Page 1

1

I really hate being late.

Impatient, I glanced down at my watch for what must have been the fifteenth time in the last half hour. The flight left in just under two hours, and you were—in theory—supposed to get to the airport at least ninety minutes early. It took a half hour to get there, so we were already going to be late for that specific mark, and we hadn’t managed to get out the door yet.

I was pointedly ignoring the fact that the Richmond airport wasn’t large enough to actually justify the full ninety-minute pre-flight arrival, even when it wasn’t the ass-crack of dawn, which it definitely was.

It also didn’t help that my version of getting ready to go was stuffing some shit in a bag and making sure I included deodorant. I didn’t actually double-check things or fold them or really care about what the fuck I was throwing in there beyond ‘probably the right amount of underwear’ and ‘the funeral suit,’ given the reason we were going in the first place.

This was apparently not the case for everybody.

“Can’t you pack any fucking faster?” I asked Taavi Camal, the infuriatingly fussy love of my life. Taavi definitely double-checked things. And folded them. And made sure he had an extra shirt, pair of pants, socks… Not underwear, though, because he doesn’t wear it. I was doubly grateful for that right now, because he would have had to check that twice, too.

“I asked for ten minutes two minutes ago, Val,” he irritably replied to my question.

“We’re going to be late,” I snapped.

Taavi appeared in the bedroom doorway, his eyes—one a rich brown and the other milky white—narrowed and his dark hair pulled into a ponytail that exposed the close-shaved sides of his head. He still didn’t have a shirt on, and a few drips of water ran down one muscular shoulder and over the Maya tattoo that patterned his coppery skin. “Eight minutes,” he said firmly, then disappeared again.

I hate being late. For anything. I am the asshole who shows up to your event exactly on time, and only because people have told me that it’s rude to show up early in the South. Where I come from, if you’re on time, you’re late. Everybody shows up at least fifteen minutes early to help you set up—and they mean it. If you’re perfectly ready, they’ll actually be annoyed.

I’m from Shawano, Wisconsin—which is where we’re about to get on a plane back to because my best friend in the world, Elliot Crane, called me hysterical the night before. His dad had been murdered, so he’d begged me to come home.

So I’d immediately gotten online to find the earliest ticket I could.

Taavi insisted on coming with me.

So I’d bought two tickets. But now it was almost five in the morning, and Taavi still wasn’t ready to go, while I could have been out the door twenty minutes ago.

Seven minutes later, he came out of the bedroom, dressed in dark jeans and a burnt orange long-sleeved t-shirt under a camel-colored cardigan. There was a fleece under one arm.

“You’re going to freeze,” I told him. He didn’t own anything heavier than that fleece and the sweater, both of which he’d found at a thrift store a few weeks ago.

“I don’t own winter clothes, Val,” he replied, sounding annoyed. “I’m from Arizona, remember?”

“Which is why—”

“Valentine Hart, I’m coming with you, and that’s final.”

I sighed. I hate it when people use my full name, mostly because I hate my full name. Taavi typically only did it when he was trying to end an argument. It usually worked, although this time I stopped arguing because we’d already bought him the plane ticket, and we were both—now—packed. And because I actually did want him to come with me. Mostly.

I wanted him there with me. I also wanted him to meet Elliot, my best friend since kindergarten, although this wasn’t exactly the situation I’d envisioned. What I didnotwant was Taavi meeting my mother. Not because I don’t like my mother, but because she, like every other overprotective midwestern mom in existence, was very much set on ‘seeing me settled down and happy.’ Which, in her mind, meant married. At least she knew damn well that it wasn’t going to be to a woman.

I was still not prepared to havethatconversation with my parents and Taavi.

Not because I didn’t want to marry Taavi. I was pretty sure that I did, in fact, want to marry Taavi, but we’d only been together two-and-a-half months and living in the same apartment for two fucking weeks, and that iswaytoo soon to be talking marriage. But if he came back to Wisconsin with me, he would be the first boyfriend since high school that my parents had actually met, and my mom was one hundred per-fucking-cent going to take that as a sign that he was The One.

And yes, okay, he was. But I was still getting my brain wrapped around the fact that he actually loved me, and I wasn’t yet prepared to talk about things like five years from now, much less fifty or forever.

Oblivious to the actual reason for my internal freakout, Taavi walked up to me, setting his stuffed duffel down at my feet, and put his hands on my waist, looking up the foot difference in height between us. “Val, it’s okay. We’ll figure it out.”

I let out another breath, letting my hands settle on his shoulders. “It’s Elliot,” I said softly.

“And Elliot is family.”

I nodded. Elliot wasn’tliterallymy family, of course. Elliot Crane is Ho Chunk and Mamaceqtaw, and my family is German-descended American with a little bit of Swedish or some shit thrown in on Dad’s side, but Elliot and I had grown up inseparable, so he called my parents Ma and Pop, and I did the same with his. Or I had. His mom had died seventeen years ago from cancer they’d caught too late, and now his dad…

Gregory Crane had contracted the Arcanavirus at the same time as his son, and both of them had come out of St. Christopher’s Hospital for Arcane Maladies with fur and wicked claws. If you’ve never seen badger claws, they are scary as fuck, let me tell you. But fur and claws or not, Gregory and Naomi Crane had treated my sorry ass like a second son, feeding me and letting me sleep over anytime I damn well pleased. My parents had done—and probably still would do—the same thing for Elliot.