Page 38 of Raven's Instinct
“I’m not promising anything,” Kendra warned him.
“I’m not setting any expectations,” he agreed.
Kendra knew that neither of them was talking about food by this point.
“Tonight?” Kendra clarified. Amy was getting restless and starting to lean out from her embrace to convince Kendra to put her down.
“I’m free,” Alan said. “I get off at six.”
Kendra vividly remembered his promise to getheroff. “What’s your address?” she asked, pulling out her phone. Alan rattled it off to her and she set a pin on the map. “I’ll come by at six-thirty.”
“Kendra…” he blurted, as she turned to go.
She glanced back.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said honestly.
“Me, too,” Kendra agreed.
They definitely weren’t talking about food.
26
ALAN
Alan didn’t have much of a house to clean. As much as his raven liked shiny things, he wasn’t much of a collector, preferring to find things togiveto people over hoarding them for himself. He was fairly tidy by nature, and he had a weekly housekeeper to scrub the bathroom and kitchen and vacuum the house.
The house itself had been selected and furnished by the agency, and it was relentlessly bland, with beige carpet and off-white walls. Token pieces of completely inoffensive artwork (landscapes and abstracts) filled the largest spaces, but it was definitely a place that lacked personal touches.
Alan hadn’t considered it a problem until he was going to have Kendra over and he realized that not only was it dangerously unprepared for a toddler to visit, it was also the most boring house possible, and he felt a tinge of shame.
The bookshelf had glass cabinet doors, the television was in reach of swinging toys, and Alan had no items of entertainment that would be of interest to someone who was still at an age for putting things in their mouths and banging things for the sheer noise of it. The recliner-rocker was a finger-pinch hazard, and the couch was the same off-white as the walls…just daringsomeone to spill something on it. None of the cabinets or drawers had been safety-locked, and the knives were in a block on the counter which would not be out of reach of a determined climber. Alan had learned quickly that some little kids could scale almost anything.
He should have brought some toys from the day care, Alan realized when he unlocked the front door and stared in at his very neutral, starkly empty living room.
He should have put up some personal touches by now, he thought. Artwork that represented his own roots, not Martha Stewart’s BigMart line ofdon’t rock the boat.
It was too late to redecorate before his guests arrived. He had thought to stop at the store and get milk, since he wasn’t sure if it would come with Thai food, and a booster seat with a tray so that Amy would have a place to eat. He didn’t remember until he was checking out at the department store that Kendra would be driving herkitchento his house and could probably supply her own beverages if she needed them.
Alan rumpled the blanket on the back of the couch so it wasn’t quite as savagely un-lived in, put the milk in his fridge, buckled the booster seat onto a chair, and waited.
Ten minutes before Kendra said she would arrive, Alan’s phone rang, and he answered without looking at the screen. “Yes?”
“That’s yes,sir,” Juliette teased him. She’d been recently promoted, and Alan had given her a lot of good-natured grief about outranking him now.
Alan tamped down his disappointment, looking at the clock on the microwave. “What can I do for you,sir?”
“I actually have some unfortunate news for you,” Juliette said, sobering. “Owen’s out.”
Alan swore and his raven bristled. “Someone upstairs pulled strings?”
“I don’t like it,” Juliette said. “We’re losing four of our highest-risk holdings, and the agency says they can keep tabs on them and minimize the damage they can do, but I’m doubtful that we actually can.”
Alan knew that the temperature of the agency had been in flux for a while. Changes in administration meant changes in policy, and some of those policies that were for the protection of shifter secrets didn’t look good on ledgers outside of the circles of secrecy. “Who are the others?”
Juliette named them and Alan filed them carefully to look up later. They weren’t individuals he knew. Owen, given his history with Addison and Theo, was the largest immediate threat. “Directives?”
“Continue as-is,” Juliette said.
