“Uh . . . I’ll have to check my schedule,” I said, fidgeting with my shirt and pushing my hair behind my ears. I’d been wearing it down more, now that I wasn’t seeing much of Charlie. She considered my hair her personal toy property.
“Hey, you’re wearing the earrings I got you!” Anna exclaimed, returning from the bathroom. She pointed at my earlobes, and I automatically reached up to touch one of the little studs she’d given me ages ago, when I was home between tours. They were in the shape of tiny curled-up griffins. My cousins didn’t know about my tattoos—I wasn’t sure how my family would take the fact that I suddenly had full-on ink sleeves covering my forearms, so I’d kept them hidden.
For a second I was this close to blurting out, “That’s funny, Sam was just talking about griffins today.” My brain caught up to my mouth just in time. “Yeah. I love them,” I said instead.
“How come I never got a spirit animal?” Elise complained. “You only assigned one to Lex.”
“Um, because you guys gave me shit for years for even bringing up the words ‘spirit animal’?” Anna retorted. “Besides, Lex is special. She needs a griffin more than you do.”
Elise rolled her eyes in a dismissive, Anna’s-being-Anna way and started gathering up her jacket and bag. But I looked at my younger cousin with new interest. I’d always assumed she’d decided griffins were connected to me because of the whole army thing—in mythology, griffins symbolized courage and boldness, which was soldier stuff. Meanwhile, Sam had told me that griffins were the guardians of priceless treasures. I’d associated that with protecting Charlie. “What do you mean, I need one more?” I asked Anna.
“We talked about griffins when we were studying heraldry—you know, coats of arms and symbols and stuff,” she said. “Griffins were drawn to powerful monsters, and they stood for military strength and leadership. I just thought you could use one.” She grinned, gesturing at my earrings. “Or two.”
“Huh.” All along I’d associated myself with the griffin, but Anna had been barely thirteen when I’d gone to Iraq. She had hoped for a griffin to watch over me. “Thank you,” I said sincerely. “That means a lot.”
It was only when I was walking back to the car that I considered the rest of her words: griffins were drawn to powerful monsters. Like Maven? Or Quinn?
Then I remembered how good—how right—it had felt when I used boundary magic, and I shivered. Or was I the monster?
It’s just a symbol, Lex, I reminded myself. Symbols only have the significance that we bring to them.
Right?
Chapter 10
I fought the commuter traffic so I could get home and take care of the herd, who were as glad to see me as ever. When they all stopped trying to scale my clothes and settled down to their dinners, I slipped into the bedroom to change for date night.
It was only then that I realized I had no idea where we were going. I wasn’t really a movie person, unless there was a theater playing Singin’ in the Rain or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Maybe a night hike? Then I probably shouldn’t dress up, right? But it was a date . . . ?
I sighed. I hated girl problems.
In the end, I settled on my newest jeans and a short-sleeved silk blouse, sapphire blue to set off my eyes, and a cream-colored linen jacket to hide my tattoos and the shredder I strapped to my right forearm. I half-assed some makeup and spent a couple of minutes straightening my flyaway hair, and that was as primped as I got.
When I was ready, I checked the clock and realized I still had an hour to kill before sunset, when I would meet Quinn at Magic Beans. For once, I didn’t feel like being alone, knowing I would just start to obsess over Emil’s visit again. My first impulse was to stop at John’s house to visit him and Charlie, but they were in Orlando, and besides, John didn’t want to see me.
On a whim, I decided to swing by the Basement of Dr. Moreau to check on Simon. It had been ages since we’d just hung out.
Simon’s lab was a converted two-bedroom apartment off Longbow in the same building where several of the Boulder vampires lived. Because it was one of Maven’s properties, the building had been renovated so that the basement dwellers had a separate entrance from the humans who lived aboveground. By mutual agreement, everyone in the building left their neighbors the hell alone.
I had a key to the outer door that led to the basement, in case there was ever a security concern. When I knocked on Simon’s door, he opened it just wide enough to stick his face out. Tall and lean with a nerdy-surfer thing going on, Simon was probably the crush of every undergraduate girl at CU . . . most of the time. Tonight, he looked exhausted and distracted, and he was wearing a blood-spattered lab coat and I-just-murdered-someone leather gloves. “Hey, Lex,” he said wearily. “What’s going on?”
“Um . . . hi. Can I come in?”
“Oh. Right.” He opened the door, ushering me in quickly. It was a little pointless, given Maven’s total control over the building, but it never hurt to be cautious. Inside, the apartment had been refitted with lab gear, including several enormous machines that I couldn’t have identified if my life depended on it. If it had been anyone else, I might have suspected the gear was just for show, but I was pretty sure Simon used every bit of equipment in there. There was even an enormous aquarium against the back wall, which contained skin beetles that spent their lives eating the flesh off Unktehila bones. I purposely didn’t look at it. I’d made that mistake before.