Kelly Meding - As Lie the Dead

“Who? Weres?”

“Yes, Evy. Weres, Owlkins, and anything else you might want to call us.”

I placed my hands on the table, palms down, and sat up straight. “Look, I know I keep offending you with my word choices, but put your ass in my pants for a minute. The last four years of my life have been spent policing goblins and Halfies, and generally keeping the rest of the city off your collective scent. If it kills a human, I hunt it. If it’s a Dreg and it breaks a law, I kill it. Political correctness isn’t something I have a lot of time for.”

“Education is the greatest weapon we have against ignorance.”

For a non sequitur, that was pretty good, and it was a thought I’d had myself not long ago. He just should have saved it for a more relevant conversation. “This isn’t an interaction session, Phin. We aren’t battling ignorance.”

“Aren’t we? Humans have a long history of fearing what they don’t understand, and one of the biggest products of fear is hatred.”

There, laid out for me in a neat, gift-wrapped package, was the entire reason for this little exercise. Bring me to a were-owned and were-operated diner, let me see them in their natural habitat, and prove they were just like me so I wouldn’t fear them. So I wouldn’t hate them. As a civics lesson, it was somewhat effective. Only I wasn’t in school anymore.

“So you’re trying to do what?” I asked, tapping my fingertips on the plastic tabletop. “Educate me in the error of my Hunter ways? Show me how evil I’ve been for the last four years and what a fucked-up organization the Triads are?”

“More the latter than the former.”

“You had to bring me to lunch at a were-spot to do that?”

He traced his finger along the rim of his half-empty glass, three complete circles, and then stopped. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?” My voice rose a notch. I struggled to return it to a normal, less noticeable level. “For Christ’s sake, Phin, quit with the cryptic-speak and say what you brought me here to say. I don’t communicate well in code.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to eat in a Sape-owned diner. Did that occur to you?”

My hands curled into fists, which I kept pressed to the table on either side of the cooling mug of coffee. “In a what?”

“Exactly.”

“Ready to order?” Belle asked, her voice sneaking up on us.

Neither of us looked away, neither backing down.

“Cheeseburger, medium-well, no onions, fries,” I said.

Phin’s left eye twitched. “I’ll have the same.”

“Okay.” Belle turned the two-syllable word into at least four, spun on her heel, and clicked back into the crowd. Forgotten instantly.

“You humans have a fondness for labeling things,” Phin said. “Yet you get upset when the tables are turned and you’re similarly labeled. You really think we Dregs don’t call you things behind your back?”

“I’m not that stupid,” I said. “I just don’t often meet one who’ll say it to my face so casually.”

“Because you’ll kill them for it?” He asked the question as though my killing something for insulting me wasn’t unusual. Or even questionable.

Bastard . “That’s how you see me? Someone who kills because she feels like it, and consequences be damned?”

“It’s the reputation you’ve created among my people and others, Evy, you and the Triads. You create and enforce the laws, you don’t allow us to police ourselves, and when we do break a law, the Triads are sole judge, jury, and executioner.”

“This is our city, Phin. We’ll police your people as we see fit.” I couldn’t believe I was still sitting there, listening to him proselytize about what humans were doing wrong in the course of protecting our city. And the half-million human beings living in it. I couldn’t believe it, but I didn’t get up and leave. Leaving meant losing the argument.

Phin’s eyes narrowed. “Then don’t be surprised when others begin to resist your rule.”

My heart pounded in my ears. I leaned forward, elbows on the table, never looking away from him. Saw my own fury reflected in his eyes. “If you know something about tomorrow’s meet-up at Park Place, you’d better spill it now before they’re mopping your blood off the nice, clean floor.”

He snorted laughter. “And here I thought we’d begun to understand each other. That’s not what I meant. Not even close.”

“Then what? You want to join the Triads?”

“Is that unreasonable?”

For the second time in ten minutes, my jaw dropped. I searched his face for signs of jest, any hint he was being sarcastic, and found none. Just the same earnest sincerity and keen observation he’d had since I met him that morning. God, but that seemed a lifetime ago.

“Seriously?” I asked.

“You sound so surprised. You employ Gifted as both Hunters and Handlers. Why not Therians?”

“Therians?”

“More specifically, Therianthropes. The Clans, Evy. It’s what we call ourselves. Personally, I find the term ‘were’ a little insulting, considering your human history with the word. I’m not a wolf, and I don’t change under the full moon. I’m Therian. I’m also Assembly representative of the Coni Clan.”

Speechless, I forced myself to remain still and not give away anything I was thinking. Feeling. Confusion, frustration, and anger churned into a potent storm that threatened to unleash its fury. Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. I didn’t blink them away. My chest hurt from holding my breath.

Instead of shrieking, I managed some smidge of control and spoke barely above a whisper. “What. The fuck. Do you want. From me?”

The hard edges of his face seemed to soften, and his lips parted. Forthcoming words died in his mouth as a ruckus broke out on the other side of the diner. I half stood, hand braced on the table, trying to peer past the heads of other folks who’d just started to stand. Phin shifted around in the booth, as curious as me.

“Get that talk on out of here,” Belle shouted, her voice ringing loudly over the buzz of hushed conversation and crackle of the flattop. “No one’s interested.”

“That why they’ve been hanging on my every word?” a male voice asked. Husky and thick. Couldn’t see him. “Because they’re not interested?”

“If they want to listen, let them listen outside,” Belle replied.

Someone moved and I finally spotted Belle, poised next to the counter, both hands on her hips. The target of her ire was still out of my sight, but the upturned angle of her head told me he was taller than her. And not intimidated by the were-cat waitress, if her shifting posture was any indicator.

“You going to kick out one of your own?” the dissenter asked.

Belle nodded. “And enjoy it, too.”

A squat man in a baseball cap got up from his table, leaving behind a woman and two small children and four ice cream sundaes. He turned the cap around backward and sidled up next to Belle, further obscuring my view of the drama. “Trouble here, Belle?” Ball Cap asked.

“We’re just talking,” the problem person said. “When did that become a crime in this city? Do we persecute our own now for supposed crimes? Isn’t that what the Triads are for?”

I bristled. Phin’s hand closed around my left wrist—the only thing that kept me from entering the fray. I focused on the warmth of his skin, the dual strength and softness in his touch, and kept myself grounded. Less likely to fly at someone—him included.

Conversation around the diner all but stopped as heads turned and previously oblivious patrons took notice. Someone nearby growled. The two Bloods at the far end of the counter were the only people ignoring the main event, uninterested in the were—no, Therian —standoff.