Shadow & Soul (11 page)

What he felt when he saw the way she was loved, and the way she was so comfortable and assured in that love, was just…lack.

“That’s fucked up. Your life doesn’t suck at all. You have a great life.”

Instead of feeling guilty, she got pissed right back. “What do you know about it?”

“I know you have a mom and dad who love you, and a house with your own room, and a car of your own, and you do pretty much what you want and have pretty much what you want. I know that much. Trust me—that isn’t a life that sucks.”

Her anger evaporated. “Okay. It’s not always so great, though.”

He couldn’t stay mad, either. Not at her. “I know. Sorry I jumped down your throat. I’m just saying—could be worse.”

“Yeah. It makes me sad that yours was.”

He shrugged and put his arm back around her. “What do we do now?”

“You’re not running?”

It was too late to run. “No. But Blue is going to take me apart when I tell him. Even if he doesn’t kill me, I’ll probably lose my patch.” He tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was something different. “I don’t even have the thing sewn on yet.”

“Don’t tell him. Not yet.”

“You want to wait?” That was the wisest course. It made him feel sick, though, now, after he’d given in and knew what it was like to love her. He wasn’t sure he could go back to avoiding her.

But she shook her head. “No. I don’t want to wait. I just don’t want to say anything.”

“You want to sneak? To lie?” Demon was well acquainted with sneaking and lying—it was how he’d survived a lot of things he’d had to survive—but he didn’t want to start his life in the club that way.

“Just until I’m eighteen. He’ll still be pissed then, but there’ll be less he can do about it. I don’t want you to get hurt—and I don’t want you to lose your patch. I know what it means. But I don’t want to not see you. If you want to be with me, then I want to be with you. I don’t want to wait. We’ll just have to be careful for a little while.”

“Why? I’m no good. Why do you want this?”

Her smile was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen. “I told you. Because I love you, stupid. You
are
good, and I’m in love with you.”

He believed her. He’d do anything for her.

Even betray a brother.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Faith had felt better once she got back home. Not really thinking it through, just knowing she couldn’t leave him behind again, she’d brought Sly back with her. He’d ridden contently most of the way, curled on her lap, bumping his head on her arm when he’d wanted to be stroked.

He’d been slow and suspicious when she’d set him down on the worn wood floor of her loft, but it was a big, wide-open space with wide, long windows lining two whole walls, so he’d slunk around a while and then found a sill to camp on. She’d run out to the all-night market a couple of blocks down and brought back cat food. He’d dined in mismatched china bowls. All of her dishes were oddball flea market finds. She liked to make mismatched things match.

In the morning, she’d woken with her old cat curled up on her pillow with her, purring, his furry paw on her head, flexing his claws into her ear in a gentle, contented rhythm. She’d lain still and enjoyed that as long as she could.

Just having a shower with her own stuff and putting actual clothes on, her jewelry, doing her hair and makeup—just that made her feel more in control of herself, if not of the new circumstances of her life. Going to Madrone in the middle of the night in ratty sweats had been like going to battle without armor.

Now, though, she was back in the world she knew, out in her life, taking care of her business, and she felt strong again. Protected. A niggling thought had crept in the back door to suggest that she didn’t have to return to Madrone, that her mother’s problems were not her problems, that whatever she and Michael had had was old news and should stay that way, that she could just pretend the past couple of days had never happened and return to her regularly scheduled programming.

But that was impossible, too. She couldn’t know what was going on and stay away. Her mother was cold and could be cruel, and Faith wasn’t sure she deserved her love. But she couldn’t leave that mess to Bibi. Bibi couldn’t do everything.

And now that she’d seen Michael, she had to know.

So, dressed in one of her favorite outfits, wearing her very favorite studded combat boots, looking hot and feeling strong, Faith began to take the steps that would, if necessary, close up the life she’d built for herself, by herself, so she could go home to a place she’d never lived and take care of a mother who didn’t want her.

She’d gone down to Slow Drips with her tablet to send and answer emails and try to make a couple of quick appointments. With that sort of boring, administrative work, she’d learned that she focused better away from home. She was more focused on the work she did at home, then, too, if it wasn’t tainted by the gloom of business.

At home, she made her art—that was why she had the loft. She had a whole floor of an old warehouse that was in the middle of being refurbished into condos. Hers was still, for the most part, a warehouse, with some rudimentary refits for a kitchen and a bathroom. It was a rental, and she knew damn well she wouldn’t be able to afford to buy one of the condos when they got around to renovating her unit. But until then, she was getting a great rate and her landlord was pretty chill about her doing heavy-duty welding at home.

How she would manage to keep making art if she had to move to Madrone long-term, she didn’t know. She had a couple of commissions, one of them huge. She would have to work that out. Somehow.

After she finished her emails and got back confirmations on two appointments, she packed up and ran some errands, walking around her neighborhood for as many of them as she could.

Venice Beach was both an L.A. neighborhood and its own unique little place. It was different from just about everywhere Faith had ever been, and she’d been to some interesting places. She’d traveled quite a bit, and she’d lived in the Haight in San Francisco for about eight years. But when she’d lived there, the Haight was becoming gentrified, full of gajillion-dollar Victorians and lofts. There had still been signs of its Flower Power heyday, but they were more museum pieces than neighborhood landmarks.

The same thing was happening to Venice—hence the precarious future of her awesomely rugged apartment—but more slowly, she thought, with more resistance from the locals. And the boardwalk continued to be a cornucopia of freakiness. She loved it.

What she knew of Madrone did not inspire in her any confidence that she could be happy in a life there, even without the specter of taking care of Margot. Faith pretty much thought the whole Inland Empire was an armpit. She didn’t understand why the club had moved out of the eclectic bustle of L.A. to some rinky-dink subdivision town.

Madrone was pretty, sitting between the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Mountains, but it was pretty in a doctor’s-office-waiting-room-print sort of way. Faith liked this kind of pretty. Venice Beach was pretty in an ugly way. Nothing matched, but everything belonged together. Like her sculptures. Like her.

~oOo~

She had a late lunch meeting with the director of the park that had commissioned the big piece she was making: a twenty-foot-long snake that would sit at the entrance to the new children’s area and be suitable for climbing. She was working in four five-foot segments, and had most of the third segment finished.

It had been a nightmare to navigate the logistics of merging her style of art—using scavenged and salvaged metal parts—with the safety needs of what amounted to a big jungle gym. Rusty engine parts were sharp. Also rusty. Not so great on little hands and knees. But the park board loved the idea of recycled art and had been so taken with a piece she’d had installed in the courtyard of the Children’s Hospital—two children flying a kite, one of them in a wheelchair—that they’d offered her the commission without even opening it up for applications. She would never have applied to a playground project.

She’d worked it out, but it took longer, because she had to file and seal the segments once they were created. She’d already asked for one extension. Now she’d had to ask for another. And she’d lied when she’d told the director that she needed only three more months.

There was no telling, at this point, whether she could finish it at all.

But she put that doubt out of her head and drove back home. Things would work out, one way or another. It was a pretty fair bet that whatever happened with the snake, the result wouldn’t kill her. That was true for her mother, too. Probably. So she’d just keep on keeping on.

With that mentality, she parked Dante in her space in the garage under her building, gathered up her few purchases, and headed to the door that led into the back stairwell of the building. There was an elevator, but it hadn’t worked while she’d lived here, a victim of the construction happening on other floors.

The back door was locked. That was true almost half the time, but Faith’s landlord had never gotten around to getting her a key for this door. So she huffed a sigh, shifted her canvas bags around to a more long-term hold, and walked through the garage street entrance and around the block to the front door.

Born to a biker and raised in an MC, Faith always noticed the motorcycles around her. She had strong opinions on just about every make, model, and iteration. She didn’t ride herself—her father would never teach her, and after she’d left home it hadn’t been a priority to learn—but the interest and knowledge was deeply ingrained, like it was coded into her genetics.

So she noticed the mammoth Harley V-Rod Muscle, a gorgeous, highly customized model, solid matte black with a big, fat rear tire, at least a 300, maybe even a 330. The thing looked like it had been ridden straight up from the fires of hell.

No matter what had happened with her family, she was a biker’s daughter. Faith felt a thrill just looking at that beautiful bike, a thrill so sharp it honestly made her a little wet.

Then she saw the art on the tank.
Night Horde SoCal
. A horse skeleton with a flaming mane and tail. And in script below:
“Demon.”

She stared at that tank and then turned and stared at the door into her building. Was he in there? For a long, breathless moment, she stood on the sidewalk, holding her bags, letting people pass by her, and stared.

Finally, she went in.

He was sitting on the floor outside her door, leaning against the wall, one leg stretched out before him, the other bent up at the knee, his arm resting on it. She had the whole top floor, so there wasn’t really a corridor. More like a landing. He stood when he saw her coming up the last flight of stairs.

“Michael?”

His eyes caught and held hers as she climbed, but he said nothing until she reached the landing and was standing in front of him.

“You were right here.
Right here
.” His voice was deep and quiet, beautiful, but soft with hurt. They were the first words he’d said to her since that night ten years ago, and they hurt her to hear.

She nodded.

“Why?”

She knew what he was asking—why had she stayed away, knowing they were so close? Because there were things—there was one thing, a big thing—he didn’t know. Because she’d been afraid she’d hurt him more if she’d sought him out. Because she couldn’t get so close to her mother. Because she didn’t know if he’d still want her.

“I don’t know. Afraid, I guess.”

“Of me?”

“No, Michael. Never of you. Of…it. Us. What happened. I don’t know.”

“Are you still afraid?”

Again, she nodded. She was still afraid.

“Me, too.” He laughed and smiled sadly—even sad, his was the most beautiful smile. It made the intensity and distrust that seemed a feature of his face disappear and left behind kindness and…well, faith, though Faith felt corny to think it.

“Will you come inside? Will you talk to me?”

Michael nodded and held out his hands for her bags. After she passed them over, she unlocked her door and let him into her life.

As they came in, and Michael went to her table and set her bags down, Sly jumped down from his newly-designated favorite sill and meowed a threat. He came forward carefully, his body skimming the floor, his ears back.

“Holy shit,” Michael muttered. “Is that…that’s…”

“Yeah. He was at my mom’s.”

Michael turned to her. “You didn’t have him with you all this time?”

She shook her head. “Long story. My mom kept him.”

Giving her something like a scowl, Michael squatted and held out his hand to the cat. “Hey, dude.”

Sly slunk forward, growling all the way. He sniffed Michael’s fingers and swatted at his hand. It was his greeting ritual, and a test. Not many people passed. As far as Faith knew, the only people who had were in this room right now.

The trick was to be steady. Not to flinch, not to run. Sly bumped Michael’s hand and came forward, relaxing. Michael picked him up and held him snugly.

He scratched Sly’s truncated ear. “He looks a little rough.”

“He always was a scrapper. But he doesn’t like being cooped up in the house. He probably took on the whole neighborhood.” They were talking like normal, like friends. As if the past ten years hadn’t happened. It felt weird. And right, too.

“Are you keeping him here now?”

Faith didn’t know the answer to that. She didn’t know if she was keeping
her
here. It depended on her mother. And on Michael. And on more things than she could sort out at one time. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Michael. What are we…?” She’d meant to finish the question with the word ‘doing,’ but it wouldn’t come. But it sounded right as it was:
what are we
. That was really the question, wasn’t it?

He put Sly down, and the cat sauntered off, content, toward his fancy china bowls, already the master of this place.

Michael took the three steps that put them face to face. “I can’t talk, not about…before. I thought I could. That’s why I’m here, I think. But I can’t. I don’t know what to say. There’s too much.”