“Then why have the—” I started to ask before realizing. “Easy protein?”
“Easy protein.”
That made sense. It wasn’t hard to put together that Cherry wasn’t exactly a domestic goddess, so adding eggs to soup or ramen or anything else was probably a big boon to her.
How much could she accomplish if she had someone else to take care of that for her? A personal chef, or a partner. Someone with her gifts—even if she wasn’t a psychic—could definitely spend her energy better elsewhere.
We finished our meal in relative quiet, right up until Hudson sauntered in and meowed loud enough that I was sure the neighbors heard it. She was a saucy little thing. Cherry got up, cracked another egg and separated out the yolk, then put it in the cat’s bowl on the floor.
“Good morning to you too, ma’am,” she said with a chuckle before returning to her seat.
It was… domestic in a way. But as soon as that idea bloomed within my head, I tried to dismiss it. Cherry was a professional providing a consultation service to me. Not to mention she was still on thin ice for lying and pretending to have an ability she didn’t. Although there were sections of my brain that wanted to forgive and forget, the vast majority of my conscience knew that wouldn’t be wise.
Everything was always so complicated when you were an adult. Normally, I relished my ability to navigate that.
Nothing was really normal anymore though, was it?
Because despite the lies, despite the sex, there was still a hit out on my youngest brother, and the murder of my eldest brother and my father was still unsolved. If there was anything that could get my mind off what Cherry looked like in the throes of passion, that was it.
“I think we should head to your estate, regroup, and update Chris about the situation.”
“What exactly is the ‘situation’?”
“Me being an empath, not a psychic.”
Her sudden dedication to the truth surprised me, and I felt an automatic kickback from myself on that. “Perhaps we should put a pin in that for the moment.”
“Why?”
“Because although I get it, or I think I do, and I’m willing to try this again, he won’t. Chris is a one and done. If he finds out you tricked us in any way, not only would he make your life a living hell, but he’d probably shut down this whole operation and say we need to rely only on the police.”
“Your detectives can’t tell if an assassin doesn’t have emotions. Or if people are lying.”
“I’m well aware.” I also could still hear one of them dismissing my suspicions and basically accuse me of being paranoid. “So, while I respect you wanting to come clean with Chris, do you agree it would be prudent to delay that for a while?”
She huffed a laugh, and I shot her a curious look. “Was something I said amusing?”
“Oh, it’s just that you like to revert to more formal vocabulary when you’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
She raised one of her pale eyebrows. Huh, she must have been darkening them with makeup, because they were barely visible on her washed face. Not a big deal, of course, but the idea that I was getting to see a clean-scrubbed, more vulnerable side of her appealed to my wolf quite a bit. And he was about as happy as could be after getting his knot off and being served a hot meal.
Eh, who was I kidding. I was happy about that too. It was kind of easy to imagine this was what my life could have been like if I wasn’t born a VanMarche.
“I can see it, you know. Kinda sludgy blue little dashes around your head like static.”
“Are emotions always the same when you see them? Like will my nerves always be like that, or does it change?”
“It changes. I can’t explain the how or why of it, but I think they’re affected by intensity, what else is going on in a person’s life, if they’re feeling that emotion toward someone they trust, someone they don’t know, etcetera, etcetera.” She waved her hand like she wasn’t explaining something deeply complex and magical. Her abilities were the Old World powers that had largely faded from the world as humans took over more space.
“Fascinating.”
“Is it?” she said, giving me an odd grin.
“Don’t you think so?”
“I… suppose. I’ve gotten so used to it over the years. It was real overwhelming when it first started happening but now… well now it’s mostly par for the course.”