Page 64 of Sky Song
“It isn’t me.”
A barely perceptible sound of a closing door sounded from the street. On Paloma’s side.
“I bet it’s that bartender has come to check on her,” she murmured. “How cute.”
Although she was no longer straddling him, one of Lyle’s hands, the uninjured one, continued to caress her thigh, and, mistake or not, she didn’t want him to stop.
His eyes noticed everything without staring. “You need rest.”
She pulled away and stood up. “I’m not tired,” she said belligerently, like a child at bedtime. The truth was, she did feel tired. But more than that, she needed space to process things on her own. “What about you?”
He let his head drop against the couch. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
He kept his promise.
When Cricket came out of her bedroom, she found Lyle seated at the table, with the filtered light from behind the curtain bathing him in the morning glow. What she also found was a slim weapon and a small device he was examining. Hipper was blessedly quiet.
“Did you sleep well, beautiful?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” She slept like the dead, and as the result, today she felt more clear-headed than she had in a long time. “What is this? No, wait. First, where did these things come from?”
“I went out at night.”
“Ah. Those ‘contacts’ from Atticus?”
“Yep.”
“That was quick.”
“I do know how to make a great first impression,” he sounded pleased with himself.
Cricket was about to ask what he could possibly have traded for the things, when a small rabbity face with human eyes peeked at her from under her own table.
“Hipper?”
“He’s a bit skittish.”
“How…”
The face assumed the same comical expression of surprise she must be wearing.
“He kept scratching at the wall that separates you from - what’s his name again?”
“Mr. Sulys,” Cricket supplied dumbly.
“Yeah.Mr. Sulysleft early in the morning, and I picked his lock and brought the animal here to kill. But so far, he’s been quiet.”
“No killing!” Cricked lowered to a crouch to better see under the table. “I thought he was afraid of aliens.”
Hipper hid from her behind Lyle’s legs. “He’s more afraid of humans, it seems.”
“Unbelievable.”
To give Hipper time to get acclimated to her, Cricket backed off from reaching for him and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. Bringing her coffee and toast with cheese cuts to the table, she pointed to the narrow shiny matchbox Lyle was inspecting.
“What is this?”
Lyle was slow to answer.
