“I never said that.”
“So you’ve lived in the city for years?”
“I never said that either.”
“Zayvion.” I was getting annoyed now. “I know you worked for my father, but I don’t know anything else about you. Would it hurt to open up and tell me a little about yourself?”
He didn’t say anything for a while, and that worried me.
Finally, “There’s not much to say. I’m an only child, my parents live on the coast. I’ve done freelance work.” It sounded like a well-practiced book-report recitation. As revealing as a grocery list.
He stopped talking, so I got him started again. “What kind of work?”
He shrugged. “Whatever I could get.”
“Spying?”
“If it pays, I can do that.”
“You’re not answering me.”
“Well, I followed you around for your father. I’ve had a couple other jobs along those lines.”
“You’re a PI?”
He smiled. “No. You have to go through training for that, report to the regulatory agencies, keep good records.”
“Let me guess, you hate paperwork?”
“See? You know more about me than you thought you did.”
“I know how you kiss,” I said.
“One kiss does not a man make.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means maybe I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve you haven’t seen yet.”
“Well, well. Look at you all confident and strutting. I think getting away from magic has done something to your attitude, Mr. Jones.”
“Oh?”
“I think it’s made you human.”
“Not even close.” He took a curve in the road a little too fast and slowed down again. “How about you, Allie? Tell me about yourself.”
“You worked for my father. You know everything about me.”
Zay glanced over at me, his brown eyes intense. “Everything?”
I shrugged. “He gave you my personnel file, right? Don’t look at me like that—I’ve seen it. My entire life in black-and-white—my strengths, my weaknesses. I was just another asset to him, Zay. Not a person. Not a daughter. Not a woman.”
Zay thought about that while the scenery slid by. “So tell me something about the woman.”
This conversation was heading dangerously into intimate territory and that scared me. My heart beat harder. “What do you want to know?”
“Why do you Hound so many jobs for free?”
Oh. I didn’t realize he’d ask about that. I’d done a lot of free jobs. Mostly for people who didn’t have the money, and mostly when it was pretty clear they were being taken advantage of. Every time I sat down to pay my bills I’d ask myself why I did it. It wasn’t like I was rolling in the dough and could afford to be charitable. Hells, I wasn’t even making my rent month to month. But I didn’t do it to get back at my father, though I’m sure he would have disapproved. I guess I did it because I honestly believed it was right to help people when I could.
“Money isn’t everything,” I said. “Magic isn’t either. Sometimes people get confused about that. Sometimes even I get confused about that.”
“You, confused? When?”
“College,” I said with forced cheerfulness. “Magic and drugs do not mix. Or rather, they mix too well.” I’d lost almost a full term to that particular hell. I’d managed to pull myself out of it with the help of a few people I hadn’t seen since. I found out the hard way I have an addictive personality. That’s bad news for a Hound, and probably why I was always drinking coffee. “Thanks for bringing up
“Didn’t like college?”
“Liked college. Didn’t enjoy being manipulated into being there.”
Zay nodded. “I like that about you.”
“That I dropped out of college? Did drugs?”
“That you weren’t afraid to do what you thought was right, even if it meant failure in your father’s eyes. You picked up your life and moved on. More than once.”
I felt a blush warm my neck and face.
He, of course, chose that moment to look over at me. “I like that about you too. For such a tough girl, you blush easy.”
I scowled, but it didn’t help. I just blushed harder. Time to change the subject. “Lots of people get over failure,” I said.
“Lots of people don’t have such a . . .” He paused, thought something over. “A lot of people don’t have a man like your father telling them what they should be. A lot of people can’t stand up to that kind of pressure, Allie, can’t stand up to that kind of will. You could. You did.”
“For all the good it did me, right?” That sounded sullen, so I tried to steer away from the subject. “Do I get an award for good behavior?”
He shook his head and did not look at me. “No,” he said regretfully. “You just get this.”
“Garbage and an almost-dead guy?”
The corner of his mouth twitched up.
“Garbage, an almost-dead guy, the cat, and me. Not all bad.” He looked over, brown eyes filled with warmth, with sympathy. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t hold his gaze without the blush starting to creep up again. I looked out the window.
“Can we go back to talking about drugs?”
“If you want.”
On second thought, I didn’t want that either. My dark past should stay in the past. I changed the subject. “Nola’s is right up here somewhere. A big white house with a huge driveway. On the right.
“There.” I pointed out the window. Her driveway was a gravel and dirt affair, wide enough that three cars could drag race down it, and close enough to her front porch that getting groceries out of the car was a breeze.
Zay turned down the driveway and we crawled along it until we came up next to her porch, the headlights shining against the closed door of her garage.
Jupe, a mud-colored brute of a dog that was part Lab, part Great Dane, and all parts of him huge, tore through the side yard from behind the house, barking his big square head off and wagging his tail like mad.
“Jupe!” I called to him. I didn’t do pets, but Jupe was big enough to be a family member. Maybe two. Still, I did not roll down the window, and I wouldn’t until Nola came out. I wasn’t stupid.
“Don’t you remember me, boy?” I asked.
“Don’t open the door,” Zay warned.
“Not planning on it. Nola should be out soon.” At the mention of Nola’s name, Jupe’s ears perked up. “That’s right, boy. Go get Nola.”
“You speak dog? Wonderful talent. Now
“Shut up, Jones.” I did like it better when we were joking instead of talking about serious things.
Jupe just kept barking and running from Zay’s window to bark at him and over to my window to bark at me.
Finally, the front door opened and Nola stepped out onto the porch. She was country through and through, from her steel-toe boots to her overalls with daisies stitched down the shoulder straps. She’d let her honey-colored hair grow long enough to pull it back in one braid down her back, but otherwise I caught my breath at how much she looked the same as when I knew her in high school.
Nola whistled and Jupe looked back at her. He wagged his tail and barked. She whistled again, lower this time, and the big lunker of a dog bounded over to her and stood at her side.
