiple tiny, white-gold loops adorned each brow, each ear. Little diamond studs glistened on either side of his nose.

He smiled and, strangely, it was as fearsome as it was friendly. “Food’s getting cold, Red.”

“Oh. Yeah.” You can do this, I told myself. He just seems scary. Ask him in.

I swallowed and put on a fake smile of certainty as I reached for the latch. “Come in.”

Johnny stepped inside. This was my personal space; allowing him in here felt completely different than opening the cellar, which wasn’t accessible from the house.

“I got Chinese. Might have to nuke it a bit. It stays hot pretty good except when it’s on the back of a bike in October. There’s nothing out here, you know. Not even a gas station. I got this in Cleveland, at one of my favorite spots.”

He paused, taking in the living room’s deep red walls, the chocolate-brown-corduroy-slipcovered furniture, the worn tan pillows. I felt my insides shrinking. I hoped he wouldn’t say anything cocky about all the Arthurian artwork and books being inside an old saltbox farmhouse.

“I’ve never seen your inner sanctuary before,” he said. “You’ve got style, Red.”

I managed to say, “Thanks.” He wasn’t too choosy if he approved of an aging farmhouse with creaky floors and little in the way of modern decor. I hoped we would make it through the evening without him catching on and cracking jokes about my weakness for Arthur.

He sniffed. “Did you get a dog?”

“I did,” Nana said as if she were sharing a secret. She stepped away from the window and was actually smiling. It made her look like someone I didn’t know.

“Really?” He turned to Nana. “What kind?”

“A Great Dane puppy,” I said unenthusiastically. “He’s huge.”

Over his shoulder, Johnny said, “Me too,” disguised in a cough. He did it so quickly that I almost didn’t catch it. Silently, I prayed that Nana had missed it. “I brought these especially for you.” He held a picnic basket out to Nana, complete with red-and-white-checkered cloth. He was going all out for the Red Riding Hood thing. I couldn’t imagine sinister-looking Johnny going into a basket-and-candle shop, but I guessed he had.

Across the basket’s top, wedged under the handles, was a carton of Marlboros. “For me?” Nana asked sheepishly.

He placed it into her hands. “Check inside the basket.”

Nana removed the carton and stuck it under her arm so she could open the hinged lid. “Cookies!” she exclaimed. With a deep breath, she took in the scent of them. “Oh. They smell divine! What kind are they?”

“Macadamia nut and white chocolate chip,” Johnny said. “Made ’em myself just today.” He offered her his hand. “I’m Johnny.”

Nana shifted the basket and accepted his hand readily. His tattoos didn’t faze her at all. It made me wonder why they disturbed me so much.

“I’m Demeter. Demeter Alcmedi.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Demeter.” He properly put the emphasis on the first syllable, as she had in introducing herself. She always hated it when people made her name sound like a Frenchman asking for a yardstick, duh-ME-tur. He was definitely racking up brownie points with her. Didn’t she know he was a wærewolf? She could usually tell right away. “The cookies are for after dinner, though. I hope you like General Tso’s Chicken.”

“My favorite! Did you tell him, Seph?”

“No.” I didn’t eat meat, so I began to wonder what he’d gotten for me. “Kitchen’s all the way back.” I pointed down the hallway.

He carried the bag on to the kitchen, boots thumping and chains clinking. Nana was smoothing her hair again. “Did I get it?” she asked.

“Yeah.” I laughed quietly.

“What?” she asked.

“He brought Chinese. I guess you’re eating out of a box anyway.”

“This is different.” She patted her basket happily and carried it down the hall.

When I joined them, Johnny had put his leather jacket on the back of a chair and started taking out the white paper cartons at the dinette table with two chairs on one side, a bench on the other. I got down the mismatched kitchen plates and grabbed some flatware from the drawer. “Uh-uh,” Johnny said, wagging a finger at me. “You have to eat with chopsticks.”

I gave him a dubious look; he countered with a defiant one. “Okay,” I conceded, “just don’t be too harsh when I’m wearing my dinner.”

He glanced sidelong at Nana placing her basket out of the way on the countertop by the sink and whispered to me, “If you get messy, I promise, I’ll clean you up personally.”

In the instant it took for my cheeks to warm, the image of him licking sweet-and-sour sauce off my cheek filled the cinema in my head. I couldn’t move.

Johnny took a plate from my hands and began dumping one of the cartons onto it. “You’re vegetarian, aren’t you?” he asked in normal tones, as if to cover up that he’d whispered to me.

I swallowed and wished I could pull the heat from my face as easily. “Yeah.”

“I couldn’t stand not having a couple of thick and juicy filet mignons, rare, with lots of peppercorns. Mmmm. Love it.”

Having figured him as a porterhouse type, I made a mental note. I’d promised him treats.

“Here you are, Demeter.” He sat the plate before her and came back to serve up another little box. He noticed the big oak dining set in the room beyond. “Oh, you have a dining room. Should we eat in there?”

“No. I never use it,” I said.

He shrugged. “Okay.”

“How’d you know I was vegetarian?”

His eyebrows jumped up and down, and he acted like he was locking his lips shut with a key. Then he quipped, “Celia told me.”

Celia was the first wære I ever knew. After the attack, I thought she and Erik were going to die—everyone did—but they both made it. Then we found out about their lunar furriness. I helped them find a safe house to spend their full moons in. When I bought this place, we fixed the cellar for them. At first it was just the band, but as she met more wolves and brought them along, we kept adding kennels. It was practically a pack now.

Celia was filling the cages as fast as we could renovate the space for them. The wæres brought pizza and beer and pretty much partied in the storm cellar until the change happened. Listening to them talk about the ups and downs of wæredom shaped my column topics. They each paid me twenty bucks a night for kenneling services and a continental breakfast of Krispy Kremes. Since that seemed to be the doughnut of choice for all wære-creatures, I’d bet the company’s sales always spiked before full moons. “Celia,” I repeated.

Johnny stopped serving and faced me squarely. “I asked her a lot of things about you.” He was very close. Though he’d kenneled here for six months—meaning I’d seen him six times, and then only when opening the cages in the mornings and leaving the doughnuts—I’d never been this close. He smelled like cedar and sage.

For the first time, I really looked at him. Not with furtive embarrassment. Not even with fear. I looked and paid attention. All the things I feared faded for an instant, and I saw Johnny beneath the tattoos. He had steely, blue-gray eyes.

“You two come and sit down to eat,” Nana ordered us.

Taking my plate of steamed vegetables on rice, I went to the table and deliberated about where to sit. If I sat across from Nana, Johnny could choose which of us to sit next to, but if I sat beside her, he would have to sit across from us both. That seemed the best plan. So I sat and tried to figure out the chopsticks, but I couldn’t get anything to my mouth. By the time Johnny had filled his plate with some kind of chicken dish and sat with us, I’d tried, without success, to pick up a bite of food a dozen times. Nana laughed at me. I felt terribly foolish, but I laughed too.

“I’m going to starve if you won’t concede to letting me use a fork.”

“You’re using them like a shovel and holding them wrong,” he said. “They’re delicate, but they won’t break. Hold them like this. Firmly.” He indicated how he was holding his, and I noticed he had more rings on his fingers than I did. “Pinch the food.”

I moved one stick, then the other, and held the chopsticks up for inspection. “No.” He put his chopsticks down. Reaching across the table, he took my hand in his before I could protest. Gently, deftly, his warm hands repositioned the sticks and molded my fingers into position. “There. Now try it. Pinch.”

I did, and actually got a bite. The vegetables needed half a minute in the microwave, but to warm them up, I’d have to set the chopsticks down. Then he’d have another chance to “help” me position them properly. I decided to eat the food just as it was and avoid further hand-holding. “Oh,” I said, chewing. “So that’s how you do it.”

“I thought you already knew how to do it,” Johnny said brightly, as if there was no innuendo in the statement at all. “Next time, we’ll try French. Or Thai. Some Thai can be really hot. I like it hot.”

Next time?

“Oh?” Nana said conversationally. “What about Greek?”

Johnny grinned and, despite the Wedjat tattoos, it was mischievous in a very little-boy way. Nothing scary there at all—until his smile decreased and he focused hard on me while he answered her, “I don’t think I’ve ever tasted anything Greek. But I’d love to.”

I’m not accustomed to being mildly flirted with, let alone blatantly flirted with. A little is one thing; it lets you know somebody’s interested. It’s flattering. But Johnny never did anything on a small scale. The sexual-tension thing—which he clearly thrived on—rose to an overwhelming peak for me with Nana sitting there, her old ears hearing every word and not catching a single innuendo. I was scared that she’d catch on. Scared she’d start cussing and go all indignant on us. Scared she’d laugh like a banshee and proceed to bring him up in conversation every morning at the breakfast table.

He had to stop.

When we were all nearly finished, I asked Johnny, “What’s that you’re having?”

“Bo Lo Gai Pan. It’s chicken and water chestnuts, pea-pods, mushrooms, vegetables, and pineapple.” He lowered his tone and continued. “On your tongue the pineapple just—”

I cleared my throat loudly and interrupted him. “You picked up the package?” I didn’t want to know what the pineapple did on his tongue. I just knew it’d be another innuendo.

Clearly amused but unoffended, he said, “Of course.”

I asked, “Briefcase?”

“More like a little overnight duffel. It’s on my bike.” He pushed his plate away.

Except for a few grains of rice clinging to a patch of sauce, the plate was empty. The man knew how to pinch with his sticks. There was a joke there, and I was glad I hadn’t voiced my thought aloud.

“That manager. She a friend of yours?” Johnny asked.

Nana stood up and cleared our plates away. I stared after her as she carried them to the sink. I don’t think she would have helped if it had just been the two of us for dinner. Clearing the table and doing the dishes had been my chores since age eight. But I was the roomie in her home then. Now, despite the situational reversal, I had to wonder what she was up to.

“More like an acquaintance. How’d she react?”

“She was cool.” He sounded disappointed.

“What about the customers?”

“The place was empty except for a little girl sleeping in the corner.”

I muttered, “Damn her,” my voice barely above a whisper.

“Her kid?”

“No. You didn’t recognize her?”

“Should I have?”

“It was Lorrie’s daughter, Beverley.”

“Beverley! Oh, she was facing away. If I’d known…” He paused. “What’s she doing there?”

“Lorrie knew that manager, made her Beverley’s guardian in her will, so Child Services has given her temporary custody.”

“I can’t believe what happened,” he said. “Heard about any arrangements yet?”

“I don’t think anything can be done until they release the body. I’m sure Celia will stay on top of it and let us know.”

Nana came over and patted Johnny on the shoulder. “Thanks for dinner.”

“So where’s this pup of yours, Demeter?”

“In the garage. Would you like to meet him?”

“Sure.”

The two of them went out, and a swirl of cooler air wafted in as they left. The cool air helped refocus my thoughts. Vivian was simply not up to parenting a grieving child. I doubted Vivian would abuse her physically, but Beverley needed mental support and understanding, not the rejection clear in Vivian’s tone and actions. In an effort to calm my instincts, I reasoned that I shouldn’t get involved in Beverley’s care. I was already way too involved in settling up with her mother’s killer. Social Services would check up on Beverley—

Shit. No they wouldn’t. Her mother had been a wærewolf. Though Beverley was clear of the virus, they’d conveniently lose her file and forget she was out there. Damn it, wasn’t there anyone else who cared?

“Yes. You do,” Nana said, opening the door to the garage.

My eyes widened at the thought that she’d suddenly become a mind reader.

“You have as much right to voice an opinion as anyone else,” she continued, over her shoulder to Johnny. “And, actually, I agree with you. I think ‘Ares’ is much better than ‘Poopsie.’”

I was relieved: at least Nana wasn’t a mind reader. “Ares?” I asked.

“Johnny said he thought it suited him better. So ‘Ares’ it is.”

The pup yipped happily from the garage.

Mystified by her agreeableness to Johnny, I went and stood beside her as she leaned on the door frame, fondly smiling out the door she hadn’t shut. After checking her face, I had the distinct impression that she was admiring our guest’s backside. Johnny and Ares were playing tug-of-war with a big rope toy I’d bought in the hope that it would save my couch. Both were growling merrily.

Nana turned and shuffled a few steps away, then stopped and faced me. “If you were smart, you’d make a mess of yourself and let him clean you up.” She disappeared into the hall.

My mouth was still hanging open when Johnny suddenly let the pup have the rope. He took his cell phone from its belt clip and opened it. “Hello?”

I was surprised he could get a signal out here.

“Yeah…shit. How bad? Do they know? I’m on my way.” He shut the phone. “Sorry, Red, I gotta go.” He leapt up the steps to the landing and passed me in a rush, headed for the front door. I grabbed his leather jacket from the chair and followed.

“What’s going on?”

He didn’t pause; he just opened the door and went out, talking as he walked. “Theo’s in the ICU. Car accident.”

“Johnny wait—” I was jogging to keep up.

“When they find out she’s got the virus, they’ll pull the plug! I gotta go.” He slipped a leg over the motorcycle. He took the jacket from me and slipped it on.

“You mean Theodora Hennessey, right?”

He nodded tersely; his face had hardened. He started the bike.

“I’m coming with you.” Awkwardly, I threw a leg over the seat behind him. It’d been a long time since I’d ridden on a motorcycle. Hands on the big black saddlebags, I situated myself so I wasn’t right up against him. He looked over his shoulder at me, curious. His mouth opened; then he clamped it shut and shrugged out of his coat. “Put this on.”

I did.

“I’m getting there ASAP, so hold on tight,” he said, and for once I didn’t think he was just being smug.