Among the Living (Tyler G Book 1) (9 page)

Tyler realized, after about ten
minutes of explanation, which involved Tara walking out and being introduced,
that his mother was freaking cool. On a level that he'd never actually noticed
about her before. She'd always been there for him, and while there were rules
to living with her, they'd never been unreasonable things. Keeping the place
clean, so they didn't get typhoid or diphtheria, which wasn't that high of a
bar. When he'd been in school she'd asked, politely, that he keep the highest
grades that he could manage.

That kind of thing.

Now, with a sudden and totally
unexpected girl coming out of his bedroom, she acted like it was
normal
.
Even the fact that Tara had solid blood red eyes, and more teeth than was
strictly attractive didn't set her back. His mother was just nice about it.

That meant he was back to sleep
about half an hour later, and while he was making plans to get out of the house
as soon as he could manage, that wasn't going to have to be the next morning.

Still, the sofa was lumpy, and
built in such a way that the cushions hit him with a seam right in the lower
back. He did have the pillow from his bed, since he normally had two of them
which he traded off. It was, he figured, the kind of thing that happened when
you had guests. You took only one of the comfortable sleeping aids, and left
the rest for them, even if they didn't need it. It meant getting up late
though, for him.

Without enough sleep too. Not
good quality rest. He wasn't stiff or sore in any case, which was good. It
would have sucked to get up at five-thirty and have a sore neck.

He moved quietly, since his
mother was asleep for certain. Tara, when he looked in on her, was dead, on his
bed. Lying flat and unmoving. It was eerie, and not all that attractive. That
was a bit of a surprise, since given his total lack of history with having a
woman alone for any length of time, Ty would have figured that he'd be more
into at least staring at her like a freak.

Instead he was actually kind of
nervous about it. Not that the woman, who looked to be in her early twenties
right now and was probably a lot older than his mother was, had done anything
wrong. It just turned out that suggestions from Ginger the day before aside, he
wasn't that into molesting corpses.

"Good to know." That
was muttered, but sounded happy enough.

It took a bit to really get
ready, since he realized that he needed to take a full day of supplies with
him, which meant carrying it all on a run. That meant he needed his comb, a
towel, the clothing he was wearing that day, food and water. Because he didn't
really want to smell like banana all day, that meant wrapping the fruit he was
taking up in a large black plastic garbage bag.

 His clothing went in another
one, since having it soaked with sweat wasn't going to help him. It meant,
after hurrying a bit and feeling a bit like warmed over crap, that he was able
to get out of the house at about six.

It was fifteen miles to
Westfield, and because he was him, instead of a normal person, that meant going
carefully, trying to keep an eye out for trouble, and measuring his pace. Ty
controlled where his feet went, and didn't over extend at all as he moved, his
soles hitting directly in the center. They weren't really picked up much
either, giving him a very smooth quality that a lot of people would have
probably described as shuffling.

It was efficient, and if not very
fast, let him keep going over a distance that most wouldn't have made. This was
a bit farther than he normally went, so he was feeling decent about himself as
he got to the mall. Enough so that he went to the central entrance, rather than
the one closest to him. The large wooden overhang that covered the glass doors
looked nice, though it had fish carvings in it. He'd never been that big on
fish, as decorations. It wasn't a deal breaker for him in life, but he much
preferred the owl decor in the node transportation area.

In the store there was no one
visible when he got in, even though it was kind of late already. Before nine,
but just a bit. That meant hurrying into the back, where the showers were kept.
There were three of them, and none were in use yet, so he took the closest one
to the door. It was open on one side, not having any way to close it. No
curtain or anything. The white and blue tile wrapped around however, so that no
one could just see in, which was probably safe enough. After all, he didn't
really
care
if anyone saw him naked.

Ty might be a bit thin, but he
was also lean, which meant he had good abs.

It wasn't a point anyway, and ten
minutes of rapid scrubbing later he was able to find the sign in cards, which
were over to the side along the wall on his left when he faced the front. There
was a fridge in the back too, along with a single wooden rolling book cart that
needed to be emptied. They'd had more than that, but the rest had already been
taken care of.

He hit the floor hard, sweeping
first thing, since the wooden tile floor needed to be cared for constantly. It
was clean, but there was dust to be removed, even after a single night. Then
there was store straightening, and getting the last cart in the back onto the
shelves.

People did come in, even if it
was early, but almost none of them even pretended to look at books. No, they
made a straight line for the cafe in the back. The smell from the place made
him hungry. Oh, he only ate fruit and veggies, with a bit of whole grain, like
rice or bulgur wheat, as a rule. Eggs too, on occasion, though not often. That didn't
mean his nose was broken. He could see why people wanted to eat there.

It wasn't a lot of people, but
over the course of about an hour, ten or so came in. Four of them were men and
women that he could tell were Alede. They
all
leaked sex, lust and
desire constantly. Interestingly, they all ate, too. He'd kind of thought they
only fed off of sex energy.

One of them, a very good looking
man in a suit that was perfectly fitting, came up to him when he was finished
with his delectable meal.

"Tyler! You're here early.
How are things going? Settling in all right?" There was a gleam to the
man's eyes, and he seemed to be teasing him for some reason.

Probably because Alede could
change gender, and they'd met the day before. The guy didn't look like any of
the women. He had black hair, and pale white skin. Other than that and looking
like a male model if they were perfect, there was no way to tell which he was.
So Tyler didn't guess.

He put his hand out to shake
though, because they were both men and it was a professional setting.

"Hi! Um, which one are
you?" It was rude sounding, or could have been, but it turned out he was
right.

The man winked at him and gave a
single dry pump to his hand. Professional rather than slutty.

"Rob. I was
Roberta
last night. Not a bad call, realizing that we've met. Anyway, early in the day
I work over at the Alede embassy. Pretty Plus, across the way? If you get a
chance you should visit us over there later. Believe it or not, we can use some
help, on occasion, from someone that isn't going to need to run off and have
sex six times a day. You'll want to talk to Valerie, if you can't find
me."

It was actually a nice offer, so Ty
smiled. He felt uneasy as hell around the female Alede, but Rob here wasn't
battering him too badly. It was a little bit odd, really. He was at
least
as attractive as a man after all. The difference wasn't coming from inside
himself then, but rather from the person in front of him.

"That sounds like an idea,
if I ever get the time? What kind of things do you need done?" Rather than
go into sexual positions, the man pulled his hand back all the way, as he
thought for a moment.

"A lot of it is working with
certain members of the public. We can control ourselves, most of the time, but
on rare occasion, say dealing with local officials, or some of the other
groups, being us is a detriment. For instance, the Trollienkeine can barely
stand us. It's a scent thing, and not one we can really control for them."

That got him to nod.

"Oh. I don't know what that
kind of person is."

"Trollienkeine? The power lifting
gym folk. Basically they're bigfoot, more or less. If you look closely you'll
see that they all have to shave off most of their body hair, daily. Really,
it's a bit of a shame that they aren't wild about my people. I mean, could you
imagine playing your hands over..." Then the man stopped and winked again.

The whole thing was a bit
overdone.

"So things do come up like
that. As a Human you're kind of a free agent here. A neutral party. That means
you can do things like that, which might be hard if one of the other groups has
to be called in."

Tyler didn't agree instantly, in
case it was a trick or trap, but he couldn't imagine what that would be.

Which was the point. Polite, and
careful, seemed to be the watchwords for the day, as far as he could tell.

"I'll look into it? That's
nice of you to offer, thanks."

That got him a pat on the arm
that was clearly a bit of a come on, unless he was just so backward he couldn't
tell the difference between that kind of thing and being normally friendly. He
was shy though, not autistic. That being the case he made a point of smiling at
the man, as he watched him walk away. That meant staring at his rather tight
looking ass, which had him thinking about having sex with it.

"So, at
least
bi." He muttered that just as another of those people, this Alede being
female and familiar walking by without comment. Oh, she
looked
at him,
so he recognized her as Ivy from the day before, and while she was dressed in
work clothing, it was all tight in the right place. He noticed that too.
"Definitely not gay."

Then, he decided, shaking his
head a bit that paying attention to what everyone had told him before was a
good idea. It could be
really
easy to let himself do nothing but be
preoccupied with sex at the bookstore. That didn't get the work done.

Not that it was all that hard
after that. He seemed to be nearly alone in the shop itself, and hadn't seen a
coworker yet. He
had
made one whole sale by himself, for a woman that
wanted a magazine about cakes. Other than that, he cleaned. At eleven, to his
surprise, Kait came in, looking a bit nerdy, in a way that was far too sexy to
actually count if you were paying attention.

Really, for all that she was
clearly dressed down, and trying to not be a sex goddess at the moment, she failed.
Pulling his mind away, he waved to her, which got a shining smile.

"Ty! You came back.
Excellent. I wasn't sure. I thought you might be offended by us." There
was a wave at herself then, as if she might be the cause of him running away in
terror.

It might be a good plan, but it
was probably too hard to get done, fleeing from her like that. He felt
drawn
,
to tell the truth. Like he wanted to touch her. It took an act of will to fight
the feeling off. That happened with a laugh.

"Nope. I'm trying to be good
and put work first, that's all. I
do
appreciate you helping out, by
not..." He waved and smiled, not even blushing at her too much. It
occurred to him that he had no way to describe what he was getting at.

The woman did, and her smile
gleamed at him.

"For not stripping you of
free will?"

Making a considering face, he
nodded at her.

"That would be it. Yes. So,
thanks for the support that way?"

She started to move in, to hug
him, he thought, but held off, her eyes going a bit wide.

"It's
brutally
hard for
us. Everything we do is wrapped up in sex. It takes a level of mastery not to
do that kind of thing that is really rare, actually. We're... The people at our
embassy, are better at it than most. It does help if we can have sex regularly.
This place is good that way. Especially since we came out. That was
frightening. We kind of thought that we might all be killed, but people just
want to have sex, which is a good thing for us." The girl seemed chatty,
and looked around at the empty store. "It will really start at about noon.
Are we switching off rooms for cleaning like yesterday?"

Tyler took a second to think, and
then nodded. It was a lot of work, trying to get that done constantly, but
letting the rooms smell like sex booths at a porn theater wasn't a great thing,
as far as he was concerned. Not that
he'd
been to a place like that. Luckily
he was well read, so had a clue that things like that existed.

"That's the plan. So, what
am I supposed to be doing that I'm not? Clerking, stocking, and sex room
tidying..." He glanced around, thinking he was doing well, but the girl
patted his arm, sending a thrill of desire for her down it. It made him stiffen
in his pants, and glare at her a bit. Playfully. She
did
pull her hand
back suddenly.

"Oops. Sorry about that.
Have you talked to Palma yet? She probably doesn't need help, but it never
hurts to ask. Other than that, and keeping an eye out for people that come
here, when they actually want node travel services next door, that's about
it." Then she looked up, since a man walked into the store. They locked
eyes, and without speaking to boring old him anymore, the freakishly hot woman
drifted from behind the counter.