But even as she was thinking that, Jack said, “I haven’t been to them in a while. There was a woman in my bed until recently, but she died.”
“Your ‘dead packmate’ that the bloedzuiger mentioned?” Chloe prompted.
He nodded. After a moment he said, “Mary. Her name was Mary. She was from 1989, but she’d been here for a few years. This wasn’t the first time she’d died here, but this time she didn’t wake up.”
“The bloedzuiger called me a replacement.” Chloe didn’t quite phrase it as a question, but it was one all the same.
“When one of us stays dead, someone else arrives.” Jack’s expression grew clouded. “There’s no telling when it’ll happen, why it happens, how to stop it. We were watching for you. That’s how we found you so fast. I get a sense of when I should be expecting a new Arrival.”
“So Mary died, and then . . . I arrived.” She realized that they’d stopped walking and were standing in front of a store. Inside the store, three people who looked like the extra-thin sort-of-humans who had been at the tavern watched them with open curiosity. Chloe smiled at them politely, but their stares made her uncomfortable, so she turned back toward the Gulch House.
Jack kept pace with her. After several steps, she asked, “And Ajani?”
“I don’t know if he gets a sense of Arrivals or if he just has spies. We don’t know much about his doings until a few years before we arrived here. No one knows how old he is, how he got his money, what he wants. All I can say is that he makes the same offer to everyone—work for him, and he’ll keep you alive and wealthy. Some people say yes.” Jack didn’t look at her as he spoke: his gaze was fixed on the street in front of him. “Melody went with him briefly a while back, but after a few months, she returned to us. I’ll admit to wondering if she told him you were here, but it doesn’t much matter. He always finds out.”
Chloe let all of this settle into the increasing clarity she was finding about her new situation. It wasn’t clarity of the oh-that’s-logical variety, but it was information that fit together to help her start to make better sense of the situation. “So she—Mary—was in your bed, and I’m the replacement for her there too? Do all the new women—”
“No.” He gave her a hard look. “Mary and I were friends of a sort. After a time, we got so that we enjoyed a bit of comfort together. I hadn’t planned for what happened earlier. It did happen, though, and . . .”
They’d reached the Gulch House. She stopped and prompted him, “And . . . ?”
“And I’m not sorry it did. Mary and I . . . we were friends who enjoyed each other, but I don’t see the sense in much else. You interest me, and I like the look of you.” He sighed and rubbed a hand over his face, as if he could wipe away the weariness and the stress.
She didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t looking for anything either. “I just got out of a relationship,” she said carefully, “and I’ve got a long list of bad ones before that.”
Jack nodded.
“That murder bit?” she continued. “It was a man I’d been seeing . . . Jason. He did some things, hurt me. One night I was drunk, and I decided to stop him from hurting me again . . .” She let the words fade away. For years, talking about that hadn’t been wise. Even though she was in an entirely new world now, the long-held habit of silence was still hard to shake. She could’ve avoided that last night with Jason; she decided to kill him instead, to put an end to it before a night came when she couldn’t escape. She hadn’t ever once said that aloud. Her testimony in court wasn’t a full lie, but there were some omissions and a bit of careful shading of the facts. The whole truth would only have made sense to someone who’d understood what Jason was capable of doing. The well-dressed men and women in the court weren’t going to be able to fathom what a man like Jason was like. She’d known that—just as surely as she knew that Jack might know it too. After the cyns in the desert and the monks and everything else in Gallows, she knew that Jack hadn’t ever led a sheltered life. He was a realist, so she told him what she wouldn’t tell Melody in the tavern. “Some men don’t let go. I made sure Jason wasn’t going to hunt me down some night.”
Jack held her gaze for a moment, but there was no judgment in his eyes. All he said was, “If you want to keep walking, we can. If you want someone else to keep you company right now, I can get one of the others.”
“No.” She shook her head. “But being inside an actual room would be nice.”
She waited for him to ask her to clarify, but he didn’t. He nodded and opened the door for her.
Once her eyes adjusted from the bright sun to the shadowed room, she realized that none of the others were in the tavern. Jack asked a few questions of people, and then he led her farther into the building and out another door into a small, enclosed yard where they found the proprietor. The fenced-in space reminded her of a beer garden, a space where people could enjoy the sunlight or smoke. So many places at home were all no smoking now that some bars seemed to have bigger crowds outside than in. Here, smoking was apparently not banned. The garden seemed mostly to be a space for customers to play some sort of games, none of which she recognized. On various tables, faded game boards were painted. The man Jack sought came toward them, and in a few moments they had directions to the location of their rooms.
Once they were inside again, Jack pointed out, “I don’t know what the others are doing. They could be out, or in the rooms.” He paused, motioning her to what appeared to be a wood-and-mud staircase. “I can knock, find Katherine or Melody, and you can—”
“I trust you, Jack,” she said softly. “I’d like to come to your room.”
He was silent as they walked up to the third floor.
On the third floor, he pointed to an empty chair in the hall. “Edgar and Katherine are up here, or Hector would be on guard still.”
“Do you need to check in with them?” Chloe asked, surprised by the sense of disappointment she felt.
Jack looked at her with that serious expression again, and then said, “I’d rather not. My sister is a bit temperamental, and right now she’s liable to take her anger all out on me.” He gave Chloe a sheepish smile. “I wouldn’t mind postponing that.”
Chloe nodded, and they made their way to the last room, the one the innkeeper had called the “spacious” room. When Jack opened the door, she had to shake her head. If this was the spacious room, she half suspected they’d all be sleeping standing up against a wall in the other ones. The bed was admittedly wider than a twin, but much smaller than the queen bed she had in her apartment in D.C. A privacy screen hid what she assumed would be a toilet of some sort. The walls were bare. The privacy screen itself was a little more interesting: a painting of a forest covered the whole thing. The bed linens were deep green, and a worn but serviceable green rug was spread on the floor beside the bed. The rug was irregular in shape, and as Chloe looked at it, she realized that it was made of feathers of some sort.
Jack noticed where her attention was directed and said, “It’s soft, but doesn’t get dirty. The pelt is damn near water repellent, so they hold up well in inns.” He crouched down to touch the rug. “I still can’t get over some of the things here. I have a couple of these. I try to keep one at each of the camps.”
Chloe kicked off her boots and went over to stand on it. “Wow.” She wriggled her toes in the feathers and closed her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sensation. “That’s better than any fur I’ve felt.”
“Better than any back home at least,” he agreed.
Chloe glanced down at him. He was smiling up at her, and aside from the fact that they were discussing a rug made from a bird, she could almost think they were two average people having a normal conversation. Sure, he still looked very much the cowboy, and he’d healed from a serious gunshot wound in a matter of hours. She’d tried her damnedest to find normal back home, though, and it had never made her feel what she felt here in the decidedly abnormal world with a man who’d been born a century before her.
br /> Jack stood, and the already tiny room seemed even smaller. “I’d offer you a seat, but I’m not sure whether the rug or the bed is more comfortable.”
“You can’t tell me that bed is as soft as the rug.”
“I could,” he drawled. “Sadly, lying’s probably not going to get me into your good graces.”
She poked him in the side, and he let out a sound that seemed suspiciously like a laugh.
“You’re ticklish?” She shook her head and reached out again.
“Chloe,” Jack started in what she suspected was to be a warning. It was too late, though, because she already had her fingertips on his side.
“Yes?”
“I am not,” Jack said, but he grabbed her wrist to stop her from tickling him.
She lifted her gaze to meet his. For a moment they were motionless. Then she snaked out her other hand and tickled him again.
His laughter made him seem like a different person, just a regular man—a sexy-as-hell one, but not one who had the sort of edges that made her remember to be cautious. Earlier in the desert and a few minutes ago outside, Jack had been intense. In a fight, he’d been deadly. During all of it, he’d been in control. Suddenly, though, the far-too-serious cowboy was replaced with someone far more captivating: he was real.
When Jack grabbed her other hand, Chloe started backing away. Her legs bumped up against the bed, and she let herself lean back, pulling him down on top of her.
He released her hand and caught himself so he didn’t fall on top of her. Even so, he covered her with a not unwelcome weight, and she admitted that there was something altogether perfect about having a man as strong as Jack up against her. She wasn’t one for the oversize gym rats at home, but she appreciated the rocklike hardness of a body toned by hard work.
Unlike in the desert, she was clear enough of mind now to make a sound decision—although if she were totally honest with herself, she’d admit that she’d made the decision before they even entered the building. She liked him; she’d felt a clarity of purpose in him when he was in danger. She wanted him to be okay, to be around to talk to; she wanted to be beside him. With the hand he was no longer holding, she reached up and trailed her fingertips over his face.
“What are we doing here, Chloe?”
She didn’t want to say all of those things she was thinking. She just wanted to feel him. The thin layers of her skirt and his trousers seemed far too restrictive. She arched her hips upward against him and watched him go still.
In one swift movement, his hand released hers and clasped her hip, holding her motionless, keeping her from repeating the action. “Those ungentlemanly thoughts I mentioned? This isn’t helping with them.” He stared down at her. “Tell me yes, or tell me to stop.”
Chloe tugged him down to her and kissed him. His fingers dug into her hip with bruising pleasure, but he didn’t move beyond kissing her. So she stopped kissing him long enough to say, “That’s a yes.”
“Thank God.” He released her hip and pressed down into her, at the same time reaching up to cup her face with one hand as he kissed her again.
Too soon he pulled away, but only long enough to remove the gun holstered at her hip. “Not comfortable,” he murmured. He unfastened his holster too, and after a few practiced moves, he’d unarmed both of them and put their weapons safely on the floor.
Absently, she noticed that he’d locked the door when they came into the room and that the weapons were still within easy reach, but then he ran one hand up the length of her still-exposed leg while he tugged off one of his boots.
Before he could remove the second boot, she’d grown impatient and pushed him down on to the bed—which was definitely not as soft as the rug.
All of her doubts had vanished, or maybe just fallen into silence at the feel of Jack’s body against hers. There wasn’t an untoned muscle on him, and his kisses were the sort that spoke of confidence and skill. Even if this was a mistake, it was feeling very much like the sort of mistake that included several orgasms.
Between kisses, they’d shed both of their shirts, and her skirt was bunched up at her waist. His trousers were unfastened, but he hadn’t yet yanked off the second boot. She was about to insist he remedy that when he murmured, “Your lack of undergarments is still distracting.”
Chloe swallowed and started to apologize, but her words were lost in a gasp as Jack slid down her body and lowered his mouth to demonstrate one of the benefits of forgoing undergarments.
After the first orgasm rolled her eyes back and her hips upward, she ordered in a decidedly languid voice, “Less trousers. More naked.” She exhaled and tried again, succeeding at a slightly firmer tone. “More naked now.”
He laughed and nipped her thigh. “Yes, ma’am.”
But before he could comply, someone knocked on the door.
“Jack?” Edgar called. “I need to talk to you.”
Chloe started to pull away, but Jack clamped his hands tighter on her thighs. He lifted his head, glared at the door, and said, “No.”
She wasn’t sure whether he was saying no to her moving or to Edgar.
“Jack!” Edgar repeated in a louder voice. “Are you awake?”
“Hold on. Mary and I are—” Jack cut himself off midsentence.
Chloe’s sharp intake of breath made him look at her, and she saw the regret in his expression. It didn’t come close to halting the wave of embarrassment and stupidity she felt washing over her.
In a low voice he told her, “I didn’t mean . . . Damn it.”
Carefully, Chloe rolled out from under him and looked for her missing bra and shirt. She forced her embarrassment to stay out of her voice and said only, “Go see what he needs.”
Then she turned her back to him as she hurriedly re-dressed.
“Chloe.” He put a hand on her shoulder, but she didn’t look back at him.
“Jack?” Edgar called again. “You need to see Francis.” There was no mistaking the seriousness in his voice.
He squeezed her shoulder. “Chloe . . . just . . . I’ll be back as soon as I can. Just stay here.”
Chloe didn’t reply. There weren’t any words that either of them could say that would make her feel less like a fool, and she knew that he couldn’t stay to talk anyhow. She also didn’t want to walk out of the room with him. Truthfully, she wasn’t entirely sure what she wanted to have happen at this point, but she knew that Jack needed to look after his team and check on the injured man.
He lingered for a moment; the only sound in the room was their breathing. He obviously had no idea what to say to her. His hand dropped from her shoulder, and she wasn’t sure whether that was better or worse.
“Go on,” she said.
Jack scowled and called, “I’ll be right out.” Then he stepped in front of her. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. It was just habit, Chloe. . . . I know who I’m here with.” He caught her face in his hand and held her steady as he looked into her eyes. “Chloe? Do you hear me?”
She nodded, took a deep breath, and tried to smile. She didn’t answer. What else could he say? He obviously wasn’t over Mary, and she wasn’t interested in being the stand-in for his dead lover. She’d told him the secret she’d held for years. She’d bared more than her body to him. This was a mistake. We were high, and we made a mistake. It was Alcoholics 101: bad choices when fucked up. She’d feared as much when they were in the desert; she just hadn’t expected to be proven right so quickly.
Jack left, closing the door quietly behind him, and she could hear low voices as he and Edgar discussed whatever crisis had befallen Francis. For a moment Chloe sat on the bed. Then, when the voices had departed, she picked up her boots and her gun. She holstered her gun, carefully opened the door, and stepped outside the room with her boots still in her hand. She couldn’t bring herself to stay in Jack’s room. She knew she probably should, but she couldn’t. She didn’t know which room was hers either—or if he expected that she was going to stay with him.
&n
bsp; Maybe she was overreacting, but she’d felt more at ease with Jack than with anyone else in the group, and now, because of a stupid decision, that had changed. She wasn’t looking for forever, but she wasn’t starting out her life in a new world with a one-nighter in which she was a stand-in. Attacks by monsters, drinking addictive blood, killing a monk . . . it was all more than a little overwhelming. Somehow, though, the fact that she’d started her time in a new world with the exact same bad taste in men she’d proven to have in her old world was the final straw in a whole truckload of fucked up. She needed some air.
Once she saw that the coast was clear, Chloe pulled the door shut carefully so as not to make any noise and crept down the hall as quickly and silently as she could. She just needed to get out of Jack’s room and think. Staying here would lead to a stupid argument or trying to ignore being called another woman’s name. Neither option was one she could accept.
Chapter 26
Jack couldn’t say he wanted to stay and talk to Chloe, but he knew he’d have to and only hoped that she wasn’t too angry—or worse yet, weepy—when he returned to the room. He wasn’t going to go all namby-pamby with emotions or anything, but he figured he owed Chloe a little more explanation than he’d offered. Unfortunately, he didn’t exactly have an explanation beyond what he said: Mary was the only one in his bed the past couple years, so it was an honest mistake. She’d only been gone a little while. He’d meant it when he told Chloe he didn’t expect her to replace Mary in his bed just because she was here. Hell, it wasn’t like Mary had replaced someone either. It just happened that Mary was his friend, and Chloe was . . . he wasn’t sure what. He liked her in a way that he hadn’t expected, and it had nothing to do with replacing Mary. The timing was a bit awkward, and if not for the Verrot, he suspected that he’d have been better able to resist his interest, given them time to get to know each other first. Regardless of the timing, though, he felt something unexpected and good for Chloe. Back home, in another world and another life, he’d have thought about courting her, but this wasn’t that world.