MaryJanice Davidson - Dead Over Heels

“How do you hunt,” she asked, fascinated, “if you keep eating your claws?”

“Nervous tic.”

“Yeah, well, it’s kind of skeeving me out.”

He nibbled harder. “It gets worse when I’m under stress. Which you’re definitely putting me under.”

“Pal, you haven’t seen stress. Next!”

“That’s it,” Saul said.

“What?” she cried. “Only five? Five losers?”

“You gave me,” he reminded her, “twenty hours notice.”

“Oh, sure, it’s my fault. Man, if I didn’t know you so well I’d swear you set me up with those idiots on purpose.”

“Now why would I do that?” he asked mildly, sitting down across from her. “You can just call me candidate number six.”

“Very fucking funny, Saul. So now what do we do?”

“Have a drink?”

“After that. My birthday loometh.”

“Well, I did fix you up for a blind date tomorrow night.”

“Excellent!”

“Yeah,” he said, draining his beer. “Excellent.”

Is that what you’re wearing?” Saul asked as soon as she walked into his living room. He had all kinds of incomprehensible paperwork spread around him, and looked harassed.

She looked down at herself. Clean denim shorts, a navy blue T-shirt. Black suede flats. It was July on Cape Cod; what else would she wear? “What? What’s wrong with it?”

“What if he’s planning to take you somewhere nice?”

She scowled at him. “I’m not wearing a dress or a skirt and that is that .”

He sighed. “You’re not making this very easy.”

“Hey, I never said it would be easy.”

“Yes, you’ve been threatening me with that since kindergarten.”

“What’s all the stuff?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Work junk?”

“Work junk,” he agreed. “New client. Place is a disaster. I foresee a month of twenty-hour days. Especially now that you’ve dumped your little project on me.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch,” she said good-naturedly. “Hey, maybe you can fix me up with some of your clients.”

“We only have three werewolves, and they’re all mated.”

“Rats.”

“‘Rats’ as in ‘Oh, rats’ or rats as in ‘They’re rats to be married’?”

She pondered that one for a moment, then finally said, “Both.” She looked around at all the paperwork with distaste. “Saul, when was the last time you had a vacation?”

“What year is it?”

“If you have to ask, it’s been too damn long.”

He shrugged. “I like my work.”

“Yeah, that’s fine, but you should think about settling down, too. You don’t want to be the only one in the old gang not mated.”

“God forbid,” he said dryly. “Plague and famine would be more welcome.” There was a polite rap on his door. “Ah. Prince Charming has arrived.”

“Please God,” Cain said fervently, and went to answer the door.

My patients are really my life, and they’re all so different, that’s what I love about my work, the constant variety, I mean, every single day is different—”

Oh my God. This guy hasn’t stopped talking since he picked me up at Saul’s.

“—Dr. Williams is so arrogant, he just won’t tolerate any nurses, thinks we’re all trained monkeys—badly trained monkeys—and—”

Jesus. He’s never going to stop talking.

“—and then there was Mrs. Jenkins, boy, she was a firecracker! D’you know she was friends with Michael’s mother? Man, the stories she told! They were—”

I’m going to have to kill him and escape.

“—of course, what I’d really like is to go back to school and become a nurse practitioner. With the national nursing shortage, I can pretty much—”

Should I hit him until he shuts up? With what? A fire extinguisher?

“—they can write prescriptions and the money’s really great, not to mention—”

I’ll hit Saul. That’s what I’ll do.

“—you’re really great to talk to, you know how to listen, which I really—”

First this guy, then Saul, then myself. A double murder/suicide.

“—work such long hours, it’s so hard to meet people, but of course it’s worth it for the job, I mean, it’s just so rewarding—”

Oh my God. Where is that waitress? I need another drink so badly.

“—couldn’t believe it when Saul called me up and said you wanted to go out, I mean, we’ve all wondered why you haven’t settled down—”

At this rate, I’ll be unmated when I’m fifty.

“—then you had that cool mission to Minnesota, something about Antonia and—can this be right?—a vampire queen? I mean, it’s like something out of a Stephen King novel—”

Stupid vampire queen.

Come on,” Saul said, setting a plate of steak and fries in front of her, along with a glass of six raw eggs. Among other things, Saul was a good cook and knew all her favorites.

“What, come on? It was awful!”

It was eleven o’clock at night; her date had ended early. Except it hadn’t felt early, God no.

Saul was unruffled. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“He never shut up! It was work, work, work, and blah, blah, blah—he doesn’t know a thing about me because I couldn’t get a word in edgewise!”

“He’s single, makes a good living, good-looking (not that I see him that way), and wants to settle down.”

“No, he’s looking for a blow-up doll that will listen all day and all night. God!” She drained her glass of eggs in three swallows. “I didn’t think I’d ever get out of there.”

“Well, you did. And here you are. Again.”

“You never used to mind when I dropped by,” she grumped. She chewed her steak furiously, then said, “You look like hell. You’re working too hard. Take a damned vacation already.”

He shrugged. “From what? Excel, or you?”

“You’re hilarious.”

“The good news—if you can call it that—is that I’ve set you up with another date for tomorrow night. Word’s getting around that you’re looking to settle down.”

“Excellent! There’s no way this guy can be worse than the other six.”

“You really do like to jinx yourself, don’t you?”

“Nuh-uh! Okay, maybe that was a dumb thing to say. I guess we’ll wait and see how it goes tomorrow night.” She chewed another piece. Then: “Word’s really getting around?”

He shrugged and flipped his black hair out of his eyes. “You know how our kind are. We’re genetically inclined to settle down young and have cubs. So the news that the infamous Cain, single for almost thirty years—”

“Because of the pact!”

“—wanting to settle down is pretty good gossip.”

“A dream come true. I’m gossip fodder.”

“There’s worse things,” he said, and cracked two more eggs into her glass.

She didn’t care for number seven—Geoff Ren—and she couldn’t put her finger on why. Certainly he was smooth, and handsome (in a distant, icy blond, blue-eyed way), and charming. He listened to her, courteously offered to move them away from a cigarette smoker, and sent her steak back when it showed up overcooked. He made sure her drink glass was always full, and offered to take her somewhere else for dessert when nothing really grabbed her on the menu.

Maybe he was a little too—controlling?

Stop it , she scolded herself. You’ll never get mated at this rate. Now you’re just looking for reasons to reject these guys. Geoff’s been a great date. The best of a bad lot, that’s for damn sure .