Page 68 of Skinwalker's Bane
“Go on,” Adam told him. “Just stop throwing stones at taxiboats, okay?”
“Sure.” Jamey ran across the earth and, with a wave, disappeared amongst the bushes.
“The cheek of him,” Devin murmured.
“He’ll need it, as he gets older,” Adam said reflectively. “He’s, what, eight?”
“Yes.”
“Small, then. Guts is his only weapon.”
“Were you small, like that, too?” she asked. It didn’t seem possible that a man as tall as Adam and as strong, could possibly have been a small, picked-upon child.
“Smaller, even,” Adam admitted. “Then I grew twenty-five centimeters in one year. That shut them up.” He grinned reflectively and tucked the pendant back inside his shirt. His gaze met hers.
Devin pressed her lips together. “You’ve never wanted to give it to anyone, Adam? In all these years?”
His gaze shifted away from her. “Gelin Merrit gave his to Liya. When they got their daughter, Liya gave it to her. Evangeliya has no idea what it is. Eventually she will and it will mean something to her. I think Lincoln gave his to a woman he spent a week with.”
“It wasn’t me,” Devin said quickly.
“Clearly, or you would have recognized what mine was a long time ago.” He shrugged. “I won’t give it to someone who doesn’t give a damn what it means.”
Devin couldn’t look at him anymore. She felt too uncomfortable, despite the conversation they’d had last night. Perhaps that talk added to her discomfort. They had agreed to let each other be who they were. She just didn’t want him to think that her talking about the pendant meant she wanted him to give it to her.
“The taxiboat is coming back,” Adam said warningly.
She turned to look at the approaching taxi. “No, that’s Ronney’s boat.” She knew all of them very well and recognized the scratches and dents on the hull of this one. “He grounds heavily,” she added. “We should get out of the way.”
They moved closer to the house as it was clear the taxi was heading there. As it got closer, they could see who was in it and Devin recognized him.
“What does Peter want, I wonder?” Adam asked.
“He’s a housemate. It might be something domestic. How long since you were back there, anyway?” Devin asked.
“There are screens for stuff like that.” Adam rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s only one thing that would bring Peter here in person. Will this day never end?” he added.
Devin was startled. “You’ve had a bad day?”
“I’ve had people yapping at me all day,” he admitted.
“About me?” she guessed, as the taxi lowered down, then crunched and scraped as it settled.
Peter held his wrist out and the driver scanned in, then Peter hopped over the edge and hurried toward them. “Did you hear the boat coming?’ he asked, puzzled.
“We were out here already,” Adam said. “Come in. You look grim.”
He did. He was a short man—he clearly had not got to enjoy Adam’s spurt in growth in his teenage years. Yet he did not seem to be like a lot of short men, who tried to compensate for the lack of height with a lot of bluster, or hard angles to their personality. What Devin knew of him, which was not a lot so far, he seemed like a nice guy.
She could say that about everyone Adam was friends with, which seemed to include everyone he worked with, too. That was not a description she could make about her own associates, so what did that make her?
Troubled, she led the two men inside. It was fully daylight now and the warmth of the day was starting to build on the Table already. She asked the house AI to polarize all the windows, which would keep the heat and some of the light out of the house. That was the only environmental controls she used, even here on the Table. The other two houses on the table both had full environmental controls and stepping inside them in the middle of the day was a shock and made her skin crawl unpleasantly as cold fingers trickled over it.
No, it was better to be warm.
Peter didn’t sit, even inside, where there were plenty of seats to choose from and even after Adam told him to sit down.
Devin didn’t sit, either. She wouldn’t offer the man coffee because he already seemed jittery enough. Instead, she printed coffee for Adam and herself and a glass of iced and flavored water for Peter.
