I nodded. I still had the scars. I only kept scars that meant a near-death wound. I had a lot of them these days.
“If so,” Eli said, “then the research facility, or whatever it was, could be close to where you were found. I’ll do some investigating and get some drones up when the snow clears.”
“And if you find it?” Bruiser asked.
Eli grinned and it was a scary sight. “Road trip, my man. Road trip.”
“And then?” I asked.
“Life’s a bitch and then you die,” Eli said.
“This is our job, my love,” Bruiser said. “We’ll deal with it while you concentrate on getting well.”
Like that’s gonna happen.However, I nodded. “I’m changing back to Beast soon. But I have a little time?”
“Let’s go upstairs,” Bruiser said. “I’ll take any time with you I can get.”
“Ditto,” I said.
I stood and took his hand. Our fingers interlaced. With my other hand, I reached up and scrubbed my knuckles over his two-day beard. “I like it,” I said.
Bruiser smiled. “Maybe I’ll keep it, then.”
“Oh please,” Alex said. “Will you just go on upstairs and do the big nasty. I’m trying to work here.”
Bruiser laughed and pulled me to him.
Black Friday Shopping
A Soulwood story. It first appeared online as a gift to fans in 2017. It takes place around the time Nell joins PsyLED as a probie.
“Mama says Walmart is the devil’s storehouse,” I said, hiding my badge in my jacket lapel pocket and making sure my weapon was secure and out of sight in its Kydex holster.
“Nell, sugar. You never been in a Walmart?” Occam stopped and pulled me to a stop with him by the simple expedient of catching my jacket sleeve between thumb and forefinger.
“Course I been in a Walmart.” I eased away from his touch and he let go. Occam knew my history and was always careful when it came to trapping me. Neither of us liked cages of any kind, him being a were-leopard who’d spent twenty years in a cage, and me being an escapee from a polygamous church. “I just think about Mama anytime I go to a place she would disapprove of. And Mama would highly disapprove of me shopping at a Walmart on early Black Friday, after Thanksgiving dinner—what she would interpret as the devil’s holiday.”
“Well, let me lead you into sin and destruction”—he shot me a sidewise glance and a cat grin—“at Walmart.”
I knew he could smell my blush. Occam wanted to take me to dinner and a movie. A date. Like normal people did. But I wasn’t normal and neither was he. And I wasn’t sure how to date, what to do, or what to talk about, or how to act. I’d sorta put him off, which had made the occasional mischievous banter more pointed.
Determined not to be teased without a rebuttal, I said, “They got steak and pork and salmon and shrimp and chicken in there. You gonna go all furry and raid the refrigerated meats?”
Occam snorted and led the way. “I’ll try to restrain my cat, Nell, sugar.”
I made ahmmmingsound and followed him into the chaos and insanity of a Thanksgiving evening at Walmart.
We had been sent by JoJo at HQ to take a long walk through Walmart while keeping an eye out for someone who might be casting curses at the shoppers or the store itself. The week before Thanksgiving, there had been half a dozen unusual accidents in the store, from a rack of children’s Santa-style pajamas collapsing and taking down four other racks, to a shelving unit full of Christmas trees falling on one shopper, to a row of three car batteries exploding in the automotive shop, to all the freezer compressors in the frozen foods section burning up at the same time. Other than a customer wearing tinsel, the fire department arriving to put out a small fire, and the mess of a lot of melted seafood and ice cream, there had been no major danger or human injury. But the customer who had worn tree lights after the Christmas tree shelving fell on her was a sensitive and claimed to smell magic, hence our presence in the store on late Thanksgiving, undercover, as shoppers.
Occam snagged a buggy and we melded into the crazy.
Two women were fighting over a sale item made of camo-material. Another woman yanked an item out of the hands of a disabled woman. Fortunately, someone “accidentally” tripped the shopper-thief and the item was returned. In the bedding section there was insane fighting over the last set of Marvel Comics superhero sheets. In the toy section, several shelves were empty already. In the food section the frozen turkey bin was empty and shoppers were yanking turkeys out of the hands of the poor clerk as he was restocking. And there was a near riot in the electronics section. Occam called it in to the local PD and we kept an eye open until the cops waded into the melee and arrested two women who were wrestling on the floor over an Apple tablet case that glowed in the dark.
We trundled through the store, eventually leaving the buggy in an aisle and just people-watching. An hour in, I felt a wash of magic, like sparklers cascading over my skin. I pointed. “That way. Fast.”
Occam took off at a jog while I walked slower, checking out the shoppers for anyone who looked like they might be casting mischievous spellson the customers, the store stock, and the store building. I spotted a little girl, standing off by herself. She was wearing boy’s clothing—too big for her, none too clean, and worn in tattered layers. I slowed, taking her in, knowing that something was wrong here.
There were dark circles beneath the child’s eyes. She hadn’t bathed or washed her hair in a while, her face smeared with that particular orange shade of Cheetos. Most telling, her ankles were bare and dirty above brand-new bunny slippers with the tags still on. And there was an aura of magic about her, like a soft blue haze.
