him. He hadn’t known that I held lion inside me: good. It meant he didn’t know everything about me: even better.
His eyes actually slid to the side, and I fought not to look where he was looking. I gave only the edge of my vision in that direction. He was too close to me for me to risk taking my gaze off of him completely. He probably wasn’t going to jump me here, but I wasn’t sure, so I only saw Ahsan working his way toward me out of the corner of my eye. The shapeshifter turned and watched him completely, not looking at me at all. Was it an insult, or a show of trust?
Ahsan paused before he got to the table, shivering a little. He felt some of the psychic energy wafting around us. He got a point for that. Psychic nulls don’t survive well around me. I didn’t want to date him, but I didn’t want to get him killed, either. He glanced at the man still standing near my table, but not “at” my table. It was suddenly not just a dangerous situation, but socially awkward. Perfect.
Ahsan looked from one to the other of us, his smile faltering. “Is this another… friend?” He hesitated way too long before settling on that last word.
“He’s not a friend,” I said.
“Coworker,” the shapeshifter said, voice absolutely ordinary, even pleasant. “I just saw Anita getting ready to leave and thought I might get her table. There isn’t another empty one.”
Ahsan relaxed. I didn’t, because the stranger had managed to calm the waiter and subtly threaten everyone in the restaurant. I fought to let my breath out slow and even, and kept the gun aimed on the main body mass of the stranger. Though with his height, and the table height, he’d better hope I didn’t have to pull the trigger, because the main mass I would hit was low, as in below the waist. To hit higher I’d have to be willing to show the gun to the restaurant, and I was hoping not to have to do that. He was right; the restaurant was packed full of innocent bystanders. Packed full of human bodies that the silver-plated bullets would kill just as surely as the shapeshifter; fuck. Not to mention that the amount of power he’d displayed meant he could probably put out just claws on his human hands without having to shift completely, which would have given me time to shoot him. But claws are like switchblades-fast. He could slice up the humans faster than I could kill him. The situation was just chock-full of bad choices.
The lioness inside me began to pace slowly upward, as if she really could. I knew it was a comforting illusion my mind created, but she walked up a path, and that meant she was coming closer to the surface of me. I did not need to try to shift in the restaurant. It would make me unable to concentrate on the bad guy. I worked at calming my pulse, slowing my breathing. I could control this.
Ahsan wasted another brilliant smile on me, and I fought to smile back as he handed me the faux-leather holder that contained the check. I had one of those moments that no one ever seems to have in movies. How did I pay the check with one hand while keeping the gun aimed in the right direction with the other hand, and actually keep my attention on someone only a few feet away who could probably move in a blur so fast it couldn’t be followed with the human eye?
I opened the holder with my left hand, keeping my right and the gun under the table. If I hadn’t thought it would make Ahsan call the cops, or talk to a manager who would call the cops, I might have flashed the gun to see if that cooled the flirting, but I wasn’t ready to escalate-yet. There was an extra piece of paper folded in with the check. Normally, I’d have unfolded it and looked, but I was trying to keep my attention on the shapeshifter. I took the paper and asked Ahsan, “Your number?”
He nodded, and smiled more happily.
I knew my smile wasn’t up to his, and I thought, What would Nathaniel do? I did my best to put that look into my eyes, but the smile that went with it was not Nathaniel’s, it was all mine, a little bit of come-hither and a little bit of threat, as if to say,
I glanced at the shapeshifter, and he was smiling wider, as if he understood my discomfort, or maybe I just amused him. But there was wariness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I’d done something that made him more nervous. If I could only figure out what, maybe I could do it again. Once I’d been able to use my petite, female packaging to fool the bad guys, but my reputation among the preternatural set had forced most bad guys to ignore the package and treat me like what I was: a predator that specialized in other predators.
I did the only thing I could think of: I slipped Ahsan’s number into my jacket pocket, and fished out the credit card I’d tucked in the same pocket. I put it in the little faux-leather holder and handed it back to him. I smiled one more time, turned back to my “coworker,” and said, “I didn’t think you worked today.”
Ahsan took the hint and left us alone.
He started walking slowly closer, hands still out. I didn’t tell him to stop, because I realized that the only way to make certain where my bullets landed was to have him so close I couldn’t miss. I was gambling that my own faux-shapeshifter speed would let me shoot him before he killed me. Maybe he wasn’t here to kill me, but whatever he was here for it was nothing good. I would have bet serious money on that.
He got to the edge of the table, hands spread a little more, and said, “May I sit down, because I’d rather not have you shoot me where you’re pointing right now.” He smiled happily as he said it, but the smile never touched his eyes. I knew that smile, those cold eyes. I’d worked with too many men who had it, and seen it in the mirror too often.
“Sure,” I said, “sit there.” I nodded toward the chair that would put him beside me, rather than across.
He started to tuck the chair closer to the table, and I said, “No, keep far enough away from the table so I can see that your gun stays in its holster.”
He gave a little nod, and angled his chair more toward me, one ankle on his knee, so that it was that very guy stance that some did, as if they wanted to frame their groin for inspection. I wasn’t interested, but the lioness was, because she was one of the few beasts inside me that didn’t have an equivalent on the outside. It meant she was way more interested in other lions than was comfortable for me. There was one werelion who was applying pretty hard for the job, but I kept avoiding him. I had enough men in my life.
I had slowed the lioness with my breathing and my pulse, but the image that she put in my head was not very human. She wanted me to drop to my knees and rub across him. She wanted more of his scent on us, more of his skin on us. With a gun in my hand, it was easier to push the thoughts down. I let her know that we were in danger, and that did seem to calm all my beasts. They understood danger, and through me, they knew what a gun could do.
The man kept his hands on his knees, and I moved so that the gun was angled more solidly at his chest. There’d be no collateral damage at this distance, because fast as he might be, he wasn’t faster than a speeding bullet from less than three feet.
“Just so we’re clear,” I said, “if you try to move fast, I will simply pull the trigger, because I know once you move for real it’s my only hope at this range.”
He nodded, still smiling, so that from a distance it would look like we were being friendly. “You moved me in close so you wouldn’t accidentally hit the nice humans. I smell you, Anita; I know I’m not the only kitty-cat at the table. It’s a weakness to care too much about your pets.”
I frowned. “Do you mean humans?”
He nodded, still smiling.
“I carry a badge; it’s sort of my job to care about them.”
“First, let’s be very clear. If anything happens to me, then your people die.”
“What people? You mean the people in the restaurant?”
“No, but knowing you care does make it easier.” He nodded a little behind me. “It’s a visual.”
“If I even feel you move too much, I will just pull this trigger.” The lioness in me snarled at the air, and the edge of it trickled out between my lips. It made the threat better, but it was not a good sign for my control.
“I believe you,” he said, voice dropping lower. “I will sit very, very still, kitten.”
I would have protested the nickname, but I had called him kitty first. I turned and found Ahsan almost at our
