Dead Letter Day (10 page)

THE TIMER WENT OFF AND I LOOKED OVER TO WHERE I’D set the stick, covered by a washcloth. I knew if I didn’t cover it, I’d sit there and watch it change. So instead I watched the washcloth over it. Big improvement.

I stood, took a deep breath and lifted the cloth.

Plus. It was a plus. A pink plus. I was pregnant. Suddenly it felt like there was no air in the room. None. It even started to whirl a little. I sat down again.

Maybe I’d gotten confused. Maybe plus meant I wasn’t pregnant. I pulled the box back out of the trash and fumbled the instructions open. Nope. Plus meant preggers. As in I was now plus one, soon to be closer to plus sized, myself plus another.

I put my hand on my stomach, but I felt nothing. It was still flat, taut even, because of how much I worked out. There was no bump, no bulging, no nothing. There was nothing to give me away.

How long would it stay that way? I had no idea. I’d have to figure out how far I was along before I could even begin to answer that question. Surely I had a few weeks, though. A few weeks to think. There were options. I could make a decision that no one had to know about except me. It could be my secret.

That’s when I felt it. My hand was still pressed against the lower part of my stomach. Right where it was pressed, maybe a half inch below my belly button, I felt a flutter like butterfly wings.

I gasped and snatched my hand away. Had I really felt that? Had it really happened? Or was that flutter a product of my overactive imagination?

With equal amounts of hope and dread, I placed my hand against my stomach again. Nothing. I took a deep breath and blew it out. Okay then. I’d imagined it.

Nope. Not my imagination. There it was again. A fluttering, deep inside me. I gripped the edge of the sink and looked at myself hard in the mirror. How could I look so much the same as I always did when everything had changed completely?

TED BUZZED ME IN THE LATE AFTERNOON. “HOW’S IT going?”

“Fine. Great.” Actually, panicked and confused, but I wasn’t quite ready to tell Ted about that yet. I wasn’t ready to tell him anything. I wasn’t sure I had even completely absorbed the news. How was I supposed to break it to him?

“Wow. That was…upbeat.”

Crap. I was overcompensating. Upbeat definitely didn’t describe how I felt. “Any reason I shouldn’t be upbeat?”

“Oh, that you’ve been exhausted lately and threw up in the bushes on our morning run the other day comes to mind, but otherwise, no.” He paused for a second. “Hey, have you looked into those crows at all?”

“No. I haven’t had a chance.” Crows and cows. Weird. I wondered if they were going to be related in any way. I had to look into them. I had been a little distracted by the fact that my life had just taken a turn that would alter its course forever. A baby. How was I going to cope with a baby?

“Do you want to do some sparring tonight?”

That didn’t sound like a good idea, but maybe I was being overcautious. It’s not like anyone ever kicked me in the stomach when sparring, although weird things did happen on occasion. Not with Ted, though. With Ted, sparring was more like a dance. Weird as it might sound, it was often kind of a mating dance with the two of us. Moving together with him, clashing, feinting, twirling. It was hot.

I hadn’t thought about that either. Was that okay for the baby? Surely people didn’t stop making whoopee for the whole nine months, did they? I was going to have to get a book or something. But if I did get a book and accidentally
left it lying around, there would be questions. I wasn’t ready for questions. Mainly because I didn’t have any answers.

The Internet. That was where I needed to go. Nobody ever looked at my browsing history.

“Melina? Are you still there?”

Oh, yeah. Ted had asked me a question. “Would it be okay if we passed on that tonight? I want to get a little more rest.”

“No problem. Should I meet you at your place? I could bring a pizza,” he offered in his best wheedling voice.

Pizza. I love pizza. I practically live on pizza. That was probably not appropriate nutrition for a baby, though. “I thought maybe a salad might be nice.”

“Just a salad?” Ted sounded horrified.

It did sound kind of horrible. “How about pizza and salad?”

He sighed. “I think I could live with that.”

We hung up, but I sat there for a while staring at the phone. I was going to have to tell Ted. If there was anyone who deserved to know, it was Ted.

But not yet. I knew my man. I knew exactly what he would do. That boy would be down on one knee proposing before I finished stammering out the word pregnant. It was simply the kind of man he was.

How on earth did I end up with such a Boy Scout as my baby daddy? The universe certainly had a sense of humor.

THE SALAD WASN’T ANYWHERE NEAR AS BAD AS I’D thought it might be although I was glad it wasn’t the only thing on my plate. Ted apparently felt the same.

“I like this,” he said. “We could eat more healthy. It wouldn’t take much.”

I hoped he was right. It was everything I could do to keep my hand from straying to my stomach to see how the baby was enjoying the influx of green leafy vegetables. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. I don’t think we have to go full Norah, but we could slide closer to her on the continuum.”

Ted took a bite of pizza and chewed it, a thoughtful look on his face. “I’m not giving up coffee.”

Damn. Coffee. I was going to have to look that up, too. Could I have it at all? Of course, just because I was pregnant didn’t mean that Ted couldn’t have whatever he wanted. Being a man is a total racket. They get away with everything. “I wouldn’t dream of asking you to give up your beloved caffeine,” I said.

He arched a brow at me. “You’re thinking about giving it up?”

“We’ll see.” I shrugged.

“And the crows? You find out anything about them?” Ted took another bite of his pizza.

I hadn’t. I’d been too busy trying to figure out what I was supposed to eat or not eat and what other restrictions I might have. “I’ll look tomorrow. I promise. Why are you so keen on finding out about them anyway?” Crows were totally my phobia, not his.

He shrugged. “I keep seeing them around.”

“It is the fall. It’s kind of that time of year.”

“I know, but I keep seeing two of them and those two are freaking huge. It’s probably nothing. Oh, I did find some interesting bits and pieces in the police blotters,” he said.

My head shot up. “What does that mean?” I was usually the one firing off the cryptic replies.

“It means there are a few things that jumped out at me, but nothing definitive.” He leaned back on the couch, clearly enjoying his moment in the sun.

“Care to elaborate?”

He sighed and sat back in his chair, stretching those long legs in front of him. “I’m not sure there’s anything to elaborate on. Some woman surprised two burglars in her garage and one growled at her.”

“That’s it?” I suppose growling isn’t typical among burglars, but it didn’t amount to much.

“Well, on that one. There’s another report about an officer chasing someone down an alley.”

“Another vicious growling incident?”

“No. This time someone got bit.” Ted sat back up and took another piece of pizza.

“The cop bit the guy?” Now that surprised me. They have clubs and Tasers and guns, for Pete’s sake. Why bite a guy?

“Other way around.” He shot me a look.

Ohhh. “And?”

He took another piece of pizza. There were still two left in the box. I hoped that would be enough. I was suddenly really hungry. “And I don’t know. I tried to call the cop who got bitten and he’s off duty. They put him on leave.”

“For a bite?” It sure didn’t take much to draw a disability check, did it?

“I’m looking into it, Melina, but it makes me uneasy.”

I thought about it for a minute. “Well, it wasn’t Paul, right?” Could Paul be going rogue? It seemed so unlikely that I hadn’t really considered it before. He had to be at least a little angry at how the Pack was treating him. After years and years of dutiful service, he gets a girlfriend they don’t like and suddenly they’re demanding he rethink his priorities. I could see where that could cheese a guy off. But was it enough to have him turn his back on them completely? And even if he did, why bite a cop? It didn’t seem like anything but trouble could come from munching on the local constabulary.

“I doubt it, but I can’t be sure. The guy got away. The cop seemed certain that he at least winged him, but nobody has turned up in the emergency rooms with any kind of bullet wound.”

“A regular old bullet wouldn’t make a wound bad enough for a werewolf to end up in the emergency room, not unless it was made of silver. Especially not if he only winged him.”

“I know. Still we’ve got a missing werewolf and somebody running around biting cops and growling at citizens.” Ted ran his hands through his hair.

When he put it like that, it didn’t sound good.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“No, but there are a lot of holes in the report. I was thinking of making a little trip to visit the cop who was bitten and maybe even the lady who was growled at and see what I can find out.”

That was a great idea. A cop would be observant and able to report back details that could help us. “Let’s go together.”

He hesitated.

I didn’t like the look on his face. “What?”

“You can be a little…confrontational in an interview situation.” He winced a little as he said it, as if I’d already punched him in the arm.

I wiggled a little closer to him. “I swear, I’ll keep my mouth shut and let you do all the talking. I’ll be able to sense if there’s anything hinky going on on the paranormal front, though. You won’t have a clue.”

“True that,” he said. “Fine. But you follow my lead, okay?”

I held my hands up in front of me. “You’re the boss.”

He grabbed my wrists and pulled me over on top of him on the couch. “Ooh. I like it when you say that. Say it again.”

Fire flooded through me and I leaned down and kissed him hard, pizza breath and all. “You’re the boss.”

“Mmmmm,” he murmured, sliding his hands up the back of my shirt and popping the fastening of my bra. “Again.”

“You. Are. The. Boss.” With each word, I undid one button of his shirt, which left me with two still fastened. I unbuttoned those for good measure.

Then my shirt was off over my head and he began kissing his way down from my neck to my chest.

“Boss,” I murmured.

Then I stopped talking.

“YOU LOOK CONTENT,” NORAH SAID AS I STUMBLED INTO the kitchen the next morning.

I felt content. My man knew his business—and apparently mine—quite well. “You’re looking well yourself, my friend,” I said and plopped down on one of the kitchen stools.

“You want coffee?” she offered, holding out the pot.

I shook my head. “No thanks. I think I’ll have some tea.” The information I’d found on the Internet about being pregnant was pretty confusing, with each piece of guidance seemingly contradicting the piece I’d just read. Cutting down on caffeine didn’t seem to be a bad idea, though.

I got up and pulled a mug out of the cabinet and started rummaging through the collection of boxes in there. Sleepytime. Nope. I’d been sleepy enough, thank you. Tension Tamer. I believe that was what Ted had provided last night. Morning Thunder. Sounded dangerous. Ah. I Love Lemon. I hadn’t seen anything about the inherent dangers of lemon to pregnant women. I went with that.