Tooth and Nail (22 page)

Svein caught my gaze again, and I had a harder time pulling away this time. “I have to get back,” I said, fumbling to stand. He put out his hand to help me but I didn’t take it, propping my hand instead against the wall to propel myself to my feet, one of which was asleep and tingling. “Avery’s going to think I took off.”

“He’s busy talking up the crowd,” Svein assured me. “You’re all right.”

“No, I’m not,” I said, and it was the truth. Between Mahoney and Svein, I was incapable of rational thought.

“Go out there and do your thing,” he said. “I’ll track this guy Mahoney.”

“But you don’t know who he is. I’ll point him out for you, and …”

“No, you have a job to do. I’ll take care of it.”

My shoulders relaxed, dropping down and away from my ears. “He’s wearing glasses,” I said, “and a really stupid-looking tie.” I rubbed my face with both hands, and took a deep breath. “Thank you.”

“Don’t,” he said. “Just walk out this door like it made sense for you to be in here.”

I pushed on the door and both halves swung open. I stepped into the carpeted hallway with faked dignity and poise, but no one was there to notice. I felt Svein’s hand on my elbow, and he fell into step beside me.

“What are you doing?” I hissed.

“Escorting you back to the main room.”

“Bad idea.”

“I think not.”

Avery picked that moment to emerge from the dining room back to the hallway, and he smiled at me. I smiled back. “Go away,” I said through my clenched teeth, but Svein didn’t, and I approached the love of my life on the arm of a man I wasn’t even sure I liked but had made out with in broad daylight against a brick building.

No idea how to start
this
conversation.

But apparently, Svein did. He released my elbow and put out his hand. “Avery McCormack,” he said. “You have my vote.”

“That was easy,” Avery said, somewhat taken aback, but he recovered quickly, shaking Svein’s hand.

I looked at their clasped hands and realized both my worlds had collided.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” Avery asked.

“Svein Nilsen.” That was surprising. I’d thought for a moment he was going to go with an alias. “You and I haven’t met,” Svein continued smoothly, “but I met Gemma at Smiley’s Gym recently. I’m thinking of joining and went there to have a look around, and I watched Gemma spar before talking to her for a while about the gym. I just ran into her by the restrooms and realized it was her. She’s hard to forget.”

“She is,” Avery said, pulling me close to his side. I liked how he did it. Avery wasn’t a jealous thug. In fact, he loved it anytime we were out together and a random man gave me the once-over.

Of course, now I felt like a worm.

“So you’re a boxer?” Avery asked.

“Martial arts, at the moment,” Svein said, and the two of them chatted as I gritted my teeth and willed Svein away. To be sure, he’d done quite a good job covering for me—fae couldn’t be violent, but apparently they were fine with a few fibs here and there—but I was having a hard time standing there listening to their small talk.

Avery and Svein weren’t supposed to be in the same place, ever. They needed to be in separate places. Even if I was growing more and more unsure every day about which man belonged in which place.

Avery asked Svein about his business and Svein gave him some story about financing and investigations or something, and I kept smiling and nodding, mentally vowing to kill Svein if this conversation ended with a golf date.

“It’s been a pleasure to meet you, but I’m going to let you get back to winning people over,” Svein said. Speaking of winning people over. “I apologize for monopolizing Gemma earlier.”

“I’m sure you’ll be seeing her soon,” Avery said. “Though for your sake, I hope it’s not on the unfortunate end of her right hook.”

I smiled.

“If you’ll excuse me,” Svein said. “I see someone I need to catch up with.” He cut me a look, and I knew which someone he was referring to.

“Thank you,” I said. “For, uh, for your support.”

Svein nodded at both of us and I watched him disappear into the dining room crowd. When he was out of sight, I kept my eyes on the spot.

He’d help me. Despite his balking, I knew he would.

“I was getting worried about you,” Avery said, breaking into my reverie. “I thought you fell in.”

“There was a line in the ladies’ room,” I said, “and then I ran into him.”

“Nice guy,” Avery commented. “And I’m secure enough in my manhood to say that he’s a really good-looking guy.”

I wondered how glamour worked between heterosexual members of the same gender. Probably just worked to charm them. “Maybe,” I said. “But after a few days at Smiley’s, he’ll have the same facial imperfections as the rest of us.”

“You are perfect,” he said.

“In here,” I said, “where the light’s dim, I look pretty good. In daylight, anyone can tell my nose has been broken. But the other guy was worse off that day.”

“I never doubted it.”

He put his arms around me and I leaned into him for a moment. I rested my cheek on his navy blue tie and breathed him in. I held him, and thought about all the things I loved about him, then realized there were many things I hadn’t seen in a while. “Are you tired of this yet?” I asked. “You’ve been working this thing day and night. You haven’t taken your bike out in weeks. You haven’t played your guitar, you haven’t seen much of your real friends, and you used to spend so much time with your camera. Maybe that’s what you should do. The cherry blossoms are almost gone. Take some pictures before they go.”

“The cherry blossoms come out every year,” Avery said into my hair. “An election is every two.”

“I understand it’s your priority, but it shouldn’t be all you do. Avery McCormack is more than that.”

“Just hang on,” he said. “Just hang on, babe. It will be over in a few months, and I’ll win or lose, and I’ll get back to being me.”

“I’m not saying it for me,” I said. “I’m saying it for you. I love you, and I don’t want you to get lost.”
I don’t want to get lost
, I thought. When it was Gemma and Avery, it was fantastic. Now that it was Avery the political candidate and Gemma the top-secret tooth faerie—
fae
—it was confusing and scary. We were working this relationship part time.

“How could I get lost?” he asked. “I can always ask you for directions. You know exactly where we’re going.”

In my memory, Svein trailed his finger down my face again, pushed me up against a building again. And deeper down in the same stack of memories, Avery kissed me for the first time.

“We’d better get back to your adoring constituents,” I said.

>=<

I rose from bed and stumbled into the carpeted hallway. I looked down and saw them, tiny and white, scattered all over the ground. My hands flew to my face and I pushed against the skin around my mouth. Then I clamped my jaws shut and heard a click. My own teeth were intact.

I didn’t know whose teeth were on the ground but the whispers had started, laughing and musical: Get them, grab them all, don’t lose them…

Dropping to my knees, I pushed along the rug, gathering two handfuls of teeth, but when I lifted my hands to examine them, they slid between my fingers like sugar and fell away. No! I had to get them, keep them. Each was a gem, containing a fragment of the whole, and I couldn’t lose even one. I clutched at the teeth again and closed my fists around them, but a flare of pain in my mouth made me cry out. I sealed my lips shut and tried to hold it in, but it throbbed and ached. I pressed my fists into my face, but the pain pulsed stronger and I opened my hands, releasing all the teeth again as my own teeth dropped from my gums, falling in a mess onto my tongue.

I felt them all sitting there, rattling against each other, and I couldn’t, wouldn’t open my mouth and lose them. But the pressure against my lips was unbearable, so I cupped my hands in front of my mouth and prepared to catch them. But as I opened my fingers, they were sticky and crimson with blood. I looked up to see Svein at the end of the hall, standing calm, watching me.
Whose blood?
I tried to ask him, but I didn’t want to open my mouth.
Whose blood?
I projected the thought at him. He still didn’t
move, didn’t speak, didn’t blink. I opened my mouth and my teeth fell out in a gush and I screamed,
I can’t do this…

I jerked awake, sweating and breathing hard.

>=<

I dragged myself to the table where Avery was already eating an English muffin, his mug of black coffee steaming beside his humming laptop. I collapsed into a chair.

Avery looked up and did a double-take. “Are you okay?”

Choosing to go for the understatement, I said, “I didn’t sleep all that well.”

“Yeah, you don’t look too good.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, smirking. “You’ve got another admirer besides me.”

“Can we not be cryptic so early in the morning? I can hardly see straight.”

He swiveled his laptop around. “Take a read.”

I squinted at the screen. The D.C. Digger’s site featured a little cartoon of a guy in thick glasses with a shovel, pushing deep into the ground in front of the Capitol. His top blog entry was dated this morning at 2:23 a.m., and detailed Avery’s fundraiser.

“Guess he was there last night,” Avery said. “But he must have had a good time, because he didn’t have it out for me.”

He was right about that. The blog copy was complimentary for the most part, and the few catty digs were not at Avery himself but at several mucky-muck guests in attendance.

But it was the last item in the entry that woke me up: “McCormack’s sweetheart, ex-pollster and local amateur boxer Gemma Cross, enraptured guests with her witty banter and bright smile. She was nothing short of radiant.”

Might I say, you look radiant tonight, Gemma…

My eyes darted again to the little cartoon man and his black-rimmed glasses. Then I let out a long, quiet sigh.

Mahoney, that little shit, was the D.C. Digger.

CHAPTER 14

I
evaded a flailing jab and countered with a hook that didn’t land.

Mat laughed.

Mat considered laughing and taunting to be his brilliant key strategy. His form had improved considerably and he was in far better physical shape than the day he’d first arrived at Smiley’s, but he still had the patience of a child. Convinced he had the psychological game down, however, he continued to laugh at and taunt every opponent he faced.

Everyone in the gym was biding time. Mat was a clown, but we weren’t going to teach him his most important lesson until he was ready. In the meantime, he didn’t throw any of the rest of us off, but he was very, very annoying.

Especially to me, especially today, because I had a plan, and it involved Mat emerging superior.

Smiley leaned into the ring from the floor, one hand gripping the rope above him. “Easy,” he said to Mat. “Take it easy.”

“I’m takin’ it easy,” Mat said. “This ain’t nothin’. Why’m I sparring Bricks, anyway? She’s too little for me.”

“’Cause I don’t want you just swinging useless. I want you to pay attention to your opponent’s mind game, and Gemma plays a good one.”

Ironic he should say that.

“All right, stop a minute,” Smiley said, and climbed into the ring. I backed into the corner and let them confer. It was Mat’s time with Smiley, after all, and I had been volunteered for the lesson. I squeezed my plastic water bottle and only half the water made it into my mouth, with the rest splashing my cheeks and dribbling down my chin. I glanced over my shoulder and saw the two of them in deep discussion. I crouched and spit my mouth guard onto the wooden stool. With my gloved fists, I pushed my sweatshirt over it, then walked back to the center of the ring just as Smiley slid back down to the floor.

While his back was still to us, Mat laid a sharp jab into my chest, despite Smiley’s instructing us earlier to engage in light contact only. I exhaled hard and Mat chuckled with glee.

I hoped with all my heart that when it came time to wipe that cocky grin off Mat’s face permanently, the guys would let me be the one to do it.

I stared him in the eye, and let him try to figure out my next move. When I knew he didn’t expect it, I caught him sharp on the chin.

“Easy!” Smiley reprimanded me.

I snorted, barely containing a contemptuous smile, and Mat, taking the bait, scowled at my arrogance. Back and forth, back and forth, and I laid another one on him. Same spot. Just a hair harder.

“Bricks!” Smiley warned.

Openly smirking, I barely had time to recover when Mat retaliated with a cross that caught me square in the mouth. And I didn’t duck.

His hit lacked in style, and was only a fraction of his full force, but he’d made his point. Blood oozed from my split upper lip.

I backed off and covered my face with my gloves. I outlined my front tooth with the tip of my tongue, and felt a piece of it had chipped away. Good. This had worked out well. The only hope I’d had of getting back into Clayton’s office so soon under minimal suspicion was with a dental emergency, and this was as minor an incident as I could have orchestrated.

“Who’s laughin’ now?” Mat taunted. “That’s right, that’s right. Not Bricks.”

“Shut up!” Smiley yelled, and his voice was near me.

He pulled my gloves away from my face and tilted my head back to look at my messy mouth in the glare of the bare light bulb overhead. “Nice job,” he said, low into my ear. “Get your sorry ass out of this ring.
Now
. You,” he said, louder, to Mat. “Shut your stupid mouth. Only reason you got to her is because she was crazy enough to let you. Get out of my sight.”

“What about my lesson?” Mat asked.

“Lesson over.”

I went to retrieve my shirt and water bottle. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and pushed my mouth guard into the kangaroo pocket. I climbed through the ropes and hopped onto the floor, and Not-Rocky was by my side in an instant. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Why you playing games with Mat? He’s an idiot.”

“I know. I don’t know.”