Moonshifted(59)

“This is what’s stopping me from trying to score, Edie. It’s like magic.”

“Yeah. Well.” I looked down at my unadulterated burger, and then picked it up. It wouldn’t do any good to tell him anything, and so I wouldn’t. I shoved the burger in my mouth and took a huge bite. Anything to keep from saying something I’d regret.

Jake sighed at me, shook his head, and then polished off the rest of the fries on his plate. When the waitress came by with a to-go box, he took the check, and he had the gall to flirt with her in front of me. She even flirted back.

I tried to see him as she must have—not as someone participating in a customer service transaction but as a person. He looked clean. Hell, he looked good. He had our dad’s brown eyes, and his shaggy brown hair needed a cut, but looking a little rugged around the edges was almost a rare thing in this town. Holing up for winter after winter made most people soft and doughy. He looked like he’d been outside recently, like he might know how to use a football, or a rake. He put down cash for both our meals and tipped her well, like a true adult.

I had to admit, weird water in little blue vials or not, I was impressed. And really glad I’d kept shoveling in fries.

“Here, Edie, keep this, in case you change your mind,” he said as we stood.

I inhaled to argue, then realized I was tired of fighting him. The thing with Jake was that he always wound up doing what he wanted to anyway. A salesman to the end, there was no way not to lose. I just wished he’d found this calling earlier.

“Sure, fine.” I pocketed the blue vial, and together we walked out to my car.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE





We drove to the Armory in silence. I was concentrating on the road—the snowplows hadn’t hit these streets since dawn, and it was getting treacherous. Jake seemed pleased with himself, like he’d won some argument I didn’t know we’d had.

I pulled against the curb a block from the shelter, where I could manage to parallel-park without putting anyone else’s life or vehicle on the line. Jake grinned over at me, in the street’s half-light.

“Hey—I’d been meaning to ask, but I forgot. Can you see if someone’s at the hospital for me? You met him on Christmas—Raymond.” He saw the question on my face, and spoke more quickly than I could respond. “He didn’t come home to the shelter last night, and I’m worried he got hurt.”

“Caught in the crossfire of an energy supplement war?” I said sarcastically.

“Or frozen to death, after being beaten by asshole college kids,” Jake replied, just as sarcastic.

“I’ll keep an eye out.”

“All right,” he said, reaching over. We hugged in the front seat of my car, clumsy with coats and no-practice. He refastened all the layers of his sturdy new coat. “You know, Edie—” he began, and looked outside. “It wasn’t so bad living with you.”

I was glad it was dark inside my car, with the engine off—I hoped it hid the emotions running across my face.

“I could pay you this time,” he went on. “I know things are rough for you right now—I don’t know how come, but you can’t hide it from me, they are. I’m not talking put me on the lease or anything, but I could pay for half your rent, and we could share things again—”

I knew the thousand and one ways that having Jake live with me would be a bad idea—above and beyond the fact that a cyborg and a sleeping vampire had temporary residence. When the bottom fell out of whatever he was currently selling, and he wasn’t flush with cash, and he tried to use, or sell other, worse, things, then I’d be the bad sister who kicked him out, all over again …

“It was just a thought, Edie,” Jake said.

Just a thought, but painful nonetheless. “I’m sorry, Jake. I need to get my own life straightened out right now.”

“Yeah. I hear that.” He reached over and knuckled my head like we were kids again, then opened my car door. Winter air rushed in and took my breath away. I was sending him out into the cold. Again. “Bye, Sissy.”

“Bye, Jake.”

I watched him get out of my car and walk down the street while my heart broke in two.

* * *

It wasn’t a long drive back to the freeway, except that I missed the exit because I wasn’t paying full attention. I wished, not for the first time, that I could tell Jake everything. That I could trust him again, like when we were kids. But there was nothing I could do to change the past, and the future was hazy right now. I made three right-hand turns instead of one left and wound up going past the Armory again.