I did, and woke only when T. Laine nudged me awake at the house.
NINETEEN
I pushed open the door, banging it against the inside wall of the cold house. The mouser cats rushed in, anxious, tails high.
I stumbled in the dark, in my own house. I had never done that before. Occam caught me, one hand under my arm, the other holding paper grocery bags. Stepping surely, lightly in the shadows. Cat eyes, seeing in the dark; had to be. “You okay, Nell, sugar?”
“I’m just peachy,” I breathed. I flipped the switch and the lights blazed, the house looking unlived in, abandoned. The fire was out in the cookstove. Even the walls were cold to the touch. A fine layer of ash from the woodstove and dust coated everything. I had been home from Spook School for a week and hadn’t dusted anything.
JoJo shut the door behind us all. I stood in the entry, exhausted, leaning against the wall, and watched as my coworkers carried groceries to my kitchen. Occam started a fire in the Waterford Stanley and added water to the water heater, just as if he lived here, as if he knew what to do. Feeling as if the earth had gained a few tons of gravity in the last hours, I made it to the couch and sat, clumsily pulling an afghan over me.
T. Laine pulled food from the grocery bags, which was a good thing, as there was no meat in the kitchen and nothing fresh to cook. Had I been alone, with my bandaged hands, I’d have made do with leftovers and water. Thankfully they had picked up a cooked turkey breast and raw veggies and a loaf of artisan bread. And some canned soup for me. I had eaten commercially canned food at Spook School, and most of it was nasty stuff, but the spicy tomato smell of the soup was pretty nice as it glopped out of the waxed-paper carton, into a soup bowl.
My teammates sliced meat, poured kibble for the mousers,opened and washed the salad fixings, and nuked the organic roasted red pepper–and-tomato soup.
I kicked off my shoes as they made themselves at home. T. Laine knew where I kept the sheets, and while the bread toasted, she made up the guest beds. JoJo went to my room and got out my nightclothes. At home in my kitchen, Occam set the table, shooing the cats out of the way, talking to them with little bats and pats and hisses and vocalizings that the mousers seemed to understand. These were things that only the very best of friends would have been able to do.
I felt the tension ease out of my torso and limbs as my friends worked. Tears stung my eyes. “Thank you,” I said, the words too loud, ringing in the tall ceilings and up the stairs. “For taking care of me. For proving what Rick said when I first met y’all. That I’d never have to ‘go in alone.’”
From behind the kitchen table, Occam smiled, a crooked twisting of his lips, one dimple on his left cheek pulling in tight. “Nell, sugar, that’s what this unit is all about. Teamwork. In everything.” He poured four glasses of Sister Erasmus’ wine into plastic wineglasses they had bought, and set two on the long, ancient, kitchen table, at the right of the plates. The two others, he brought over. “If you put your hands together, you can hold this.”
“I need to go out into the woods,” I said, taking the stem in my padded hands.
“After you eat, sugar. And rest a bit. You look a mite peaked.”
“That’s the way to make a girl feel pretty, cat boy,” T. Laine called from the kitchen.
Occam stiffened, as if hearing his own words, and the dimpled smile disappeared. For a moment, he looked lost, uncertain. Then he leaned in closer, holding my gaze with his own and announced, “Nell is, hands down, the prettiest thing I ever saw, all bloody or all dolled up.”
A blush flashed up my chest at the words, and my glass bobbled as his meaning ricocheted through my brain like lightning. He caught the stemware, straightened it before the wine spilled, and let me get a mittened grip on it again. The silence in the house assured me they had all heard his words. “Is that better, Lainie?” he asked, his eyes not letting me go.
“Only if you ask the poor girl out to dinner.”
He tipped his glass at mine. The plastic edges met with alow-pitched tap. “I’m getting there, Lainie. How ’bout you butt outta this convo.”
“Ohhhhoooo,” she said, as if this was an interesting development.
His voice dropped. “I’m not trying to stop you from getting to your woods. I’ll help you do anything you want, Nell, sugar. Any way you want. Anytime you want.”
My blush spread, as some strange part of me interpreted those words in a totally improper way for a widder-woman. “Ummm...”
“But I’d appreciate it if you would eat first. I was scared half to death when I saw you in the ER again, all bloody and bruised and mangled. And there wasn’t a single person I could bite or claw.”
Laughter tickled at the back of my throat, but I managed only another “Ummm...”
“And I’d like to take you to dinner. In a restaurant, like regular people do, instead of like weres do, over a bloody carcass.”
“Ummm...” My brain clicked back on. That one I could answer. “I’m not regular people, Occam.”
The dimple reappeared, and he eased back. “For which I am eternally grateful, sugar. Drink your wine.” He stood and went back to the kitchen table.
I drank half the glass. The sugary alcohol slid down my throat and into my system. I knew I should drink a gallon of water before the wine, but I didn’t ask for any. I just drank and watched Occam as he finished setting the table, wondering what all he might have meant about him needing to bite or claw someone. And me being pretty. And him wanting to take me to dinner. That sounded as if he was asking me on a date. Not now, not ever. I wasn’t even sure if I liked men as friends. But Occam wasn’t a human man, so... I pushed the thoughts away to deal with later, when I felt more myself.
***
The meal was simple, and though I had to sip my soup through a plastic straw, it was even more delicious than the scent had proclaimed, a far cry from the Spook School fare. As we all ate, the unit filled me in on more post-Breakhappenings. And I finished off two glasses of wine, which left me pleasantly tipsy.
Dessert was a cheese called Brie, heated on slices of theartisan bread in the oven with a topping of my raspberry jam, and more wine. It was true what they said about alcohol. It gave a body false courage. And sometimes a big mouth. In a lull of the conversation, I said, “I feel a big-cat walking toward the house. Somebody has let Rick out of his cage.”
