Page 6 of Pike

“I just—” She broke off. “I thought you were in trouble. I thought I could handle it. I can’t.”

“Love, for someone who can tell the future…you have no concept of personal safety.”

“I know, you’re right,” she said despondently. “That’s why I need you. Seriously this time. No more half-baked promises where you push me off on someone else. Or where you don’t show up.”

He pointed down to the ash scattering upwind. “I’ve helped enough.”

“You helped tonight, but I guarantee there will be others. Eh!” Lavinia pointed a finger at his face before he could say anything. “Don’t even try to deny it. I get into trouble like some people get into a pair of pants.”

“True,” he agreed.

“Maybe you won’t always be around to help me. I mean, I hope you are, but forever is a long time. You don’t really want me hounding you forever. Right?”

Pike took the time to scratch the hairs on his chin. “You’re not wrong.”

“Train me, and not just the few moves you showed me a couple of months ago.” She held her arms up in a fighting stance. Winced again when a twinge of pain shot from her ankles to her left hip. There was a warm bath and Epsom salt in her future. She didn’t need a vision to see that. “I need practice. Someone to tell me what to do and how to navigate this world. You’re my best friend,” she repeated.

“Love, if you need me to hold your hand, you won’t survive much longer.”

“I’m trying to get you to stop holding my hand, Pike.”

He could very well say no, Lavinia decided, and visibly shrank away when she remembered the first time she’d needed Pike’s help. About fifteen minutes after the party where she’d spotted him the second time around. Instead of finding the bathroom she’d desperately needed, Lavinia had ended up in the middle of a clamor of harpies. Harpies who didn’t appreciate being interrupted. A good bit of begging ended with her being lifted from the ground, about to disappear from the earth, when Pike turned the corner and talked them down. Bird-bodied, girl-faced, and sharp-clawed, they took to him instantly, forgetting about Lavinia in the process.

She couldn’t say what Pike got out of their friendship—besides her dazzling wit, of course—but she hoped he would continue to want to help her these many years later.

“Will you teach me how to live in this world?” she pleaded. “Your world?”

Pike glanced down at the ground then back at Lavinia. “I’m not sure you can handle me.”

“Oh, I can handle you. Trust me.”

It took a little more convincing and a lot more pleading. Finally, Pike laughed and gave her a wink. “Don’t worry, love. I’ll take you on. By the time I’m done, you’ll be decapitating ghouls like a pro.”

CHAPTER 2

“You gonna just stand there and mope all night?” the bartender said.

Pike ignored Ezollo’s irritating desire to slither his way into other people’s business. The reason Pike preferred this bar over others was the dim lights, comfortable leather seats, and a don’t ask, don’t tell policy. The place wasn’t ever too packed and he liked the solitude. But there was business to attend to, things to take care of, and none of it required an audience. Especially a nosy bartender like Ezollo.

Pike chose from one of several empty stools at the bar and slid his bum into the cracked seat. “I’m not moping,” he answered. “I’m thinking. There’s a difference, although I doubt you’d understand.”

Ezollo set a tall glass of something on a cocktail napkin in front of him. They were in the shifter bar known as Kraken Down. It sat sandwiched between a pharmacy and a deli-style sandwich place a block down from the Wicked Weed Brewing Pub in the heart of Asheville. Hiding in plain sight, the locals liked to say. The glamour was strong enough to have tourists passing by without noticing a thing and visible enough for any legitimate clientele—those of the paranormal persuasion—to waltz in effortlessly.

It was Pike’s regular hangout. He could be himself amidst the paneled walls and cigar smoke. There was no more need for pretense. Pretenses were exhausting.

So was bailing Lavinia out of her numerous scrapes, but he couldn’t blame her. Not when he needed her, too.

“Which one is it tonight?” Ezollo proceeded to ask, his accent straight out of one of Plato’s pages. Greeks. Smarmy buggers. Pike hadn’t met a single one he could trust.

He took a sip and hissed. Beer mixed with blood. It wasn’t his favorite drink but one of the nightly specials the bartender concocted out of his crazed imagination and subjected his customers to without thought. It would have to do.

“It’s Thursday,” he grunted. “You tell me.”

“The little blond with the overbite.”

Pike nodded. “Yes.”

“Damn, right on the money in round one.”

---