Stacia Kane: Home

“Why do you do that?” she asked, as they started walking toward the Solomon house with his hand engulfing hers, making her feel safe. “With the door, I mean. I always wondered.”

“Ain’t you like it?”

“I do, I just wonder where it came from.”

“One of Bump’s dames. Brenda, were her name. Told me I should.”

“Bump’s women taught you a lot of things.”

“Aye.” He grinned down at her. “Recall I tell you on Lisa?”

“The one who taught you how to read?”

“Ain’t all she taught me.”

She stopped, and gave his hand a little tug to make him do the same. His puzzled expression relaxed when she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his neck to press her lips to his. “I think she did a very good job.” His hands slid further down her back, all the way down to hold her bottom and pull her closer. “Aye? Thinkin maybe I forgot me some, maybe you oughta give me some reminding. True thing, ain’t wanna lose the knowledge.”

“Later.”

It sucked to pull away from him, but she had to. If nothing else, they stood in the middle of somebody’s lawn in a strange neighborhood at one in the morning. Not really the time or place to start taking off clothes.

He obviously disagreed. His strong arms stayed around her, trapping her against him as he kissed her again. Harder this time. Deeper. Deeper still, until her blood pounded in her veins and her hands wouldn’t stop moving, exploring his back under his shirt, tucking themselves into his jeans.

“Let’s get us back in the car.” His voice, low and thick in her ear, made her shiver.

“No.” One last kiss before she pulled away again. This time he let her go. “Let’s just get this done. Then we have the whole night. In bed.” The streetlight on the corner cast half of his face in shadow, but the visible half clearly showed him calculating how likely he was to get her back into the car.

Not likely. She tugged on his hand. “Come on. It won’t take long, I promise.” They started walking again.

“So why you thinking he got it on? Tryna kill somebody? Power, maybe? You get any feel from him why?”

“I didn’t get much of a feel for either of them, really. They’re just…lame. The only halfway-interesting thing they seem to do is sleep with other people together.”

“What?”

“Didn’t I—? Oh, no, sorry, I didn’t have time to mention it before. They have an open marriage or something, and they both sleep with other people, and sometimes I guess they both sleep with that other person at the same time. A threesome.”

“Damn. Them out here got so much they don’t mind givin the share, aye?” They’d reached the Solomon house, once again dark and silent inside. Oh, they had a ghost. They just weren’t scared of it, didn’t feel the need to turn on lights.

Stupid. Lots of people—especially people who’d managed to build themselves a little power by borrowing from others in a gathering like the Solomons had done—tried to summon ghosts. Some of them succeeded, too. And most of them died. A ghost couldn’t be controlled, couldn’t be reasoned with, or at least something like ninety-nine-point-nine percent of them couldn’t be. Their humanity…changed, after death. Disappeared, really. All ghosts wanted to do was kill.

“I didn’t think of it that way,” she said. Funny, that. But he was probably right; he usually was. These people didn’t mind sharing because they always knew there’d be more. They never doubted it.

This time he was the one who stopped, tugged her back to him. His hands were warm and solid on the sides of her face, cradling it while he kissed her. “Got some knowledge for you.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

His lips touched her forehead. “Don’t give a fuck what else I got. Ain’t never sharin you.” Sometimes he looked at her and their eyes met, and it felt like time stopped. Like he wasn’t looking at her, he was looking into her, and like she was doing the same to him.

She reached up to stroke his face, his thick muttonchops rough and soft at the same time against her fingertips. “Me either.”

She’d always loved his smile. Even back in the very beginning, when she’d thought he was ugly and, well, terrible, she’d noticed it. She’d been so stupid then not to see the rest, to waste those months because she was scared or whatever the hell her problem had been.

“C’mon,” he said finally, pulling away. “Let’s get us inside, aye?” Chess knelt on the cement slab that called itself a porch and pulled the Hand of Glory from her bag. Terrible stood by silently while she lit the candle in its palm, whispered words of power. The click—or whatever it was, she always thought of it as a click—when the spell set came back to her a second later. She turned back to him and nodded.

A minute with her lube syringe and lockpicks got them inside the house. Even in the middle of the night the scent of incense assaulted her as if they had a pound of it on the fire.

Terrible sniffled, his face hidden in the dark. “Likes they some stink-herbs, aye?”

“Yeah. I think they’re using sandalwood to cover up something else.”

“An they all asleep? Ain’t wake up?”

“Nope.” She pulled her flashlight out of her bag. “The spell lasts until I put out the candle, so they’re in enchanted sleep. You could shoot a gun in here and it wouldn’t wake—”

His lips cut her off, taking hers in a kiss that refused to be denied. She knew that kiss.

Knew it meant that he had no intention of stopping until both of them were exhausted, and if she wanted him to stop she needed to say something fast. The trouble was, as his hand slipped under her shirt and up to slide over her breast, as he pulled her bra cup out of the way so he could roll her nipple gently between his fingers, she didn’t want him to stop. She never wanted him to stop, not ever.

This was a subject’s house. This was so wrong, she shouldn’t even have brought him along. If the Church found out about it she could get into some serious trouble. Even Chess, whose file looked pretty damn good—certainly the best Debunking record in the District—would get a big-time slap, if not a day in the stocks, for this.

“Gots it all to weselves, aye?” His warm breath on her throat, her ear, his teeth gentle on her flesh. “Just you an me.”

She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t, because she knew she should be saying no, telling him to wait until they got back to her place or his. But the words refused to come. Instead she just made a gasping sound, almost like a whimper.

He kissed her harder, his tongue sliding past her lips to find hers. Metal clinked; he’d popped open his belt buckle, and his other hand left her breast to undo the buttons of her jeans.

“Want you so bad, Chessiebomb. Now.” His teeth on her neck, biting harder. “Aye? Now.” The Solomons had several bean bags dotting the floor in their living room. Hippies.

Terrible lowered her onto one of them, reaching over to yank another closer and tuck it under her head. The cold heavy cotton shocked the bare skin of her lower back, the suddenly-bare skin of her bottom when he slipped off her panties and pushed them down along with her jeans.

His back under her palms, so warm and solid. His chest so strong, covered with the thick hair she’d never imagined she’d like as much as she did. Covered on the left side over his heart by the scar she’d made, the shape of a binding sigil that had kept him alive the night he’d been shot. That sigil might still be keeping him alive for all she knew.

But he was alive, and that’s what mattered to her. It was all that mattered as she let her palm run down his stomach to play over the thick blunt head of his cock, all that mattered when he gasped above her.