“Oh, I’ll do it,” he assured me. “I just can’t believe you have the nerve to ask without offering something in return.”
I bit my lip as I recognized the look on his face. This was hardball Cole, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what was on his mind. But I had no other choice. “What do you want?”
“A date. With you.” He glared at me, like I was already trying to weasel out of it. “A real one, where you wear a dress and I ogle your butt when you’re not looking.”
I sighed. “Cole —”
He took my hand. “I know you have major reservations about us. And Vayl’s making you crazy. Whatever. Just give me this.” His grin turned evil. “Or I won’t play.”
Well, shit in a stovepipe, Jaz. Now you’re really going to be in a bind. But what choice do you have?
“Okay.” We shook on it. I called him a blackmailer. He told me my ass belonged in a picture frame in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And we decided to look somewhere else for our prey.
Since Vayl was my highest priority, I took Cole back to the Oasis. From there we followed his trail for miles, along wide, well-lit boulevards lined with cypress trees and narrow brick-paved streets where you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We strode past billboards advertising Chanel No. 5 and hand-painted signs of the Statue of Liberty with a skull where her face should be. Our trail took us past high-rises and ruins, soccer stadiums and mosques. The juxtaposition of modern against ancient was so extreme it actually lessened my surprise that the country found it so difficult to plot a middle course toward any goal. Finally we reached the edge of the city, where a dilapidated auction barn packed mostly with sheep, goats, and donkeys sprawled over an area roughly the size of a city block.
We crouched beside the fence of an outdoor pen in which three groups of five or six camels each stood or laid according to their preferences. “Oh my God!” breathed Cole. “This is our chance!”
“What are you talking about?” I whispered as I tried to figure out what Vayl would want with a sheep or goat.
Sacrifice,
my mind whispered. I told it to shut the hell up. Zarsa probably just needed to ride a donkey around the house three or four times as part of some symbolic journey to her new life.
Yeah. Sure
.
“You’ve heard of cow tipping?” asked Cole.
“I’m from the Midwest,” I answered. “What do you think?”
“Well, I’m thinking we put a Middle Eastern twist on it and do some camel tipping tonight!”
“Cole, I hate to burst your bubble, but —” He was already inside the pen. “Cole!” I hissed. “Get back here!”
He rushed over. “You got any advice for me?”
I looked into his sparkling eyes and thought,
Aw, screw it. He wants to believe, let him
. “They’re supposed to be asleep,” I told him. “You see any sleeping camels out there?”
He took a good, hard look. “Yeah.” He nodded excitedly. “A couple. You gonna come help me?”
“No. I’ll stay out here and keep watch. Now, you just tiptoe up to one of those sleeping camels, nice and quiet so you don’t wake him, and give him a hard shove on the shoulder. Basically what happens is he’ll be so startled when he wakes up he’ll fall right over on his side. Cool, huh?”
“Awesome!”
“Now, don’t let him kick you, because he’ll for sure kill you.”
“Do I look that stupid?”
I stared at him until his feet started to shuffle. “Okay, no.”
“Good answer. Now, come on, woman. Some support for the big, brave man going off to have the adventure of his life!”
I shot my fist into the air. “Go for it!”
Cole leaned in. “I was thinking more along the lines of a long, juicy kiss.”
“Before our first date? What kind of girl do you think I am?” We shared a grin, remembering our first meeting and the fact that it had ended with a spectacular lip-lock. One of those spur-of-the-moment things neither of us would have attempted in any other situation.
I watched Cole kick it into stealth mode like an off-duty ninja and had to stifle a giggle. The camels observed him approach with the bored attention of animals who’re too damn tired to give a crap. Only the ones lying down were asleep, but Cole decided a big female standing in the center of the pen was enjoying forty winks. He snuck right up to her, planted his hands on her broad side, and gave her a huge shove.
She swung her head around, looked him right in the eye, and spat in his face.
“Oh, very funny,” he said when he got back to the fence and found me laughing so hard I kept snorting every time I stopped to breathe.
“You have a brand-new stench about you,” I noted, my face beginning to ache from the size of my smile. “What do you call it?”
