“It was terrible wine,” said Grandma with dignity, “so I felt obliged to save the rest of you.” She pushed the door open. Selena made sure that she got inside safely, then led Copper toward home.
This could work. This could actuallywork.At least until I figure out something that might work better.
Behind her, faintly, she could hear a cracked voice warbling, “They will find the streets are guaaaarded ... by United States Marines!”
Chapter 16
It was dark in the room, but there was a low red light coming from somewhere, the light of banked embers or the memory of a fire. The man who held her had a long, angular face and his skin was brown, but not the way that human skin was brown. It was mottled with white, the color of dust, and when she ran her hand down his arm, it felt sleek as feathers.
This was familiar. This was right. They’d done this before, hadn’t they? He wasn’t a stranger, certainly.
He kissed her, and that was familiar too, and very good. Except ...
There was a thought inside her head. She tried to ignore it, to lose herself in the heat of the moment, but it was as prickly as a cactus spine, working its way deeper, desperate to be known.
She didn’t want to think it. She wanted this to last a little longer, this frisson of skin against skin, answering a craving she’d almost forgotten she had. But the thought was insistent and at last she drew back and looked up and met her lover’s eyes.
They were brown and gold, with a moon-white band around the pupils.
Selena stared into them and it finally clicked where she’d seen eyes like that before.
She swallowed, the heat in her blood turning cold and sluggish.
“Snake-Eater? Is that you?”
Her dream lover cocked his head to one side, birdlike, lizardlike, and Selena knew that she was right even before he said, “Yes, of course.” His voice was familiar in her ears, as if she’d heard it before, though she couldn’t remember where.
“Ah.” Now that she was looking, of course, it was obvious. That sleek mottled dust skin and the inhuman angularity of his face. The moon-banded eyes.
She inched back on the bed. Was it still her bed? She could feel the blankets under her fingers, but the red lighting was strange and indirect and Copper was no longer at the foot of it.
This no longer felt entirely like a dream.
“Selena?” He drew her name out in a caress. No one had ever said her name like that before, with a growling note to it. “What is wrong?”
What’s wrong is that you’re a ... a god of large birds! I am not fucking a bird god!
... Again?She could only remember the edges of other dreams, but she had a horrible feeling that it might beagain.
I suppose Aunt Amelia did say that he was lonely,she thought, and had to choke off the urge to laugh hysterically.
Snake-Eater reached for her again. Selena put up her hands to ward him off. “Ah—uh—so you knew my aunt Amelia, then?”
He cocked his head the other way. There was a streak of color at the corner of each eye, and she suspected that if the light had been different, it would have shown blue. “Yes, of course. I loved her, but she has gone away and would not stay with me. But now you have taken her place, as her kin, and I love you instead.”
That, as one of Selena’s past therapists would have said, was a lot to process. She inched back again, hoping to find the edge of the bed, but it seemed to keep going. “Ah. Hmm. I’m ... err ... flattered, but ... I don’t really know you?”
Snake-Eater looked blank. “What else is there to know?”
Maybe if you were a god of roadrunners, you didn’t have much time for hobbies. She cast around desperately for something to say.“My aunt ... um ... said that you were very sweet when she was ill. Maybe we could share some memories? Of her?” said Selena hopefully.
Sweetwas not really the term she wanted to apply to the figure in front of her. Actually, she could see the appeal. Snake-Eater had a body that could have come off the cover of one of Grandma Billy’s romance novels. He looked very, very male.
Very. Extremely.
I didn’t know birds evenhadthose parts.
“She was not ill. Her strength wore away,” said Snake-Eater.
