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AUbrY

I slide into the room with a bag of tacos in one hand and the Glock in the other. The lights flicker on the other side where she’s sitting on the bed. She hasn’t said much since we made it out of Crudité with our lives. I don’t know what I want her to say.

I forgive you.

Thank you for saving me.

It’s totally cool that you’re a wanted murderer who could kill me. Tear my clothes off and take me.

“I brought dinner,” I say, setting the steaming bag down on the dresser. She stirs, sliding her legs out from under her.

My shirt I loaned her strains at her belly and chest, the buttons just begging to be torn open. There was no chance she could wear my old sweatpants—I’d have ripped them off with my teeth if she did.

“What is it?” she asks, still holding Astin who—upon being let out by Sadie—refused to leave her lap.

“Tacos, a mess of them, and I think some tater tots or something. I don’t know exactly. I just asked for what’s popular and doubled it.”

She nods and tries to delicately untie the bag.

Her empty stomach screams out for food. Without thinking, I tear the bag apart.

Tacos roll across the dresser toward her.

She blinks a moment as if needing to be ladylike while eating fast food tex mex in a seedy motel.

But her hunger, and the fact they left her starving for days, wins over.

Grabbing two, Sadie works her way back to the bed.

I’m not hungry, but I pick up a taco anyway and stand awkwardly between the bed and bathroom. “Careful,” I call out as she unravels her food.

Teeth lunge before I can get a word out. Lettuce and cheese tumble to the blanket as the culprit tries to slink away with his steal.

“Astin loves Mexican food.”

“I can see that,” she says. Despite her being the one starving, she plucks a bit of meat from the tortilla and passes it to my fat cat. He’s not very delicate taking it from her hand.

Everything’s a mess. The truck’s running on fumes thanks to their bullets.

I drove until it gave out, leaving us outside Vegas and at the kind of motel that charges by the hour.

My clothes aren’t in much better shape, either riddled with bullet holes, or covered in various fluids from the dying truck.

I had no choice but to put on an old purple T-shirt and a pair of zebra sweatpants I didn’t even remember buying.

I wish my sartorial style could be my only concern.

We eat in silence. Every time I thought of something I can say, I’d back down. Either she won’t want to hear it, she’ll hate me for it, or…she’ll leave. I can’t let her do that. Not right now.

Sadie finishes off three tacos and a mess of the tater tots. I tell her she can have the rest, but she calmly folds up her papers, then adds them to the bag.

What do we do now?

There’s one bed, cause seedy motel outside Vegas. They don’t tend to need two. But I saw the way she looked at me. When she finally understood what I am. That bed’s not going to be seeing any action tonight.

I should check the perimeter again. He’s not as connected as the Brassicas, but even Mr. Ato has his favorites in the police department. They might be checking traffic cams right now to track the truck. I reach for the gun.

“Are you alone?”

Her soft question turns my arm to ice.

Yes. I’m alone. I’ve always been alone.

And I always will be.

“What?” I ask instead.

Sadie licks her lips, then she rests against the dresser. “Is there anyone else that can turn into a…vegetable?”

“More than you think. Not everyone in a family can do it, but it’s only passed through the blood.”

“Did your parents send you away because you become an eggplant?” She shakes her head as if she’s taken a shot.

I know, it sounds absurd. If I’d told anyone when I was a kid, they’d have washed my mouth out with soap for lying. It didn’t take me long to realize that my nature wasn’t something to brag about. It was a shame.

“No.” I swallow hard, refusing to think about them. “They were in trouble, not that they’d tell me how much trouble. With another mob. The Squash.”

“The Squash? Do they—?”

“Yes. Summer’s the leader now, but it was Butternut then. There’s a lot of hierarchy bullshit in the community. On the East Coast, the Squash rule and keep a tight grip on anyone who’s not. Out here it’s—”

“The Nightshades?”

Ato would love to hear that. “The Brassicas. Though they have both the West coast and the Midwest. Also most of the plains and outright own Wyoming.”

She nods like any of it makes sense. I’d never thought twice about the system.

You answered to whoever had his boot on your neck.

Seemed simple. But away from all the bickering and posturing, it sounds nuts.

At the end of the day, we all turn into vegetables.

We all have seeds, and stems, and nightmares about being boiled alive or diced up onto a party tray.

“I think my parents sent me to live with my Lolo to escape all of this,” I confess. I have no proof whatsoever beyond the need to believe that they loved me and were trying to protect me. Not just that an eggplant shifter deep in Squash territory was a ticking time bomb.

“How?” she asks.

Rather than answer her, I watch her fingers dance through Astin’s fur. He’s purring in delight, doing all he can to get one more scratch. When he bonks his head into her hips, she picks him up and cuddles him to her chest. I swear my cat sticks out his tongue at me.

It’s easy to get in good with her when you’re furry and cute.

“Aubry?” Her voice rings with a hint of tears.

I turn away like I’m staring out the window even though the blinds are shut. “Life on Cebu wasn’t easy.”

“Cause you didn’t speak the language.”

“Because they clocked me for what I was. My Lolo was a shifter too. A proud one who didn’t hide the way we’re supposed to. The locals didn’t like that. Didn’t like me.”

“Who wouldn’t like you?” she asks after I nearly got her killed twice over tonight. The list is long.

“I can understand their fear, even their hatred to some extent. We’re different. We have our own ways. And we can be anywhere.”

Sadie scrunches her brow in confusion.

I gaze at her beautiful face, knowing it’ll be the last time she doesn’t look at me with disgust or derision. “When you were kidnapped, did you happen to sign for a box, a package?”

“Yeah. I got a delivery from a client… I really hope they weren’t expecting me to do it tonight.”

I shake my head. “That was them. Probably the Bells. Bell peppers.”

“They were bell peppers. How did you…?” Realization sinks in.

Her lips droop as she weighs what I’m telling her.

Mr. Ato didn’t recruit me into this life because I’m passable at soccer, I love old movies from the eighties, and I make a damn good lumpia.

He needed spies, he needed muscle. He needed both.

And that’s what we are. We can infiltrate without anyone the wiser.

We can overhear conversations no one’s supposed to hear.

And then we can eliminate any problems leaving no trace we were ever there.

Just another veggie in the fridge while blood seeps under the kitchen counter.

“My parents were dead. My Lolo—the only one who took me in, who taught me, who would tell the worst jokes in the world, and sent me packing when I turned eighteen but still loved me… Dead.” My legs give out, and I collapse to the bed.

If I think about that day too hard my nose fills with the stench of burning sugarcane.

“And there’s Mr. Ato, offering his condolences and a job offer.

I thought…I thought that’s good money for a medic. ”

“A medic?”

In my mental lashing, I almost forget she’s here.

“I was trained to be a medic. Eighteen. Signed up. Made it a year or more before, well…” The army wasn’t going to be my life. It was just a way to get off of Cebu and do anything other than harvest sugarcane while suffering tourists. “I lost my family and picked up a new one.

“Mr. Ato was good to me.” Even after everything he’s done, I can’t help it.

I still think back fondly to those early days.

“At first. Treated me like…better than his son.” I shiver and glance up like I’ve said the name of a demon about to pop out through a mirror.

Only Sadie’s watching. “But he knew I had my limits. That I’d play spy when needed, even rough a few people up who threatened the family. Then the docks.”

Warm fingers glance over mine and I startle. How long was I staring at nothing. Sadie doesn’t sit beside me, but she stands nearer. “What happened?”

“I wasn’t supposed to be there. Red got sick.

Bad clams.” I’m stalling, trying to say anything other than what I saw in that shipping crate.

“I didn’t know what they were moving. Assets.

That was the term. We were always moving assets.

I never asked what. I didn’t think. No, I didn’t want to know. Cause if I found out the truth then…”

“Was it people?”

I gulp, my first instinct to deny as I had for months after. But the doubt wouldn’t leave me. No matter what dragon I chased as distraction it was always waiting there, asking. Did I know?

Could I have stopped it?

“People…like me. He was smuggling in veggie shifters. The thing is, we’re still awake in that form. We hear everything. When the seas got rough, or maybe they were scared they’d be found out, they turned back into human. And…”

I stand, needing to pace to get away from myself.

“And?” Sadie asks, hanging on my every word.

Why’s she even here? Why did they take her? If she’d been a one-night fuck then she’d be back home happily taking pictures of zucchini while I’m in Mexico drinking myself into a lonely stupor. Why did she text me? Cling to me?

Why didn’t I let her go?

My hand scoops up the scattered remains of the tacos—lettuce and diced tomatos gathering in my palm. She watches, her lip quirked as if she’s about to ask a million questions. But she isn’t. Why?

Did they take that from her too?