I’d always thought him a controlling jerk and couldn’t understand why Doug enjoyed his company. Now I know. They are working together and catching up on galactic news.
“Candy, you need to step away from him. That’s not Doug,” Mikhail says.
I grit my teeth at the nickname. I’ve always hated it and I figure the only people who use it are the ones who can’t be bothered with my real name, or those who are trying to make me feel small or cheap.
“This is Doug. Have you been drinking too? Did you two have lunch together, and that’s why you’re both drunk?” I play dumb. It’s what he expects from me.
“Step away, Candy.”
“Or what?” There is ice in my words.
Thistle’s hand on my shoulder is becoming hot. He says one word. “Drop.”
And I do, because I’m not a fucking idiot when it comes to bad guys and trusting my partner even if he is an alien manipulating light to seem like my boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, who is also an alien and up to his armpits in crime. A ball of white-hot light streaks toward Mikhail and hits him in the chest. He stumbles back three steps, then tips over. The air stinks of burned flesh and hair and I gag.
Thistle strides toward the flailing alien, gun out and growls out a string of words I don’t understand, I assume it’s alien for ‘you’re under arrest’.
Then he shoots Mikhail, and he goes still.
I’m on my feet and moving toward him, before I think it through. He can’t just kill someone without a trial…can he?
Thistle turns. “He’s unconscious, that is all.”
This close, I can see the extent of the burns in the fabric suit and the flesh suit. Beneath the suits is a lot of singed pink hair, or fur, and that’s what stinks. My stomach rolls again and I glance away.
Thistle smiles. “Thank you.”
“No worries.” We can’t leave the hairy pink alien in the alley. “Are we putting him in the car?” I hook my thumb at the fire escape where the car is midair.
“We are.” He reveals the car, then lowers it to the ground as if he does it all the time. Maybe he does. Maybe that’s how aliens park their cars.
“What will happen to him?”
“We will transport him to face trial,” Thistle says.
“No arrest process or assumption of innocence?”
Thistle, wearing Doug’s face, stares at me. “Being on the planet is illegal. He isn’t innocent.”
I stare at him as I try to process what I have learned about aliens. “Because we aren’t spacefaring?”
“Correct.”
“Can you stop looking like Doug now? It’s disturbing.”
“In what way? I thought you liked him? You were his partner, yes?”
I sigh. “I thought I liked him, but I liked the attention and the presents. I know that’s bad. And I ignored so many signs that I should break up with him—”
“It’s good you didn’t, or he’d have put you on the next shipment.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Thistle drags the man I knew as Mikhail toward the car. I pick up his feet and help put him into the trunk. Which feels all kinds of wrong. If the cops pull us over, I have no idea how we’ll explain it, and once again I’m left jabbering about aliens.
He closes the trunk and glances at me. “The excitement makes you smell very desirable.”
“Excitement? You mean adrenaline?”
