Blushing and looking very much away, Gabriel gave Jacklyn his jacket. The material was grey tweed, but it had a satin lining that grazed her skin like a silk robe.
Gabriel didn't ask questions. He shooed the feral cats away and helped making Craven comfortable.
Jacklyn figured Craven must be in a bad way, or he would have protested more than he did over Gabriel's fussing. Once he was on his back on a bench, he closed his eyes and shut them out.
Typical snake demon macho move.
Gabriel looked at him with knit brows. He may have been assigned Craven-duty by Veronica, but it was clear to Jacklyn he was an over-achiever. Keeping Craven comfortable wasn't enough. Gabe needed a solution to the bleeding wound in Craven's gut. He needed Veronica's help now and a permanent fix for later.
Gabriel walked around with his tablet, trying to find some location with a WiFi connection he could hack into to reach the outer world. A phone wasn't enough for what he needed to do.
Gabriel had no luck. The Russian sauna was a bastion of the old ages. It didn't stop him from pacing around like a coo-less chicken with an egg about to drop.
Jacklyn sent Gabriel out to find food, wifi and intel.
Craven didn't move. She couldn't tell if his chest rose. His pale face was the brightest thing in the room. He looked dead.
She directed horsey feelers his way, trying to get a sense on what was going on with him.
He wasn't dead.
"You don't have a heartbeat," Jacklyn said. "I heard your heart in Veronica's apartment. Then it stopped. You didn't have a heartbeat when you showed up at Pantzer's house."
"Hearts are overrated."
Craven's hand moved from the wound and came to a rest over the place where a heart normally beat in most mammals.
"But you had a heart," she said.
He scowled. It was hard to tell if it was because Jacklyn annoyed him or if he was in pain.
"Stop talking."
"Just trying to figure out what makes you tick," she muttered.
Craven grimaced like her bad pun physically hurt him.
It worked.
"I had two," he said. "Happy?"
"Your kind have two hearts?"
He groaned. "There is no my kind. I'm a half breed."
"One heart from each side?"
Craven stopped breathing. She sensed feels so strong he couldn't hide the echo of them sailing across his face.
"For a while," he said finally. "And for too fucking long."
"What happened to your first heart? It stopped, too?"
"Stop talking."
They sat in silence.
The feral cats took it as a signal to take back the sauna. They moved closer, staring at Jacklyn with blank, sullen expressions and staying way clear of Craven.
"I put it in a safe place with someone I trusted."
Jacklyn hadn't expected Craven to continue.
She shook her head. A week ago she would have called this crazy-talk, but she'd put her heart with someone she trusted and now it felt like it had been ripped out of her body. Jacklyn turned her head to hide that her eyes were welling up.
YOU ARE READING
Shifting Life
Paranormal[COMPLETE] Magic is all about the rules. You mess up, you fix it. Or pay the price. Not that Jacklyn Morse has a choice. She's a new shape shifter paying the price for saving a notorious thief who is as hot as the supernatural loot he's stolen. To J...
