Poison Fruit

“It’s not just that.” Jen’s voice was gentle. “Hot supernatural sex is all well and good, Daise, but at some point, you just want to be with someone who you can fall asleep with on the couch watching TV together.”

“We’ll see.” I changed the subject. “What did you and Lee do for New Year’s Eve?”

She smiled. “Drank too much champagne and fell asleep on the couch watching TV together.”

Okay, I’ll admit it. I was a little jealous.

But things with Stefan were good, and continued to be good in the weeks that followed. By mutual accord, we backed away from the intensity of that first encounter and kept things light for a while before scheduling an official date to attend a performance by a visiting bossa nova band at the Pemkowet Center for the Arts.

When we went back to Stefan’s place afterward, I was hoping that it would be different this time. Not the mind-blowing sex part, obviously, or the profound connection that took place during it, but the aftermath.

It wasn’t.

At least this time I was prepared for it. “Does being with a woman always drive you to the edge of ravening?” I asked Stefan as I put my clothes back on.

“No.” He smiled, but it was strained. “Only with you, Daisy. You and your outsize emotions.”

“Could you, um, refrain from sampling them?” I inquired. “At least during the deed itself?”

Stefan’s eyes glittered. “Then? No. At other times, yes. But then, no.”

He didn’t explain, but he didn’t need to. I understood. It was part of what I saw in him when he was inside me and the connection between us worked both ways. Stefan was Outcast, and that was what it meant to make love with one of the Outcast.

“Okay,” I said. “You don’t need to send Cooper over with balloons this time.”

Stefan laughed, his swimmingly huge pupils dwindling a bit. “Very well, then. I won’t.”

The fact that he could laugh about it was an encouraging sign. We could work on this, Stefan and I. I could continue to work on controlling my aura. Stefan could continue to hone the self-control and discipline he’d developed over the course of centuries. I didn’t envision us dozing off on the couch together anytime soon, but I thought a little postcoital cuddling and conversation was a realistic expectation.

And if it hadn’t been for the goddamned werewolf mixer, maybe it would have been.

Oh, yes, I’d agreed to go.

I didn’t want to be there any more than Cody wanted me there, but it was a matter of status. If I hadn’t accepted the invitation, I would have insulted the Fairfax clan and lost face in the bargain. I was Hel’s liaison. I couldn’t let my love life compromise that authority.

The weekend got off to a bad start before it had even begun. On Friday afternoon, a process server visited the police station and presented both me and Chief Bryant with subpoenas to testify in the upcoming trial. Dufreyne had warned me I’d be called as a witness, but receiving the actual document brought it home. It was a jarring reminder that the trial date was approaching all too soon. I’d been practicing my unobtrusibility skills diligently, but the thought of putting them to the test in the courtroom still made me want to throw up.

On Saturday evening, there was an unexpected fracas at the Wheelhouse, and Stefan had to cancel our plans when Cooper called him for backup in sorting it out. Not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it left me in a more disgruntled frame of mind on Sunday afternoon when I drove out to Cody’s uncle’s place to attend the mixer.

The Fairfax clan owned a big tract of land out in the countryside adjacent to the county game preserve. It was secluded and heavily wooded, perfect werewolf territory. I pulled into the long driveway and had gotten about halfway to the house when Cody’s cousin Joe, a tall figure clad in a bulky tan Carhartt jacket and pants, a shotgun held casually in one hand, stepped out from behind a pine tree to bar my way, pointing at me and mouthing something I couldn’t hear.

I rolled down the window. “What?”

“I said roll down the window!” Joe came over and stuck his head in the window, nostrils flaring as he sniffed me. “Daisy, right? You were with Cody the night he borrowed my Saw videos.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m here representing Hel, who probably wouldn’t appreciate your detaining me at gunpoint.”

Joe looked apologetic. “We’re just being careful. This isn’t the kind of gathering you want curious neighbors to drop by, you know?” He waved me on. “Go ahead, everyone’s out back.”

“As in . . . the backyard?” Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to me that the event would be held outside in the dead of winter. Of course it would. It was a freaking werewolf mixer. “Never mind.”

I parked on an expanse of hard-packed snow beside someone’s rental car and followed a well-trodden path around the ranch house to the backyard, where twenty or so young men and women ranging in age from teens to early thirties were having . . . well, a mixer.

At a glance, aside from the fact that it was the middle of winter, it looked like any ordinary backyard bash. There were picnic tables. On the deck, there was a keg with a half-empty plastic bag of red Solo cups beside it, as well as a charcoal grill with a variety of meat products sizzling away. Some of the younger teens were racing back and forth and hurling snowballs at one another in a complicated game of tag, and members of the older cohort were playing volleyball on either side of a sagging net that had probably been erected in the summer, laughing and lunging and diving for the ball.