Chapter 13
The trick with the lights suddenly turned on to startle the wrong-doer into a guilty expression and a confession wouldn't work on a fae with a super nose and super ears so Tamsin didn't bother with springing it on Dyson. Perched on a stool with the hard edge of the kitchen table cutting into her back she simply did her best to look scolding with a tinge of intimidating and her best was, as usual, quite a good one.
"Where have you been and why didn't you pick up the phone when I called?" she interrogated – and there was no mistake it was an interrogation – as soon as Dyson strode into his loft, "when I have a task for my lieutenant, I want him to be immediately available".
"Picked a trail that might have been helpful but didn't pan out," the wolf muttered shrugging out of his jacket and throwing it over a chair next to his guest. The decision not to tell the valkyrie about his new human acquaintance was surprisingly easy to make but he kept the lie down to an oversized omission. On his way home he had had plenty of time to work through the scenario of putting Kenzi on Tamsin's radar and came to the inevitable conclusion – the human girl would immediately become bait and would be used as a lever and a bargaining chip in the fae wars and that was precisely what the wolf strongly disagreed with – disagreed to the point of withholding information and going behind his leaders' collective back. While Dyson implicitly trusted Tamsin and Trick to fight for the good of the fae he felt confident neither of them would think twice about sacrificing Kenzi and that, for no reason he could explain to himself, was something to be avoided at all costs.
"A trail?" Tamsin's tone indicated she wasn't letting him off the hook that easy and Dyson had to slip her a piece of truth to satisfy her commanding curiosity.
"I caught scent of the ex-Morrigan," he explained grudgingly, "But she threw an ogre bodyguard in my way and gave me the slip."
"Would be nice to get our hands on the old minx," the blonde mused aloud, "There's no getting the self-serving bitch to fight the common cause but she might have a useful tip or two."
"I'll keep sniffing around," the wolf promised quite truthfully, "And right now, if I might excuse myself – I am dead on my paws."
"Right now you don't actually need to stand up for what I have in mind for you," Tamsin drawled closing the distance between them and her left hand landed on his chest while her right one got busy with the buttons on his shirt, but the man's strong fingers arrested her movement.
"I am really exhausted – a fight with an ogre can do it to you," he growled, "and I'm generally not at my best as the one who dressed my wounds not so long ago should know."
The blonde's perfect little nose wrinkled in unmasked disappointment. "You are boring today, wolf," she complained but there was a note of understanding underneath the superficial tease. "Do you need me to look at your injuries again? The stitches might've popped," she added with a bit more warmth than she intended but the wolf shook his head.
"I just need some solid rest, Tams," he said simply with a smile of genuine gratitude and gently unhooked the valkyrie's hands off his shirt, "You can stay, as long as you are ok with sleeping and I mean just sleeping."
As he padded across the room to his bed and flopped onto it with little grace and without bothering with the rest of his clothing, Tamsin was overwhelmed with a sudden longing to take him up on his offer and spend the night curled at his side, listening to his even breathing, comforted by his warmth.
With an effort she turned away from the sight that was Dyson – sprawled on the covers with his shirt unbuttoned and halfway to asleep – and automatically picked up his negligently discarded jacket to fold it tidily. Seconds before she might have allowed herself to breathe out an OK to his hospitality, her eyes and her nose caught something that shouldn't be there, something offending and incongruous. Though her sense of smell was nowhere near as good as the wolf's she picked on a faint traces of human coming off the inside of his jacket while her blue-green eyes effortlessly latched onto a long black hair stuck to the inner lining.
"We don't have that kind of relationship, Dyson," she snapped throwing the jacket down and spinning on her heels, "If you aren't up to fucking me, what good are you to me?"
Startled by her sudden rudeness into a semi-awake state Dyson pried himself off the pillow and propped himself onto an elbow but it was too late for any chance of intercepting the valkyrie storming out of the door, even if the wolf was meaning to. Which he wasn't. When the heavy metal frame swung on its hinges behind the blonde, the wolf fell back onto the mattress with a grateful sigh. He had just foregone an opportunity of excellent fiery sex, irked his hair-trigger partner and oddly enough, felt much more relieved than chagrined.
Another person who had got plenty of action and none of it bedroom-related that night was the very little human currently at the forefront of the wolf's mind. Kenzi got to her quarters in what she hadn't yet got used to calling home in a pensive mood and with a warm feeling in her stomach that she totally credited to that shot of vodka she had downed at the bar.
Her first port of call was the lab that she hoped to find empty but the light was still dimly on and her sister's bent back was a bright white spot that beckoned to her as soon as she was over the threshold.
"Still working, Lori?" Kenzi called softly and the doctor swiveled to face her. The blonde's eyes – strained and bloodshot – met the pure grey and a wan smile found its way onto the thin lips. "I have some things to clear up," she murmured and glanced over at the clock that was pointing its luminescent hands at well past midnight.
"Things are more amenable to clearing up during daylight hours," the younger girl made her way over to an improvised tea counter and popped the electric kettle on, "Let me at least brew you some tea, sis, or you might start snoring while you talk."
"Have you just returned?" Lauren mustered enough energy to switch into her elder sister mode and to sound suitably stern.
"Hey, I have been using my very own chauffeur-less car to its fullest until you decide to change your mind and take it back," the girl replied lightly busying herself with the mugs and the tea-bags.
"I am not changing my mind if you promise not to do anything stupid and put yourself in danger," the doctor sighed and half-turned to save the document she had been working on, "I cannot guarantee your safety outside the compound if you refuse to have my guards follow you."
"Don't," Kenzi replied simply, "Don't guarantee, Lori, you cannot control everything."
"I am tired of not controlling what matters," Lauren rose from the chair and suddenly her frail figure acquired a regal, commanding quality, "If life has taught me something, it is to recognize the importance of being in control of your own destiny and of those you care for. Whenever I let myself be weak and consenting, it ended in a tragedy of various proportions. I am a great believer in control, Kenzi. So, where have you been?"
Kenzi eyed her older sister with a hint of irritation, but caution and the glimpse of something brewing in the deep brown of Lauren's huge eyes made her bite back a snark. Not the time to be cute, Kenz, she told herself and assumed a reasonably meek look.
"I went to visit Sasha," she answered obediently, fully aware that was a winning opening line, powerful enough to make Lauren feel slightly remorseful, "Then had a drink, then just sat on a bench trying to make my mind go blank. You know, for someone supposedly empty-brained that proved to be a tall order."
As the girl had predicted drawing on the previous experience and the knack of a younger sibling to handle an elder one, the blonde immediately seemed chastised and her bossiness subsided to tolerable levels.
"I am sorry, Kenzi," the blonde murmured with a distinctly guilty look, "It's my mistake as a doctor that you have to go there at all and it's my failing as a sister that you prefer to do it alone, without me."
The unease between the two women became almost tangible, it was hanging in the air like thick suffocating smoke and as much as Kenzi was enjoying inflicting this well-deserve discomfort on her sister, she knew she couldn't afford to pass up the splendid opportunity the night presented to her.
"And what are you doing here when a super luscious succubus is waning in your bedroom?" she switched subjects smoothly.
"I am working on some samples of the very same luscious succubus," Lauren gave a diluted smile in response, "Her behavior of late has been bothering me and, as usual, I am looking for answers in the biochemistry."
"You might be doing better looking for answers in her anatomy, you know, hands-on approach," the brunette grinned mischievously and turned to the counter when she heard the pop of the kettle coming to the boil and switching itself off.
"Camomile?" she threw over her shoulder innocently as her nimble little fingers extracted a plastic tube from her pocket and fished out two pills. Still shielded from Lauren's view by her turned back, Kenzi slipped the tablets into the water even before she heard a yes and watched them fizzle and adissolve before taking the cups over to the doctor.
"Your samples are not going to go walkabout or vanish into thin air. Give it a break, Lori, you look like pale shit," she advised not without sincerity and put the cup in front of the blonde who took it up absent-mindedly.
"The problem is I can see no anomalies, nothing different from all the previous results," Lauren whispered, almost oblivious to the other girl's presence and took a sip of her tea.
"Anomalies?" Kenzi echoed and her lips curled into a half-derisive smirk, "For someone so scientifically minded and with such an ingrained need to analyze everything you seem pestered with anomalies you grapple to explain – like you lil' sis, for instance, and your lover."
Lauren took another nervous gulp and the cup clanked down back onto the saucer. "I have to know everything about her, Kenz," she jabbered feverishly, "You can't control what you lack knowledge of."
"Oh, so you're fine-tuning your warhead-carrying missile," the younger girl scoffed, "Bo-to-surface, destructive when touched, deathly when kissed."
"That's not funny," the blonde glared at her sister deprecatingly, "Bo is pretty much all that is standing between you, me and being summarily executed by the fae."
"Who might just have a justifiable grudge against you," the girl huffed, "which is automatically spilled onto me by association."
"Sooner or later they would've killed me anyway, Kenz, I knew too much of their world," Lauren confided letting her gaze drop and stifling an oncoming yawn, "They would have wrung me dry and thrown me away to die like a jellyfish in the sun."
Her huge brown eyes were getting drowsy and her shoulders hunched as the sleep was claiming her exhausted body and Lauren put her arms on the desk in front of her for support.
"And you, my dear, are far from an innocent victim dragged into this mess because of your elder sister's erroneous ways," she went on, her words slightly slurred as she leaned forward, "you paid for your own lack of rational thinking and negligence of birth control. You knew Hale was out of your league even before you found out about the fae, you should have known nothing good ever comes out of a sweeping romance with a rich kid laden with old money and old prejudice. And you should've run when you found out who he really was, who they all are."
Lauren barely scraped up the energy to finish her tirade as her head fell forward and onto the cushion of her arms and her lids slipped shut.
"I just fell in love," Kenzi whispered coming over to the doctor and sticking a flash-drive into the blinking computer.