"I wasn't the one who decorated my face, but thanks anyway." I went back to the van to button it up for the night. I'd lost the momentum that was keeping me working, and all I wanted to do was find someplace to sleep. Someplace without a vampire dead in the closet. Damn it. Where was I going to sleep?
"What are you two doing here?" I asked Warren as I closed the back hatch of the van.
"Adam said we're to stay with you until you hear from the vampires-he thinks it will be sometime soon after dark. He doesn't want you to face them alone."
"Don't you have to work tonight?" Warren worked graveyard at an all night gas station/convenience store not too far from my home-he had gotten Samuel a job there when he moved in with me.
"Nah, quit last week. They had another manager changeover and this one wanted to clean house. So I thought I'd quit before I was fired." He paused then said, "I've been doing some work for Kyle. It pays better part-time than the convenience store did full-time."
"With Kyle?" I asked hopefully.
I've known Warren for a long time and had met maybe a dozen of his boyfriends. Most of them hadn't been worth knowing-but I liked Kyle. He was a hotshot lawyer, a terrific dresser, and a lot of fun. They'd been living together for a while when Kyle finally found out Warren was a werewolf. Kyle moved out. I knew they'd dated a few times since, but nothing more serious.
Warren dropped his eyes. "Mostly just some surveillance and, once, guard duty for a woman who was afraid of her soon-to-be ex-husband."
"Kyle's afraid of us," said Ben, showing his teeth in a sharp grin.
Warren looked at him and Ben quit smiling.
"You've obviously never met Kyle," I told Ben. "Anyone who's been a divorce lawyer as long as Kyle isn't afraid of much."
"I lied to him," Warren told me. "Thing like that will stick in a man's craw."
It was time to change the subject. Ben might be subdued for the moment, but it wouldn't last.
"I'm going to wash up and change," I said. "I'll be right back out."
"Samuel said you didn't get any sleep last night," Warren said. "You have a few hours before the vampires can call on you. Should we stop and pick up some dinner, then head out to your house so you can get a little sleep?"
I shook my head. "Can't sleep with a dead man in my closet."
"You killed someone?" asked Ben with interest.
Warren grinned, the expression leaving little crinkles next to his eyes. "Nope, not this time. Samuel said Stefan had to spend the day in Mercy's closet. I'd forgotten about that. Do you want to catch a little shut-eye at my place? No dead people there." He glanced at Ben. "At least not yet."
I was tired, my face hurt, and I was coming down off the adrenaline rush the reporter had caused. "I can't think of a thing that sounds better. Thanks, Warren."
Warren 's place was in Richland, half of a two-story duplex that had seen better days. The interior was in better repair than the outside, but it still had that college-student aura defined by lots of books and secondhand furniture.
The spare bedroom Warren put me in smelled of him-he must have been sleeping in there rather than the room he'd shared with Kyle. I found his scent comforting; he wasn't lying dead in the closet. I had no trouble falling asleep to the quiet sounds of the two werewolves playing chess downstairs.
I woke in the dark to the smell of peppers and sesame oil. Someone had gone out for Chinese. It had been a long time since lunch.
I rolled out of bed and scrambled down the stairs, hoping that they hadn't eaten everything. When I got to the kitchen, Warren was still dividing Styrofoam-packaged food onto three plates.
" Mmm." I said, leaning against Warren to get a better look at the food. "Mongolian beef. I think I'm in love."
"His heart's occupied elsewhere," said Ben from behind me. "And even if it weren't he's not interested in your kind. But, I'm available and ready."
"You don't have a heart," I told him. "Just a gaping hole where it should have been."
"All the more reason for you to give me yours."
I pounded my forehead against Warren 's back. "Tell me Ben's not flirting with me."
"Hey," said Ben sounding hurt. "I was talking cannibalism, not romance."
He was almost funny. If I liked him better, I'd have laughed.
Warren patted me on the top of my head and said, "It's all right, Mercy. It's just a bad dream. Once you eat your food it will all go away."
He dumped the last of the rice on one of the plates. "Adam called a few minutes ago. I told him you were sleeping and he said not to wake you up. He told me Stefan left your house about a half hour ago."
I glanced out the window and saw that it was already getting dark.
Warren saw my glance and said, "Some of the old vampires wake up early. I don't think you'll get a call before full dark."
He passed out the filled plates and handed us silverware and napkins to go with them, then shooed us back out of the kitchen to the dining room.
"So," said Ben after we'd been eating for a few minutes. "Why don't you like me, Mercy? I'm handsome, clever, witty... Not to mention I saved your life."
"Let's not mention that again," I said, shoveling spicy meat in around my words. "I might get ill."
"You hate women," Warren offered.
"I do not." Ben sounded indignant.
I swallowed, raised an eyebrow, and stared at him until he looked away. As soon as he realized what he'd done he jerked his chin back up so his eyes met mine again. But it was too late, I'd won, and we both knew it. With the wolves, things like that mattered. If I ever met him alone in a dark alley, he might still eat me-but he'd hesitate first.
I gave him a smug smile. "Anyone who's talked to you for longer than two minutes knows you hate women. I think that I can count on the fingers of one hand the times you've actually said the word 'women' and not replaced it with an epithet referring to female genitalia."
"Hey, he's not that bad," Warren said. "Sometimes he calls them cows or whores."
Ben pointed a finger at Warren - I guess his mother never taught him better manners. "There speaks someone who doesn't like..." He actually had to pause and change the word he was going to use. "... er women."
"I like women just fine," Warren told him gathering the last of his scattered rice into a pile so he could get it on his fork. " Better'n I like most men. I just don't want to sleep with them."