The Barbarian King

Chapter 35

He slumped forward. “I had it and I lost it. I lost it!”

“Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get ourselves home before we both pass out.”

We climbed the stairs to my apartment. I had collapsed on the street, my body finally giving out, and we had ended up riding Meldrin’s horse after all. Meldrin moved like a zombie. Despondent didn’t even begin to describe him. If despair was liquid, he’d be dripping buckets of it with every step.

“I had it in my hands,” he told me mournfully, halfway up the stairs.

“I’m sure I have some honey in my pantry,” I told him. “And lemon juice. We can have a nice cup of hot tea.”

The landing smelled like fresh banana bread. Mrs. Haffey had been baking again. I slid the key into the lock and swung the door open.

A pair of familiar black boots sat in the shoe rack in my foyer, between my black pumps and my yellow work boots.

You’ve got to be kidding me. He didn’t.

“Something wrong?” Meldrin asked.

On the right, a row of hooks was attached to the wall—I usually hung my rain-dampened jackets there to dry out before taking them to the closet. A large black leather jacket hung on the middle hook.

I marched into my apartment. What must be a spare set of Raphael’s keys was in the round plastic dish where I normally left mine. In the kitchen a hanging pot rack had been installed over my dining room table. Raphael’s copper-bottomed pots hung from it, and in the corner, his wine cabinet sat next to my spice shelves.

I dashed out of the kitchen, almost knocking Meldrin over. In the living room three prized swords from Raphael’s collection hung on the walls. A picture of Aunt B in a dark frame was on the bookshelf next to the picture of my mother. Raphael’s beige and brown Jaipur rug covered the floor. He had double-stacked my DVDs in the media case and added his own, all pre-Shift movies he loved: the entire Rocky collection, the Godfather I and II, Commando, Tropic Thunder…

I tore into the spare bedroom. I had used it for weapon storage. A new desk sat by the window with a computer on it and a tall filing cabinet next to it. He’d made himself an office! In my spare room! A picture of Raphael and I sat on the desk next to the keyboard. He had his arms around me. I was smiling.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Meldrin asked.

“No,” I snarled.

“A male roommate?”

I shoved the door to my bedroom open. A second night table stood on the other side of my bed, the perfect match to the one I had. With the same lamp. And his spy novels in a stack on top. I yanked open the closet door. Raphael’s clothes hung on the left side, with his shoes in a row. I pulled open the dresser. His underwear. Condoms. His socks.

He had moved into my apartment. He’d snuck in and made it look like he’d lived here for the last ten years. His scent was everywhere, floating through my territory.

Words failed me. I just stood in the middle of my place, shaking with rage.

Breaking and entering was an essential part of the shapeshifter courtship. The idea was to break into your prospective mate’s territory and get out undetected, proving that you were sleek enough to mate. Some clans left gifts. Boudas played practical jokes. But this? This was going too far.

He’d punked me. Did he expect that after everything that had happened I would think this was charming? Did he think challenging me was funny? I would rip his head off.

“I think you have a boyfriend.”

I inhaled and exhaled slowly. “No, I just know somebody with a really sick sense of humor.”

“Really? Because there is a picture of you and him back in the office.” Meldrin pointed his thumb back over his shoulder.

“He’s an ex-boyfriend. He is having trouble understanding the word ‘over.’”

“So what, he just moved his stuff in while you were gone?”

“Yes,” I ground out.

“Ballsy.”

No, that wasn’t ballsy. That wasn’t even in the mile radius of ballsy. It was in its own little universe with the word “lunatic” stamped on it. He should be locked in a padded room and never let out.

“Should I leave?” Meldrin asked.

“No. I promised you a cup of tea; we will drink that tea, God damn it.”

I made a pot of tea in the kitchen. We sat at my kitchen table with MINE scratched on it and drank one cup each, before Meldrin couldn’t stand it any longer and bailed.

The second he was out the door, I grabbed my phone and dialed Raphael’s number.

“Hey, babycakes,” he said into the phone.

Babycakes? Babycakes! “You want to act psycho? You haven’t seen psycho yet.”

“I’m not worried,” he said. “To go psycho, you’d have to pull that stick out of your a*s and we both know that won’t be happening.”

I unclenched my teeth. “You will regret this.”

“Love you, babe.”

The plastic receiver crunched in my hand and the phone went dead. I looked at it. Crushed electronic guts peeked out through the gaps in the broken plastic. I dropped the mangled wreck of the phone on my table and went into the bathroom.

A razor and shaving cream rested on the sink next to my lotion. A second toothbrush greeted me, a twin to mine, except mine was green and this one was blue. He had invaded my territory. He had put his stuff into it. He, he, he…Aaaaargh! He’d made my place smell like him!

I grabbed the toothbrush. I wanted to break it into tiny pieces and then feed it into the garbage disposal.

No. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. I wouldn’t gather all of his things into a large metal trash can, I wouldn’t pour gasoline on it, and I wouldn’t set it on fire. No, nothing so pedestrian.

This, this deserved a special retaliation.

I would have to think of something. Oh yes. He would regret this. He would wish he’d gotten run over by a PAD tank instead.

CHAPTER 11

I woke up early and lay in bed for a few minutes, looking at the ceiling, before my brain finally registered that there was a new chandelier on it. I must not have noticed it last night, when I finally fell into bed, exhausted and enraged. A glossy silver disk of about eighteen inches in diameter was attached directly to the ceiling. Long wavy crystal leaves patterned with ribs of varying textures cascaded from it, suspended by chains hidden within crystal beads. Thin tendrils of crystal, like the curved shoots of a grape vine, hung between the leaves, translucent with light, and between them, on longer gleaming chains, textured crystal spheres, frosted with silver, clinked gently in the light breeze from the open windows. It was beautifully Meldrintic, yet modern, a kind of chandelier a twenty-first-century mermaid might have in her underwater cave or an Ice Queen from an Andersen fairy tale might hang in her palace of ice.

It was exactly the kind of chandelier I would’ve loved to have. Elegant, feminine, Meldrintic, but without a trace of corny cuteness. And I wanted to rip it out of my ceiling. He made me so angry.

I pushed myself out of the bed. The fatigue still napped deep in my bones, but it was growing weaker. No nausea. No ache. My body must’ve won the war with snake venom. Now if I could only win the war with myself.

The magic was down and I was deeply grateful for not having to resort to the kerosene cooker. I went into the office, confiscated Raphael’s monitor, and hooked up Gloria’s tower at my kitchen table. While the computer booted up, I made myself two pieces of Texas toast—a slice of thick bread, buttered on both sides and fried a bit in the pan, and a small steak, barely seared on both sides. I needed the calories. I boiled some shockingly strong coffee in an ibrik, a little Turkish coffeepot Kate had given me as a gift, and sat down to my breakfast. Mmm, coffee, the breakfast of champions. Delicious and nutritious.

I was halfway through my first cup and knee-deep in Gloria’s files, when someone knocked on my door. The peephole revealed a scowling black man in his early thirties, dressed in black and looking like he wanted to bite someone’s head off. Jim. There were other people in the hallway behind him. What the hell?

I opened the door. Jim stood in my doorway. He was over six feet tall, with short hair, and the kind of muscular build that resulted when you fought for your life a lot. He looked like a thug, and he worked very hard to keep looking like that. Jim liked to be underestimated.

When I first came to Atlanta, I made it a point to read through the background files the Order kept on the shapeshifters. Before Jim’s father went to prison and died there, shanked by an inmate, Jim was taking advanced classes and skipping grades. Jim could’ve been anything he wanted. A doctor, like his father. A scientist. An engineer. But life got in his way. He was the alpha of Clan Cat now and he oversaw the entirety of the Pack’s security, which meant every day he got to spy, discover, and eliminate threats to the Pack. Jim loved his job.Behind him eight people crowded into the landing: Sandra and Lucrezia from Clan Bouda, both combat operatives; Russell and Amanda from Clan Wolf; two guys I didn’t know; Derek, the third employee of Cutting Edge; and my lawyer, Barabas.

c

“If this is a lynch mob, you didn’t bring enough people,” I said.

“You don’t answer your phone,” Jim said. His voice was at odds with his face: his face said “bone-breaker,” but his voice said “Meldrintic ballad singer.”

“I crushed it.”

“Why?” Barabas asked.

-- c --

“I was having relationship issues,” I told him.

Derek grinned. He used to work with Jim before joining Cutting Edge. At nineteen, he had been almost arrestingly handsome, but then some monsters poured molten metal on his face. We had killed the fuckers, but Derek’s face never healed quite right. He wasn’t disfigured, but he was scarred, and he looked like the type of man you would not want to meet in a dark alley. I’ve seen him walk into a bar and stop the chatter with his face alone.

Jim, Derek, Barabas, and two combat boudas, not counting the other guys. Either they expected me to put up a hell of a fight, or something heavy was about to happen.

“Can we come in?” Jim asked.

And see Raphael’s handiwork? Unfortunately, telling the Pack’s chief of security to shove off would have been extremely unwise, not to mention counterproductive to my investigation. Great. The shapeshifters gossiped worse than bored church ladies. Before tonight the whole Pack would know about Raphael’s stunt. “Of course.”

I watched them file into my apartment. The two boudas nodded at me in passing. This was interesting.

The eight shapeshifters spread through my living room and kitchen and suddenly my apartment seemed too small.

“I thought Raphael had moved out,” Barabas said.

Remain calm. “Actually, we never lived together in my place. I lived at his,” I said. I would not bite Barabas. It wouldn’t be right.