Текст книги "Heat"

Автор книги: R. Lee Smith

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Текущая страница: 39 (всего у книги 54 страниц)

She slipped her arm around him anyway, letting her fingers play along the unseen hills and valleys of his stomach. Her thoughts drifted indistinctly from alien weapons to spying on Tagen while he got dressed, and then to Tagen undressing her and back to Dan. She wondered what he was doing with himself these days and the curiosity was not the depressing ache for an ex-lover as much as the cursory interest for an old classmate. She supposed he must have someone in his life by now, someone who wouldn’t do him the inconvenience of getting half her face burned away by acid. Maybe he’d finally taken that honeymoon in Hawaii they always meant to take, had those kids they used to talk about having. She wondered if she wished him well, decided after some little thought that she wouldn’t go that far, and then spooned up against Tagen.

He stirred at last, stretching hugely before rolling onto his back and raising up his head to look at her. He dropped back, scratching his hair into some semblance of order, and mumbled words so thickly-accented with sleep that she honestly couldn’t tell whether he’d said them in her language or his. It didn’t matter. She slipped in under his raised arm and laid her head on his chest.

He pushed himself halfway up, as if to better study this strange person who was trying to snuggle when it was ninety degrees out, and then fell back again with a sleepy chuckle. His arm curled around her, holding her even closer, and his other hand came to stroke through her hair.

“Are you all right?” he asked in recognizable if fuzzy English.

She nodded, staring at the nearest pile of Dan’s boxes. She wondered if he’d gone back to live in the city or what. Maybe his number was listed in the phone book. She could call him up, give him one last chance to come out and get this stuff and then…run it out to Goodwill or something. She didn’t want to look at it anymore. Well, she’d never wanted to look at it, which was why she supposed she’d shut it all away up here in the first place, but now she didn’t want to even think about looking at it. Six years was long enough to be tied to these old bones.

Tagen’s breath deepened back to one of those not-quite snores, interrupting her wandering thoughts. She realigned herself to his reality, running her open hand up his chest and around his side in a half-hug. He roused with a growl. The arm that cupped her lightly squeezed and the hand combing at her hair moved to caress her cheek. She could feel sweat from his body pooling onto hers and dripping away. It was too hot for this, but she couldn’t make herself let go and move away.

It was getting darker. The orange glow faded out to the grey, phantom light that follows sunset. In minutes, she wouldn’t be able to see him at all. She stared at the shadowed sculpture of his bare chest, wanting to memorize it while she could. His body was an anchor; when she closed her eyes, she still felt lost in dreams.

He was dozing again, trying to stay with her, but slipping further and further away. Daria closed her eyes and moved her hand again, to feel him without the interfering sight of Dan’s things taking up the background. She explored the perfection of his powerful body with the lightest sweep of her fingertips until she came to the raised and roughened scar that marked his side.

“What did this?” she asked.

He drew in a breath and stretched before letting it out again. “What weapon, do you mean, or what enemy held it?”

Poor guy. She was keeping him awake. She said, “Both. Neither. What happened, is what I guess I really mean.”

“Mm.” He shifted, not pushing her away but kicking back the half-cover of the sheet. “There was a danz tuvai…forgive me, a…stronghold. To manufacture and repair stolen ships for other criminals. What you would call, I think, a chop shop.” He spoke the words very distinctly, and then yawned. “They knew we were there before we had landed. They had locked down their defenses, the doors were impenetrable. My commander ordered us to open a wall. There was heavy fire.” He stroked her hair, his thumb tracing along the smoothness of her brow. “Why do you want to hear this?”

“I want to hear your voice.”

“I could say other things.”

“You never do, though.”

“Hm.” His hand went to pillow his head, but the other on her hip took up the slow caressing movements. “No. I suppose I do not. I cannot even blame my poor grasp of English. Conversation is an art. I am not creative.”

“You’re plenty creative when it comes to some things.”

“Am I? In what—? Ah.” He chuckled and growled again, this time with libidinous intent. “Shall I say I was inspired to greatness?” His teasing words ended in another yawn.

She should let him sleep.

She moved her hand away, over the scarred side of him, down over the ridges of his stomach, and still further. His skin was like fine suede stretched tight over marble and wetted with hot oil. She could taste salt when she kissed him, could feel his heart beating beneath the thin touch of her lips, a little faster now than before. Her fingers enclosed him, stroking gently, and her lingering kiss became a bite.

His hips arched at once, but his groan had more reluctance than arousal. “Daria,” he said, sounding strained.

She shifted, still caressing him below, to bite him again, now on his stomach. Again, he thrust hard into her hand and this time, he caught at her wrist. But he didn’t pull her away, and as she continued to nip and lick her way down his body, he ultimately sighed and released her.

She didn’t speak. Neither did he. There was only room for one art to be practiced here. She worked her way to him at a dream’s pace, letting herself be conscious of nothing but the taste of his sweat, the heat of his alien skin, the growing hardness in her hand. She cemented herself to his reality, letting his body be the full substance of her world. Pleasure came to her like echoes thrown by his own. She closed her mouth over him and felt orgasm begin to unfold in syrupy delight deep inside her.

Tagen’s hands brushed at her, catching in her hair before resting heavily atop her head. He did not attempt to guide her, but the speed and strength of his restrained thrusts increased as she continued her languid caresses. She drew him in one inch at a time, thoroughly slicking and exploring its dimensions before taking more. Her hands stroked and squeezed, and then slid out to scratch at his stomach, kneading at him blissfully before cupping and sliding along his shaft again. And all the while, rapture grew in her; she basked in the reflected glow of the pleasure she gave him.

“Let me—” He tried to sit up, to pull her to him, but fell back with a groan as she took him fully into her throat. She began the first of many slow swallows and he cried her name, deliriously and with a kind of despair, his claws ripping at the sheets. She watched with catlike contentment while agony and ecstasy pursued each other on his face. He wanted to make love to her, she knew. He wanted to be the one who held and controlled and commanded, but she couldn’t let him. Selfishly, she hoarded him, letting herself alone revel in the pure sensuality of possession until he began to crest. He tried again to take her in his arms, but she would not be moved and he was reduced to curling around her, his hands sliding down her back in a protective embrace.

His heat was all around her, a shell of hard, male flesh. Daria swam in pleasure, her eyes closed and all her blood alive, as he came. His hoarse cry brought her to the completion this ritual had kindled in her; all her body turned to fire for one timeless moment of pure joy. She lingered, savoring all there was, and finally, reluctantly, separated herself from him.

He remained enfolding her. She could feel his breath between her shoulders, his hair brushing at her back. His hands still gripped at her hips, not caressing now but only holding her. She pressed her lips to his thigh and he stirred at last, speaking alien words she did not know to express a sentiment she could only guess at. He moved slowly, his hands sliding up her bare back, stroking once more at her hair before he settled himself back into the bedding.

Daria curled at his hip, not touching him now, much as she wished to. He needed to sleep. She was a horrible, selfish person who needed to let her lover sleep.

Tagen’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was not a human hand. His breaths were already lengthening towards sleep. She wondered what sorts of things he dreamed when he closed his eyes. She thought for the first time of the other alien on Earth in a tangible sense, not as some faceless boogeyman, but as a real being. Somewhere out there, he might be sleeping, too. Somewhere out there, some poor girl—two poor girls, even—might be lying just as Daria lay, with a clawed hand upon her shoulder and the musky taste of him in her mouth, but with fear and pain pooling inside her where Daria knew only love.

Somewhere.

The first snore rumbled from Tagen’s chest. The second followed.

Daria eased away, letting his hand slip and fall to the mattress. He slept on, undisturbed, even as she crawled back and rose from the bed. She looked down at him in the darkened room—his beautiful, naked body—feeling the fingers of that helpless love and dreaming loss play through her still. She loved him, but she couldn’t sleep here. She couldn’t share this lumpy sofa-bed with him and Dan and the faceless E’Var and his two faceless victims. She turned away with a lonely pang, her own hand rising to touch the place where his had lain, and made her way to the door while she could still see it.

Grendel came bolting in the instant the door was open, grumbling at the indignation of being excluded. He leapt up onto the bed and settled at Tagen’s hip, purring aggressively until Tagen’s hand moved in sleep to settle atop him. Grendel’s eyes in the dim light were slits of accusation Daria just couldn’t face. She stepped into the hall and shut the door behind her.

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Chapter Twenty-Nine

It was a nice night. Warm, but breezy, with a full moon out and plenty of stars scattered across the cloudless sky. Driving around in a decent car with the windows down, smelling barbeque smoke and sprinklers wetting down new-cut grass, with your guy on your right and his hand on your knee was a whole goddamn bag of good n’ fine. If asked, Sue-Eye would not be able to think of a single time in her life in which she had ever been completely happy, but for tonight, at least she was content. Sometimes, that was just what a girl had.

They were circling yet another dot on the map of the Edge of Nowhere. There were ten streets running one way, ten streets running across them, and a bridge separating the residential area from the tourist block. There was a post office and a feed store and a corner market that charged six bucks for a half-case of Coke and two churches and five little stores with the word ‘antiques’ somewhere in the windows and no mailboxes in front of the cute little wedding-cake houses. There were also eight—count ‘em, eight—seasonal hotels dabbed in here and there in all this quaint little clod-hoppin’ beauty, ranging from respectable bed and breakfast joints all the way down to seedy little fishing shacks out by the river. There had to be some kind of Buttfuck-Empty Class Reunion going on, too, because all eight places looked pretty full. Not packed by any stretch, but still, for a place that proudly boasted six hundred and twelve God-fearing souls on the sign leading into town, eight hotels at even half capacity was pretty damn good.

Sue-Eye reached the end of a road named after a tree and rolled back onto a road named after a former President, heaving a theatrical sigh just for effect. “Would you just pick a place already? Jesus H. Christ. I could have killed my way through all eight of these places in the time it’s taking you to pick one.”

Kane grunted, his lips twitching. His eyes moved restlessly from the lights of one hotel to the distant next.

In the back seat, his purple-haired pony hunched a little lower and rubbed restlessly at the window. “We’ve probably been seen by now anyway,” she mumbled. “Maybe we should look at another town.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Sue-Eye hit the brakes and stopped the car, right there in front of the charming little country church with the pancake social advertised right under the Subject of Sunday’s Sermon. “This is the fourth town we’ve been to already,” she argued. “Do you think they have all-night gas stations out in Hicksville? Get with it already!”

“Raven,” Kane said simply.

“Fine. They’re all alike, just pick one.” Raven crossed her arms and turned her face to the window, staring at the church.

“Ichuta’a, drive.” Kane hooked his arm over the back of his seat as the car started moving again and faced his pony fully. “Raven,” he said again, this time with menace.

Sue-Eye had the road to pay attention to, even if it was utterly deserted (naturally, it being all of midnight on a weeknight), so she couldn’t entirely enjoy the trapped-animal look on the pony’s face. But she could see enough of it in the rearview mirror to put a glow in her heart. She went with it, saying, “You know, if we do get caught tonight, it’ll be because you had to do all this dicking around instead of just doing the one job he gave you.”

Kane flexed the claws of one hand warningly, his eyes still on Raven. When he spoke, it was in a voice scarcely louder than the hum of the well-tuned engine, steel disguised with velvet. “We need to have an understanding.”

Raven’s face in the rearview mirror was lost in shadows, but Sue-Eye could still see the pony’s lips, downturned and trembling with unhappiness. She bit her cheeks to keep from smirking, but her hands clenched victoriously on the steering wheel.

“I give orders,” Kane went on. “And you obey them.”

“I picked the town,” Raven said. She sounded right at the verge of tears and Sue-Eye’s glee blossomed.

“Now I’m telling you to pick the place. And Raven, if you don’t obey me, I’m going to have to hurt you, and then I’m going to make you choose anyway. The only difference will be that I’ll also make you help me hunt.” Kane reached out his claw and brought Raven’s chin up. “Don’t,” he said quietly, “fuck with me. I can make you drink blood.”

Raven nodded, the shuddering sound of her breaths robbing the car of perfect silence, and Kane withdrew his hand from her.

“Where?” he asked.

Raven pointed, holding her hand out for as long as it took Sue-Eye to make the turn, and then she covered her face.

“Good girl.” Kane faced front again and returned his hand to Sue-Eye’s knee for the little time it took her to find a parking space. When she shut off the engine and opened her door, his hand tightened, holding her in the seat. His eyes slid her way and he smiled.

She smiled back uncertainly.

“You’d find me humans to hunt,” he said silkily, “wouldn’t you?”

And this, this dark star burning inside her, this was the closest Sue-Eye had ever been to ‘happy’.

“You bet I would,” she said, giving Raven in the mirror a broad grin.

“You wouldn’t care where.”

“Nope.”

“Or how many.”

“Bring ‘em on.”

“You’d work your way through the whole town if I told you to.”

“Tell me to,” she said, meeting his gaze with fierce triumph.

Kane patted her thigh and showed his teeth. It was not a smile. “That’s why I ask Raven,” he said, and got out of the car.

Sue-Eye’s face flamed. She shot an ugly glance into the mirror and if Raven had even been looking a little her way she probably would have done something stupid and suicidal. But Raven had her knees up and her face buried. Sue-Eye shoved her way out into the parking lot and followed the greater shadow that was Kane to the motel office.

The bell above the door sounded, raising a bored-looking man out of his magazine to offer a mechanical greeting, but Kane didn’t go inside immediately. He stood, frowning back over his shoulder at the car where Raven still sat. After a second or two, Sue-Eye heard the slow crunch of his claws digging at the door, although Kane himself was still and grim as stone.

The guy behind the desk waited politely enough for a while, then leafed through a few pages of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuits, and finally cleared his throat and said, “Can I help you?”

“I’ll be right with you.” Kane gave Sue-Eye a none-too-gentle nudge inside, and then let the door close. He started back across the lot.

Sue-Eye watched him through the window as he bent and had a few words with his pony. She might as well be looking at a photograph. Only the edges of Kane’s long coat moved, rippling in the breeze as time stretched out. Any second now, she expected him to pull Raven from the car and start slapping her around. God knew, if that were Sue-Eye herself out there, Kane would be threatening to empty her eye sockets by now.

But no. Kane straightened up and the door opened and out Raven came. Her head was bent, but from this distance, it didn’t look like anything but another sleepy traveler waking up to go to bed. Kane even put an arm around her as he walked her to the office.

For the first time, Sue-Eye found herself considering the possibility of just killing the bitch. She still thought she could make Kane do it for her, but she was sick of this waiting game. So kill her. Pillow over the head, middle of the night, all done in three minutes and not a peep to be heard.

Never happen, of course. Sue-Eye couldn’t scratch her nose in the night without waking Kane up. Besides, it wasn’t like he’d find the body in the morning and just assume she’d been whacked by a passing moose. Still, it was nice to dream.

Then Kane came a little closer to the light that spilled from the office window and Sue-Eye realized she might not have to dream after all. Kane was pissed. Not just a little. A lot. He was just one of those that quieted up the madder he got, not like the Dawg, who went full-throttle psycho-apeshit and let everyone in earshot know it. Kane was on a full boil, and when Sue-Eye saw that look in his black eyes, she stepped back and got the clean fuck out of his way.

“Okay,” drawled the motel-guy as Kane opened the door. “Now can I help you?”

Kane went to the counter, moving with swift, deliberate strides. His hand was firmly pressed to Raven’s back, propelling her before him. He didn’t say a word. He just reached out and stabbed a bloody hole in the middle of the desk guy’s throat. It made a crunchy sound, muffled, like stepping on a Frito that was wrapped in a sock.

The desk guy slapped both hands to his neck, throwing himself with shuddering force into the back of his own chair. He made a screaming face and bent over; to Sue-Eye’s point of view, it looked like he tried to puke, only the glut of blood he brought up came spraying out the hole in his throat, not his open mouth. It splattered all over the centerfold bikinis of Sports Illustrated.

“Oh God,” someone whispered, and it was a second before Sue-Eye realized to her relief that it hadn’t been her. Raven cupped her elbows, her face puckering, and watched the desk guy fumble for the telephone. She had gone past pale and all the way to grey.

Kane’s hand closed on Sue-Eye’s arm and she jumped instinctively, but all he did was move her bodily around and against the wall. He unslung his pack, pushed it into Sue-Eye’s arms, and opened it with an angry jerk of his arm. He still said nothing and his face was still stony with the blackest kind of rage Sue-Eye could imagine. He brought out the slender, shiny machine he collected brain juice in and inserted an empty vial. His eyes came up and connected with Sue-Eye’s briefly; it was like being hit with a hammer made of ice.

Then he turned away and Sue-Eye breathed again, inching back to give him as much room as the little office allowed. Kane took Raven’s wrist, yanked her arm out straight and slapped his hunting tool into her palm.

Raven’s whole body flinched and she stared at the thing in her hand like it was a snake. “Oh no,” she stammered, her eyes round and wet with horror. “Oh no, please don’t—”

Kane seized the back of her shirt and yanked, pulling her ear up next to his mouth. “Don’t tell me don’t,” he said, his lips scarcely moving. Without looking, he reached his free hand over, picked up the telephone that the desk guy was batting at, and slammed it down on the guy’s hand hard enough to shatter the base of the phone. The desk guy vomited out another gassy, unborn scream from the hole in his neck and fell off his chair.

Sue-Eye took another step back, now pressed up on her tiptoes into the very furthest corner of the office. She was hugging Kane’s pack tightly enough to make it a little hard for her to breathe. She’d seen killing like this in the past. Not head-breaking, puking-out-your-neck killing, but Kane’s kind of killing, the explosive kind that was right on the edge of splashing out and swallowing every living body in the room. She kept very goddamn quiet and willed herself to be invisible.

Kane turned Raven around and shoved her behind the counter. He followed, bent, and came up with a handful of hair. He slammed the desk guy facedown on the counter and held him there. The hole in the desk guy’s throat was foaming now. It was funny, really, because the foam was red and white and not pink like she’d expect. The blood didn’t blend. Weird.

Kane shot Raven a savage glance and she staggered one pace forward, still with that expression of abhorrence stretching her waxy features. “Now the piece I’m looking for,” he began, his voice as low and ominous as that first rattle of foundations just before the earthquake erupts, “is right above the spine, just here. Most humans have a knot of bone there that makes a handy gripping point. Feel.”

“Oh God.” Raven reached out one trembling hand, Kane’s device clenched tight in the other. The desk guy slapped thickly behind him as she touched him and she jumped back with a breathy squeak.

Kane’s hand banged into the back of her head too fast for Sue-Eye even to see. “You get right the fuck in there and feel it!” he snarled.

This was going to take a while. Sue-Eye shouldered the strap of the open pack carefully and eased around them to find the switch that operated the No part of the Vacancy sign. Kane’s gaze scorched across her, hot enough to feel even without looking, but she quietly thumbed the switch and he let her slip away again without comment.

“Not every human has that, of course,” he continued in his cold, lecturing tones. “Sometimes you have to find another way. Remember?”

“Yes.” Raven wasn’t crying yet, but she was damned close.

“This one does have that knot, though. So.” The wet crack of breaking bone put an end to the bubbling hiss of the desk guy’s screams and Sue-Eye, searching now for the master room card, glanced around again. She could see only Kane’s broad back; the folds of his long coat cloaked Raven’s shivering body like wings. “Put your hand right where mine is,” he was saying. “Your…what is that, this one?”

“My thumb,” Raven whispered.

“Your thumb should fit right in the hole I made. Do it, Raven!” he snapped as the pony suddenly stumbled back from him in a fit of dry heaves. “Right in there, right now!”

The master room card was in with the housekeeping stuff in the back room. Sue-Eye took it and stayed there, out of sight from him. Out of reach.

“Pull it away,” Kane instructed. “Move fast, but go easy. The stuff inside tends to slide around. If you puke on that, I’ll hurt you, Raven,” he added suddenly and venomously. “I am not kidding.”

The sound of Raven gagging momentarily blotted out other sounds and Sue-Eye leaned out of the doorway to risk a peek. Raven was biting on the back of her hand, sucking in breath after gaspy breath, but she didn’t throw up. Sue-Eye backed up fast. There was a smell in that room. Piss and blood and shit and something else, something strong and bitter. Not vinegar exactly, but something that put Sue-Eye in mind of it.

“All right. Quick now. Put your thumb there to open the collector—no, the black button…that’s good. Now that’s the thing you want, but you want it in one piece. Put the flaps over…good, just like that. Push the green button to close it up and it should start working on its own. That’s it. You just wait…and push the black button again to spit the meat out. Good job. You’ve harvested your first human.”

Sue-Eye stepped out into the office again and watched as Kane gave Raven’s shoulder a slap. He plucked his tool from her hand and turned around. He still looked pissed, but at least now he only looked just pissed. “Are we ready?” he asked.

She nodded, holding up the room card for proof.

“Go on, then. Let’s get to work. Raven.”

The pony didn’t move. She only stood there, staring down at the dead guy. She was still holding a chunk of bone and hair in her hand. Something was dripping out of it.

“Raven,” Kane said again, his fangs baring. “Human, you are really scratching me tonight.”

The pony remained motionless, silent.

And oh, praise the baby Jesus, this was it. Kane’s hand—the one with blood capping the claws—curled and began to rise. Sue-Eye’s breath caught and held.

Slowly, Raven looked around. Her eyes drifted to a point somewhere over Kane’s shoulder. “I killed him,” she said dully.

Sue-Eye bit her lip, watching Kane’s killing hand intently. It flexed once and then uncurled. She frowned.

“I killed him,” Raven said again. She looked at the mass of tissue and bone in her grip and let it drop. It hit something wet. Raven stared at the floor. “I killed somebody.”

“You’ve seen plenty of that since I came along,” Kane said darkly. His claws flexed again.

“That was you.” The pony’s chest started heaving. She hadn’t blinked yet. “This was me.”

Kane dropped his juice-collector in his pack. He glared at the back of her for a while longer, and then sighed and held out one arm. “All right, come here.”

The pony came in unsteady movie-mummy jerks and practically fell into Kane’s chest. She put her arms around him, the fingers of her bloody hand awkwardly crooked out so they touched nothing. She sucked in a breath and let it out in a ragged rush. “I killed him!” she howled and burst into tears.

“You sure did.” Kane patted the shaking shoulders. His gaze went to Sue-Eye and he shrugged slightly, his mouth set in a bitterly tolerant twist. “You did just fine.”

“It was awful!”

“It’ll get easier.”

Raven drew back, her eyes frantic. “Are you going to make me do it again?”

“That depends.” Kane gave her a severe frown. “Are you going to behave yourself now?”

She nodded wildly, still searching his face.

He wasn’t going to kill her. God damn it.

“All right then. Stay close and you don’t have to help any more tonight.” Kane gave her a final consoling rub and turned to Sue-Eye. “What about you?” he asked. “Feel like killing anyone?”

Sue-Eye stared at him, almost shaking with the effort of holding so still, of not looking past him to the pony swiping at her leaky eyes and sniffling behind him. Her senses were still clogged with the smell of death and the rolling thunder of Kane’s fury, and she could feel how near that purple-haired bitch had come to dying. She could almost taste the blood in her own mouth it had been so close. “Oh, you bet I do,” she said.

Kane looked at her for what felt like hours as the neon lights hummed and the pissant town slept and blood soaked into the cheap linoleum inside the hotel office. At last, he reached into his pack, brought out his device, and held it out to her.

She snatched at it and gripped it, her hand aching and her breath burning.

Kane had a hand for her shoulder then, a light slap to put her feet in motion as he moved for the door. “All right then, ichuta’a. Let’s hunt.”

*

Little fingers on his arm brought Tagen out of a dream of stars and back into his bed. He groped behind him, his eyes still shut, to find Daria. Once that was done, he tugged her down over his hip to tumble into bed beside him. He ignored her protestations and pulled her against him, nipping at her jaw to silence her, and prepared to go back to sleep.

“Tagen, you have to get up,” she said. “At least, I think you do.”

“Mm. Unless the house is a’fire, I think not.”

“There were more murders.”

He opened his eyes. The room was dark. Daria’s face was only a pale suggestion of itself in the surrounding shadows. She was an early riser, his human host, but never this early. “What is the hour?” he asked.

“Almost four.”

He frowned, and then rolled over and switched on a light so that Daria could see his disapproval. “Why were you awake to hear of these murders?” he asked.

She went shame-faced at once. “I was…sweeping,” she confessed and immediately became defensive. “Well, the door was open all that time! All this stuff got in! Besides, I was just constructively killing a little time while I made myself a snack. It’s not like I was re-enameling the kitchen sink. I was mostly watching tee-vee.”

Tagen pushed himself into a sitting posture so that he could glare at her more effectively. “And if I were to go downstairs right now, the mopping bucket would not be wet,” he said narrowly. “I would not smell cleaners or see moisture drying on your floors.”

She was silent.

“Or your cupboards?” he pressed.

“All this stuff got in!”

He sighed and flung back the sheets, reaching for his clothing. It was not worth the argument. He would very much like to observe that no reasonable person would be sterilizing her home in the middle of the night, but she knew it already and did not need to keep hearing it from him. He stepped into his breeches and stood up to fasten them. “Tell me of these murders,” he said instead.

“The floor was filthy,” she said. Her voice was a morose shadow of itself. She would not look at him.

He sighed again and sat down on the edge of the mattress. “Yes,” he said simply. He touched a claw to the stray locks of hair that fell over her brow, tucking them back behind her ear. “But mostly you were watching tee-vee. What was it that made you think to wake me?”