Point one five rules und.., p.20
Point One Five (Rules Undying Book 4), page 20
“What was your name before you became Billy Black?” Gail asked.
“How did you phrase it, Javier? It’s lost to the winds of history,” Billy said. “If we survive to have another generation in this pack, I get to decide the new tradition of names. I also need to think of one for Paige, but she doesn’t even know our traditions really, and it’s been so crazy since she bit Irvine that I’ve never had the chance.”
“Ahh yes, the wee loba that is now my best amigo’s bride. Oh, she’s killed a bloodsucker? I bet that went over well on the honeymoon,” Javier said.
“It was a Lung who decided to invade Vegas, so I’m pretty sure that was OK—”
“That tiny little thing killed a Lung?” Javier said, before letting out a whistle.
“Yes, not everything is as helpless as it appears to be,” Rikuto piped in, giving a piercing look at Javier. Silence fell across the camper.
“I think it’s Gail’s turn,” Billy said with a little cough.
“How can I tell a story if my memories have been erased?” she asked. “Do you want to hear about how boring my life was before I found out that it just wasn’t?”
“You could tell us about that tattoo, no?” Javier asked, pointing to her wrist.
“Oh, this story begins as many tattoo stories do, with a great deal of alcohol and a heart full of young love,” she said, daring to give a sly smile. All of the boys leaned in. Gail pointed to some faint red marks around the thorns. “It used to say Kris and Gail 4 ever. Obviously, it was not, so I paid an arm and a leg to have it fixed but I kept the rose because, well, roses are pretty.”
Billy, Rikuto, and Javier all exchanged looks. Gail let out a deep sigh and blurted out, “He fucked my cousin in a Denny’s bathroom. There is no coming back from that blue-plate special.”
All of them burst into laughter. Javier gave a little salute. “And I believe Gail wins this round. In all my years, I have never heard of such folly.”
“We’re almost there,” Sam called from the driver’s seat. “I really hope you guys have a plan.”
21
“You know, of all the places in all the world I thought we would end up . . . this never quite occurred to me,” Gail said as the caravan pulled to the curb. She squinted to see the sign for her apartment complex just down the street.
“If you are really planning on being our distraction, then we need to start setting the trap,” Rikuto said. “Still, if they are really watching—”
“Have a little faith in mi amor,” Javier said, leaning across the seat to squeeze Gail’s shoulder.
“But what if the vampires—” Williams said with a gulp.
“I will be right behind her,” Javier said.
“Are you kidding?” Williams exclaimed. “They will—”
“No one will notice me. Trust me. I learned from the best, and before you lob hombres start your growling, I already gave you my word that I would help you steal your stuff, so can we skip the drama.”
“You can’t just have her walk to her apartment. You know that they will be watching,” Billy said.
Javier gave a little wink. He twirled his hand and produced a phone out of thin air. Billy growled as he recognized the case.
“Your rideshare is less than one minute out, mi amor.”
“How?” Billy gasped as Javier tossed the phone back to the stunned werewolf.
Javier gave a flippant salute before leaning further to open the side door. “You better get going.”
The guys watched, gobsmacked, as Javier and Gail hopped out onto the sidewalk. Javier led the way as a sensible beige sedan pulled to the curb. The vampire had a few quick words with the driver before motioning Gail over.
“Just sit quietly in the back and this lovely young man will take you home. You picked her up from an apartment across town, didn’t you?”
The driver stared, glassy-eyed through the windshield. He nodded slowly. Javier smiled and gave Gail a little wink.
“They will see you stumble home, drunk, nothing more. I’ll be right behind you in a few minutes.”
“Oh, my god, I don’t have my phone or my car,” she moaned. She quickly fondled her right boob and let out a sigh of relief as her ID and remaining cash popped out. She shuffled over to leftie to slip out her keys.
“All in good time.”
“But how will I even get to work?”
“Leave that to me,” he said before giving her a quick kiss. “Now go, before our driver starts getting the idea that something is up.”
Gail gave a little nod and took her ridiculously short ride home. The driver kept his eyes forward, even as she slipped out the door to open her little pedestrian gate. She turned back once to sort of awkwardly wave, but the Uber had already pulled away. She scanned the parking lot, but no mysterious dark sedans lurked in the visitor parking. It was only as she looped around the building to her own apartment that her heart skipped a beat. She stopped cold as she saw a familiar black muscle car in her spot.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered. She saw a light in her living room window.
A shadow flickered in the corner of her view. A hand clapped over her mouth just before she could scream. “Never fear, mi amor,” Javier whispered in her ear. “But we seem to have a complication, no?
“Jesus Christ!”
“Guess again, although we do share a haircut.”
Gail cracked her knuckles and nodded. “No, this is good. If I can’t sell this to Jonathan alone, I don’t stand a chance distracting them tomorrow,” she said quickly.
Javier looked around cautiously. “I don’t know. He may not be alone.”
“Trust me, if the Dean brothers are in town, Stan is too busy being Lori’s little bitch to come out here. I dunno, my gut tells me that Jonathan would try to handle this alone. He . . .”
“Likes you?”
Gail raised a brow at Javier’s sudden change of tone. “No, he feels like he owes me, but I will admit, the jealous vibe is kinda cute, Javier. Damn it, how am I going to signal for help without a phone, though?”
“My hearing is better than yours and I’m going to be on the patio. Call out and I’ll be there. Just find an excuse to unlock the door so I don’t have to be all dramatic and jump through glass. Unless, of course, that would impress you, and then, please, leave it locked.”
“Are all vampires as strange as you, Javier?”
“I—”
“I know, you cannot say,” Gail muttered as she took a deep breath and stretched her trembling hand towards the door. Javier blew her a kiss before ducking around the corner. “No kick-ass romance heroine would be like this, woman,” she chided herself before slipping the key into the lock. “Be cool.”
All semblance of being chill, however, vanished the moment she slipped open the door. She barely choked out a horrified squeak as she saw boxer shorts hanging from her kitchen cabinets and the various pieces of a revolver scattered across her coffee table.
“What the shit?” she cried as Jonathan looked up from his handiwork. A moment later, the TV echoed with the distinctive refrain of the Police Academy theme. She blinked a few times as she saw him shirtless. “Are those my yoga pants?”
“Gail! I can explain. Holy crap, you’re all right—”
“Do I smell . . . cinnamon?”
“Yeah, I made snickerdoodles. Where have you been? The company was about to fill out a missing persons’ report.” Jonathan winced as he pushed to his feet. He limped around his duffle bag and a couple of empties to get a better look at the stunned Gail. Her jaw dropped again as she saw yet another terrible bruise on his chest.
“I was hungover and at a—” she stopped as her oven alarm went off. She didn’t skip a beat wandering over the kitchen, grabbing a potholder, and yanking a tray of golden discs out of the oven. She glared at a monumental pile of dishes in her sink and more laundry draped over the washer and her doorknobs. “Why did you break into my apartment and make snickerdoodles?”
“When I get stressed, I bake, and you didn’t have any chocolate chips.”
“Oh, that makes sense,” she muttered. “And the Batman boxers on my spice cabinet?”
“Heat sets bloodstains, and your dryer was shit on airdry.”
Gail simply nodded and mouthed, “I see.”
“We were called by the office since you called out on Friday just to check in on you. I waited most of yesterday before I let myself in—”
“I see,” she repeated a wee bit louder. “Were you worried about me?”
“I texted a few times, even called and you didn’t respond. Stan and the boss man went looking for you and told me to wait here in case you came back.”
“This is my life now,” she whispered as she methodically loaded the dishwasher, grabbed a snickerdoodle, and then sat on the couch watching crazy police recruits and their unbelievable hijinks while Jonathan cleaned his gun and a vampire waited on her patio. “Yeah, I need some air.”
She wandered over to the side door and flipped the lock. She then pressed her forehead to the glass. “On second thought, I’m gonna clean up a bit.”
“You need help?” he offered weakly.
“No, you should be resting.”
She snagged his clothes and folded the dry ones, then tossed the damp ones into her dryer. “You have to set it for extra-long,” she called to the living room. “What am I doing?” she muttered. She wadded up his damn underwear and let out a frustrated growl.
She grabbed more cookies before storming back to the sofa. She raised a finger and summoned her best glare, but devolved into giggles as she saw the Blue Oyster bar onscreen. Jonathan snickered, too.
“You can’t get too mad when Police Academy is on, right?” he asked weakly. “Just look me in the eyes and tell me you’re OK.”
“Only if you can do the same, Jonathan,” Gail muttered as she kept her gaze on the carpet. “Look, I don’t need to discuss my bad decisions with you any more than you need to discuss yours with me, right? Also, these are really good. I kinda need the recipe.”
“My pain meds were still in your bathroom,” he confessed. “And Stan—”
“Lori?” Gail sighed.
“Lori.” He sighed right back. They watched the movie and nibbled on cookies for a few glorious minutes before Jonathan dared to clear his throat. “This is awkward and bizarre, isn’t it?”
Gail slumped in her seat. “Maybe this is actually normal and all the boring shit is awkward and bizarre?” she asked. “You really staked out my apartment just to make sure I was OK?”
“I also did laundry, dosed up on meds, and baked cookies,” he added. They still avoided eye contact.
“You just think that you have the right to come here without my permission? Do you think I’ll just forget about this or something?” she asked coldly.
Jonathan kept staring at the movie. He took his time putting his gun back together and carefully packing it into his bag. Then he gave Gail a pained sideways glance. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Is there something you want to ask?” she fired right back.
This time the doorbell cut her off. She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “I ordered pizza,” he said.” She wandered off to get it from the delivery boy and Jonathan tossed her a five for the tip. She did smile as she saw chicken, bacon, and ranch drizzled on the pie.
“It’s your fave, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You been scoping out my order history at Gino’s, too?”
“Um, no, last time we had it you made noises that would make a porn star blush, that’s all. Hey, you wanna just eat and watch movies tonight or do you want to . . . want to . . . well, really talk, cause I’m guessing that you have something to say.”
“I dunno yet, but I’ll get plates and napkins.”
She stared at her quaint little kitchen – at the kitty magnets on her fridge and the neat stacks of plain white dishes in her cabinets. She surveyed the perfect, mass-market order of it all, and her rows upon rows of romance novels filling her shelves. Her hand trembled as she took out the plates. Her lip quivered as she saw a Biogenesys Labs pen resting on a matching pad on her counter.
“Gail?” Jonathan asked softly.
“Coming,” she said as she wandered back into her den. Jonathan finally looked her right in the eyes. She returned the same forlorn stare, but continued to quietly dish up dinner. Only after they had both wiped their mouths and watched all the way through the end of the credits did she finally dare speak.
“Was the gun . . . for me?” she whispered.
Jonathan shook his head. “No, they want you alive . . . but I was afraid you’d have friends with you.”
“You shouldn’t have been cleaning it, then,” she muttered.
Jonathan shifted in his seat and pulled a second revolver out from under her cushion. “That was the spare, babe,” he said as he plunked the other gun right back onto her table. “We gonna do this now?”
“What happens if I tell the truth?” she asked softly.
“Then I call my boss and a cleanup crew sweeps in. I promised him that if you told me anything suspicious, I’d get it straightened out, but if you were just out drinking and being generally stupid—”
“I got roofied and had a killer hangover. Thank goodness the guys were more interested in seeing if they could get away with it than actually getting away with anything,” she said quickly.
“That’s what I thought. You just had a stupid night out with friends in town,” he said quite a bit louder, while casting a suspicious side glance to her lamp. He then lounged against the cushions. “Hey, I think they have Police Academy II and III on here, too.”
“Awesome, crank it up. I love Bobcat Goldwaith’s voice,” she said as she took the dishes back and snagged the pen and paper on her way back. She scribbled “Why?” just under her latest grocery list.
Jonathan took his time and set up the movie. Finally, he grabbed the pen and scratched “because I owe you” in terrible left-handed slanted script. “So you know?”
Gail nodded but didn’t say a word. Jonathan grimaced, then buried his face in his hands. Finally, he looked over at the tattoo on her wrist. “What is it with you girls and getting flowers for tattoos?” he asked.
“Flowers are pretty, I dunno?”
“It’s a rose. Lotta rose tattoos,” he said, staring off into space.
“Roses are pretty, and they have thorns if you’re not careful,” she said, giving him a perplexed look.
“Eh, roses are wimps if you ask me. You get them a little too cold . . . a little too hot . . . or, hell, the soil is just not right and, poof, they die. You know what flower I admire?”
“What?”
“Dandelions,” he said flatly.
“Dandelions?” Gail scribbled a few extra questions marks on her shopping list for added effect. “You like weeds?”
“Dandelions are badasses, Gail. I had a . . . girlfriend who once said that she got a dandelion tattoo because even though they were common and looked down upon, they could shatter concrete with their roots. One day, we will all be gone, and all that will be left—”
“Is dandelions and rubble,” Gail finished. “I mean, that seems like something awesome to say, right?”
“I dunno, I just remembered that. It’s probably the last concussion.”
Gail rolled her eyes and did a cursory check of the ever-wounded Dean brother. As she stared at her reflection in his eyes, her head swirled for a moment. She stared at her wrist again and looked at the scarring around her rose. For the briefest of moments, she saw little flecks trailing up her arm, like the seeds from a puffball trailing towards her elbow.
“Well, roses may be wimpy, but they are prized and rare. Dandelions are everywhere,” Gail muttered softly.
“You know, I heard once that there were pink dandelions,” he said, studying her face. Gail just raised her eyebrow and stared expectantly.
“Damn it, nothing,” Jonathan muttered under his breath.
“What was that?”
“You don’t ever feel like something is familiar, but you can’t quite piece it together? Then you sort of walk away and boom, the realization hits you what you’ve forgotten?” Jonathan asked.
“All the damn time for the first part, but I don’t get too many of the boom moments, sorry.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, too. Hey, thanks again for always looking out for me. You really don’t need to keep patching me up, Gail.”
“Yeah, yeah, I do,” she said. “I’m gonna turn in – work tomorrow and all that.”
“Yeah, lotta work tomorrow.”
She walked to the doorway to her bedroom and gave a quick peek to see her room was indeed in order and there were no more surprises. She closed her eyes and found herself blushing. Jonathan perked up.
“Hey, did you—?” he asked.
“I just imagined your underwear on my cabinets,” she said with a shudder. “Oh, can you give me a ride in tomorrow, and possibly out to pick up my car later?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, his face falling more and more by the second. Just as she was about to slip away, he finally spoke up. “You know what is worse than not remembering something important?”
“What?”
“Remembering something important,” he muttered mysteriously.
Gail rolled her eyes and slid into her room. As she leaned against her door she could barely hear, “That the other person still doesn’t.”
22
“Pink dandelions? Really?” she muttered as she puttered around her room until she finally dared to slide open the lock on the other door to her little patio. “And I thought you were weird, Javier.”
“These are not mutually exclusive statements, mi amor,” Javier whispered as he slipped into her room. He padded across her floor with nary a sound, even with a plastic leg. Gail watched, confused as the nightlight flickered and a slight hum buzzed in her ears.
The vampire lifted up the skirt on her bed and smiled broadly as he saw a clear resting place under her boxspring. “Act natural,” he muttered before slipping underneath.
Gail carefully lay down. “Is this natural enough?” she hissed.
