Читать книгу Heart of Briar - Laura Anne Gilman - Страница 10

Chapter 4

“Hey you. Sleepyhead.” His breath was warm on her bare shoulder. “Wanna go for a run?”

“Are you kidding me?” She didn’t run. She walked at a nice steady pace and did all her exercising at home, on a yoga mat. The only time she wanted to run was if something was chasing her, and even then she though she might let that something catch her, rather than die in a gory coughing-up mess. “I’ll keep the bed warm, how’s that?”

“Yeah, that’s good,” Tyler said, leaning over her, and she turned slightly so she could see that familiar, slow, so-sexy smile on his face, until she realized his lips, usually so soft and full, had narrowed to hard lines, pointed like a beak, and then his face changed, eyes glowing gold, the beak opening to reveal double rows of sharp teeth as though he was going to bite her entire face off—

And Jan sat up in bed, not really awake yet but shocked out of the dream, her eyes wide-open and her heart racing.

“Holy shit on a shamrock.”

Just a dream. It was just a dream, you idiot, and what did you eat yesterday that gave you a dream like that?

Operating on routine, she rolled out of bed, took her pills, and headed for the coffeemaker, where her sleep-dazed awareness took another jolt at the sight of Martin, wearing only a pair of low-slung jeans, standing in front of the coffee machine, already adding coffee to the filter.

“Hey,” he said over his shoulder. “Good, you’re up. I didn’t know if you liked it strong or not.”

She looked at him, not quite certain what he was talking about, and he blinked back at her. “What? Coffee? We like it, too.”

It took a minute before her brain caught up with the rest of her. Yesterday. Tyler’s apartment, the bus, the warehouse, coming home with two men who weren’t actually men, who wanted her help to save the world....

No wonder she’d had bad dreams.

Unable to deal with the realization that it had all been real—or at least true—just yet, Jan looked down at her feet. The polish on her toes was starting to flake off. Her gaze flicked away, like her brain, unable to settle on anything for too long, and caught sight of Martin’s feet, instead. He was barefoot, which wasn’t surprising, and his feet ended, not in five toes, but a single wedge with one dark nail, like...like the tip of a hoof.

That alone should have sent her screaming out into the hallway, or at least back to bed. Instead, she simply said, “I like it strong,” and went past him to the refrigerator, pulling out the carton of orange juice. Out of deference to her houseguests, she poured it into a glass, rather than taking a swig from the carton the way she usually did.

The thought struck her, then, that she was only wearing her nightshirt, which barely covered her ass. It struck her immediately after that she didn’t feel the slightest bit of embarrassment, standing there in front of Martin, both of them half-dressed.

“Shock,” she diagnosed. “Yesterday was... This will all hit me later, and then I can have a nervous breakdown.”

Martin either didn’t hear her or decided to ignore her. “Did you sleep well?”

Jan put the juice back and closed the door. She had to stop and think about the question. “Yeah. Weirdly enough, I did.” Despite the dream waking her up in a cold sweat, she felt rested, as if she’d had a full eight hours of sleep.

He went back to measuring coffee into the coffeemaker. “Good. You had a busy day yesterday.”

“Yeah. You could say that.” Hysteria would be appropriate but useless, she decided. “You? I mean, how’d you sleep?” She had been so tired by the time they got back last night, she’d barely had time to throw extra pillows and blankets at them before retreating to her bedroom and closing the door. She didn’t even know where they’d bunked down: there had been no trace of pillows or blankets in the main room when she’d wandered across. She would have noticed that. Probably.

“I did. Toba doesn’t sleep much. And we had... There was... A third...” Martin floundered a bit, then pushed the start button on the coffeemaker, and turned to face her. “AJ sent someone else to join us, to help set up the protections. He doesn’t think what we set up last night was enough, especially if we’re here, too. Just... Ignore it. The...the other, I mean.”

“Ignore it. Uh-huh.” Considering what she’d already seen, that wasn’t particularly comforting. Nor was the fact that Martin looked a little uncomfortable even talking about it.

She decided to change the subject. “So, what exactly are these protections? Spells?”

He seemed just as happy with the change of subject. “No. Or, not really. A kind of glamour, sort of, to make it seem as though you’re not here. It’s hard to explain. Toba’s better at it than I am. I tend to make a splash.”