The Burning Bush (9 page)

“This is MeShack’s last week here,” Zulu declared. “Every week I come closer to killing him, and unless you would be cool with my taking his life, something has to change.”

I rubbed my eyes and then the skin around my X brand, feeling drained and exhausted. “I understand.”

I’m probably going to kill him myself.

“I’m sorry, Zulu. You did take us in.” I wiped more Pixie crap off of my forehead brand and smeared the glittery mess onto the sheet I was wearing. “We’ll be out of here in a week.”

In a flash, Zulu was in front of me. “Excuse me?”

I stepped back. “What?”

“You and Ben are leaving with him?” He closed the distance, standing barely an inch from me. I could feel his breath brushing against my skin.

I edged away from him. “Of course.”
Why wouldn’t we be leaving with him?

Zulu scowled and stepped around me, almost slipping on the sheet’s ends. My stomach twisted into tiny knots of tension.

“Wait, you’re just going to walk out?” I held my hands out to my sides. “Can we talk about this?”

He halted but didn’t turn around. “We don’t need to talk. I know why you’re leaving. You’ve always lived with MeShack. Apparently, you always will live with him.”

A hot fury pulsed through my cords. Zulu’s fury.

“Can we just talk about this?” I mumbled, staring at the floor. “Why are you mad? We both knew this was temporary.”

“I thought you would eventually change your mind and stay with me.” He marched out of my bedroom without saying goodbye. A Were-dog peeked through the hole in the wall, assessing the damage. Striped black and brown fur covered his face.

I glared at the Shifter and said, “Neither Zulu or MeShack submitted, so you can hand the money back to whoever bet.”

The Were-dog averted his eyes. “Sorry, Lanore.”

He extracted a large stack of bills out of his pocket. “Me didn’t mean no disrespect.”

“Whatever.” I waved him away.

Angel climbed through a hole in the wall, completely nude and Human. “Rico, I want my hundred back.”

The Were-dog held out a bill.

“Seriously? You made a bet?” I rolled my eyes.

She snatched the money from the Were-dog’s hand.

“Who did you bet on?” I asked.

“It’s a secret.” Angel picked up some books and started piling them into a stack. “But I bet on the best one.”

My alarm went off, blasting the Captain Habitat theme song all over the bedroom.

Supernaturals prevail.

In the weakest moments, we never fail.

I snatched the clock out of the wall and smashed it against my dresser. Sniffing, I realized I’d woken up in other people’s fluids. Ben had pissed in the bed on my right. On my left, blood seeped out of Angel’s nostrils for the third time this month. It happened every time she absorbed powers, and it scared me to my core.

“Yuck!” I wiped the sticky stuff off my cheek as more blood pooled around my pillow. After the factory bombing, I’d vowed to stay away from blood as much as possible, and here I was lying in it.
This is the last time I’ll let either one of them sleep in my bed.

MeShack stomped into my room, bending his copper-toned body under my doorway. A coffee-colored towel stretched around his waist. He held a bag of sugar cubes in his hand. I struggled not to peek or drool at him, half-naked in my room.
No big deal. He’s just naked.
I bit my bottom lip and let my eyes stray to his bare thighs for a moment.

It was his week to take Ben to school. MeShack stood at the end of my bed and didn’t look at me as he kneeled down and tossed the bag of sugar cubes into the box of Pixies on my night stand. I smelled the spice rum cologne he liked to splash on after his showers.

“You have to feed them three times a day,” he mumbled.

“I did.”
At least I think I did.

Those long kinky curls fell across his face, hiding it as he swooped Ben up in one quick motion and marched away. The towel stretched around his hard muscled behind. I caught myself ogling him and averted my eyes.

“So you’re still not talking to me?” I yelled at his back.

“Are you still a terrorist?” he replied.

Last night, MeShack had come into my room and cleaned up the damage he and Zulu had caused. We talked for a while until Ben arrived full of pizza and soda. To say our conversation last night didn’t end well was an understatement.

“Ben peed in the bed so he needs to take a shower before you drop him off at school,” I called out. MeShack grunted and slammed his bedroom door. I climbed over the urine-stained sheets.

“I hate my life.” I entered my destroyed bathroom, stepping over the pile of glass in front of the doorway. It took so much time to clean my bedroom that we’d given up on sorting the bathroom. I shouted, “Get up, Angel. We have a long day.”

The sooner I finished Rivera’s investigation, the better. I stepped into the shower and turned on the hot water. It sprayed all over the bathroom walls, drenching my once beautiful carpet and wetting the blood-stained mosaic.
I should set MeShack’s bed on fire. Rule number one: Don’t ever mess with a woman’s shower!
But in reality, it was actually Zulu’s shower, since this was all his property.
I couldn’t have stayed here that long anyway.

I leaned back against the wall, relishing the hot water and attempting to fit apartment hunting somewhere into my busy schedule for the day. We had to get out of this warehouse. Zulu had welcomed us in, not asking for rent or anything else, and we’d destroyed his place. Even worse, now he was pissed at me.
As soon as I move into my new place, things will be better.

“Lanore, I bled again.” Angel came into the bathroom, pulled her pajama pants down, and sat on the toilet.

“Absolutely not. This morning is bad enough already!” I motioned for her to get out.

Blood covered the area from her nose down to her neck, soaking her pajama top.

“I have to go,” she whined.

“There are other bathrooms,” I insisted.

She stomped out.

“And you wouldn’t have bled if you hadn’t taken Quinn’s ability to shift,” I called. “Magic addict!”

I need coffee and a newspaper’s classified section.

We had one week to get out of here. Zulu would probably permit us to stay longer, but why push his kindness or strain my relationship with him even further.

“Fuck!” I shouted to no one. It would take forever to find another apartment that allowed Mixbreeds and Purebloods to live together. Not to mention we had Ben to think about now. He would need his own room.

And when we found this apartment, the place would probably be a roach-infested rat’s nest. No smart owner with income-rich property would allow interspecies living when there were plenty of wealthy Purebloods to rent it to.

I’ll think about this mess later.
I closed my eyes and sighed, delighting in the soft pitter-patter of hot water as it sprinkled on my face. And then something clicked near the doorway.

I opened my eyes to a flash that blinded me. After several blinks, I spied a crescent moon brand on the forehead of a slim young girl with long blond hair hanging to her waist. She held a camera covered in turquoise stars. Her blue eyes were wide with excitement. “No wonder my brother is crazy about you. Your body is strapped.”

She took another picture.

“What the fuck?” I quickly shut off the shower and jumped out. “What . . . who are you? And why are you in here?”

She held out her hand for me to shake. “I’m Cassie, Zulu’s sister. And it’s pretty obvious that I’m in the bathroom taking pictures of you.”

“Because?” I snatched a lavender towel off the rack.

“Zulu didn’t tell you?” Her cheeks turned rosy red. “I’m doing an article on you for my school newspaper.”

“No, you’re not.” I fled the bathroom, my skin still drenched with water. Clutching the towel close around me, I rushed to my dresser and grabbed the clothes I had set out last night.

“Yes, I am,” Cassie squealed.

She has way too much motherpounding enthusiasm for this early in the morning! I wish I could roar like Zulu.

“My principal approved it,” she said.

“I didn’t.”

“Zulu approved it,” she added, as if that was significant.

“I don’t care.” I slipped my legs into my underwear and hurried to put on my jeans as I struggled to keep my towel in place. “Zulu is not a god or some authority in Santeria.”

She put the camera down and strolled around my broken bookcase. “He is to me.”

Well, that would have been gushingly cute, had she not taken several pictures of me naked.

“I want those pictures destroyed.” I buttoned my jeans.

“Well, I wanted to trade them to my brother so he would let my fan club meet in his condo.” She fluttered her eyes and pouted her lips. “My mom won’t let me do the meetings at my house.”

“Fan club?”

“I created the official Staked fan club in Santeria,” Cassie explained, beaming with pride.

Staked was a Vamp boy band—one that sucked. Their music targeted high school girls. Their top two songs were
Immortally Yours
and
At the Prom
.
Although they appeared to be teenagers, they were all over a hundred years old. I found it creepy that they sang to young girls.
How is that not pedophilia?

“If you let me do the interview, I’ll give you back the pictures.” She held the camera out to me. “You are my hero and everything. I don’t want us to start off on the wrong foot.”

I turned my back to her, dropped the towel, and put on a bra. “You don’t have to give me the camera, but I would love for you to destroy the pictures.”

“I have every newspaper clipping that mentions your accomplishments.”

“So then you have one clipping,” I muttered.

Back when I was a freshman, Maya Luna had done a feature article on how I was the first Mixbreed to be enrolled in the school and how proud it was to be the first school in the habitat system to permit a Mixbreed to register. What they left out was that I’d fought my way in. I wrote hundreds of letters to PETA, United Species, Miami’s Mayor, and every head species council member in Santeria.

“Actually, I have twenty-five clippings.” Cassie seized one of my romance novels, wrapped in brown paper to hide the embarrassing book cover. “There’s like five articles about you and the murders last month. Zulu told me you solved that case, so I put that with your honor roll and dean’s list announcements—”

“What?”

“I have a whole scrapbook done in violet lilies.”

Really?

“I have this huge spot where I’m going to put the article I do on you in my book.” She peeled back the brown paper on the novel, revealing a Human sailor fondling a Mermaid’s huge bosom. “Strapped! Can I borrow this?”

“No. It’s adult and . . . it’s not even mine. Just some ditzy friend that reads trashy romance books.” I dried my dreadlocks. “What’s the article that you want to do on me about?”

“A day in the life of a revolutionary.” With each word she hit the air with her hand and grinned. “I’m so piped. You’ve not only busted the dopeness radar, you’ve created it. You soared it to the ceiling with your holiness and then birthed it to the universe.”

I scrunched up my face in confusion.

“She means you’re amazing.” Angel strolled into the room with a clean face and a bloody towel slumped around her shoulder. “She’s really cute. Can we keep her, Lanore? Please?”

“Her name is Cassie, and she’s not cute because she’s Zulu’s sister and in high school,” I said. If I hurried, I could catch the seven o’clock tram before all the magical products plant workers crowded the trams up.

“Please, Lanore? You’re my hero, seriously.” Cassie stuffed her camera and the romance novel into a big pink-and-white polka-dot purse. “I had to fight to get this article. The whole faculty didn’t want me to do it. They’re a bunch of busters.”