A Feral Spark, page 2
He paused, and she couldn’t tell what his deal was. Maybe auditory processing issues? His face was very expressive, though, but maybe that went with the Sign Language. The face was just as much a part of communication as the gestures.
“Chicago originally...” His expression waffled between shy and annoyed.
“Okay,” Miranda said with a salute. “That’s a start. Are you one of the frat brothers?”
[No.] He curled his lip like the prospect was distasteful.
“You are an excellent conversationalist, Chicago.” Miranda sighed, and then watched him sign several things, none of which she understood.
“Uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah.” She nodded her head like she followed whatever he was going on about. Then she added, “Your eyes are freaky. You know that?”
“They were blue once. Before...”
He doubled down on his expression of displeasure as if mentioning that fact pained him. Miranda took a step back, ready to leave him to his awkwardness, but he stopped her with a gentle request.
“May I touch you?”
He was polite if peculiar, and she put up her hand to stop him. Any other guy who respected boundaries would have let it go at that, but he took it as an invitation to hold her hand in his as if she was a delicate bird with easily broken bones.
“Uh... Chicago, you’ve got my hand.”
“Yeah,” he said as his fingers grazed over Miranda’s skin with the lightest pressure. He bowed his head and looked at her hand in utter fascination.
It was a pleasant sensation, almost charming, because it felt like real curiosity instead of a dude trying to pick her up by putting on romantic airs. But then Chicago had to open his mouth and ruin the intimacy of the moment.
“I have no idea what you are. You’re not human... but you’re not like me, either...”
Miranda gasped, and his silver eyes flashed red for a split second before she jerked her hand away.
“Excuse you!” she screeched at him.
Her heart raced at his accusation. She’d been keeping it under wraps since she was five years old. Not completely. Sometimes there were accidents that she couldn’t easily explain without long conversations that she didn’t want to have.
Then she realized one very important thing. Chicago might have called her out, but in doing so he was admitted he was different too. But different how?
Stepping forward, she whispered, “You’re not human?”
He opened his mouth slightly, then shook his head no.
“And you’re sure we’re not the same?” Miranda got even closer.
“You are so bright. Beautiful,” he said with his hands moving to sign. That didn’t answer her question, but it was a curious reaction.
“You can see that?”
“I could see you if you were at the bottom of the ocean.” A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.
Chicago started to sign something else, but Miranda saw a tattoo on his inner forearm near his left elbow. It looked like a UPC found on food labels or the backs of books.
Miranda placed her fingers there and tried to catch his eye. “What is this?”
“Secret,” he whispered as he pulled back from her.
He reminded her of a horse ready to bolt. She slowed her breaths audibly and concentrated on radiating a calm demeanor. He quirked an eyebrow at her but eventually acted more tranquil.
“Is this part of your not-human secret?” Miranda asked.
“If the wrong person finds out,” Chicago said, “they’ll take me back.”
“Who will?”
Miranda smiled encouragingly and was half-tempted to offer to share her secret if Chicago shared his. It was on the tip of her tongue—
“There you are!” Dennis called out as he approached her. “You disappeared. Did you get bored?”
When Miranda started working for his father, she had expected Dennis to be snobby and entitled. He was as handsome as one would expect from the scion of a rich family, but he was also a surprisingly nice guy. Unfortunately, he was hopeless around horses, much to his father’s chagrin. She’d be earning her money teaching him.
“No. I’ve been here talking to...” She gestured to where Chicago had been standing only to discover him missing. “I was talking to thin air, I guess.”
“Do you want to come inside and dance? You know, my mom made me take ballroom dancing for years.”
“Did those lessons work?” Miranda put her fingers on his extended palm.
“One way to find out,” Dennis replied with a gleaming smile.
As they returned to the house to dance, Miranda looked around for Chicago, puzzling about what and where he could be. If she dared believe him, she might not be alone in the world after all. As it was, she sure wasn’t like any of the other people dancing to EDM inside the house.
She and Dennis danced with each other for about four songs, until he put his hand on her waist and whispered in her ear, “You’re not enjoying yourself, are you?”
Ruefully, she shook her head. Miranda thought she’d hidden it better.
Taking her hand and tucking it in the crook of his arm, Dennis said, “Then let’s go find something else to do instead.”
CHAPTER TWO
Chicago weaseled his way into the Psychology 101 class a few days later by pretending to be Trevor, one of the registered students who had not shown up. He wore a pair of sunglasses to hide his silver eyes and make it easier to blend in. The people who’d gotten close enough to notice usually flinched because blond hair with silver eyes was an odd-looking combination. Miranda had been an exception. Her reaction to him was curious and unafraid.
Though he didn’t have a formal education beyond the eighth grade, Chicago had always been a bright and curious student. During his time in the lab, he’d overheard too many arguments between the White Coats espousing different schools of thought in training his test group. He followed that curiosity naturally to psychology.
He sat next to a girl who had the textbook open on her desk. “Read over your shoulder?”
“Yeah,” she said, checking him out and appearing to like what he was serving.
A few other students filed in, including someone who knew the girl he was sitting beside. They immediately went into gossip mode.
“Hey, did you hear JR died Saturday night?” She sounded both horrified and entertained.
“No shit? I hated that guy,” one of the dudes a few seats away proclaimed.
Chicago felt ringing in his ears. He’d left JR alive. Restrained, but alive.
“Do we know the cause of death?” he asked softly.
“It was some kinky sex gone wrong by the look of things. He was tied up bondage style according to what I heard.”
The rest of the students talked around him, and Chicago tuned them out. It was rotten that the kid had died, but then again, no one would expect JR’s information to be used. Especially not the people from the lab who were still hunting him three years after he escaped. When he’d passed through Philadelphia the previous year, he’d thought he saw lab people skulking around one of the places where he’d been picking marks. He’d disappeared quickly to avoid recapture.
He looked up to see Ms. Tucker, the teaching assistant in charge of the class, walking in with an attention-getting sway to her hips like a model on a catwalk. Several students noticed and whistled after her. When she turned around to face the class, he recognized her as Dennis’s friend Val who had been talking to Miranda at the frat party.
Val called the class to order and discussed the semester syllabus. She appeared confident in front of the group as she focused her attention on different areas of the room. Chicago felt when she noticed him. The pause was long enough that one of the guys near him called him a “dog” and tried to give him a low-five. He played along because that’s what Trevor the student would do.
“We’re going to go over Maslow’s hierarchy of needs twice,” Val continued from the front of the lecture hall. “First at the beginning of the semester and later to find out if your understanding of what is essential in life changes.”
“Will this be on the final?” a student to his left yelled.
Val gave the young woman a saucy look. “One of your essential needs is to make sure you know this information.”
Glancing at the book in front of his seat partner, he thumbed through the pages until he landed on the diagram that matched the one on the whiteboard. “Here it is.”
“You already read the book?” she asked, looking at him suspiciously.
“Yeah.” It had been an older edition from the university library, but he’d finished the book in nearly one sitting. He found it all fascinating.
“I hate psychology,” she muttered.
“Then why are you taking it?”
With a hot glare, she answered. “Same as you. Required class. Educational psychology is going to be worse.”
“You’re going to be a teacher?” He didn’t claim to understand people, but that didn’t bode well for her future students.
The girl perked up. “Yeah! I love taking care of little kids.”
“What was that?” Val asked from the front of the class. “Anything to add?”
She walked toward them in her authoritative heels, a pointer in hand.
“We were talking about Maslow,” he answered. “How it applies if you’re gonna be a teacher.”
“That’s actually very important,” Val said. “Good job, you two. Keep the chatter down, and I’ll bring you back into the conversation later.”
After she walked away from them, one of the other dudes sitting near him practically salivated as he said, “I love that ass.”
Fair. There was no doubt Val Tucker had the confidence to flaunt her physical assets. Chicago was more curious as to how well she’d teach psychology.
The class session ended faster than he’d expected. Before the students could file out at the end of the lecture, Val reminded them that there was a psychology club that met twice a week to socialize and discuss the material. “You could meet a tutor if you’re struggling, and you can get a free lunch if we know you’re coming.”
He sat up straighter in his chair. When the class was over, he walked against the tide of exiting students to get to Val, who greeted him warmly while packing her bag.
“I hope you enjoyed the class. Are you going to be at the club meeting, too?”
“Maybe,” he hedged. “What does the club actually do?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s not just for psychology majors. I get that question all the time,” she said with a smile that could have been flirtatious. “I already mentioned tutoring and lunch. We get to make friends and give back to the community. In fact, members of the club are working the Guilfords’ charity event next month.”
Miranda’s date at the frat party had been named Guilford. “Is that... Dennis Guilford’s family?”
“Yes! What a small world.” Val slowly looked him up and down, perhaps making a finer assessment of his persona. “How do you know him?”
“I met him at a frat party,” he answered with a slouching posture and a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder to indicate the past.
“Was it that party where JR died?” she asked with sadness in her eyes. “What a shame, you know? Someone tied him up and left him for dead.”
It wasn’t supposed to have happened like that. “Were you there? Are there any suspects?”
“I was. It was pretty gruesome,” she said with a shiver. “Let’s talk about something more pleasant. That fundraiser is for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to cure spinal cord injury, and it’s sponsored by Dennis’s mom and Dr. Coleman.”
Chicago had known a Dr. Coleman back in the Evanston lab. Many scientists had come and gone, from biologists and geneticists to neurologists and so many others that they’d become the nameless White Coats. The Dr. Coleman he knew had been particularly memorable for his single-minded determination and his habit of eating copious amounts of peppermint, something Chicago now hated.
He did like lunch when he could get it, though. “I’ll see you at the meeting tomorrow.”
“Great! See you there.” Val gave him a look that was much more interested than he expected it to be. He was lucky she didn’t recognize him from the party where he’d first seen her.
He finger-waved goodbye to Val and walked past students entering the lecture hall, including athletes in their workout attire. Chicago pocketed one of their student ID cards on the way out in case he could use that to gain access to the showers in the gym.
✣✣✣
At the end of August, when Miranda had been in Ithaca three weeks already, she drove to The Stump, the student bar where she agreed to meet Lisa Tucker. Despite the bar’s unimpressive name, it couldn’t be any worse than any of the bars full of dumb men in Montana. Contrary to conventional wisdom, redus neckus americanus, aka the Common American Redneck, was indigenous to all parts of the United States, not just the south.
After finding a parking spot, Miranda stepped down from her truck, an older F150 that she’d driven across the country to New York, and surveyed the parking lot for any hidden dangers. A couple kissed as they walked inside, but there weren’t any other people loitering around. Miranda locked the truck and pocketed the key, turning around to find a huge wolf silently staring at her from the shadows.
She froze in place and studied the beast sitting on its haunches. He was at least 150 pounds, if not bigger, with silver-gray fur that matched its silver eyes. The air about the animal was patient and perhaps curious. The wolf was not afraid to be in human spaces. She didn’t feel like it was measuring her up for an attack. It could have been a mental game, of course. Both humans and wolves were apex predators, but Miranda had the more dangerous edge.
Back home, Miranda had come across coyotes and wolves in the wild when she worked with mustang herds. Wild animals had never intimidated her. She had a knack for them, especially the mustangs, as if the wild in them recognized the wild in her.
After the wolf had gotten his fill of looking at her, he loped for the foliage at the edge of the property. Miranda shook herself out of her wolf-induced trance. A wolf that large was rare to see in a city. He could have been an escapee from a zoo.
Inside the dark bar, Miranda glanced around the room, and though she’d never met Lisa before, she was easy to pick out. Lisa was the tall, blonde woman who looked like a Valkyrie with a long braid and muscular shoulders. She could probably star in some fantasies as a sexy blacksmith, a near trade to some things farriers did. Lisa showed off those shoulders as she played pool at one of the back tables.
“Lisa?” Miranda asked, pitching her voice loud enough to be heard over the jukebox yet soft enough not to mess up the shot.
Standing up with a triumphant smirk, Lisa said, “Hi! Thanks for meeting me here.”
Miranda was shorter than her at a modest five-foot-four. Most of the time she also kept her hair in a French braid, like the one Lisa wore, or in a ponytail. It was easier for work.
“After we finish this game, do you want to play?” Lisa pointed at the guy playing pool with her. “This is Steve.”
With his thick build and bald head, he looked like someone who should be named Steve. He probably worked as a bouncer or a famous wrestler impersonator.
“Nice to meet you.” Miranda politely waved. “Did either of you hear anything about a zoo with an escaped wolf? I swear I just saw one in the parking lot, and it was too big to be wild.”
“I haven’t heard anything,” Lisa replied, “but I just got into town.”
“Me, neither,” Steve said. “Is the wolf still there?”
“No. He ran into the bushes.” Miranda shrugged. “Should I report it to animal control?”
“I don’t know, but I’ll check it out,” Steve said, strolling to the door while Lisa continued playing her turn.
“Wow. A wolf,” Lisa said as she set up her shot. “Wouldn’t it be cool if he was part of a movie set?”
That was nothing at all like what Miranda was thinking, and Lisa must have noticed. She stopped shooting to explain, “I love horror movies, so my mind’s always working that angle. Would you like to go to the movies with me later?”
Horror movies made sense. “What kind of horror do you like best? Blood and murder or vampires and werewolves?”
“Both,” Lisa said with a grin.
Steve came back inside, and Chicago brushed past him at the door. Chicago studied everyone in the bar, and Miranda’s heart beat faster at seeing him. She had wondered about him several times in the two weeks since the frat party, but she hadn’t thought their paths would cross again.
“No wolf out there that I saw,” Steve told them when he returned to the table.
Miranda was still staring at Chicago, and Lisa nudged her. “Do you know him?”
“Not really. He was at the party where I met your sister.”
“He’s a tricky one,” Steve said, crossing his arms as he looked at Chicago. “Goes home with different men or women all the time. Doesn’t seem to care.”
“Some people are bisexual,” Lisa said in an exasperated tone. She missed her shot and had to surrender the table to Steve.
While he put together his shots, Lisa stood by Miranda. “Were you there when they found the body?”
A shiver of disgust rippled through her. JR had been a groping nuisance, but Miranda hadn’t wished him dead. “No. Dennis and I had already left the party. Thankfully.”
“I might be a horror movie fan,” Lisa confessed in a breathy whisper, “but I’ve never been near a dead body before.”
“Oh, I have,” Miranda said. Several of them. Making new friends was probably not supposed to come with a comparison of body count.
Though her face showed curiosity, Lisa’s ringing phone prevented her from asking any questions. “This is important. Let me take this outside. I’ll be right back.”
She disappeared out the front door, and Miranda watched Steve sink the rest of the balls to finish the game. They started a new game together, and Miranda played first. She wasn’t too bad, but she also wasn’t as good as Steve.
