"Nothing happens to the kid, or you will not have enough money to keep yourself out of jail, or at least the nut house."
"I am not crazy, Ms. Blake. I’m a woman scorned."
"He was married to you for twenty-five years. I think the poor bastard suffered enough."
That was it. She turned on the stiletto points of her expensive shoes and stalked out. If I’d known that that would make her leave I’d have said it sooner. Seemed this was my week for people wanting my very "alive" zombies for very bad purposes.
TWO WEEKS PASSED before I went back to the restaurant where Micah, Nathaniel, and Jason had flirted with the waiter and, all right, so had I. This time I was at a table not a booth, and all by my lonesome. Though honestly I’d eaten more lunches alone in my adult life than with anyone else. The workers at Animators Inc. had staggered schedules so no one had lunch at the same time. Sometimes I brought a book; sometimes it was just good to get out of the office. Today I had actually brought the latest copy of The Animator, our trade publication. There were a couple of articles I’d been wanting to read, so I’d order food, read, and hopefully learn something.
My waitress was petite, blond, and female when I ordered drinks, but when the drinks came my waiter was tall, black-haired, and male. It was the waiter from the time before. He put down my Coke, smiled, and said, "I traded tables with Cathy; I hope you don’t mind."
I shook my head, smiled back. "I don’t mind."
His gave me that even brighter smile that I remembered from last time. I did what I’d learned last time; I smiled back. It would take two more trips back and forth from the table for me to realize that he thought I was flirting with intent. It was when he stayed at my table talking after my food had arrived that I realized I’d made some kind of tactical error. It was one thing to flirt in the safety of my group, with Nathaniel and Jason to take some of the heat and Micah to look on, but a totally different experience with just me and the waiter. Crap.
His name was Ahsan. He was a college student. He was a theater major with a minor in literature. He was graduating this year and going on to start his master’s program. His goal was to teach at a college, unless his own acting career took off. I learned all this because I couldn’t figure out how to stop the conversation. I had flirted first, so it was my fault, and if something is my fault, I try to fix it. But Ahsan was like that scene in Fantasia with Mickey Mouse and the brooms carrying water buckets. I’d flirted and gotten the game started, but I had no idea how to stop it. I mean, I could have been blunt—my usual—but I had started it, and so was there a way to gracefully retreat? By now I was pretty certain that he thought I’d come back by myself so I could flirt more freely with him. Eek. I was remembering why I didn’t flirt for fun—because I didn’t know how. I could flirt with intent of dating or sex, but I sucked at casual flirting. Shit.
I would have tried to play the age difference card, but he was Nathaniel’s age exactly, so I couldn’t claim that an eight-year age difference weirded me out. I was debating on exactly what I could do to let him down gently, or whether I was irritated enough to let him down hard, when I felt energy. Not just regular human psychic energy, but shapeshifter energy. It was someone powerful enough that it raised the hair on my arms and crawled down my back, to see if it could find my own beasts. Those shadows inside me moved almost like a hand caressing deep within my body. God, he was powerful. Either he was a bad guy letting me know he was here, or he’d picked up my own beasts and thought I was a real shapeshifter. Some of their societies encouraged them to mark territory. One of the ways to do that without a fight was simply let the power out. It was a safe way of saying, Don’t fuck with me. Or, it was a bad guy, and a threat. I wouldn’t know until too late, so I treated it as bad guy: better paranoid than dead.
I smiled sweetly up at Ahsan and said, "I’m sorry, Ahsan, it’s been great talking to you, but I’ve got to get back to work. I need the check."
"Can I have your number?"
"How about you give me your number, when you give me the check?"
He wasted more smiles on me, but hurried back through the busy restaurant to get the check and scribble his number on something. But at least the nice waiter wouldn’t be standing at my table when the bad guy walked up. There was the remote possibility that it was a sort of preliminary flirting attempt. Some of the really powerful lycanthropes were always searching for a mate to match their power. It helped you control your animal group and keep other shapeshifters from trying to mess with you. But this felt like too much for flirting. The only reason to do the power that was making the air thick and hot and hard to breathe was to mark his metaphysical territory and tell me that he was bigger and badder than I was. Fine with me. I took my gun out from under my arm, as discreetly as I could, and put my hand under the table, gun and all.
I didn’t try to draw my own version of shapeshifter power. One, I wasn’t as powerful as what was coming toward me. I knew that just from that roil of power. Two, sometimes when I drew my power out it got out of hand; just because I didn’t change shape didn’t mean the beasts inside me didn’t want out. They did. They’d damn near torn me apart from inside before I got a handle on the control. But it wasn’t just the pain; there was always the chance that one day I’d shift for real, and a crowded restaurant wasn’t the place for it. Also, if it was some misguided macho flirting attempt, then I would let him know he’d misread what I was, and maybe he’d go away.