Blood Price - By Tanya Huff Page 0,18

the top of the pile and if you weren't on top, if you couldn't be on top, you weren't going to play! So you ran away. You took your pail and your shovel and you fucking quit! You walked out on me, Nelson, not just the job!"

Through all the fights-after the diagnosis and after her resignation-that was what he'd wanted to say. It summed up the hours of arguing, the screaming matches, the slammed doors. Vicki knew it, knew it the way she knew when she found the key, the little seemingly insignificant thing that solved the case. Everything about that last sentence said, this is it.

"You'd have done the same thing, Celluci," she said quietly and although her knuckles were white around the receiver, she set it gently back on the phone. Then she threw the marker in her other hand across the room.

Her anger went with it.

He really cares about you, Vicki. Why is that such a problem ?

Because lovers are easy to get and friends good enough to scream at are a lot rarer.

Running both hands through her hair, she sighed. He was right and she'd admitted as much by her response. As soon as he realized she was right as well, they could go on building the new parameters of their relationship. Unless, it suddenly occurred to her, last night had been the farewell performance that enabled him to finally come clean.

If it was, she pushed her glasses up her nose, at least I had the last word. As such things went, it wasn't much of a comfort.

"Well, if it isn't old Norman. How you doing, Norman? Mind if we sit down?" Without waiting for an answer the young man hooked a chair out from under the table and sat. The four other members of his party noisily followed his lead.

When the scramble for space ended, Norman found himself crammed between the broad shoulders of two jocks he knew only as Roger and Bill, the three of them staring across the round table at three young ladies. He recognized the blonde-he usually saw her hanging on Roger's arm-and as the girl next to Bill was being awfully friendly he supposed she was with him. That left one extra. He grinned wolfishly at her. He'd been practicing the grin in his bathroom mirror.

She looked puzzled, then snorted and turned away.

"It was real nice of old Norman to keep this table for us, wasn't it, Bill?"

"It sure was." Bill leaned a little closer and Norman gasped for breath as his available space narrowed drastically. "If it wasn't for old Norman, we'd be sitting on the floor."

Norman looked around. The Friday night crowd at the Cock and Bull had filled the basement pub. "Well, I, uh... " He shrugged. "I, uh, knew you were coming."

"Of course you did," Bill grinned at him, a little disconcerted to find that the Birdwell-nerd was at least as tall as he was. "I was saying to Roger here before we came in, it wouldn't be Friday night if we didn't spend part of it with old Norman."

Roger laughed and all three of the girls grinned. Norman didn't get the joke, but he preened at the attention.

He bought the first round of beer. "After all, it's my table."

"And the only empty one in the place," the blonde muttered.

He bought the second round as well. "Because I've got lots and lots of money." The wad of twenties he pulled out of the pocket of his windbreaker-five thousand dollars in small unmarked bills had been the third thing he'd asked for-caused a simultaneous dropping of jaws around the table.

"Jesus Christ, Norman, what did you do, rob a bank?"

"I didn't have to," Norman said airily. "And there's plenty more where that came from."

He insisted on buying the third and fourth rounds and on switching to imported beer. "Imported beer is classier," he confided to the shoulder of Roger's leather jacket, Roger having moved his ear out of range. "It really gets the chicks."

"Chicks?" The echo had a dangerous edge to it.

"Consider the source, Helen." Bill deftly removed the glass from her hand-both hand and glass having been threateningly raised-and drained it. "You'd just be wasting the beer."

The five burst out laughing again and again, not understanding, Norman joined in. No one would think he wasn't with it.

When they started getting up, he rose with them. The room swayed. He'd never had four beers in quick succession before. In fact, he wasn't entirely certain he'd ever had four