Vicki shoved her glasses up her nose and turned to glare out the window at a view she couldn't see, unsure of how to react with no outlet for her anger. After a moment she said, "All right, so you understand. So I have a comparatively mild case. So I can still function. I haven't gone blind. I haven't gone deaf. I haven't gone insane. It still sucks."
"Granted." He read disappointment at his response and wondered if she realized that she expected a certain amount of effusive sympathy from the people she told. Rejecting that sympathy made her feel strong, compensating for what she perceived as her weakness. He suspected that the disease was the first time she hadn't been able to make everything come out all right through the sheer determination that it would be.
"Have you ever thought about taking on a partner? Someone to do the night work?"
Vicki snorted, anger giving way to amusement. "You mean you helping me out as a regular sort of a job? You write romance novels, Henry; you have no experience in this type of thing."
He drew himself up behind the wheel. He was Vampire. King of the Night. The romance novels were just the way he paid the rent. "I wouldn't say... "
"And besides," she interrupted, "I'm barely making enough to keep myself going. They don't call the place 'Toronto the Good' for nothing you know."
"You'd get more jobs if you could work nights."
She couldn't argue with that. It was true.
His voice deepened and Vicki felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. "Just think about it."
Don't use your vampiric wiles on me, you son-of-a-bitch. But her mouth agreed before the thought had finished forming.
They drove the rest of the way to the farm in silence.
When they pulled off the dirt road they'd been following for the last few miles, Vicki could see only a vague fan of light in front of the car. When Henry switched off the headlights, she could see nothing at all. In the sudden silence, the scrabble of claws against the glass beside her head sounded very loud. She didn't quite manage to hold back the startled yell.
"It's Storm," Henry explained - she could hear the smile in his voice. "Stay put until I come around to guide you."
"Fuck you," she told him sweetly, found the release, and opened the car door.
"Yeah I'm glad to see you, too," she muttered, trying to push the huge head away. His breath was marginally better that of most dogs - thanks, no doubt, to his other form being able to use a toothbrush - but only marginally. Finally realizing that without better leverage the odds of moving Storm were slim to none, she sat back and endured the enthusiastic welcome. Her fingers itched to dig through the deep ruff, but the memory of Peter's naked young body held them in check.
"Storm, that's enough."
With one last vigorous sniff, the wer backed out of the way and Vicki felt Henry's hand touch her arm. She shook it off and swung out of the car. Although she could see the waning moon, a hanging, three-quarter circle of silver-white in the darkness, it shed a light too diffuse to do her any good. The blurry rectangles of yellow off to the right were probably the lights of the house and she considered striding off toward them just to prove she wasn't as helpless as Henry might think.
Henry watched the thought cross Vicki's face and shook his head. While he admired her independence, he hoped it wouldn't overwhelm her common sense. He realized that at the moment she felt she had something to prove and could think of no way to let her know she didn't. At least not as far as he was concerned.
He put her bag into her hand, keeping his own hold on it until he saw her fingers close around the grip, then drew her free arm gently through his. "The path curves," he murmured, close to her ear. "You don't want to end up in Nadine's flowers. Nadine bites."
Vicki ignored the way his breath against her cheek caused the hair on the back of her neck to rise and concentrated on walking as though she was not being led. She had no doubt that the wer, in wolf form at least, could see just as well as Henry and she had no intention of undermining her position here by appearing weak to however many