If Bruiser was puma, would want Bruiser as mate.
I chuckled softly. It came out a lot deeper than I expected.
Eli lifted his eyes from the bar where he had a number of handguns in pieces. The place stank of lubricants and suddenly felt more like home. He glanced to one side where Little Evan was eating Cheerios, dry from the bowl, sitting beside him, watching every little movement. Elihad a fan. The former Army Ranger looked out the windows, scanning, his fingers touching the loaded weapon still holstered beneath one arm. On guard. Protecting. Always.
The little boy looked up. “Hey, Ant Jane,” EJ said. “That’s a really good costume. I learned to breafe... breathe... and to baw’ance—balance—on two feet.”
“Yeah? That’s good. Breathing is important.” I covered his head with a paw-hand, surprised when the whole thing fit into my longer fingers. Children were so small and fragile.
Kits... ,Beast thought, the word filled with longing.
I scrubbed Little Evan’s head, mussing his hair, and said to Eli, “Thank you.” I opened the fridge and asked, “Got anything to build muscles in this form?”
“Babe.” Which meant it was a stupid question. Wiping his hands, keeping an eye on his workbench, Eli said to EJ, “Don’t touch. Remember?”
“I ’member.” EJ crunched down on cereal, his eyes mischievous. “I’m a good lil boy.”
Eli sighed as if he knew better than to believe the assertion, stepped up beside me, and pointed. “Roast. Steak. Eggs. Name it.”
I had eaten eggs at breakfast, able to keep two down. “Steak. Let’s start with a couple pounds and move on from there.”
Eli chuckled. “And then we spar for a while. That last attempt was pitiful.” Eli turned on the stove grill and pulled a steak from the fridge.
“Mmmm. Beat your butt this time, I betcha,” I growled in my deeper voice.
“Beat ya butt! Beat ya butt!”
“Molly’s gonna kill you, you know,” Eli added casually, turning the gas up high to sear the steaks.
“Yeah. Shoot me now.”
EJ giggled and slammed his fists down, scattering Cheerios on the floor. “Soot me! Soot me! Soot me!”
Eli managed not to laugh at me and picked up my godson, placing him on the floor. EJ squealed and took off running in the general direction of his parents’ suite. Elislapped the steak on the stove grill and made the kitchen smell wonderful. Within minutes, he gave me a mostly raw steak cut into bite-sized pieces so I could pretend to have good manners. If Molly was gonna kill me, at least I’d go out with a full belly. In that odd comfortable silence of family, I watched Eli finish the weapon maintenance and clean the bar while I scarfed down several pounds of meat.
As I was wiping delicious beef grease off my lips, Alex walked in and plopped a sheaf of papers onto the bar top. “Your appointment of Grégoire to the Dark Queen’s Warlord, thoroughly vetted and approved by Bruiser and the Robere Onorios. Read and sign.” He clicked a pen open and held it out to me. I didn’t bother to read the papers, but I knew that what I was doing would change the way vamps lived in Europe for... maybe forever. I signed with a flourish. Grégoire was going to love being Warlord. And I had managed to avoid having to go to war in Europe. Go, me!
I signed a couple dozen siggies and handed the papers to Eli. Feeling much better about things, I sat back against the barstool and opened the nail polish.
“Can I paint them?” Angie asked from behind me.
“Ummm.” I had a mental image of my nails after my goddaughter painted them. It wouldn’t be any worse than my own job. “Sure. Why not?”
Angie Baby climbed onto the barstool near me and took the bottle of polish. EJ clambered up on the weapon-free bar top and crawled over to watch, lying with his belly on the cold stone, seemingly without discomfort. Angie patted the seat between her legs and I carefully placed my oversized paw-foot on the barstool and wiggled my toe pads. She giggled and pulled the brush from the bottle, the acetone stench ruining the leftover steak scent. She caught her tongue between her teeth and began painting my nails, her brush strokes slow and smooth. The scarlet was the perfect color.
“It’s pretty,” she said. When I didn’t respond, she asked, softer, “I can’t feel my Edmund in my headanymore. Is he gonna be okay, Ant Jane? Am I gonna have my knight back?”
Edmund had sworn fealty to Angie and her entire family, to be their protector, and somehow the two had formed an unexpected mental bond. In the same way that he had been ripped from me, he had been ripped from Angie, and then he had, in the manner of vamps, locked his mental shields down so we didn’t suffer while he suffered. But I had no way of knowing if the mental bond could or would be restored and had no way to explain all this to Angie.
“Yes,” I said, sounding utterly positive, “Edmund is going to be okay. And he will always be your knight, whether we feel him in our heads or not.”
She nodded, her strawberry blonde curls sliding forward as she painted the hard-to-reach little claw. “I miss him,” she whispered.
And I was right. It took most of the bottle.
***
It was long after sundown, a light snow again falling, when Alex shouted that he had a text claiming visitors were arriving. On the way to the front door I glanced at the screen, spotting a gaggle of snowmobiles pulling into the long drive. In half-form, I walked to the door, turned on the welcoming lights, and stepped outside. The roar of the snowmobiles blasted the silence from the property as the first two vehicles accelerated, dashing up the long driveway, creating ruts in the blanket of snow. Lincoln Shaddock’s people were here.
