Page 29 of Rifted Hearts
That wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.
“Lyall loves to lap up scotch from his doggy bowl.” Remi added a touch of compulsion to the couple, and they exchanged a kiss before walking away holding hands, all thoughts of awkward questions gone from their minds. “Lead the way to the bar.”
13
Kaveh walked into the monstertown’s saloon, not sure if he would hug Remi if he found him there or shake him senseless.
The rift’s expansion had been alarming, but Rhys’s cool arrogance after Kaveh rode all the way to the keep to ask why it happened had been even worse. He told Kaveh that given his match was most likely in the monstertown, a decision had been made to expand their territory to keep the individual safe and allow Kaveh to collect them.
That phrasing and Rhys’s refusal to allow Kaveh to discuss this further with the matriarch led to a blow-out argument. Kaveh didn’t lose his temper often, but when he did, it took him a long time to simmer down.
The ride back to the monstertown hadn’t been enough to take the edge off his anger, but not seeing Amanita tied up at the field shelter had driven any thought of the fight with his ex out of his mind.
It was a short ride from the picnic area to the monstertown, and Remi had been riding on a repoequus—Amanita had fully transformed when they had crossed over the newrift boundary. She not only knew the way to the monstertown, she could intimidate any dangerous Riftworld creatures who might have been emboldened by the rift’s expansion.
As he stripped the tack off Ranger in record time and pumped fresh water into the trough for the gelding, he told himself there had to be a reasonable explanation that didn’t involve a transformed Amanita eating Remi or some monster worse than a repoequus harming both of them.
He cursed himself for not taking Remi to the safety of the monstertown himself and rushed through the gates.
That’s when he ran into a group of parents and their kids returning from the soccer field. They hadn’t been watching a game, and as he heard various versions of what had transpired, his worry turned to annoyance, and finally to dread.
He liked Remi. A lot.
The picnic and what they had done after it had been wonderful, comfortable in a way sex had never been with Rhys. Before he heard the stories about what had happened at the soccer field—what had people been thinking?—his biggest concern had been a nagging feeling of guilt he was being unfaithful to someone whose identity he didn’t even know.
Now he worried whether Remi had ever been the person he thought he was.
His entry into the combination bar, coffee shop, and music venue everyone called the saloon didn’t go unnoticed. In fact, he became the immediate center of attention, which always made him uncomfortable. He expected the townspeople would be upset and concerned about being subsumed into the drakone riftland without warning, but that wasn’t what everyone was asking him about. They were asking about the Matchmaker and his search for true love.
“Kaveh’s here!” Remi called out from across the room, and despite everything, Kaveh’s heart lightened in his chest. Remi stood safe and sound on the small stage inside the building that featured entertainment ranging from live music to interspecies poetry slams. His clothing had wrinkles and grass stains, but he otherwise looked fine. “There’s a whole room full of eligible residents willing to try on your bracelet. I’m calling it speed matrimony.”
Remi waved at the restaurant’s bartender/barista, a green-haired woman with Riftworld ancestry from an intelligent plant species. She poured out a beer with her twig-like fingers and gestured to Kaveh to come and take it.
He didn’t need alcohol now. He needed to talk to Remi.
José bounded over to the bar to grab the drink and brought the sloshing glass over to him. “Congrats on the engagement, dude, with whoever it is. Remi said you’d be cool with a throuple, so if it’s Jessie or me we’d be stoked.”
“How is Lyall?” Kaveh put ice into his words, and José gave him a sheepish grin. “I heard about the fight.”
“He kicked my ass, so he’s better than okay.” José gestured at one of the tables where Jessie sat with a group of her friends, Snow on her shoulder. Lyall was perched across from her on a chair with an array of bar food and a bottle of scotch in front of him. Not the kind of diet Kaveh recommended for canine species, but from what people had told him, Lyall wasn’t a normal dog.
José began a rambling series of excuses about the dog fight.
Kaveh cut him off. “We’ll talk about it later.”
He ignored the beer José tried to press on him and pushed through a crowd of well-wishers, most of whom were ready to volunteer to become his life partner on the spot. He made his way to the front of the stage and stoodwith arms folded, glaring up at Remi. For a second, a wholly unfamiliar expression of guilt flickered across the vid streamer’s face, before a guileless smile replaced it.
“I need to talk to you in private.” Kaveh half expected him to address the saloon again or try to drag him onto the stage, but Remi set down his beer and hopped down. Lyall jumped off his chair and trotted over to Remi’s side, sniffing at Kaveh’s boots with suspicion.
They all walked out the back, where the saloon’s owner had a small garden of plants from both worlds. There was nowhere to sit, but it was the closest place Kaveh could find that gave them privacy.
“Did you find out what happened with the rift?” Remi seemed determined to get his own questions in before he had to answer any of Kaveh’s.
“Rhys told me the clan did it deliberately to protect whoever the Matchmaker selected for me.” Kaveh didn’t want to get into more details before he had a chance to talk to the matriarch. “They’ve received word that some of the Colony’s enforcers are in Tucson.”
“What colony?” Remi’s air of innocent confusion didn’t fool Kaveh for a minute.
“Several people told me you transformed into a rodent alter form during a dog fight between your terrier and José.” Kaveh did his best to keep his tone level. The argument with Rhys had been infuriating, but the prospect of finding out that Remi had betrayed him was far worse. “You’re one of the ratkind, and you’re from Boston. You can’t expect me to believe you don’t know what the Colony is. The newsfeeds run articles all the time about the rat monster mafia and its leader, Arimanius. I need you to tell me the truth.”
