Night Shift

My heart pounded so hard I thought I would faint. I actually considered it.

"It's late," Saul said over his shoulder. Silver glittered, threaded into his hair with red thread. He'd picked up a few more charms, and the glints looked good against the silky darkness. It would look even better once some of it grew out. "Or early, with you working the night shift and all. So I thought, omelets. Hope you like pepper-jack cheese; it's hard to find decent pepperjack back on the Rez. I was craving it. And hash browns. Baked, this time. You don't have the right oil for frying them. Did you throw out everything in the fridge?"

My jaw was suspiciously loose. My ribs ran and boiled with pain that burrowed under and into every vital organ, but most of all my heart. I was having a heart attack. Jill Kismet, kickass hunter, dropping dead of cardiac arrest over an omelet.

He looked back down at the stove, the back of his neck oddly naked without a Were's long hair. "It took a little longer to finish up out in the Dakotas than I thought it would. I was going to call, but then I thought you don't answer your phone much."

I dropped the whip. Closed my mouth with a snap, and kept staring at him as the leather slid onto the floor, metal flechettes tinkling.

He was in my kitchen. Again.

Oh, God, I am not strong enough for this.

He shut off the stove, picked up the pan. Ripped one omelet off onto a plate arranged just so on the counter, repeated the process with slightly bigger saucepan. Fragrant steam rose. "I'll leave salt and pepper to your discretion," he said, and I realized he sounded a little nervous, for the very first time.

I cleared my throat. That was the sum total of my conversational ability.

He turned, holding my battered plastic thrift-store spatula. "We're going to have to talk about your taste in kitchen utensils, too." His eyes met mine, dark and level, and he dropped his hand. The spatula dangled easily, loosely.

I summoned up every scrap of courage I had. "I'm no good at this sort of thing," I managed, in a squeak that sounded more little-girl Mi

"I got that," he answered gravely. He didn't look away.

My heart cracked open inside my chest. Please, God. The prayer was no more than that, an incoherent mass of longing right behind my breastbone like Monty's indigestion. "I'm not a nice person." I kill, Saul. I kill hellbreed and Traders and other nasty things. I'm corrupted. I'm tainted. You have no idea what I was, or what Mikhail made me, or what I am now. What I almost did, how close I came to handing over my soul to Perry. It's not just in the stories that people get taken by hellbreed.

He sighed. Laid the spatula down on the counter. I remembered I was holding a gun, and holstered it. The creak of leather sounded very loud.

"Mikhail wasn't the only man who gives a damn about you." Saul said it very quietly. "No bargains, no deals. We'll see what happens."

One choked word struggled to get out. "Why?" Why me? Why this? Why couldn't you have come here before Perry? Before I was teenage streetwalker with a serious rage problem? Before I was broken?

He shook his head slightly, as if I'd just asked a stupid question. "Because you need me. Because I want to," he said softly, and because he was a Were and he said it so quietly, it made sense.

God help me, but it did make sense. He was here now, he was saying. He was right here. In my kitchen.

With omelets.

The bubble of tears broke in my throat. One slid down my cheek, hot and accusatory. "I don't know how to do this." That finished up all my ability to speak, because if I said anything else I was going to start screaming.

He shrugged. Picked up a plate, and I saw with a kind of mad hilarity that he even had a sprig of parsley stuck in each neat mound of hash browns.

"It's not that hard, Jill. You just sit down and eat something. Then we talk."

"Urgh," I managed, with a slight inquisitive sound at the end. What I meant was, talk about what?

And God have mercy on me, but he understood. He smiled, a sweet slow smile as he stood under the lights, and I lost every bit of good sense I had left.

"We can talk about anything, kitten. Come on, it won't stay hot forever."

Glossary

Arkeus: A roaming corruptor escaped from Hell.

Banefire: A cleansing sorcerous flame

Black Mist: A roaming psychic contagion; a symbiotic parasite inhabiting the host's nervous system and bloodstream.

Chutsharak: Chaldean obscenity, loosely translated as "oh, fuck."

Demon: Term loosely used to designate any nonhuman predator with sorcerous ability or a co

Exorcism: Tearing loose a psychic parasite from its host.

Hellbreed: Blanket term for a wide array of demons, half-demons, or other species escaped or sent from Hell.

Hellfire: The spectrum of sorcerous flame employed by hellbreed for a variety of uses.

Hunter: A trained human who keeps the balance between the nightside and regular humans; extrahuman law enforcement.

Imdarák: Shadowy former race who drove the Elder Gods from the physical plane, also called the Lords of the Trees.

Martindale Squad: The FBI division responsible for tracking nightside crime across state lines and at the federal level, mostly staffed with hunters and Weres.

Middle Way: Worshippers of Chaos, Middle Way adepts are usually sociopathic and sorcerous loners. Occasionally covens of Middle Way adepts will come together to control a territory or for a specific purpose.

OtherSight: Second sight, the ability to see sorcerous energy. Can also mean precognition.

Possessor: An insubstantial, low-class demon specializing in occupying and controlling humans; the prime reason for exorcists.

Scurf: Also called nosferatim, a semi-psychic viral infection responsible for legends of blood-hungry corpses, vampires, or nosferatu. Also, someone infected by the scurf virus.

Sorrow: A worshipper of the Chaldean Elder Gods.

Sorrows House: A House inhabited by Sorrows, with a vault for invocation or evocation of Elder Gods.

Sorrows Mother: A high-ranking female of a Sorrows House.

Talyn: A hellbreed, higher in rank than an arkeus or Possessor, usually insubstantial due to the nature of the physical world.

Trader: A human who makes a «deal» with a hellbreed, usually for worldly gain or power.

Utt'huruk: A bird-headed demon.

Were: Blanket term for several species who shapeshift into animal (for example, cougar, wolf, or spider) or half-animal (wererat or khentauri) form.