Cassie Alexander: Deadshifted

“You’re sure it’s impossible?” I asked him, hoping-not-hoping for him to be right.

Asher’s brow furrowed in contemplation. “A year ago, yes. But … I’m not as positive as I used to be. Shapeshifters living into their mid-thirties is pretty impossible. Santa Muerte changed me. Maybe she did more than I know.”

I wrung my hands together in my lap. “Just once, I’d like to know everything for sure, you know?”

Asher snorted softly. “Me too.”

There was a long pause between us during which I wished he’d magically say the right thing, while at the same time knowing wishing that was epically unfair. “Is it okay?” I asked, my voice small.

He looked surprised. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be? Unless you don’t want it. Then—” He made a mysterious gesture in the air.

I twisted my lips to one side. “So you’re ambivalent about it, is what you’re saying?”

“I’ve had less than five minutes to think about it. It’s still a maybe. What more do you want from me?”

If he’d said that with the wrong tone, I might have lost it. I’d had a very, very long day. But he was earnestly asking what else, if anything, he could do, and I was wise enough to know he meant it.

“Let’s figure it out for sure tomorrow. And then we can celebrate, or celebrate, depending,” I said. “It would be celebrating, right? And don’t say what I want to hear because you know already. That’ll just piss me off.”

Asher looked as stunned as I’d been feeling for the past fourteen or so hours. “I never thought I would ever be a dad. I never wanted to be one. After my dad leaving us … I couldn’t ever imagine bringing a kid into the world.”

It felt like a lead fishing weight was dropping down my throat while he talked.

“But—” He took my hands in his, and calmed their wringing. “I can see doing it, with you. I’ve never thought about it before now. I just assumed we couldn’t, ever. But if I was going to have a kid, I’d want it to be with you.”

I squinted at him. “You’re not just saying that because I threatened you?”

“Not in the least. I sort of figured eventually your mom would wear you down and we’d adopt or something.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Why not? I’ve seen you. You’re good with kids. You like them. I wasn’t going to deny them to you. I just never thought they’d be from me.” He inhaled, held it, and then carefully spoke again. “What if … it’s part shapeshifter?”

I knew what he meant when he said that. What if it’d be like him, and have to grow up outside of society for his, or her, own protection, until it was old enough to deal with the strange. And if it was shapeshifter, even in part, what would happen to it when it aged? Would Asher and I get to have any grandkids? Could ligers breed? Or would it lose itself in the sea of personalities inside, like Asher had almost done?

I shook my head. All that was too far away. We didn’t need to go looking into the future for things to worry about; we had enough options in the here and now. “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. If it’s real. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” he agreed.

I crawled backward onto the bed. “What are we going to do about dinner? It’s been a long day—I don’t feel like leaving the room.”

“This, I’m prepared for.” He reached over to his bedside table and got the room service menu guide for me. “Twenty-four seven. As promised.”

I hadn’t eaten all day—what with traveling, sex, and exhaustion, everything on the menu looked good, and I said so. Asher got a clever-looking smile, and I shut him down. “Don’t you dare make some lame joke about me eating for two.”

After the arrival of two club sandwiches with a side of french fries, we arranged a picnic on our bed, and our conversation continued.

“So it didn’t work. Not at all?” I asked, shoving around ketchup with the edge of a fry.

He shook his head. A little too hard. Was I being hypervigilant, or was he overprotecting me?

I pressed on. “What were you hoping to even accomplish?”

“Other than ruining everything?” he said, brows raised, sort of teasing, sort of not.

“Yeah.”

He heaved a sigh. “I just wanted to see. Maybe if he’d become some great humanitarian in the last few years. Or if a lot of bad things had happened to him, if karma had won out.”

“And what if neither of those things had happened?”

Asher snorted. “I don’t know. It’s a big boat. I bet people fall overboard all the time.”

The fry I’d been raising to my mouth paused in midair. “Did you just hear yourself say that?”

He made a face at me. “Oh, come on, Edie, I was teasing.”

“It’s only teasing if you’ve never done anything like that before.” I carefully set the fry with its burden of ketchup back down. “If you have, then it’s kind of a threat.”

Asher groaned and swung his gaze to look up at the ceiling, pondering it for a moment before looking again back at me. “I’m not that person anymore. Honestly.”

“It isn’t that I want you to change, Asher. It’s just that—” The words hung between us as I tried to think of a phrase that would prove my point, because I really, really really, did want him to change, or at least pretend that killing people wasn’t okay, no matter how awful they might be.

“You don’t want to be in love with a murderer,” he said, cutting me off with a resigned nod. “I get that. It’s fair.”

I gave him a halfhearted grin and tried to lighten the mood. “You know I can’t take time out of my busy schedule to visit you in jail. When would I get my nails done?” I looked down at my hands—I had gone and gotten a rare manicure for this trip, scheduled it yesterday after work, when I’d be safe from my own overzealous hand sanitizing habit. The red nail polish was already chipping a little bit at the edges, where only I could see.

“When indeed,” he said drily, and poached a fry off my plate.

After our picnic, we crawled into bed. Asher slept soundly and I envied him. I wanted to, but couldn’t. I missed my Ambien prescription. Ironically, I could get Hector MD to write me one, but I felt stupid needing it now that I was supposedly on a day-shift schedule. I hadn’t thought about the stresses of jet lag, finding out my period was late, and discussing whether my morally ambiguous boyfriend should kill someone, even if he was a really bad someone, on my vacation trip. Oh, well, I didn’t know if Ambien was safe for indeterminately pregnant people, either.

I was too keyed up to sleep. My mind was an angry dog, chasing after endless cars.

Would Asher make a good dad? I thought he would. Then again, his own dad sucked. But what better excuse to overcompensate than to fix your own past?

Would I make a good mom? Oh, God, who knew. I knew I’d be full of good intentions—just like the proverbial path to hell.

I threw the sheets off me and walked across the room to the balcony, unlocked the doors, and stepped outside into the night.

The Maraschino put out too much light pollution itself for me to see the stars. But the newly waning moon was overhead. I knew all weres were safe from its pull for now. I leaned against the railing, looking out at the water.

Was it even safe to bring a kid into this world? One that I knew had vampires, and weres, and a hundred other things that could go bump in the night in it? If we did have a kid—ours, or adopted—and it was scared of something under the bed, would I honestly be able to tell it that things would be just fine?

“Edie?” I heard Asher’s voice from the room behind me and turned around. There were no lights in the room; his disembodied voice was coming from the dark. “Come back to bed.”