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He smiled, but it was cold. “Yes, but that’s not Ronald’s problem. He’ll just lease the mineral rights out to whatever group has the highest bid and let them absorb the risk. I don’t want my name mentioned in the same sentence of that if I can possibly avoid it.”
Fine. I could go toddle around after Gazelle for a few hours.
Extreme werewolf politics by night, fluffy human-ing by day.
Gazelle bounced. She was wearing a gorgeous puffy white ankle-length coat with a furry collar that consumed most of her head and big sunglasses as she waited outside the salon with two bodyguards. Someone approached just as I set foot on the curb and asked if they could get a selfie. I hung back, eyeing the crowds pressing around us.
“Hey, Winter,” Gazelle greeted me cheerfully as she pulled off her big sunglasses. “Want to be in the shot?”
“No, thanks, pass,” I said, feeling downright demure in my non-poofy navy blue long coat. I was absolutely not exciting. My shoes were a little exciting, though, in the I could break an ankle sort of way. Six inches of spike with the diameter of a piece of spaghetti. It was an engineering marvel it could bear weight. I smiled at the two excited humans tucking in next to Gazelle for a shot. It was kind of like watching puppies excited a favored adult was home and might have treats to puke up.
One of the people walking by carried the scent of fryer oil on their wool scarf. Lurking at the corner by the lamppost: FryerVats and Companion.
FryerVats waved at me. Companion hung on his shoulder, mouth open and panting in the cold.
I forced myself to turn my back.
The two humans gave me a curious look as they checked their photo and giggled to each other, then scurried away.
Gazelle was nice company, even if she teased me. She showed me pictures of Fiji and chatted about her pet turtles and her plans for the holidays and showed me pictures of the Christmas decorations that had just gone up the previous weekend, and how much fun she’d had with the tree.
“You probably have work to do over the holidays,” she said as a beautiful bronze color was painted on her nails. “I did all my holiday shoots back in July, and my spring and summer shoots won’t really start until after the new year. Have a few runway shows and that’s it. Ronald’s busy with his end of the year stuff. Not counting the parties, which are all dull.”
She pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of her nails, then leaned over towards me. I startled and almost yanked my hand back and smeared blue nail polish everywhere.
“Why are you so shy?” Gazelle teased. She gestured to one of her handlers and directed him to take a shot of her hand next to mine.
“I’m not shy.” I submitted to the photo. “Just… calculated.”
That was probably the wrong word. Paranoid? Neurotic?
She laughed. “You’re so together.”
My life was a plane that had lost both engines, its tail, and was being repeatedly hit by lightening as it plunged towards the churning ocean. “I am not, but I’m glad I fake it so well.”
She laughed again, and told me about her pet turtles, and how the best thing about her shoot in Fiji had been the sea turtles. Then she dragged me about to poke in stores. It’d been my first time buying clothes without Mint supervising, so I just tried to follow her lead and not do or say anything too stupid. I managed to drum up enough courage to ask for her opinion on the most extravagant, outrageous heels I could get away with in semi-polite company. Mint was getting the fun heels from the stripper stores, and I had a few demure pairs he’d thrown at me for polite company, but there had to be something that I could wear that’d have some bite without the panting.
“Sterling have a thing for heels?” she asked with a sly grin.
Sterling had a thing for gift wrap. “Mint tells me I’ve got to learn to walk in these things anyway, so why not have a good time?”
She gestured to my shoes with one elegant finger. “Those are pretty fierce.”
I looked down at my shoes. “The only thing fierce about them is I could stab someone with the spike.”
She sauntered over to a display of shoes. She twirled two heels on her fingers, both spiked stilettos that made my arches cry looking at them. Both were shiny patent leather, and all hard angles and lines. One was tropical ocean blue, the other a luxurious iridescent purple. The purple had a spike that was a violent bright red, the ocean blue’s underside looked like bright magenta mylar had been melted on it.
They were fabulous.
I’d never had a human… friend… before, and damn, it was easy. No politics, no my daddy bosses your daddy around, no I might be bad luck.
It was nice.
I bid Gazelle goodbye as the day was getting dim and cold.
[Mint] >> Fabulous.
Winter [Mint] >> ?
