Mixed Feelings (Empathy in the PPNW Book 1) Read online

  She shook her head, her expression going soft. “Don’t worry about me. Just get her safe.”

  Mel nodded and took her hand off his arm, kissing it and giving her a wink. She smiled and I felt her flattery. Whatever was between them was warm, but she wasn’t after sex. Mel leaned down to look into my eyes.

  “You smell pretty awful. Slide over, I’m driving you home.” When I didn’t move, he frowned, then spread his legs on either side of the vomit and reached awkwardly into the car. “You’re sure she’s not hurt?” he asked Amy as he moved my box of donuts to the back seat.

  She told him no and then I heard her radio squawk as the volume was turned up. She walked away without another word to us, addressing dispatch as she did.

  “Up you go.” He lifted me like a doll and sort of tossed me over the cup holders and e-brake. As I landed on the passenger’s seat, one leg still draped across to the driver’s side, Mel slid into the car. With a deft hand, he shoved the seat back and then reached over to gently cradle my leg, his grip more sexual than helpful as he put me completely on the passenger side. His hands flirted with impropriety as he reached across my body to buckle my seatbelt and he wasted no time turning the car on and blasting the heater.

  “Mel,” I muttered.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re an ass, but a nice one.”

  “I have a nice ass? Thank you, Gwen. I’m touched!” To demonstrate, he took my limp hand and dropped it in his lap.

  ***

  I woke in the dark in an unfamiliar bed to the muffled sounds of a TV in the next room. The bed I lay in was decadent, the covers thick and plentiful. The room looked small, judging from what the sliver of light slipping through the doorway showed me. There was one narrow rectangular window set high in the wall to the right and I could see that the sun was sneaking a peek at the world. I couldn’t tell if it was going down or coming up; I had no idea how long I’d been asleep.

  Something shifted by my legs and I froze, panic taking over. A dark shape arched upward and I felt claws dig into my leg, even through the blankets. My heart pounding, I tried to force myself to think rationally. My brain was refusing the call to action and all I could do was picture horrible things about to happen to me.

  The claws pulled back and little feet padded quickly over me before a furry head slammed into my face, shoving me further into the pillows I was propped against. A purr vibrated away my fear as a cat rubbed itself across my face, ending gracelessly with the side of its butt against my mouth. I blew out my breath—and likely a bit of spittle—and turned away, grumbling. The cat came back for more, stopping briefly to sniff my mouth before making another rear-ending pass. I couldn't feel any actual emotions coming from her, but that wasn't unusual for felines. They’re often more of an enigma than the Riddler himself.

  The door cracked open a bit more and Chloe peered inside. The light from the living room illuminated her, making me squint slightly.

  “Poopy, leave her alone.” She slipped in, closing the door just enough that it let light into the room but didn’t blind me. She picked Poopy up—the cat let out a dissatisfied little rumble, but didn’t fight her—and then perched on the bed next to me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Naked.” I answered. My throat was dry and I swallowed as much spit as I could generate. “Why am I naked?”

  I was struggling to remember what had happened. I had vague memories of Mel in my car and I leaned my head back as I tried to piece things together. Suddenly I had a shocking thought, letting out a dry, strangled cry.

  “We… am I naked because… did Mel do this? Did I have sex with Mel? Oh god. Oh, god!” I moaned, hugging the covers against my chest and wondering if I'd ever be able to chafe Mel’s essence off my skin. My head was pounding; it felt like the worst hangover headache I’d ever gotten. I said nothing, waiting for Chloe to break the disgusting news that Mel had finally found the cheap pick-up line that I couldn’t resist. After what felt like several days, she chuckled and sat up, setting the cat free on the floor.

  “Relax. You threw up on yourself, so we had—”

  “We?” I demanded squeakily. “What did Mel pay you to let him see me naked?”

  “I wouldn’t charge Mel to see you naked!”

  “Wouldn’t or didn’t?” Chloe’s snort dissolved into a fit of giggles and I relaxed. She took my hand and held it, giving a squeeze.

  “You must be delirious. I undressed you to clean you up and you’ve been out for over a day. Whatever smacked you around really did a number. You feeling okay now?”

  I took stock of my body, sucking in a breath, wiggling and moving my limbs from the toes up to see if everything worked. Other than the monstrous headache and fatigue, I actually felt reasonably normal.

  What I didn’t feel was Chloe. Panic surged right back in.

  “I can’t feel you!” I reversed her hold, taking her hand. I clutched it, seeking outward, trying to feel her emotions. There was an ebbing of something but it could have been the headache. I couldn’t tell. “I—my empathy! It’s gone!” I took a deep breath; I wanted to jump up, to run out and find whatever had done this to me and demand it give me back what was mine.

  Chloe put a hand to my head.

  “Calm down. It’s not you.” She pulled my hand to her chest, just below her collarbone, and I felt a lump of something smooth and hot, like glass left on a stove. She closed her hand around mine and tugged. The necklace left her skin and suddenly I could feel her. Concern washed over me and I gasped for air; it was like drowning in her worry. I felt myself flailing, trying to surface through the flood of mixed emotions, a torrent that I’d never felt from a person in one sitting before. After a few minutes, everything slowed and I adjusted, closing myself off to her emotions like I’d done a hundred times before.

  “What was that?” I wheezed, putting a hand to my forehead.

  “Merrin dropped it off. It protects the wearer from, um, probing. She said you’d need stillness to recover and told me to wear it until you woke up.”

  Evadne’s words came back to me and I made a thoughtful sound. “The trinket, I guess.”

  “Merrin only stayed long enough to give you a once-over and tell me you’d be fine with rest and to come to her when you were ready.”

  “Ready for what?”

  “She didn’t say. You know Merrin.”

  I did know Merrin, so I left it there. Chloe dropped my hand, the stone still inside my grip. It was hot, but I didn’t want to let it go.

  “I rescheduled your appointments from yesterday and your only appointment for today cancelled so it’s okay if you’re not feeling up to going in.”

  “How’d Loraine sound?”

  “Um.” I could feel hesitation and worry in her and considered that she was about to lie—a waste of time around an empath. In the end, she answered truthfully. “As well as could be. She understood when I told her it was an emergency, that you feel really bad about having to put her off a few days.”

  Guilt chewed at my insides and it seemed to magnify the headache. When I didn’t say anything else, Chloe pressed on.

  “Can you eat?”

  “Can I eat,” I scoffed at her. “Please. It’s one of the few things I can always do.”

  “Are you sure?” Chloe asked, leaning in. I opened my mouth to insist that I could, but reconsidered in an instant. Based on how I felt when I moved more than a tiny bit, I still wasn’t doing very well. She continued: “What happened, anyway? Mel said you called to have him come out to meet you in Bellevue, that he sent a cop your way in case it was something bad. When he arrived, he claims he found you feeling each other up, that he had to tear you apart and bring you here.”

  “That ass,” I growled.

  Chloe laughed and I felt a spark of mischief in her. “Relax, Gwen, I’m just teasing. He told me she healed you, that something nasty had hopped inside your skull and messed you up. What was it?”

  “I have no idea, but it wasn’t human. It looked h
uman, but it wasn’t.”

  “Werewolf?”

  “There wolf!” I quipped without thinking, pointing off to the right. Indulging me, Chloe twisted to look where I aimed and then back to me.

  “There cat. That’s just Poopy. Did you sense a werewolf?”

  “No. This was something else. I’ve never felt it before, but that doesn’t mean anything. I don’t exactly have much of a track record with this… sort of stuff.”

  “Start from the beginning. What could make you drive all the way out to Bellevue?”

  “What could make me drive all the way out to anywhere?” I asked sarcastically. “Donuts.”

  “Of course.” She sighed and shook her head. “I made a mistake showing you that place. How many times a week do you sneak off and pick the cases clean?”

  “I plead the Fifth,” I said, unable to meet her eyes. “Speaking of, where are they? Did Mel eat them? I’ll kill him.”

  “I brought the box in, but… don’t worry about it. Just tell me what happened.” Chloe was getting impatient, her concern for me shoving to the front of her psyche, which made me feel bad. Despite the niggling worry in the back of my brain that my sweets had been pilfered again, I pressed on.

  “I was in Bellevue, making life worth living, when Evadne called with the address Merrin had sort of promised us. It was actually pretty close to where I was, so I headed straight there. I was going to call you, but I realized you wouldn’t really be able to help.” I jerked as a spike of irritation shot out of Chloe and stabbed me in the chest. “Mel said he’d rush right over, which you know, so I’ll skip that part. I parked out in front of this little apartment building and waited, figuring I’d just hide out until Mel or the cops got there.

  “And then this… dude-shaped thing rocked up, feeling all… wet and kind of slimy and proceeded to stand around suspiciously. I tried to sense him, to see what he was feeling, and then… nothing.” I squinted, the memories floating together like lily pads. “I remember Amy waking me up and Mel being predictably inappropriate as he offered to drive me home. That’s about it. Everything’s still kind of a mess up here.” I pointed to my head, as if she needed clarification.

  “Like I said, you were pretty beaten up, at least psychically. You’re doing better now though, I hope?” Chloe waited until I gave a nod and relief spilled out of her in a wave. It was a mild emotion, normally, but somehow it felt overwhelming now, crashing across me and making me feel for a moment like I was choking. I squeezed my eyes shut against it, willing the pounding in my head to ease up. When it did, it still wasn't nearly enough. I whimpered and tugged the covers up so I could press my face against them.

  Chloe patted my knee. “Your clothes are clean if you want me to grab them.”

  “Yes, please,” I mumbled into the blanket.

  Chloe squeezed my knee and left Poopy and me alone in her room. The cat breathed out heavily through a purr, making it sound like she disapproved strongly of our conversation. I could feel a vague sense of irritation that might have been her emotion but could just as well have been my own. Cats are normally odd and often spastically unpredictable in their feelings, but Poopy was on another level entirely. I couldn't ever decide if that made me like her more or less than other cats.

  The cat and I filled the next few minutes with a staring contest that she won several times over. When Chloe came back in, she had my clothes in one hand and my donut box in the other.

  “I’m gonna turn the light on, are you ready?”

  “Hit me,” I said. The light came on and I squinted through the pain. Chloe set my clothes on the edge of the bed and rested a hand on top of the box. Her emotions spoke wildly of trepidation and pity. I narrowed my eyes at her. “What.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I found it this way. You can’t be mad at me.” Without further ado, she set the box on my thighs. It weighed nothing.

  “No,” I hissed, yanking up the lid. Only crumbs and smears of glaze remained. “Mel!”

  “I don’t think it was Mel.” Chloe tapped the inside of the lid and I lifted my gaze to a pink sticky note.

  It said, Get well soon! in the familiar scrawl of the candy thief.

  That bastard!

  Chapter Eight

  Chloe babied me for most of the day, bringing me thick socks to put over the thin ones I’d shown up wearing and feeding me like a queen. She explained that she’d spent most of the evening cooking for me and then dragged me to the fridge to show off an impressive stack of her colorful Tupperware.

  We lazed around until early afternoon, when she suggested that I go home to check on Sonny; she’d apparently fed him while I was unconscious but she was no expert on birds and she was worried about him. As if I didn’t trust her implicitly, she swore she would have called a bird expert friend of hers if I hadn’t woken up when I did.

  Loading up my car with the food she’d made for me, we headed out. I whined at her insistence that Mel come by so we could all talk through what had happened, but I didn’t put too much effort into my protest. I was just happy not to risk driving alone in the post-snow city.

  We got to my place and Sonny announced his displeasure at my absence the second he heard my voice. I went straight to him, pulling him out of his cage and resting him on my shoulder. He nipped at me and warbled. I cooed back at him while Chloe unpacked my haul in the kitchen and gathered some fresh vegetables for Sonny. I dropped onto the couch, still utterly exhausted.

  Chloe came out, folding her empty tote bag; she looked confused.

  “You have no candy,” she said.

  “I told you that,” I said as I set Sonny on the perch where Chloe had left his snacks.

  “But you have none! Not even a single caramel or one of those mini single-serve boxes of Diabetes-Os.”

  “Yes, “I repeated, “I told you that.”

  “Something ate all of your sugar! Gwen, you’re practically a C&H factory. For something to eat everything you have with sugar in it, that’s…” She trailed off, looking worried.

  I nodded. “Yeah, tell me about it. I’m going to have to buy all of that again.”

  Frowning at me, she continued. “No, I mean... that night, you were only asleep, what, five hours tops?” I didn’t bother answering. “What could eat all of your sugary snacks, fill your fridge with phrases, and not wake you up in that amount of time?”

  “Didn’t we have this conversation already? You’re the one who convinced me it’s a thing and not a person hiding in a crawlspace watching me sleep.”

  “I didn’t realize you actually meant it ate everything everything. In this house, even half of everything is a lot. You have nothing. You actually meant everything.” She shook her head, bewildered. “That’s just way crazier than I was picturing before.”

  “Of course I meant everything. Why do you think I was so mad?”

  Chloe’s brows shot up. “And the office! Something ate all your honey packets and I’ll have to restock your candy for the dish completely.”

  I squinted at her, suspicious of her sudden interest in restocking my sugar supply.

  “You weren’t worried before, so why are you nervous now?”

  “This creature is clearly starving!” Chloe cried. “I’m just wondering if maybe we should leave something for it.”

  “Oh, don’t do that. It’s not a neighborhood squirrel. I’m not leaving Twinkies on the porch like peanuts. Not only because it would be a waste of Twinkies but because it may never leave me alone if we feed it.” I felt Mel approach as I finished speaking, lust and hunger reaching scalding, sucking tentacles around me, wrapping me snugly in velvet nausea. I groaned and hugged my arms, squeezing my eyes shut and doing my best to protect myself as he came up the drive. Chloe realized immediately what was going on and Mel only got one knock out before she opened the door.

  “I bring gifts,” he said. I cracked open one eye, perking up when I recognized the box he was holding as being from The Internets. “I stopped by for coffee. Madeline as
ked where her best customer had been.”

  He stepped inside, elbowed the door shut, and set the pastry box down on the coffee table. He opened it, using his hand to waft the scent of treats my way. The smell of sweets was nearly enough to distract me from the pain of him being so close. I could feel my body tensing up, though, and it was all coming at me much faster than I was used to. Being around a werewolf was always bad, but the scalding slices of hunger tearing at my psyche felt as if he’d been pressed right up against me for at least an hour.

  “Chloe?” I croaked, fighting a war between my desire for the marshmallow-covered chocolate donut and my body’s desire to never stop vomiting. “Does that necklace still work?”

  “Neck—oh! Oooh, good idea. I packed it. Let me get it.” She fled down the hall toward my bedroom while I continued to focus all my energy on the donut, as if I could will it to my mouth. She was back quickly, the black-edged, square blue stone dangling from the skinny leather strap in her hand. Mel watched her approach, his lips quirking as she stood on tip-toe in front of him, wrapped her arms and the necklace around his neck, and tied it off.

  I caught sight of his arm sliding around her back, felt lust arc like a solar flare away from him... and then it all stopped. The difference was so stark the world shut down and for a second, I felt like I had gone deaf, blind, and numb. I blinked as my living room seemed to melt back into being, looking down at my hands as I flexed my fingers. Sure that my other senses were working, I took a breath and let it out audibly to make sure my ears were okay. Still rediscovering the existence of the world, I leaned back with a sigh of relief.

  Mel’s emotions were barely there now, like sitting in a luxury hotel and listening to a heavy metal band play in the dingy bar next door. I could sense the chaos if I really tried, but it was better just to enjoy the calm. After maybe another minute, he was a blank slate, as though he wasn’t there at all.

  “Oh, thank god,” I moaned, lifting my hands to press them against my eyes. I felt cool, comfortable, and better than I’d ever felt while so close to Mel. “Merrin is officially my new favorite person.”