“Cally isn’t going to take that well.”
“Actually, she seems to have gotten over the worst of her jealousy, although I suspect that she would have preferred the puppy.”
Max laughed. “I’m sure she would have. He made a cute puppy, but I’m glad he’s back to being a baby.”
“I brought some stuff.” Ukiah unloaded the computer bag onto the bedside table. “Playboy, for the articles, the new U.S. Cavalry catalog, the Wall Street Journal, and your laptop.”
“Great. Thanks. All my vices.” He waved a hand toward the window. “Isn’t it a great view they’ve given me?”
“Very nice,” Ukiah agreed.
They lapsed into awkward silence.
“Sam didn’t come with you?” Max asked.
“She wanted to drive in on her own. She didn’t want to depend on me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, don’t give that to me. We’ve been partners too long. Is it Sam? Is it not going to work out? I thought we worked well together as a team, the three of us.”
“No, no, it’s not Sam. Hell, it can wait. This isn’t the time to talk about it.”
“Kid!”
“I don’t know where to start, and frankly I’m scared to even open my mouth, and maybe screw everything up.”
“What about?”
“Us being partners.”
Confusion warred with concern on Max’s face.
“Nothing’s wrong with you; it’s all just me. I’m not who I was a few months ago. I’m not even who I was before we went to Oregon. I’ve changed a lot.”
“Yes, and no. At the core, you’re still the kid I took on six years ago.”
“You really feel that way?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess there was part of me that was afraid you wouldn’t like the new me.”
“Kid, you grew up. It was going to happen sooner or later, and it happens to everyone. Sure, you did it differently than most, but I expected it to happen. Hell, I would have been disappointed if it didn’t happen.”
“Considering my history with Magic Boy and all, you kind of lucked out, then.”
Max gave a surprised laugh. “I hadn’t thought of that. Is that it?”
“No,” he chided himself for being scared. This was Max after all. “Things need to change because I changed. I’m not happy with the way things are in my life, and I’m trying to figure out how to get to where I want to be, and things can’t work.”
Max had nodded as he talked, and when he stopped, he raised an eyebrow. “I’m not following you.”
“I need to move out of my moms’.”
Max startled visibly. “You asked Indigo to marry you?”
“No, no, things are still . . . status quo with us. She loves me and Kittanning, but she’s not sure if love is enough. Everything has been too frantic to take it beyond that. Moving out isn’t about Indigo. It’s just about me.
“I need a car. Not a new motorcycle, though I hate to give it up entirely, but with Kittanning I need a car. I need a place of my own, not a bedroom in someone else’s home. I’m not fitting into the little boy’s space anymore.”
“Yeah. One gets that way.”
“But that’s where it gets tricky. I’m going to need help figuring out how to pay for everything, but I want a house somewhere close to my moms’ and at least a part-time nanny for when Mom Lara is working and a car.”
Max shrugged. “Between what you pull down as a salary and your savings, that’s all doable. You don’t have any expensive habits. We could even work in a bike, since insurance is probably going to total your old one. The car will probably be used, and the house a starter. If you’re talking houses, kid, maybe you should just rent until you and Indigo come to some decision. Together, you’ll get a different house than what you would get separately.”
There remained one big hurdle, and he wasn’t sure how Max would take it. Everything so far didn’t affect Max personally, so it was easy for him to nod and agree.
“But the big thing is, none of this works with the offices in Shadyside.”
Max didn’t say anything, though his mouth pressed into a tight line.
“I’ll go insane trying to juggle Kittanning if there’s thirty miles between me and work, through rush-hour traffic. It’s nearly an hour, one way, which is two hours out of my life, my life with Kittanning, just driving. I can’t put him in a day care here in town; next to other kids, his leaps in development would stick out. God forbid he decided to change shapes again. Cally is in kindergarten, and next year will be going full time, and my moms really need Mom Lara to go back to work. I could pay her to baby-sit, but that doesn’t come with health care on the level Pitt offers, not to mention self-esteem and doing what she loves.”
Max’s mouth relaxed as Ukiah talked, which was encouraging.
“You’ve said before that the mansion intimidates people; they don’t want to intrude on a private residence. After all this, I’m not crazy about the fact that we mix home and work so closely, so that any trouble we stir up knows where we sleep. And if things go well with you and Sam, I would think you might want some privacy.”
Max laughed. “Oh, that’s low.” Ukiah waited and Max eventually nodded. “You have valid points.”
“The closer we move to Evans City, the better for me, but probably not for the agency. A compromise of the North Side, or the North Hills.”
“Cranberry is booming lately, and they just finished up the connector last year.”
“Well, I’m not sure I want to get too far north,” Ukiah said. “There’s Indigo’s commute to consider, if things work out there.”
Max laughed. “So you’re okay with Sam?”
“We actually work very well together.”
“Funny”—Sam leaned against the door frame—“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“We were just talking about making some changes to the offices.”
“Because of me?” Sam frowned slightly.
“Because of me, and Kittanning,” Ukiah said. “I want to move out of my moms’ house, but to do so means changes, like moving the offices out of Shadyside.”
She nodded. “If I’m staying, I want a place of my own, no offense, Max, but I want to feel like I’m not being rushed, and moving in with you, even to the guest bedroom, would feel too rushed.”
“Actually, I might move too,” Max said.
Ukiah and Sam looked at him in surprise.
“I grew up in this city and always loved the view from Mount Washington. I wanted one of those condos with the balconies that look out over the edge and see for miles. It was one of those unrealistic goals in life that you never thought you’d hit: a million dollars in the bank, a trip around the world, and a luxury condo on Mount Washington. After I sold my company and deposited several millions into the bank, my wife and I drove up, went to the park, ate lunch at Christopher’s, and then toured some houses and a couple of condos. Aileen got quieter and quieter, and finally she started to cry; she’d never told me, all those years of talking about the condo, but she was afraid of heights. She hated it. We settled on the house in Shadyside as a compromise.”
It was the most Ukiah had ever heard Max talk about his wife sober; but then, perhaps, there were drugs involved now.
Sam took Max’s hand, and he held it tight.
“We’re going to make some real estate agent happy.”
Rennie called him then, telling him that Kittanning was waking. Ukiah excused himself, saying, “I want to keep close to Kittanning until I know that he wouldn’t slip back to being a puppy.”
He started down the hall, but was checked five doors down by a set of familiar voices.
“I know no words of apologies could ever set things right with us,” Socket was saying inside the room with an armed guard at the door. Apparently she had also been brought to Mercy for her minor gunshot wound. “I’ve betrayed you at a level of infidelity that can
’t be humanly forgiven. I’ve taken too much from you to ask you to even pretend that forgiveness is possible. But I want you to know that I’m deeply, profoundly sorry.”
“That’s good,” Hutchinson slurred his words slightly, thick with the New England accent he normally kept filtered to a minimum. “It’s good that you’re sorry.” He gave a slight laugh. “Oh, Christa, talking about this while I’m full of drugs is probably not the best of times to do this.”
Ukiah stepped back so he could see into the room, despite the hard look from the guard. Hutchinson lay in the bed, clustered with monitors and IV stands. Christa was in a wheelchair beside the bed, dressed in a matching hospital gown. Two battered souls, betrayed by those they loved and trusted.
“I had to see that you were okay.” Christa gazed at his good hand as if she wanted to take it, but lacked the courage to.
“Why?”
“I never really stopped loving you,” she whispered. “But I suppose that I didn’t love you enough. There was this void that I thought the Temple’s mission could fill, the sense I was important for me, not my money. I was so stupid. It was all lies. It was always about the money and not me.”
“To me, it was never the money.” Hutchinson shushed Christa as she started to sob. “I know there’s no forgive and forget, but we two both really could use a friend to get us through tomorrow. I have to deal with losing my hand, and you’re going to jail, but it would be good to know that when the chips are down, there’s someone who will be there.”
“You’re willing to—?” She stopped short of asking him to define what relationship he meant.
And battered, Hutchinson protected his heart, but still reached out his good hand, saying, “I’m willing to.”
She clasped his hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”
“Cub?” Rennie called from downstairs. “In a minute or two, I’m going to be holding a puppy.”
Wondering if Hutchinson and Christa’s new alliance was truly a good thing for Hutchinson, Ukiah took the stairs down to the lobby instead of waiting for an elevator. Certainly, the agent had suffered immensely out of his love for Christa, but was winning her back really a reward? Perhaps.
Kittanning greeted him with a squeal of happiness and settled into his arms.
“How’s your partner?”
“Healing.”
“Did he go for it?”
Ukiah looked at Rennie in confusion and then realized that the Pack leader must have sensed his thoughts on the way into the hospital. “Yes, Max did. We’re moving the agency.”
“So you’re going to be looking for a house with a white picket fence?”
“Eventually.” Ukiah shouldered Kittanning.
“What first?”
Ukiah waited until they were out into the parking garage, with new sounds and smells to distract Kittanning, then said, “We’ve only destroyed two of the four Ae. Ice has the other two, and he’s gone into hiding. We need to find him, before he tries for Kittanning or, worse, realizes that he doesn’t need him to make Loo-ae work.”
Bitter rage flared through Rennie at the mention of the cult, quickly controlled for Kittanning’s sake. Last night when the Pack caught up with Ukiah and realized he’d been with a woman, they had been aggravated at him. After they made Ukiah share his memories—a la Pack mind meld style—the annoyance became a full parental outrage aimed at the cult. Core was lucky that he was already dead.
“Are you going to tell Indigo about this Ping?”
“I already have. All the cult members knew where Core was and what he was doing last night. It wouldn’t have been fair to let her find out from one of them.”
“And?”
“She says that it’s frightening how often she finds herself in alignment with the Pack.”
Rennie laughed. “She wanted to kill the bastard?”
“Something like that.”
Rennie glanced back at the hospital. “Does Hutchinson’s woman know where the rendezvous is?”
“She’s turning state’s evidence and willing to cooperate fully, but Core didn’t trust her. Indigo hopes to piece together an address from what Socket . . . Christa might have overheard and general observation.”
“The men will start dying soon without the Blissfire.”
“I know.”
Core had died instantly in the crash. Hash had drowned, not from Ukiah throwing him from the boat, but in an attempt to evade capture by river patrol. Ironically, only the female cultists had died on the island; one had tried to pull Du-ae out of the fire, and the other had been shot resisting arrest. That left five men—Dongle, Io, and three others—in custody but they would start dying within days.
And so would Parity, if the Ontongard didn’t turn him into a Get first.
The Butler Fire Department found no trace of cult members at Eden Court beyond the two men in the driveway; one dead of a snapped neck while the other had a butter knife sunk through his windpipe. Bear and Hellena had scoured the smoking rubble early in the morning, slipping in under the police’s noses. They verified that all the Gets in the wine cellar had been freed before the fire.
Depending on what those cultists knew and what the Ontongard could learn, it might be a race to find Ice first, with the fate of all mankind in the balance.
Wen Spencer, Bitter Waters
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