THORN QUEEN

My housemate, Tim Warkoski, stuck his head into the kitchen. He wore a T-shirt with silhouettes of Native Americans that said Homeland Security: Fighting Terrorism since 1492. I appreciated the cleverness, but it lost something since Tim wasn’t actually an American Indian. He merely played one on TV, or rather, he played one in local bars and tourist circles, using his ta

With a garbage bag in one hand and a cat scoop in the other, he gave me a dark look. “Do you know how many fucking boxes of litter I’ve had to change today?”

I poured a glass of milk and sat down at the table. “Kiyo says we need one box for every cat and then an extra one.”

“Yeah, I can count, Eugenie. That’s six boxes. Six boxes in a house with fifteen hundred square feet. You think your deadbeat boyfriend’s ever going to show back up and help out with this?”

I shifted uncomfortably. It was a good question. After three months of dating between Tucson and Phoenix, my boyfriend Kiyo had decided to take a job here to save the hour and a half commute. We’d had a long discussion and decided we were ready to have him simply move in with me. Unfortunately, with Kiyo came his menagerie: five cats and two dogs. It was one of the woes of dating a veterinarian. He couldn’t help but adopt every animal he found. I couldn’t remember the cats’ names any better than the dogs’. Four of them were named after the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and all I could really recall was that Famine ironically weighed about thirty pounds.

Another problem was that Kiyo was a fox-both literally and figuratively. His mother was a kitsune, a sort of Japanese fox spirit. He’d inherited all of her traits, including amazing strength and speed, as well as the ability to transform into an actual fox. As a result, he frequently got “the call of the wild,” making him yearn to run around in his animal form. Since he had downtime between jobs now, he’d left me to take a kind of wild vacation. I accepted this, but after a week of not seeing him, I was starting to get restless.

“He’ll be back soon,” I said vaguely, not meeting Tim’s eyes. “Besides, you can get out of chores if you want to start paying rent.” That was our deal. Free lodging in exchange for food and housework.

He wasn’t deterred. “Your choice in men is questionable. You know that, right?”

I didn’t really want to ponder that too much. I abandoned him for my room, seeking the comfort of a jigsaw puzzle depicting a photograph of Zurich. It sat on my desk, as did one of the cats. I think he was Mr. Whiskers, the non-Apocalyptic one. I shooed him off the puzzle. He took about half the pieces with him.

“Fucking cat,” I muttered.

Love, I decided, was a hard thing. Well aware of my grumpy mood, I knew part of my anxiety over Kiyo stemmed from the fact that he was also passing part of his sabbatical in the Otherworld, spending time with his ex-girlfriend who just happened to be a devastatingly beautiful fairy queen. Fairies, sidhe, shining ones…whatever you wanted to call them, they were the tall, long-lived rulers of the Otherworld. Most shamans and I referred to them as gentry, an antique term. Maiwe

I sighed. Tim might have been right about my questionable taste in men.

Night wore on. I finished the puzzle while blasting Def Leppard, making me feel better. I was just shutting off the music when I heard Tim yell, “Yo, Eug. Kujo’s here.”

Breathless, I ran to my bedroom door and flung it open. A red fox the size of a wolf trotted down the hall toward me. Relief burned through me, and I felt my heart soar as I let him in and watched him pace around in restless circles.

“About time,” I said.

He had a sleek orange-red coat and a fluffy tail tipped in white. His eyes were golden and sometimes bore a very human glint. I saw nothing like that tonight. A purely animal wariness peered out at me, and I realized it’d be awhile before he changed back. He had the ability to transform to a wide range of foxes, everything from a small, normal-sized red fox to the powerful shape before me. When he spent awhile in this bigger form, turning human again took more effort and time.

Still, hoping he’d transform soon, I dumped another puzzle on my desk and worked it as I waited. Two hours later, nothing had changed. He curled up in a corner, wrapping his body in a tight ball. His eyes continued to watch me. Exhausted, I gave up on him and put on a red nightgown. Turning off the lights, I finally slipped into my bed, falling asleep instantly for a change.

As I slept, I dreamed about the Otherworld, particularly a piece of it that bore a striking resemblance to Tucson and the Sonora Desert surrounding us. Only, the Otherworldly version was better. An almost heavenly Tucson, warmed by bright sunshine and ablaze with flowering cacti. This was a common dream for me, one that often left me yearning for that land in the morning. I always tried my best to ignore the impulse.

A couple hours later, I woke up. A warm, muscled body had slid into bed with me, pressing against my back. Strong arms wrapped around my waist, and Kiyo’s scent, dark and musky, washed over me. A liquid feeling burned inside of me at his touch. Roughly, he turned me toward him. His lips consumed me in a crushing kiss, blazing with intensity and need.

“Eugenie,” he growled, once he’d paused long enough to remove his lips-just barely-from mine. “I’ve missed you. Oh God, I’ve missed you. I’ve needed you.”

He kissed me again, conveying that need as his hands ravaged my body. My own hands slid along the smooth perfection of his bare skin, awakening my desire. There was no gentleness between us tonight, only a feral passion as he moved on top of me, his body pushing into mine with a need fueled as much by animal instinct as by love. He had not, I realized, completely regained his human senses, no matter his shape.

When I woke up in the morning, my bed was empty. Across the room, Kiyo pulled on jeans, meeting my eyes as though he had some sixth sense that I was awake. I rolled over on my side, the sheets gliding against my naked skin. Watching him with a lazy, satisfied languor, I admired his body and the sexy features gifted to him by Japanese and Hispanic heritage. His ta

“Are you leaving?” I asked. My heart, having leapt at his presence last night, suddenly sank.

“I have to go back,” he said, straightening out a dark green T-shirt. He ran an absentminded hand through his chin-length hair. “You know I do.”

“Yeah,” I said, my voice sharper than I’d intended. “Of course you do.”

His eyes narrowed. “Please don’t start that,” he said quietly. “I have to do this.”

“Sorry. Somehow I just can’t get all that excited about another woman having your baby.”

There it was. The issue that always hung over us.

He sat down beside me on the bed, dark eyes serious and level. “Well, I’m excited. I’d like to think you could support me in that and be happy for me.”

Troubled, I looked away. “I am happy for you. I want you to be happy…it’s just, you know, it’s hard.”

“I know.” He leaned over me, sliding his hand up the back of my neck, twining his fingers in my hair.

“You’ve spent more time with her in the last week than with me.”

“It’s a necessity. It’s almost time.”

“I know,” I repeated. I knew my jealousy was unwarranted. Petty, even. I wanted to share his happiness at having a child, but something in me prevented it.

“Eugenie, I love you. It’s that simple. That’s all there is to it.”

“You love her too.”