Edie Spence [04] Deadshifted Read online

  It was already afternoon back home. My mother picked up the phone, her voice unsure because she didn’t recognize Asher’s number. “Hey, Mom? It’s me. Guess what…”

  She started screaming before I could finish my entire sentence. She heard “baby” and let loose—which was good because right after that, the phone cut out. “Mom? Mom?” I tried redialing, and found I couldn’t; there was no connection. I handed Asher back his phone. He tried again, and when it didn’t work, he shrugged.

  “We’re probably too far out.”

  “She heard enough—she’ll probably be waiting for us at the dock.” Holding a diaper bag and a list of distant relatives she wanted to invite to our baby shower.

  “I could hear her from over here.” He grinned and sat beside me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Apart from the sick thing, good. I think.” I spent a moment checking in with myself. I was going to be a mom. A mom … I looked at him, eyes wide. Oh, my God. It was real.

  Asher watched me panicking. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah. I think.” The world around me was narrowing, though. I felt like I was in a tunnel, and the distant exit was getting smaller.

  He wrapped an arm around me and held me close. “It’s okay to be scared. But everything’s going to be just fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  He beamed down at me. “Because it’s too early for you—for either of us—to be able to screw anything up. It’s not even worth worrying about now.”

  “But what if I still do? Or—things later?” The enormity of eighteen years of responsibility, and beyond, stretched in front of me like open road.

  He made an absurd face. “That’s not going to happen, Edie.”

  “But what if it does?”

  “Then you’ll have me around to help you unscrew it,” Asher said, and I nodded slowly, forcing myself to agree with him. I knew he meant it. But I also knew my propensity to mess things up. “Are you seriously worried about that, this early in the game?” he went on. “Don’t make me start chalking things up to hormones this fast.”

  I inhaled deeply and held it for a second too long to buy myself time to think. “You knew I was naturally paranoid when you started dating me. Not just knew, but knew-knew.” I wiggled my fingers between us to indicate the strange.

  “I did,” he agreed. “It’s oddly charming, though completely unnecessary.”

  “What if I suck at this?” I poked at my stomach, like the creature inside there could poke back.

  “Are you being serious?” Asher pulled away to look at me like I might be coming down with something.

  “Completely. What if I mess up their life? What if they hate me?”

  “Edie,” he said, dismissing me with a head shake, his voice low. “There is no possible way that will happen.”

  “You know me. I mean, you really know me, Asher. It wouldn’t be the first thing I’d screwed up—” There was a swelling under my breastbone, and I didn’t know if it was more nausea or stomach acid. I put my hand there, to press it down.

  Asher’s hand followed mine, interlacing his fingers. “No one gets any guarantees. And while you are reckless—I know you try harder than anyone. If anyone can make this work, it’s you and me. We’re a team. Okay?”

  I nodded quickly, as though I was trying to convince myself, and took several deep breaths. “Thanks.”

  “I love you.” He stood suddenly, pulling me up after him. “I never actually loved anyone before I met you.”

  “That’s because you were too busy using them,” I said aloud with my outside voice. Asher looked pained, pressing his lips together tight. “Oh, God. See? That was it. I do that. I don’t mean to do it, but I do that. Sometimes. It’s like I can’t even help doing it. I’ll be doing that all over PTA meetings. For the next eighteen years.”

  The pained look was replaced by soft exasperation, and then he laughed aloud. “And somehow I still love you. In spite of it. Maybe because of it.”

  I bit the insides of my lips before I could say anything else. He sank to his knees in front of me. “Edie, let’s get married.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  My lips became unglued. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  He was kneeling in front of me, looking up expectantly. I stared at him like a deer in headlights. The longer I was stunned, the wider he smiled.

  “Say yes. We’re on a ship for two weeks. We’ll get the captain to do it somehow.”

  I blinked. “Yes.” He stood immediately and I shoved him lightly before he could kiss me. “I can’t believe you’re not even nervous! About anything!”

  Asher laughed and swooped me up. “Of course I am. I’m just better at faking being calm than you.”

  And then he kissed me, one of those sweet kisses you see on diamond jewelry commercials on TV, except it was me. The girl who just got everything she ever wanted, mostly. When we came up for air I was beaming.

  “Someone should pinch me,” I said. With an evil grin, Asher did. “Hey!”

  “Just following orders, ma’am,” he said, innocently.

  I laughed. His hand rested where he’d pinched, then moved up underneath my shirt. I extricated myself, still laughing, and stretched out on the bed, and he moved to lie beside me. I snuggled him.

  “Will your mom get mad?” Asher asked, a possessive arm around my waist.

  “No. It’ll be easier this way. Assuming we can swing it.”

  Asher shrugged. “We’ll swing it.”

  Of course we would. If it wasn’t allowed, or there wasn’t time, he’d just bribe whoever he had to until rules were broken in our favor. Asher was the type of man who made things happen—betrothals or pushing people overboard. For better, or for worse.

  But getting married on the ship would be easier on everyone. There’d be fewer hoops to jump through, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting all my family in one place at the same time, fight-free. And this way my mom wouldn’t get the chance to ask questions about where Asher’s absent family was.

  “Are there any shapeshifter traditions I should be aware of?” I imagined myself throwing a grenade instead of a bouquet.

  There was a long pause. “Live fast, die free?”

  “All this time we’ve been dating, and you never told me you were secretly in a motorcycle gang.”

  He snorted. “We don’t do this that often. You’re supposed to find someone like yourself to settle down with. Have a few kids, fast. Raise them up to fend for themselves in time.”

  “How old were you when…” My voice drifted, unsure what I was asking him.

  “When all the adults in my life abandoned me?” he filled in. “Fourteen.”

  “You’ve been on your own since then?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Wasn’t it hard?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t fun … but it wasn’t hard, either.” I twisted back to see him better, caught him staring at the ceiling thoughtfully. “It was mostly lonely.”

  I found his hand wrapped around my waist, with my own, and his fingers twined with mine. “Not anymore.”

  Asher looked down at me. “You’re really going to be with me, a misfit shapeshifter, for the rest of your life?”

  I smiled up at him. “Yeah. I think you’re pretty much stuck with me now.”

  “Good.” He nodded, and kissed my temple, and then held me as the ship rocked back and forth on the waves. We were quiet together, and I wondered what he was thinking. I managed not to ask him, though. I closed my eyes and just let the moment spin. When I opened them again, he had a questioning look on his face.

  “Sleeping? Food? Or other things?”

  This really was a vacation. I really didn’t have anything I had to do for fourteen whole days. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had that long off. Maybe the summer break before I got a job, back in high school.

  I stretched beside him. I was hungry; my stomach was still on the other coast. “Food. And
then we’ll see about sex, fiancé.”

  Asher grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

  * * *

  It was in between breakfast and lunch, but there were certain restaurants on board that never closed. We made our way to one of these on the third floor, the Dolphin, through an indoor bar and promenade, with leather chairs facing huge portal windows showing a deck and, past it, the choppy seas outside. If I looked just right, I could see the orange belly of a lifeboat hanging down. Good to know. I wasn’t sure which was making me more green, the motion of the ship or my pregnancy, but I was fixated on getting pancakes. If only I’d had a day or two longer to get sea legs under me before everything else.

  “Are you sure you want to risk it?” Asher asked solicitously.

  “Yes.” I might learn better right afterward, but I was set on learning the hard way. “They’re spongy. They might help.” I wished I’d listened to all my pregnant coworkers back in the day. I’d always tuned out their pregnant-lady talks before. My current ignorance served me right. “At least the syrup might be fast calories? Maybe I can absorb some without throwing them up.”

  Asher didn’t look like he thought it was a good idea, but he shrugged, willing to let me learn for myself.

  This time of morning, the restaurant was mostly empty, except for the dolphins painted on the walls chasing one another. The maître d’ seated us near a window. Asher began to tell him to move us, but I quickly shook my head. “It’s nice to see outside.” Maybe if I could see the waves, I’d begin to get a feel for their motion, and separate them from my stomach. The window was bubbled out, giving a view in all directions, dark waters below, sun ahead, and behind us fast clouds pushing in.

  As the waiter took our order, Asher sized up another uniformed cruise employee near the door. “Be right back.”

  I didn’t have to ask what he was doing to know. I’d seen him do it at least a hundred times. He reached the man and started talking to him in his intuitively congenial way. Asher could make anyone like him. I watched him with a mixture of jealousy and awe, and the realization dawned that I was engaged to, and impregnated by, a hustler. Not that that was a bad thing, at least not in Asher’s case. But it was … a thing. Something I’d never had to deal with before.

  Asher laughed and the man laughed and they were laughing together—I shook my head in bemusement, then let my gaze wander the room. This restaurant had an under-the-sea theme, with walls covered by splashing ocean waves and happy denizens of the sea swimming underneath.

  I spotted the family we’d sat through the safety lecture with, the Indian couple with their kids, and I waved at them so as not to seem creepy, as the mother caught me staring a second too long. She absentmindedly waved back, clear she had no memory of me from yesterday. As a mom, this was probably like a working vacation for her. They might not be at home, but she hadn’t gotten to take a break from her mom-job.

  I watched her out of the corner of my eye, trying to put myself in her shoes and failing. Her boy was scarfing down a huge plate of scrambled eggs, and her daughter was studiously drawing on a place mat with crayons. That was going to be me. Give or take eight years.

  Asher returned to his seat, disrupting my reverie. “I know who to talk to now. I’ll go out after this and move things along.”

  I smiled at him and snorted. “Wow, if you’re fast enough, this may be our only breakfast as fiancés.”

  “I hope so, because that word sounds weird.”

  “How shotgun is our wedding going to be? Am I going to have to find a white dress somewhere on board?”

  He laughed, and just like the man he’d been conversing with, I found myself wanting to laugh with him. “Only as shotgun as you want.” He beamed at me. “I don’t care what you wear, as long as you show up.”

  This week might be the last week I fit into the red dress I’d brought along for formal nights for a while. “I’m going to wear red then. I’ve already got that outfit, and it’s easier this way. Especially seeing as it’s just for us, and whatever witnesses we have to rope in for it to be legal.”

  He grinned, then gave me a sober look. “You should get your hair done, though. And your nails. Whatever other fun things women do. I don’t want you to miss out on all of that just because I’m rushing you.”

  I inspected my nails. My manicure might hold well enough for a few more days, seeing as there wouldn’t be any dishes for me to do, if I could avoid my natural inclination to use All the Sanitizer. But getting it redone just because I could was tempting, too. Wasn’t that how vacations worked? “You’re not rushing me, honest. I wouldn’t want the hassle of planning everything anyhow. This is saving me a ton of stress.” Avoiding sending out invitations, check. Avoiding endless discussions with my mother about colors, flowers, or dresses, double check. Not having to wonder if my brother’s going to show up or not, high or not, or being the worst-sister-ever again if I didn’t invite him to avoid that entirely, super-check.

  Our breakfast arrived, and Asher waited until the waiter left to speak again. “Well, I’d still like it to be romantic. Even if it is practical.”

  “It will be. It’s with you.” I grinned at him over my pancakes. They smelled so good—my stomach flipped a coin, and hungry won. I ate a few bites, and things held. I sank back into my chair, relieved. “What about rings? I’m not really a ring wearer—” Work gave me the opportunity to touch too many gross things.

  He quickly shook his head. “Rings are too complicated.”

  I blinked, as I realized he was right. People at work didn’t know I was with Hector—they’d only ever met me dating some blond guy named Asher, who just happened to never be around when Hector was. Same with my brother and folks. There would be no way to explain things at work, and the second either of us showed up wearing a ring—people there might not put us with each other, but there’d be questions to answer for sure. It would be easier without them, less chances to screw up.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “No, it’s okay, I understand.” I set my fork down and held up my ring-free hands for illustration. “I don’t like them anyway, and besides, I’d be worried about it falling into an abscess all the time.”

  Asher’s eyebrows rose in mock horror. “Please tell me you wear gloves when you change dressings.”

  “I do, but—” I mimed taking off a glove and then a ring flying off and over, to land into Asher’s scrambled eggs. He made a face and then laughed.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “My ability to be disgusting and still eat is kind of why you love me.” I leaned over and forked a bite off his plate by way of demonstration.

  He grinned at me. “There are more reasons than that, but that is definitely one of them.”

  I snickered and then leaned forward to kiss him across the table—something I realized I might not be able to do in a few months when I’d gotten a belly—and he leaned forward to kiss me back, and that’s when I heard it. The sound of someone choking.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  You don’t actually hear the sound of someone choking. The hallmark of choking is that the chokee can’t actually make any sounds. If they can talk, they can breathe, and they just need to cough things out.

  What you do hear are the screams of other people’s panic as their tablemate turns blue.

  “Someone help! He can’t breathe!” shouted someone with an Indian accent.

  Asher and I both looked over. The woman was standing and her son was facedown in his eggs. Her daughter watched her brother, openmouthed and terrified.

  Asher leaped up and raced over, and introduced himself by his occupation, not his name. “I’m a doctor.”

  I was close behind him. He circled the boy, braced his hand around his waist, and popped his fists up underneath the boy’s sternum. The mom was still shouting for help, but she was wise enough to stay out of the way.

  A plug of eggs popped out of the boy’s mouth on the third blow, and he started coughing violently.<
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  “There you go—” Asher set the boy down on the chair beside his mother, and he promptly threw up. I reached over to the next unoccupied set table and grabbed all the napkins fast to put over the mess.

  By then, the ship’s doctor had arrived, the same one I’d gotten the pregnancy test from this morning. He started looking over the boy as Asher and I faded back. He seemed competent from afar; maybe this morning I’d just caught him off guard.

  The rest of the crew brought in a wheelchair and took the boy away for observation. His mother looked back at us on her way out the door. “Thank you so much, Doctor,” she said, still breathless from her ordeal.

  Asher took it in stride and waved like a prom king.

  We sat back down at our table. “Oh, Doctor,” I said to Asher, quietly, mimicking her intonation.

  He snorted as our waiter returned and thanked us, his hands clasped nervously in front of his chest. “You were so fast! We have protocols, practices, but we don’t use them very often. Is there anything I can get you extra? For your help?” He looked from Asher to me.

  My nurse’s stomach had withstood the onslaught of someone else’s emesis, but the pregnant portion of me was now rethinking everything else. I pushed my half-eaten plate of pancakes away. “I think I’m good. Thank you, though.”

  “Oh, no, no, thank you. So many people sick on board,” he said, shaking his head. And then he blanched as though he’d said too much. “But it’s not us, it’s the waves. We’re racing a storm. All the waves’ fault.”

  “I believe you,” Asher said, with just the right tone to calm the man.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he said again, waiting for an extra second in case we changed our minds, and then backing hurriedly away.