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“Call me when you’re done with the meeting and I’ll sort out what needs to be sorted,” he says.
He looks much more put together too. He looks like he’s had a shower. He’s definitely changed clothes, and his knuckles have light bandages on them. I do wonder who he’s been hitting. Rick isn’t the kind to go to violence immediately in my experience. He generally leaves that to someone else.
No point asking though. He won’t tell me. I’ll have to see if someone will drop the information by accident. Wolves are gossips. Can’t help it. Pack dynamics are going to pack dynamic.
“Okay. I’m heading out then,” I say, going for the front door.
“Fiona?”
“Yeah?”
I turn and wait for him to give me some rude parting shot.
“Remember I love you, okay?”
“Uh, okay? Love you too, I guess?”
“Stop making it weird,” he says, instantly making it much more weird.
* * *
Kyle’s office is downtown in one of those buildings that are very tall and have windows that look like mirrors and sometimes set other people’s stuff on fire.
I inquire as to his whereabouts at reception and get sent up to some interminable floor. I really don’t know what I am supposed to do here. Take information on board, I suppose. I’m not going to be able to make any decisions. I don’t have the information to do that, even if I was allowed to.
There’s a second receptionist on his floor, and she very helpfully guides me to his office waiting room. I sit there for far too long. Five minutes pass, then ten. I think about getting up and walking out. There’s something in my gut telling me to do it. I hate places like this where they waste your time. Actually, I hate all places where you have an appointment time, but nobody seems to care. I’ve had a privileged life in many ways, but there are some places that everyone gets screwed on time. Doctors, dentists, vets, and whatever this guy is.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Kyle says, emerging from his office just as I am about to stand up and leave. “Come on in.”
He is a tall man who looks taller because of how rangy his form is. He’s got the body of a Slenderman understudy, all long limbs and narrow features. I wonder what he looks like when he’s shifted. Probably like a maned wolf, I’d bet.
I follow him into his office, where he’s already retreated behind a big desk that used to belong to my father. I don’t think that’s a decorating accident. As I look around his office, I see a lot of things that used to belong to my dad. In fact, if you squint just right, you’d be forgiven for thinking that this was my dad’s office.
Kyle is in his sixties. Not really that old, but he has the air of someone ancient. He oozes power, and by that I mean it seeps out of him, like it doesn’t like being with him. This is a man who has spent a lifetime trying to become more than he is and still ended up a facsimile of the real thing.
“You look so much like your mother,” he says.
The compliment makes my skin crawl, for reasons I can’t explain.
“Really? I’m sure by this stage I don’t share a lot of appearance with her. She’d be a skeleton by now.”
It’s a crude and maudlin thing to say, but I find it’s best to repel the repellent as soon as possible. I do not want Kyle thinking I like him, or want to make conversation about my mom. Her name, even the concept of her name doesn’t belong in his mouth.
I didn’t expect to feel this hostile when I saw him, but the way his eyes are ranging over me and the air of smug superiority is pissing me off.
He picks up a fountain pen and taps it on the desk in a way that sets my teeth on edge.
“You know, she was planning to leave your father before she died.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is, I am afraid.”
He’s lying. I don’t know why. Maybe for fun. Maybe for recreation. Maybe he masturbates to it later.
“And? Why are we having this conversation?”
“Women of your bloodline have to be mated and married,” he says. “Without those bonds, you have a tendency to become feral. And, let’s be honest, dangerous.”
