Chapter 1
Jack
“Get up, you lazy bastard.”
“Uurghnnn.” I peeked up into the harsh light the morning sun wreaked in my bedroom. It was my daily dose of ‘white shades: fail.’ I really needed to see about dark paint, or curtains, or something equally drastic. I was not good with mornings, especially those that came after long nights with bottles.
“Come on, Jack-o. You’re late. Again. Get the fuck up, man.”
“Whatimez…” I was totally lucid.
“Noon-thirty, you asshole. You were supposed to open at ten. Enough, already. Get. Your. Ass. Up.”
I groaned, swore, braced myself, and rolled up and out of bed. The throbbing vice on my frontal lobe intensified, and I took a moment with closed eyes to get a grip. This was not going to be my day.
But Grath was right—I needed to get into action. I’d been on a solid bender for…well, for a number of days, anyway. Long enough. Heart heavy with grief, I sent up a thought for my brother, Keith—whose birthday had recently passed—took a breath, and resolved to rejoin the living.
“Dude, seriously, you gotta go in. There’s some woman there waiting on you, with a baby. Kinda hard to tell for sure, but it does kind of look like you. I’d let you roll longer, but this…Jack, you gotta get up and deal.”
WTF?—I was still half-asleep, and full-on hung over. Woman and baby did not compute, but something clicked in my brain that sent my cells into action mode.
So I catapulted my sorry ass into a hot shower, which went pretty far to making me feel more human. By the time I got out, Grath was gone, but the guy had left me a lukewarm cup of dark roast. Not for nothing was he my favorite person alive.
I rooted around for clean clothes, which I was pretty sure was a lost cause, but I thought I’d give it a shot anyway.
Yeah, that didn’t work; it was definitely time to do laundry. I picked up a fallen tee, some jeans, socks, boots, pulled on my kutte, and rolled out.
By the time I made it to the shop, I was deeply regretting not having guzzled down a gallon of water and some painkillers the night before. Whoever invented sunshine should be shot. That fireball had no compassion.
Indoors at last, I was met by Trini, guardian of the front desk. She was a heavily-inked and pierced, five-foot-four, pink-haired, cat-eyed, militant organizer of the highest realm, and she provided snark at no extra cost. Basically, she was about the best thing that had ever happened to DeepInk, and we’d have been lost without her.
But on this day, I was cursing my luck that she wasn’t still out at lunch when I arrived.
“Hoo-boy. Look what we got today. Rating on the GM’s calendar! To what do we owe the honor?”
And so it begins.
“Shut it, Treens. And get me something for my head, would you?”
“Oh, is somebody suffering la cruda? Pobrecito! Yes, let me rush off to take care of your po’ widdoo head.” She shook her own at me. “Jerk. You deserve it. You back, now?”
Chin down, I peered at her over the tops of my sunglasses, which I tipped down but protectively kept on my nose. “Yeah, I’m back.”
She glared at me, then reached into a corner of her domain and pulled out a blessed bottle of ibuprofen. She tossed it to me as she headed to the back kitchen/staff room for what I hoped would be a bottle of water, giving me a shoulder bump on her way. Total gem.
I was looking over the schedule for the day—okay, I was procrastinating. I had no desire to meet with the mystery woman and her baby, if they were even still there.
When Trini came back with the water, she destroyed my hopes. “Heads up, boss. There’s a woman with a baby, looks like you, in your office. Been waiting there about an hour and a half, now. You been holding back on us, Jack? Deets, dude.”
I was careful. I was always careful. I could have been ten sheets to the wind, and I’d still use protection. No way could there be a kid out there with my genes. No way in hell. It was starting to piss me off.
“Name, Trini?”
“Didn’t get one. Just insisted on seeing you, I said you weren’t in yet, she said she knew your office was in the back and made her own way there. I don’t know this chick from nobody, but I am not getting in the middle of any lovers’ tiff. Your baby-mama, your problem.”
At that moment, the baby began to add in its two cents, as if on cue. It sounded like a catfight, but worse, since it came from the direction of my office. My space. This did not help my hangover. It was time to lose this woman and regain my peace.