“I ate a bunch of the beef jerky and Slim Jims first,” he admitted. “Just out of habit. Not that it really tasted the same.”
“Me too. At least human me doesn’t mind eating pre-cooked meat.” She offered him a little square of chocolate, and he gave her a cracker in return. “But chocolate ... chocolate is a nice change. I think I’m going to eat it until I get sick. This is my gravely serious and very mature and reasonable plan.”
“It sounds good to me.”
“Are you going to eat cheddar and peanut butter crackers until you get sick?”
“God, no,” Logan said. “These aren’t even that good.”
Iz laughed. She sat down beside him on the bed and neatly folded her legs up under her. She had an innate gracefulness to her, he could see now. She’d probably had it as a dragon too, but he hadn’t known how to judge it then. Now that they were both human, he could see how she radiated poise, even when she was doing something as mundane as sitting on a crappy motel bed and eating chocolate.
The hum of activity continued around them, but it didn’t bother him anymore. Not now she was here with him, serving as the calm at the eye of the storm.
“I was just realizing that I still have my house keys,” Iz said. She held them up as proof. “And my card key for a different room in this motel, although I’m sure it doesn’t work anymore. It feels like I should have lost them, but they were safe in shift-space this whole time.”
He had looked for his phone, but he’d forgotten about his keys. He checked his pockets and came up with a key ring of his own.
These could unlock so many parts of his life he’d almost forgotten about. House, office, car.
His hand stilled over one key in particular.Motorcycle?
The heat and rumble of a bike beneath him came back to him as a powerful sense memory.
Red,Logan thought.Cherry red.
He could remember the sensation of infinite speed, the hot wind whipping by him.
It was tempting to get lost in the memory and see if it would lead him anywhere new, but this definitely wasn’t the time for that.
Besides, in a very real sense, there was nowhere the memory could take him. Yes, he had his keys, but there was no way he still had any of the locks that went with them. He had been off the grid for two years.
His old life was ... gone. And there was no new life in sight—or at least, he amended as he looked at Iz and felt longing tighten up his chest, there was noplausiblenew life in sight. No life that he didn’t have to walk away from if he ever wanted to think of himself as a decent guy.
He cleared his throat. “I should get my own room key. My own room, I mean. We could both use some sleep.”
Of course, he’d been mainlining coffee for the last few hours, but he still didn’t think sleep would be a problem. He was worn out. Months of exhaustion, claustrophobia, and deprivation had just come crashing down on his human body, and it would take a lot more than some neon orange crackers to make it better again. Sleep would at least be a good start. Maybe it would even help him get his head on straight enough to decide what to do about Iz.
One of Iz’s coworkers—Logan was pretty sure this one was Keith, the unicorn shifter—practically materialized at his side, holding out two plastic key cards.
“I reserved one for each of you,” Keith said. “Since Logan’s been away from the world for a while, I wasn’t sure his credit cards would still work.”
“And what,” Iz said, with a trace of aristocratic, draconian hauteur, “was your reason for reservingmineinstead of letting me pay for it myself?”
“Chivalry?” Keith glanced at his watch. “And the front office closed an hour ago.”
“Those both seem like good reasons,” Logan said to Iz.
Keith had some of the same cool composure as Iz, and he was a good-looking guy, even if his eyes—a gray so light they had an almost colorless look, like the surface of a lake—were a little unsettling. He was a little old for her, maybe, but that wasn’t always a big deal. And he was also agentleman, the kind of person who would think of things like hotel reservations.
Aperson, more than anything else.
He was closer to what Iz deserved.
Logan tried not to hate him for that. Keith, like the rest of Iz’s team—even the quiet guy with all the scars—had been nothing but kind to him.
He took the key Keith held out to him and made himself say thanks.
“Logan, Cooper put some clean pajamas in your room,” Keith added, “and Evie did the same for you, Iz.”