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“I’m really not afraid to meet your mother,” Petreski told me later that night as we were curled up on my sofa watching The Walking Dead on my laptop.
“You should be. I’m terrified that she’ll scare you off.”
He sighed and hugged me tighter. “She won’t scare me off. I’ve faced worse than... than... what is your mom’s name again, anyway?”
“Monica.”
“Monica Hillebrand. How scary can a Monica be?”
I snorted.
“You haven’t met my parents, either.”
“Do you,” I swallowed, “do you want me to meet your parents?” We hadn’t talked about this before. Meeting the parents was something I hadn’t even thought about yet, which was ridiculous because I couldn’t see myself with anyone but Boo, ever.
“Yeah. You know, on a special occasion. Like, our tenth anniversary or something like that.”
I laughed and tilted my head back to meet his eyes. “That bad?”
“We could have a contest.”
“Would it bother your parents that I’m not... you know... like you?”
“A cop?”
“Jerk. You know what I mean. Not Cat.”
“Let me guess. In all those paranormal romances you read, shifter families get bent out of shape if their shifter son brings home a human mate?”
“Fine. Yes. But it’s a serious question. There are lots of people who don’t want their children to bring home someone of a different religion or culture or whatever.”
“You have a point, sorry. But no, that won’t bother them. My mother will think you’re adorable.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad. And I am kind of adorable.”
“You’re a brat, is what you are. Look, bottom line, I’m up for meeting your parents if you’re up for meeting mine.”
“If you think we’re ready. I mean, if you are, I am. Yeah, okay.”
* * *
“I guess I just don’t get this,” I said, lowering my e-reader.
“Don’t get what?” Petreski asked, cracking open one green eye and looking up at me.
“Sorry, were you asleep?”
“Not yet. Just cat-napping.” He grinned like he thought he was hilarious. He really isn’t. “What don’t you get?”
“Zombie romance.”
“That’s a thing now?”
“Yeah. I don’t get it.”
“I wonder, if you have sex with a zombie, does it eat your brain afterwards, like a praying mantis?”
“Ew. No. These aren’t that kind of zombie.”
“There’s different kinds of zombies now, too?”
“Yeah. But the thing is, if you’re dead – or undead – there’s no heartbeat, so no blood flow, so how does – you know – stuff work?”
“Stuff?”
“You know,” I waggled my eyebrows, “stuff.”
“Oh. Magic?”
“There’s no such thing as magic.”
“There’s no such thing as zombies, either, and yet we’re having this conversation.”
“Don reads lots of zombie books. Maybe he knows.”
“Ask him tomorrow,” Petreski said, grabbing my arm when I started to get out of bed. He took the e-reader from my hand and laid it on the nightstand. “There’s nothing wrong with my circulatory system.”
* * *
It was dark, but I could see just fine. There were streetlamps, but I didn’t need them to make out the figure of a man shuffling down the street. He stumbled, dropping to one knee, but pushed himself up again and kept moving. I felt myself shake and called out, warning him to stay away. I heard other voices join mine, a chorus of yips and howls, and the man disappeared around the corner.
“Jake. Wake up Jake, come on.”
I could feel someone shaking my arm, and I opened my eyes to see Petreski leaning over me. “Oh. Sorry, was I loud?”
“You were dreaming. You kept saying, ‘No, go away, go away!’ Do you remember anything?”
I rolled onto my back and looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, trying to remember the dream. “I was outside, watching a man walk down the street. I couldn’t make out a face, but he was hunched over and moving slowly. I was afraid of him, and was yelling at him to stay away.”
“Yelling?”
“Well, technically I guess I was barking, but that was the message. Oh, crap, I do not need this right now.” These dreams, when I dreamed I was an animal, they were real and they were almost always bad.
Petreski got up and headed for the kitchen, and not even a bad psychic dream could stop me from admiring the way his muscles rippled as he moved and I really needed to get my priorities in order because somewhere out there something bad was going to happen if it hadn’t already.
“Thanks, Boo,” I said when he handed me a glass of water and sat down on the edge of the bed.
“Sure. Now drink that and tell me what you remember.”
“That’s pretty much it. I was in my place – my yard, I guess – and I was defending my territory. But he was just walking down the street, he didn’t come towards me. It was more like I knew he was bad news and was warning him off.”
“Did you notice anything specific about him? Or the area? Did the street look familiar?”
“He stumbled at one point, like maybe he was drunk or dizzy. Or maybe he just tripped in the dark. It was an older neighborhood – small houses and bungalows, chain-link fences. Nothing special that I recognized.”
I set the glass on my nightstand and slid back down. Petreski climbed in behind me and spooned me against his chest. It was warm and I felt safe with my big cop right behind me.
“You want me to wake you up if you start dreaming again?”
“Yeah. I like waking up with you. Makes me feel safe.”
He pulled me closer. “You know you said that out loud, right?”
“It was on purpose that time.”
* * *
The remainder of my night was blissfully dream free. I woke up before Boo and headed into the kitchen to start a pot of coffee.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered, looking at the teaspoon of grounds in the bottom of the bag. How could that even be possible? I must have been distracted by school starting and my parents coming and forgot to buy coffee.
Disgusted, I went into the bathroom to take a shower. The hot water helped wake me up and I decided we could go get coffee at Ground Up. Petreski slouched past me as I exited the steamy bathroom.
“Morning, Boo.”
“Ngh,” he said as he closed the bathroom door. My Boo is not a morning person.
“Take a shower and we’ll walk over to Ground Up for breakfast.”
He grunted again, so I knew he heard me.
“Hurry up, Boo! The faster you shower the sooner you get coffee!”
That did the trick, because he was ready to go before I had finished packing my backpack for school.
“You can’t be clean.”
“I’m clean enough to sit in a car with Perez all day.”
“That’s mean, but I’ll let it go since it’s Perez.”
“Harsh. Come on, let’s go get that coffee.”
The walk to Ground Up only took a few minutes, and we got in line to order.
“Oh,” I said, seeing that Petreski was distracted by the pastry displays, “I forgot to mention I bumped into Tom Wilton yesterday.”
It took a moment for that to sink in, but then Petreski’s back stiffened and he straightened up. He turned to face me. “You just happened to forget to mention that?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Because it’s not a big deal. Turns out he’s a psychology major, too, so we’ve got classes together.”
“Lovely.”
“Now, Boo. You know Tom has a dog and I’m more of a cat person.”
His lips twitched, but I pretended not to notice so he could give me grief a little longer. Don doesn’t get it, but sometimes giving each other crap is how we flirt.
I left Petreski to order and went to find us a table. Most of the customers were getting their orders to go, so I was able to get a table by the front window.
“No late-night study dates,” Petreski said, sitting across from me.
“What? Geez, don’t you trust me?”
“You, yes. Him? No. I saw how he looked at you.”
“Months ago. It’s not like that.”
“Just try not to give me a heart attack, okay?”
“Whatever.” I poked at my breakfast quiche with my fork. “So, ah, how did he look at me, exactly?”
I could hear the rumble low in Petreski’s throat and it made me shiver. “Same way I do – like he didn’t know whether to kiss you or strangle you.”
“Kinky.”
“So, so very not.”
“What is it?” I asked when Petreski’s phone chimed yet again. “Do you need to go? It’s okay.”
“No,” he shook his head. “Just an update from Perez.”
“Update? New case?”
Petreski shook his head again, but his answer was an affirmative. “Yeah, but nothing you need to worry about.”
“Can’t help worrying, Boo,” I told him before taking a sip of coffee.
“Have you heard about the killings on the west side? Three middle-aged black men?”
“Aren’t you supposed to say African-American?” I asked.
“It’s more complicated than that. Two of them were technically Afro-Caribbean, and one recently emigrated from South Africa.”
“Wow. So do you think they were targeted because they were foreign? Or black? Was it a hate crime?”
“We don’t know anything yet. Only that they were all tortured, and then killed with the same gun. And this is all just between you and me, as usual.”
I nodded and pried a piece of crust off the edge of the quiche with my fork. I thought about the man I’d seen in my dream. Had he been black? I couldn’t be sure. It had been dark and his face had been shadowed. Anyway, the street I saw had been closer to home, an older, inner loop neighborhood. The west side would be outside my range – at least as far as I knew.
