Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) (52 page)

"Sure," Frank said.

"Do you fucking
understand
?" Dana growled, looming, using his height.

"For fuck's sake, man," Frank said, refusing to tilt his head back to look up. "You're acting like we haven't been on assignments together and shit."

"House arrest!" Dana repeated, and then he slammed the door shut on his way out.

Frank ambled over to the stairs.

"Yo," he called.

Leander popped out from his assigned upstairs bedroom.

"He's gone," Frank said.

"Thanks dude," Leander said. "Can someone get a hold of Jack for me?"

"Yeah, he'll want to talk to you," Frank said. "Sec."

There were polite pleasantries, like,
thanks for coming over
and
thank you for asking me
, but mostly Leander and Jack eyed each other carefully from across the room after their hand shake.

"So," Jack said, at length. "You're Leander."

"Did you expect someone different?" Leander asked, with a quirk of his lips.

"I didn't expect you to end up
here
," Jack said sharply.

He reminded Leander of the cool sort of high school teacher that taught art, or maybe shop. Leander was sure he'd have felt really at ease around him, in any other circumstances.

"Yeah," Leander said. "Well. Neither did anyone else, really."

"And I expected someone..." Jack waved a vague hand at Leander's perfectly erect posture, "...with more broken legs."

"Recovery took a while," Leander said.

"Was it easy?" Jack asked.

"No," Leander said, with a flash of vulnerability in his eyes.

"So you're here risking your fresh legs and your life because...?"

"It's the right thing to do," Leander said.

"You're very calm about this," Jack said. They both had their hands clasped behind their backs, and they took the measure of each other warily. The fountain of charm Leander had been pumping earlier was either dry or irrelevant--this was important, but a different kind of important.

"I have to be," Leander said, honestly.

"Is Axton dead?" Jack asked.

Leander blinked rapidly.

"If he was, I wouldn't be calm," he said.

"Then how did Ax
ever
let you end up in this place?" Jack asked.

"I asked him to," Leander said. "People underestimate the power of just asking for things."

"Whooa, boy," Jack whistled. "You're crazy."

"It's possible," Leander conceded, "but probably not."

"You think you got a plan," Jack said. "I hope you got one hell of a plan, son."

"Just a hunch," Leander said. He paused. "Axton said you were a friend to him."

"Yes," Jack said.

Leander hesitated again.

"Ax doesn't bond with most people," he said. "But you took the time."

"He's a good kid," Jack said. "Just a little standoffish. Shy."

"Skittish," Leander said. "What compelled you to make the effort?"

It was Jack's turn to hesitate.

"I'm not comfortable," he said, spreading out his hands, "discussing that here."

Leander looked at him steadily, waiting.

Jack made up his mind.

"But if you come with me," he said, "then I'll tell you a story."

"I'm supposed to be under house arrest," Leander said.

"Like you were supposed to be bound and gagged before?" Jack asked, amused.

Leander let his lips curl into a smile as he shrugged.

"Lead the way."

Frank stopped them at the door.

"Lee's supposed to be under house arrest," he said apologetically.

"It's all right," Jack said. "I'll answer to Dana. Tell him it was me."

"We won't be long," Leander said.

"That's a lie," Jack said.

Frank sighed.

"Dana's gonna have my ass if he gets back here and I'm empty handed," Frank said.

"So go out," Jack said. "I'll tell him you chased after us. But he's down at his place, sulking, so it'll be a while anyway."

Frank mulled this over for a minute and then nailed Leander with a hungry look.

"Can you make Italian food?" he asked.

"I can make anything, given time and internet access," Leander said. "I worked in a bunch of kitchens to get through school."

"Chicken parm for dinner after the pot roast," Frank said.

"Deal," Leander said.

They shook on it.

They were having tea made from the heads of dried dandelions and Leander was ambling around comfortably, peering at Jack's collections of things--books and antique shaving razors and globes. The tea, he felt, was a nice touch. It was the sort of rustic, artlessly charming thing Axton would do. It was like a certain type of werewolf was unintentionally hipster as fuck.

Or maybe Leander had more of a context for hipsters than he did for legitimate homesteaders. That was a definite possibility, Leander mused, as he carefully spun a globe made of bronze, looking up as his host reappeared.

Wordlessly, Jack handed Leander a locket. It was old, but well shined and cared for--Leander thought vaguely that it was the kind of thing Sarah would like, when she was playing with pin-up type styles--shaped like a heart and latched securely.

"May I?" Leander asked.

"Wouldn't have given it to you if you weren't meant to," Jack said.

Leander put down his mug on a handy bookshelf and carefully opened the locket. A young woman smiled up at him, the black and white photo worn. Her hair was in victory rolls and her lipstick looked dark.

"She's very beautiful," Leander said, which was the correct response even if it didn't happen to be true--but here, at least, it was.

"Her name was Elizabeth," Jack said, turning away and sitting down.

"Was," Leander echoed. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Jack said. "Can't be helped."

"She wasn't a wolf, was she?" Leander asked carefully.

"No," Jack said abruptly. "She wasn't."

"You were sympathetic to Axton from the beginning," Leander said.

"I was," Jack said. "I
am
. Even though--Ax has no idea. What it'll be like, some day. It's terrible."

Leander sunk into a chair across from Jack, looking at the locket.

"You mean the day that you lost her," he said.

"Yes," Jack whispered.

Delicate ground. Leander knew he had to proceed cautiously, but also quickly. There was much to learn.

"Was she killed?" he asked softly.

"No," Jack said. "No. Well. By time, eventually, I'd guess."

"You'd guess?" Leander asked.

"I'm a coward," Jack said, gazed fixed somewhere in the distance. "I don't know what happened to her. Didn't want to know, for a long time, and now it's too late."

"I don't understand," Leander said. "I--"

"She aged," Jack said suddenly, "and I am, like I've said, and I'll say it a thousand times, a coward. We had a beautiful life together. I helped raise her kids. They grew up. She got older. I didn't."

"Did she know?" Leander asked.

"Of course she knew; she wasn't stupid," Jack said sharply. "But that didn't stop time for her. And I...I couldn't stand to see it anymore...I couldn't stand to see her grow old so much faster than I did...so I left."

Leander sat very still for a second.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm sure that was hard for you."

"Hard for
me
," Jack said, with a soft, bitter laugh. "You...ah, you mean it, don't you?"

"I've long thought that losing me would be...very difficult for Axton. He's...attached...and we haven't even been together long enough for him to notice much aging, even counting our recent time apart." Leander did not say anything about how it had felt for him to lose Axton, even temporarily. He wanted to be honest with Jack--but not that honest, not if he could help it. It would be better to not remember, especially now since he'd willfully separated from Axton again...Leander blinked and tried to catch up with the conversation.

"You've talked about it," Jack said flatly.

What?
Leander thought, but out loud he guessed, "The expected lifespan difference?"

Jack nodded.

"We've joked about it," Leander said.

Jack looked wistful.

"I could never joke," Jack said.

"I mean, what else is there to do?" Leander asked. "You laugh. Or you cry. If you go with the first one, there's less clean up after."

Jack sighed.

"What are you here for, boy? You live as long as a butterfly and you're cutting your time with Axton even shorter."

"I'm here to solve a murder mystery," Leander said.

Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Lord above," was all he said.

Leander leaned forward, weight on his arms, eyes intense.

"But first," he said, staring Jack straight in the eyes, "help a man out. Honor bound culture. Tell me your specifications for judicial combat."

"Mighty sure of yourself," Jack said. "What makes you think we have judicial combat?"

"You do, don't you?" Leander pressed.

Jack stayed quiet for a moment, obviously struggling with something.

"I have these books," he said slowly. "When I left Elizabeth, I wandered around, met lots of different packs, tribes, families--whatever they wanted to call themselves. And I asked questions, wrote down answers, built records."

"Werewolf anthropologist," Leander said, while silently thinking:
YES
.

Jack rubbed a hand against his face, his graying stubble.

"You understand," he said, "that this is centuries of collected data--my father and his father before him, that sort of thing. It's something of a tradition. We tend to be wanderers."

"It's sensitive," Leander. "I understand. It's natural to not want to share that immediately."

Jack looked surprised.

"Hell no," he said. "Are you kidding me? I'm thrilled. No one
ever
asks to read my books."

"I'm always glad to be someone's first," Leander said, sitting back and steepling his fingers. "Let's do this, friend."

By the time Leander was walked back to his designated room, he had a pile of leather-bound notebooks, it was time to eat again, and he was exhausted. He yawned his way through making food and cracking jokes, and then he flopped onto his bed and passed out for ten hours.

"God, I love how there's no statute of limitations on this shit," Leander muttered, flipping through a leather bound book.

Besides Axton, obviously, Leander decided that Trevor was his favorite werewolf ever, mostly because Trevor was the only untrained person he'd met who could hold pads and switch grips fast enough to keep up with the combinations Lee liked to throw during a workout. It was very satisfying. A buzzer went off.

They nodded at each other and switched equipment--Leander now holding pads, Trevor now with the gloves.

"All right," Leander said. "Remember to fully extend your shoulder this time, okay? It gives you more range on the punch."

Ten minutes later Dana burst in and took away their gear, which was both irritating and completely expected.

"It's just, like, dude," Trevor was saying with feeling, passing Leander a beer. "Just because
you
just rely on your size on a fistfight, that doesn't mean the rest of us shouldn't learn."

"A lot of big guys are used to being sloppy," Leander said. "They don't have to learn." Trevor had the lankier of the typical werewolf builds, broad at the shoulders with a dramatic taper to the waist--it reminded Leander of Axton. Of course, a lot of things reminded Leander of Axton.

"But like, you can't just go wolf during a bar fight," Trevor said, frowning.

"Of course not," Leander agreed, "or in a food court."

"I'm not an expert," Trevor grinned, "but I don't think a lot of fights break out in food courts."

"Right, sure," Leander said, and he took a long drink of beer to hide his expression.

"Before Dru," Trevor said, sounding wistful--

Leander was immediately at attention and striving to hide it.

"--We could just do whatever as long as we weren't growing fangs in the middle of the grocery store," Trevor said. "I used to play shows down at one of the bars in town. December used to take dance lessons and May used to fix cars. But now we're supposed to hardly leave here. And never without permission."

"So it's Dru, then?" Leander said. "He prefers a more isolated set up?"

"Some days I can't tell if it's him or Dana," Trevor said. "And Dana and me, we used to be tight--"

"He refers to you as his second," Leander said.

Trevor smiled faintly, but fondly.

"--but he hasn't been the same since his dad, you know. He was always kind of a douchebag about some things, don't get me wrong, and he'd always leave home for stretches without explaining much, but...now he's just…sometimes I think he goes too far." Trevor shrugged.

"Mmm," Leander said, noncommittal. "So what was his dad like? What was it like when he was in charge?"

"Eh, Frankie probably could tell you better," Trevor said. "He's older."

"You look the same age," Leander said.

"Lycan blood," Trevor said, flashing a smile with too much teeth.

"Werewolf
bullshit
," Leander said, jostling him with his shoulder.

Trevor laughed and shoved back.

The next day when Dana came to check on him, Leander was chatting idly with December as he French braided May's hair. Dana tried to drag him away, but May wasn't about to let Leander go when only half her hair was done, and December was up next.

It had been a tactical mistake, Leander thought, to think that he could get some reading done alone in his room. Staying around people was the correct strategy. Luckily, Dana was loud.

"The fuck you think you are, that you can just come in here and turn people against me?" Dana yelled.

"I haven't turned anyone against anyone," Leander said.