Chaos Choreography (InCryptid, #5)(26)

I smiled. “Sure thing. It’s good to see you again, Brenna.”

“Likewise,” she said.

I slid out of the car, taking a deep breath of the fragrant evening air. The smell of the neighborhood had changed as we drove from the relative sterility of the studio housing into a rougher, wilder neighborhood. Garbage, rotting leaves, and urine—not all of it canine—addressed my nose, undercut by the ever-present scent of the sea. This was the Los Angeles I felt most at home in, the one where danger and elegance existed side by side, beautiful and terrible and dangerous.

Brenna leaned across the seat as I closed the door. She pressed a button to roll down the window, and asked, “You sure you’re all right to get yourself home again? You don’t want me to swing around and pick you up?”

“Tempting, but I need a good run if I’m going to get through tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll get myself home safe, I promise.”

“Anyone else, I’d call you a liar,” she said. “Be safe.” The window rolled back up, and she pulled away, leaving me standing alone on the sidewalk.

Not totally alone: there were a few figures slumped against the base of a nearby wall, and someone farther up the block leaned against a post with the casual posture of the career lookout. I didn’t know what he was looking out for, and I didn’t care. I turned on my heel, slung my backpack over my shoulder and walked up the three shallow stone steps to the motel door.

The air inside smelled like Hot Pockets—hot dough and cheap cheese and indefinable meats, mixed into a hot, humid slurry that hung suspended in the lobby like an invisible curtain. The man behind the Plexiglas shield protecting the desk didn’t look up from his magazine as I walked past. He always seemed to be there, night or day, and he only moved when someone was asking about a room or trying to hand him money. I suspected he was an Oread, given his immobility, but there was no polite way to ask, and it didn’t really matter. This was supposed to be a place where no one asked any questions. It seemed only fair to extend that to the staff.

The stairwell was tucked into the far corner of the lobby, next to the gunmetal-gray elevator doors. I took the stairs. The Be-Well elevator was about as new as the carpet, which looked like it dated from the early seventies, and while I enjoyed falling, I wasn’t a big fan of the uncontrolled plummet that I was sure was coming eventually.

Despite being wedged into a narrow space between two other buildings, the Be-Well had a decent number of rooms, largely due to it having a decent number of floors. We’d been there long enough to change rooms several times, finally winding up with the one we wanted: the rear corner of the fifth floor, looking out on the backside of a billboard, two convenience stores, and a gas station that had been closed for three years, but hadn’t yet been sold.

The thin carpet on the stairs provided no padding. I only passed two people on the way up, a woman in a red dress who had her eyes glued to the screen of her smartphone, and a man who seemed more interested in talking to himself than he was in noticing me. We had found the perfect base of operations, seedy enough to be off most people’s radar, but safe enough for me to not feel bad about leaving Dominic here while I spent my time on the show.

I had a key to the door of our supposedly shared room. I knocked anyway. The sound of a chain being undone followed, and Dominic opened the door. He smiled when he saw me.

“I know you selected red because it’s an eye-catching color, but I’ve always preferred you blonde,” he said, and leaned in, and kissed me.

I’ve always felt that the way a man kisses says a lot about him. Dominic kissed me like he hadn’t seen me in a decade, instead of just an afternoon: hungry and hopeful and hard enough that I could feel it all the way down to my toes. He lifted his hands like he wanted to hold me, but didn’t want to pin me in place, in case I wanted to pull away. So I kissed him even harder, looping my arms around his neck. He took it as the invitation that it was and put his hands on my waist, boosting me up until my feet left the floor and he could carry me into the motel room.

I kicked the door shut behind me as Dominic carried me inside. The slam was deeply satisfying, as was the way Dominic was still kissing me, eager and present in a manner that very few of the men I’d kissed had been able to manage. I was about to pull back and propose we continue in this vein for a while when another sound intruded: cheering.

I pulled away from Dominic and twisted to see a cluster of mice standing on the room’s single low dresser, waving banners made from scrap paper and cheering their tiny hearts out.

“HAIL!” they cried. “HAIL THE RETURN OF THE ARBOREAL PRIESTESS!”

. . . and that, right there, was why his kisses were so passionate after being apart for only a few hours. We’d been sharing a tiny motel room with a splinter colony of Aeslin mice for weeks, and while it hadn’t managed to completely eliminate our sex life, twenty-three talking rodents had definitely been enough to put some limits on what we did.

(I’d complained to my mother, during one of my weekly calls home. Her response had been laughter, and the most chilling thing she’d ever said to me: “Well, at least this way, you’ll be ready when you have kids of your own.”)

“Hi, guys,” I said, unwinding my arms from Dominic’s neck and allowing my feet to drop back down to the floor. “Did you pick who’s going back to the studio with me?”