Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell #3)(25)

Rose was trying to push my buttons. Testing me. Maybe she wanted to see how far she could shove me until I broke and caused a huge scene. Then I would be the bad guy. I would be the one who ruined Christmas.

If I stayed, she’d leave, and Jupe would be upset. On the other hand, if I was the one who left, Jupe might just be confused. Better confused than caught in the middle of a family fight. As jealous as I was of these two women, and obviously I was—but, come on! How could I not be?—there was no way I was going to fight Rose Giovanni to prove a point.

Dammit.

I found a clean space on one of his photography tables next to the door to the darkroom and laid down the sketch paper there. After lining them up, I carefully folded and creased the papers together into a neat square, which looked a little like the white flag I was now ready to wave. “I’ll leave,” I said, turning around to face him.

Towering over me, Lon placed one hand on the edge of the table near the right side of my hip, then the other on the left, trapping me inside his arms. He shook his head slowly, then leaned down and dragged his mouth over my cheek. “No,” he whispered in my ear.

He kissed me, softly, deliberately slow. My resolve liquefied. His hips pushed against my lower stomach. Was there anything better than this?

“No,” he repeated against my lips.

Sure, he was using sex against me. And as far as arguments went, it was a good one. Just sex with Lon on its own was enough to sway me, but now his head dipped and he was inhaling deeply against my neck, his expanding lungs pushing his stony chest into my breasts as he sucked in the scent of my skin. His loose, honey-colored hair fell over my face, and I was overwhelmed by the urge to beg him to hold me. To give me a refuge. To allow me an unguarded moment. Because of all the things he could do to me, do for me, this particular ability was high up on the list. No one else, not a single living, breathing soul on this plane or the next, could I trust like I trusted Lon.

I didn’t always understand him. His motivations were often half-hidden, and the quiet strength he commanded, especially when he was transmutated, was sometimes frightening and alien to me.

Yet I trusted him. Utterly. And after what I’d been through with my parents, this was no small feat.

“Let me handle this. I’ll convince her to stay,” he murmured. “No one’s leaving.”

But an insistent thought danced in the back of my mind and wouldn’t leave, dousing my body’s revving heat. Even if Lon could convince Rose to stay, even if he changed her mind, what was I going to do? Go to bed with Lon, knowing she could hear the sheets rustle? She could probably hear the shiver-inducing scrape of his mustache against my neck right now.

I was afraid to use the bathroom, for the love of Pete, knowing that she could hear me peeing.

Everything about this stunk. Stink. Stank. Stunk.

Pushing him away was soul-crushing. “I’m going.”

His eyes darkened. “You can’t spend the night in your house. It’s unprotected.”

“I’ll go to Kar Yee’s place,” I reasoned. “Bob can’t stay there forever. She’ll end up killing him. I’ll give him a break. It’s good for everyone.”

“We haven’t spent a night apart in weeks.”

“Every time you go on a photo shoot we spend the night apart.”

“And I despise every damn second of it.”

“I hate it too, but I’m not going to Yoko your family. If anyone’s going to ruin Christmas, it’s gonna be her, not me. Because when I’m not here in the morning, she can damn well tell Jupe that she was the one who made me leave.”

I hadn’t known it until I said it, but that was it, wasn’t it? I wasn’t interested in playing the martyr. I wanted her to lose. And the way that Lon’s eyes crinkled at the corners, I knew he’d picked up on this, too.

“Besides,” I said, picking up the folded sheets of sketch paper. “I have to track down that Noel Saint-Hill punk in Morella tomorrow. It’ll save me a drive.”

Which was true, but I had something else I wanted to do. Because at some point during the hedgehog attack and Rose’s insistence that I leave, I realized there was someone who could tell me if my mother was still alive and kicking on another plane.

Kar Yee’s apartment smelled like microwave popcorn. I surveyed the pristine white-and-gold living room and kitchen, and smiled when I spotted her lone tribute to the holidays: a tabletop white Christmas tree wrapped in red lights sat on the glass table in the dining room, and beneath it, a pile of presents, including Jupe’s tiny opera figurine, now spattered in drops of dried red paint. Kar Yee’s bah-humbug protests in the bar were such a crock.

I dumped a duffel bag of clothes in the foyer near a low wooden rack made for visitor’s shoes. Kar Yee was a shoe-phobe. She was convinced that footwear was invented by Satan himself—or, at best, carried the plague. It was almost one of those obsessive-compulsive things. She often walked around Tambuku’s office in socks or silky slip-on dance things. It was kind of ridiculous, but it was worse when we lived together in college—God help the person who dared to put their disgusting shoes on her dorm bed.

But I guess we all had hang-ups. I slipped off my boots, placing them next to a pair of men’s brown lace-ups, and padded down the hall.

Like every other room in her compact apartment, the decor in her bedroom looked as if it belonged in some swank Far East hotel. Gold leaf-patterned curtains draped the window, blocking out her view of midtown Morella. A muted, oversized painting of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor hung over the bed. She was sitting in bed, propped up against gilded pillows, wearing her collarbone brace over yellow silk pajamas. Her normally super-shiny black hair looked dull and limp, pulled back into a bun atop her head. A mostly empty snack bowl was wedged between her legs.