most of the guards, physically stronger than I would ever be, but in that moment I realized something I hadn’t before. If I had been abusive to him, as my Bride he couldn’t have done anything about it. Brides were pretty much helpless to say no to their masters. He even had to keep me happy, because if I was unhappy it made him unhappy. I wondered how close to the dynamics with his mother our relationship was, and then wished I hadn’t thought of it. It was all too Freudian and weird. Why was I overthinking this? What the hell was wrong with me? And then I realized, this was what I used to do. I used to overthink relationships and poke them with a stick until they broke, and then I’d be able to say, See, see, I knew it. Fuck, what about this case, the last few minutes, had set me back to such old shitty habits?
I threw the toilet paper in the toilet and flushed away my lunch, and then I let go of Nicky’s pants leg and held my hand up to him. I didn’t need the help to stand, but it was a way of apologizing and letting him know how much I’d appreciated the help in these last few minutes, how much I appreciated him.
He looked down at me, his face arrogant, unreadable; the one blue eye staring down at me was harsh and unfriendly. I wasn’t the only one who’d had old issues hit in the last few minutes.
There was a moment when I thought he wasn’t going to relent, and that in a few thoughtless moments we’d ruined something between us. ‘Just tell me to take your hand, help you up, and I have to do it.’
‘I don’t want you to do it because you have to, I want you to do it because you want to.’
A look came over his face; it was almost pained. ‘Why do you keep giving me choices, Anita? You don’t have to.’
‘Maybe that’s why,’ I said. ‘Because I don’t have to.’
‘That makes no sense,’ he said, but he reached down and took my hand. He lifted me to my feet and backed out of the stall at the same time, so that we ended up out in the main part of the bathroom. He just kept staring down at me, as if he couldn’t figure out what, or who, I was.
‘I feel like I missed something,’ Domino said. ‘Did you guys just have a fight?’
‘Almost,’ I said.
‘Are you all right?’ Nicky asked.
‘I feel fine now.’
‘I’ve never seen you get sick like that,’ Domino said.
I shrugged. Nicky and I were still holding hands as if we were both afraid to let go. ‘I used to throw up at crime scenes pretty regularly.’
‘You keep saying that, but we’ve never seen you do it before,’ Nicky said.
‘This wasn’t a crime scene,’ Domino said. ‘What made you sick?’
‘I smelled the decomp coming from his father’s room and it was too close to last night.’
‘The smell didn’t bother you last night,’ Nicky said.
‘Trust me, it did,’ I said.
Nicky gave a small smile and squeezed my hand. ‘It bothered all of us, but not that much.’
‘I have no idea why I got sick just now,’ I said.
He drew me in so that our bodies touched. He was back to staring at my face, but it was a different look now, not arrogant or harsh, more like he was thinking about something really hard.
‘What?’ I asked.
He just shook his head. ‘Maybe you need more sleep.’
‘Always on a case,’ I said.
Domino offered me a breath mint.
‘You’re carrying breath mints in with your ammo?’ I said.
‘We’re lycanthropes, Anita; sometimes we eat stuff that a human isn’t going to want to smell on our breath.’
I took the mint and spoke around it as I rolled it in my mouth. ‘But you only eat stuff like that in animal form; once you change back to human it’s a different mouth.’
‘Is it?’ he asked.
I frowned while I thought about it. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘Just think of it as a precaution,’ Domino said.
I squeezed Nicky’s hand, then let go so I could go to the sinks and wash my hands. I looked at him in the mirror as I asked, ‘Do you have breath mints with you?’
‘No, clan tigers are prissy bastards; lions aren’t.’
‘I suppose lions eat raw meat and then just suck the juices off each other, no mint needed,’ Domino said.
‘Yeah, we do.’
Domino rolled his eyes,