Page 51 of Night's Reckoning
She shook her head.
“This isn’t friendship,” he whispered. “Maybe you don’t know what it is. Maybe I don’t either. But I don’t want to pretend anymore. You want to know what I want? That’s it. I want us to stop pretending.”
She faded into the darkness just as Jinpa turned on the low lights in the courtyard.
“Benjamin?” The sweet old woman recognized him and was unfazed by his sudden appearance, shirtless and standing with a bloody lip in the middle of the night. “What happened to your shirt?” She fussed over him. “Come in the kitchen. I’ll make you tea.”
He let her guide him into the kitchen, but not before he saw Tenzin on the far side of the courtyard, disappearing into the night sky.
“Sorry.” He turned to Jinpa. “I needed a book from the library and ran into unexpected company.”
“It’s fine.” She pushed him into a chair. “Sit. I’ll get you some gauze for your lip. You have an extra shirt or two in your room.” Jinpa looked over her shoulder toward the courtyard. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you alone?”
I am now.Ben cleared his throat. “Yeah. I’m staying in the city right now.”
Jinpa knew the score. She raised a single eyebrow, shook her head a little, and turned back to the stove. “When you’re ready to go, Mei can drive you back into town. She has a car now.”
“Oh yeah?” He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and prepared to catch up with Tenzin’s caretaker. “How’s she doing in school?”
“So well. She makes us all very proud. All the boys want to marry her, but she says no. No boyfriend for her. School only right now.”
“That’s good. Good plan. Relationships are nothing but trouble.”
Jinpa took Ben’s chin in her hand and angled his face toward the light. “And how are you, Benjamin?”
He took a deep breath. “Oh, about the same.”
14
Tenzin reached the balcony of Cheng’s building a few minutes before midnight. She saw Cheng sitting in the corner, smoking a pipe he enjoyed from time to time.
She marched over to him. “Did you send men after Benjamin?”
He raised an eyebrow. “No.”
She placed a careful hand at his throat. “Are you sure?”
Cheng was unfazed. “You have blood on your lower lip, Cricket. Is there something I should know about?”
“Ben was followed and attacked by my home.”
His eyebrow went up. “Do you really think I’d be that stupid?”
“You can be unpredictable.”
Cheng carefully removed Tenzin’s hand from his throat and set his pipe on the table. “Unpredictable? Yes. But you are anything but unpredictable when it comes to that man, so I would be an idiot to try to harm him, even if I find him annoying.”
They stared at each other for long, silent minutes.
Tenzin didn’t see any deception in his eyes. Also, Cheng was right. Coming after Ben would be stupid, and he wasn’t.
She backed away from him and jumped up to sit on the edge of the balcony. “Then who?”
“That’s an excellent question. Harming your pet human—”
“He’s not my ‘pet human.’” She glared at him. “Do you really see him that way? Are you so blind? Do you not see his potential?”
“Potential is not reality.” Cheng picked up his pipe and drew a long puff. “And I know he’s not a pet, but I do enjoy the look on your face when I call him that.”
