“Okay,” I repeated. “Well, be careful. Okay?”
I am so very awkward.
“Okay,” he agreed, and then I turned around and walked back down the hill to the truck, wishing I’d offered to order Chinese food or something. Come up with a reason to stay, because I thought that maybe, justmaybe, if I’d offered specifically, he might have said yes.
24
Elliot Crane
Are you still at work?
He’d sentthe text the night before around eight. I had, in fact, been at work. For the rest of the night and into this morning. I wasn’t at the moment—it was almost seven in the morning, and I was absolutely exhausted, having just parked in the lot behind my apartment. We’d gotten called in to a barn fire—the very same barn where they’d found the kidnapped shifter. It had clearly been arson. The owner, who’d inherited it from his grandfather only to find first a bleeding shifter and now a burnt-down wreck, was both freaked out and furious. Smith was just furious. Colfax wasn’t having anybody’s shit.
Adding insult to injury was the fact that the fire had revealed five bodies concealed under the floor boards, which I was certain would take up most of the next three or four weeks, if not longer.
At least we probably now had the bodies to go with all the blood we’d sent out for testing. It would be a good thing, if it brought closure to the families of the victims, but it wasn’t going to be easy to identify them—Shawano didn’t have a medium,and the closest one, who was based in Green Bay, wasn’t even remotely in the same league as Ward Campion. I didn’t pretend to even begin to understand the rules governing contact with the dead, but even I knew that the rules for Ward were dramatically different than for almost anyone else.
So we were going to have to do this one the hard, medium-free way.
I looked back at my phone and thought about texting Elliot back, but decided to deal with it later. Preferably after I managed to get an hour or two of sleep, although I was doubtful about how well that would work out. I climbed out of the cruiser, limping as I walked toward the stairs, but then I stopped.
I hadn’t noticed the brown Tundra when I’d pulled in—but I saw it now. Elliot Crane, wearing dark jeans and a heavy fleece jacket, was getting out of the driver’s side door, a brown bag in one hand and an honest-to-God bouquet of flowers in the other.
I gaped at him, my overworked brain incapable of actually forming coherent thoughts.
“Hi,” he said softly, a worried and uncertain half-smile on his lips.
“What are you doing here?” my mouth asked him, not bothering to consult with my brain about whether or not that was the right question to ask. My brain caught up with me, and fear hit. “Did something else happen?”Did another skinned animal corpse get left at your house?
The smile faltered. “No, nothing happened.” Then his eyes narrowed. “Seth… Are you just getting home from work? Fromyesterday?”
I nodded. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I just stood there, joints aching and muscles on the edge of trembling from sheer exhaustion.
“Fuck,” he breathed. “I—I’m sorry.” Then he thrust the bag towards me. “I just—I wanted to bring by a few more ofDad’s remedies. Henry helped me put some of the compounds together, and I thought…” He trailed off.
“Thought what?” I asked, confused. Was this a thank-you for me having stayed over? He’d already given me some of the tea and the cream Henry made.
He shrugged. “Maybe something will help your knee. Or your back.”
Emotion hit the back of my throat, and I had to swallow several times. It touched me—a lot—that he wanted to try to help me, whether it worked or not. Especially because I knew he hadn’t really been keeping up with his dad’s herbal business.
Or maybe now he was going to?
It wasn’t like we’d had an extended conversation about it after I’d yelled at him about the digitalis.
“Thanks,” I managed, automatically reaching for the bag.
He handed it to me, and I took it. The paper of the bag felt weird in my hands, my whole body seemingly hypersensitive because of nerves and exhaustion. To say nothing of the adrenaline his being here had sent surging through my ragged system.
“There’s dried lion’s mane powder, star anise oil, turmeric and black pepper, powdered ginger, thyme, cloves… Mostly powdered and in vegan capsules.” He shrugged. “Maybe none of it will help, but I thought maybe…”
“I’ll try it,” I assured him. Nothing he’d listed would be a problem, either for my alpha-gal or in terms of interacting weird with anything else. And I could still take Aleve if I needed it.
Elliot nodded, looking down. “And I, uh…” He swallowed, glanced up at me, then held out the flowers. I’d sort of assumed they were for… something else? Someone else. Judy Hart maybe, or… I had no idea. But it hadn’t occurred to me for even one second that they might be for me.
Nobody had ever brought me flowers. I shifted the bag into one arm and accepted them, my hand shaking a little and my mouth too dry to even thank him.
“I—” He stopped, licked his lips. Started again. “I was going to offer to buy you dinner. Or make you dinner. But obviously you weren’t here.”
