Dead Ice
Page 116

I finally settled on my right side, snuggling up against Travis, with Magda wrapped around me from behind. Her arms were so long that she was really wrapped around both of us. Neither she nor Travis seemed to have any problem with her arm going across him and using his body to pull me tighter into the curve of hers. I had a moment of discomfort when her breasts pressed around my shoulders. I’d never slept this close to another woman with that much breast. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me, but it did. If I could have slept on my other shoulder, I could have gone to sleep, and by the time I had to deal with someone else’s breasts I’d have had hours of getting used to it before I noticed. Now, I was noticing.
“You are tense,” she said.
“I don’t like my back to the door,” and that was part of it.
“If we get up I will remake the bed in moments and you can face the other way.”
I felt stupid for not thinking of it, but that was what we did. Travis helped her remake the bed with the covers tucked under the opposite side and the pillows moved down. The bed had no footboard or headboard, so it worked fine. This time Travis cuddled me from behind and I was way more comfortable feeling his guy parts against my ass than I had been with Magda’s breasts. I know, it’s weird, but it was still how I felt.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and because of the height difference my face was about midback to her once our hips were spooning as solidly as I was with Travis. He threw his arm across mine so he snuggled Magda, too. Again, neither one complained.
I thought it wouldn’t work, that I’d lie awake and be all weird because I’d never slept with either of them before, but exhaustion makes strange bedfellows. I fell asleep to the sound of Travis’s soft breathing, and I knew he was asleep. Magda wasn’t, though her body was still and comfortable as if she were pretending to sleep, or just letting me sleep. Somehow I knew she’d stay awake, or at least alert. I might not like her, and she couldn’t stop someone from coming through the door, that was the job of the guards outside, but I was betting good money that nothing would get to me until she had given her life to try and prevent it. You don’t have to like someone to know that they’ll lay down their life for you. You don’t even have to like someone to do it for them. You just know what your duty is, and how much you’re willing to sacrifice to do that duty. Magda had already lost one queen on her watch; I was betting my life she wouldn’t want to lose another one.
I slept, and I dreamt of a gray sky with golden clouds that looked like puffy lions, and bears, and all sorts of animals. The sky turned blue, the sun was warm, and there was the sound of an ocean on a beach just out of sight, over the hill. I walked toward that sound all night but could never find the sea.
 
 
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THERE WAS MUSIC playing; it climbed into my dream and pulled me out. I came to with a vague memory of water and a boat, and zombies juggling kittens that slashed and clawed through the air. I woke, but snuggled down between the two men and tried to ignore the music. The music finally stopped, and I started to drift back to sleep, so warm in the darkened room. I snuggled against the man in front of me, putting my face against his bare back, and didn’t know the smell of his skin.
My eyes opened, my body tensed, and I tried not to panic. I’d been asleep long enough that Magda and Travis had had to go do something else. I’d been through this before when I was injured, or exhausted, and slept so long that I needed shift changes for my bed buddies, but logic had nothing to do with it. The warm press of the two men, sandwiching me in the dim room, in the nest of sheets and bodies that had been so comforting a second before, now felt like I was trapped and couldn’t move.
The music sounded again, and I realized it was my phone ringing. I didn’t remember bringing my phone with me, so someone had put my stuff in here for me. People were taking care of me, so why was my stomach tight and all I wanted to do was fight my way free of covers and bodies and grab the phone? I started trying to sit up and realized I was lying on my left arm, which meant I was at least partially healed. I was also trapped under the covers because they were tangled around me and the men somehow.
The man in front propped up on his elbow and reached a long arm out from the bed. He was very dark-skinned, black in the room, though I wasn’t sure if that was true color or just the very dim lighting. He came back with my phone in hand, and I still didn’t recognize the short, almost shaved black hair and long, very tall body. I could feel that the man behind me was shorter and more delicate than the one in front of me, but I hadn’t even bothered to look. I knew by just lying there that it wasn’t anyone I was that familiar with . . . no one I had slept and woken up with.
I took the phone and finally recognized the glimpse of face of the tall man. It was Seamus, werehyena to call for the Harlequin Jane. I hit the button and said, “Yes, I’m here.”
“You sound like you were asleep, Blake,” Special Agent Manning said.
I snuggled back down on my left side, burying my face against Seamus’s back. The smaller man in back snuggled in against me, too. I stopped worrying that I didn’t know who it was and just let it feel comforting. “I had to work all night, so yeah I was asleep, sorry.”
“You raised the dead all night?”
“Something like that, yeah. What’s up?”
“You do remember that you requested to view the videos again?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“By the time you get dressed and down here we should be ready for you.”
“Ready for me? I just walk in and your partner does his computer magic and we watch the videos; just this time I use my psychic abilities to look for clues.”
“The home office wanted another pair of eyes to help you look for clues.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re flying another agent in to view the videos with you and Marshal Kirkland, remember?”
I’d forgotten all of it; it made my shoulders tighten and took some of the comfy out of my nest of bodies and covers. “Fine, I know not to argue with the home office.”
“Can the sarcasm, Blake; just because you ride around like the Lone fucking Ranger doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t have superiors riding our ass. Working with you makes all the upper-management types nervous. I wonder why that would be?”
“I think that was sarcasm.”
“I think you’re right.” She sounded unhappy, and I didn’t think it was just at me.
“I know the upper muckety-mucks don’t like me at the bureau. They think I’m a pain in the ass and don’t follow orders well.”
“Prove them wrong,” she said.
“I can’t, because I’m a pain in the ass, and I don’t follow orders well.”
She gave a small laugh then, and finally said, “Shit.”
“What’d I do now?” I asked.
“Not you, the plane is delayed. Take your time, Blake, you’ve got two extra hours before the bird lands and we get our extra agent on the ground.”
“Good to know, maybe I can eat something.”
“You know what’s on the videos; like I said last time, eating first would probably be a good idea.” She hung up without saying good-bye.